1 Corinthians 15:3b-6a, 7 And The Bodily Resurrection Of Jesus

By Kirk R. Macgregor

[Kirk R. MacGregor is visiting instructor of religion at the University of Northern Iowa, 1227 West 27th Street, Cedar Falls, IA 50614.]

One of the most recurring claims leveled by modern exegetes against the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus has been that the pre-Pauline creed in 1 Cor 15:3–7, at best, implies that Jesus’ earliest disciples believed in a spiritual resurrection which did not necessarily vacate his tomb.[1] Two lines of argument are normally given in support of this premise. (1) Since Paul employs the same Greek verb as the tradition, ὤφθη (“he was seen”), to describe his visionary experience of the risen Christ, Paul’s experience was the same in character as that of the preceding disciples.[2] (2) The formula contains no mention of the empty tomb, thereby suggesting that the corpse of Jesus was irrelevant to the concept of his resurrection held by the Jerusalem church.[3] Such an understanding of the resurrection was shared by Paul, as displayed in his contrast between the physical and spiritual bodies (1 Cor 15:44). However, this understanding evolved during the second Christian generation into the doctrine of physical resurrection featured in the Gospel appearance narratives.[4] The purpose of this essay will be to challenge (1) and (2) on form-critical grounds and to reveal in the process that the earliest followers of Jesus both believed in his physical resurrection and recounted resurrection appearances qualitatively different from that of Paul.

I. Prolegomena

Form criticism has established that within 1 Cor 15:3–7 Paul quotes a primitive Christian creed originally formulated during the earliest years of the Jesus movement.[5] Although scholars differ concerning its precise length, there has emerged a consensus that at least verses 3b–5 belong to the ancient tradition based on the following linguistic data. First, Paul prefaces the creed by reminding the Corinthians, “For I delivered (παρέδωκα) to you as of first importance what I also received (παρέλαβον)” (v. 3a), where παρέδωκα and παρέλαβον are technical terms used by Jewish rabbis for the transmission of sacred tradition. Therefore, Paul admits that the creed is not his own, but that he received it from an earlier source who handed it down to him.[6] Second, several words in the creed are found almost nowhere else in Paul’s writings, which indicates that Paul is quoting an earlier source. Such non-Pauline phrases include ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν (“for our sins”), κατὰ τὰς γραφάς (“according to the Scriptures”), ἐγήγερται (“he has been raised”), τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῇ (“on the third day”), ὤφθη (“he was seen”), and το͂ς δώδεκα (“by the Twelve”).[7] Finally, there are indications that the creed has a Semitic source, including the use of the transliterated Aramaic Κηφᾷ (“Cephas”) for Peter, the threefold καὶ ὅτι (“and that”) characteristic of Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew narration, and the faithfulness to the Hebrew Bible reflected in the qualification of both Jesus’ death and resurrection with the parallel κατὰ τὰς γραφάς.[8]

Concerning the date of the creed, virtually all critical scholars agree that Paul received the tradition no later than five years after the crucifixion, with a majority holding that the material was passed on to him when he visited Jerusalem three years after his conversion (Gal 1:18–19), and a minority maintaining that the material was conveyed to him in Damascus via the community in Antioch immediately upon his conversion.[9] The former group points to Paul’s description of his visit with Peter and James by the participle ἱστορῆσαι (Gal 1:18), which literally means “to visit and get information” and refers to an investigative mission where he carefully examined these apostles to discover facts.[10] Since the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus would in all probability have been the primary subject of discussion, a Jerusalem reception of the creed from Peter and James, both of whom were recipients of postmortem appearances, seems preferable.[11] Hence, the terminus ante quern for the origin of the creed is AD 35, assuming the truth of the majority view that Jesus’ crucifixion occurred in AD 30 and Paul’s conversion in ad 32. Remarkably, however, form-critical analysis reveals the existence of two earlier stages in the development of this tradition. Since the creed would have been formulated before Paul received it, the creed in its final form should be dated even earlier than ad 35. For this reason, even the radical Jesus Seminar, in its book The Acts of Jesus, dates the tradition no later than ad 33.[12] Moreover, Gary Habermas observes that “the independent beliefs themselves, which later composed the formalized creed, would then date back to the actual historical events.”[13] Taken together, these considerations have led a broad spectrum of scholars from widely divergent schools of thought to identify this creed as eyewitness testimony of those who believed they saw literal appearances of Jesus alive after his death. As the Jewish NT scholar Pinchas Lapide concludes, “[T]his unified piece of tradition which soon was solidified into a formula of faith may be considered as a statement of eyewitnesses for whom the experience of the resurrection became the turning point of their lives.”[14]

II. The Length Of The Creed

Although all critics agree that verse 8 is a parenthetical remark appended to the tradition by Paul when writing 1 Corinthians in c. ad 55, due to its distinctly Pauline vocabulary and stylistic discontinuity from the preceding lines, the authorship of verses 6–7 remains in dispute.[15] In his analysis of this problem, however, Peter Stuhlmacher persuasively argues that verse 6b— ἐξ ὧν οἱ πλείονες μένουσιν ἕως ἄρτι, τινὲς δὲ ἐκοιμήθησαν (“most of whom are still living, but some have fallen asleep”)—is typically Pauline.[16] To his argument I would add that both μένω (lexical form of μένουσιν) and κοιμάομαι (lexical form of ἐκοιμήθησαν) are frequently employed by Paul elsewhere (the former in Rom 9:11; 1 Cor 3:14; 7:8, 11, 20, 24, 40; 13:13; 2 Cor 3:11, 14; 9:9; Phil 1:25; the latter in 1 Cor 7:39; 11:30; 15:18, 20, 51; 1 Thess 4:13–15). It seems, therefore, that we should regard verse 6b as the product of the apostle’s hand. But the question remains whether or not verses 6a and/or 7 belong to the formula. I believe an extremely strong case can be made for identifying both of these verses as original to the creed, in which case, if successful, would then yield the following six-line Urtext extending from verses 3b–6a, 7:

ὅτι Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν κατὰ τὰς γραφάς
(“that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”)
Καὶ ὅτι ἐτάφη
(“and that he was buried”)
καὶ ̔́οτι ἐγήγερται τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ κατὰ τὰς γραφάς
(“and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”)
καὶ ὅτι ὤφθη Κηφᾷ εἶτα τοις δώδεκα:
(“and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the Twelve”)
καὶ ὅτι ὤφθη ἐπάνω πεντακοσίοις ἀδελφοις ἐφάπαξ:
(“then he was seen by over five hundred brethren at once”)
ἔπειτα ὤφθη ᾿Ιακώβῳ εἶτα τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν
(“then he was seen by James, then by all the apostles”)

The case for the inclusion of both verses 6a and 7 consists of two categories of evidence: (1) contextual; and (2) structural. We will discuss each of these in turn.

(1) In addition to ὤφθη, verse 6a contains two other non-Pauline terms: ἐπανω is found nowhere else in Paul’s writings; and the only Pauline instance of ἐφάπαξ (Rom 6:10) carries the connotation “once for all,” which is quite different from its meaning “at once” in the line under examination.[17] Moreover, Paul’s use of ἕως ἄρτι (“still”) in his parenthetical remark, “most of whom are still living, but some have fallen asleep” (v. 6b), indicates that Paul is here giving his own commentary on a phrase that was formulated at an earlier time concerning the 500 brethren (v. 6a). Hence ἕως ἄρτι constitutes Paul’s own admission that verse 6a is non-Pauline. Linguistically, then, it seems undeniable that verse 6a should be included in the tradition. Equally powerful are the reasons why verse 7 should be regarded as part of the original formula. It should be noted that the group of τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν (“all the apostles”) does not include Paul, even by Paul’s own admission in his parenthetical appendage to the tradition (v. 8). This fact is quite stunning because Paul, throughout the Corinthian correspondence, is constantly fighting for the recognition of his apostolicity and insists that no one has the authority to deny that he is an apostle alongside those regarded as apostles by the Jerusalem church (1 Cor 4; 9; 2 Cor 11–12). Verse 7 thus flies in the face of Paul’s stark assertion in 1 Cor 9:1, in which he grounds his apostleship in his experience of a resurrection appearance: “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” In my judgment, therefore, it is simply unthinkable that Paul, after boldly and repeatedly asserting his apostleship in the same epistle, would compose a line in which he excluded himself from the group of “all the apostles.” Such a line is explicable only if τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν designates the pre-Pauline circle of all those recognized as apostles in the earliest years of the Jerusalem church, a limited group which included but was somewhat broader than the Twelve (Acts 1:21–23), before the persecution associated with Stephen (ad 30–34). Just as the non-Pauline ὤφθη is also found in verse 7, it seems historically certain that τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν is a non-Pauline phrase and pre-Pauline group.[18] Moreover, the presence of “James” in verse 7, coupled with “Cephas” in the undisputedly creedal verse 5 as the only two properly named recipients of resurrection appearances, makes perfect sense if verse 7 is creedal, since it is already probable that Paul received the creed from Peter and James when he visited Jerusalem.[19] Our hypothesis is reinforced by the fact that Paul, when recounting his trip to Jerusalem, claims to have gathered information from Κηθᾶν (“Cephas”; Gal 1:18), not Πέτρον (“Peter”), and ᾿Ιάκωβον (“James”; 1:19), precisely the two names found in the verses postulated as belonging to the original formula and the two people from whom the formula is already known to have likely come. For these reasons, the contextual evidence provides powerful evidence in support of the creedal identification of verses 6a and 7.

(2) The structural argument for the inclusion of verses 6a and 7 can be thus summarized. If both of these verses are original to the tradition, then a stylized and parallel form emerges which appears too intricate to be coincidental. However, if either or both of these verses are not original to the tradition, then the structure of the form is destroyed. Supposing for the sake of argument that verses 6a and 7 are part of the creed, the literary structure of the first three lines of the creed is symmetric to the literary structure of the last three lines of the creed. The first three lines form an intercalation, in which lines one and three are parallel to one another, each ending with the stylized phrase κατὰ τὰς γραθάς and between them lies the non-parallel line two. This intercalation in the first three lines is mirrored by an intercalation formed by the last three lines. Similarly to lines one and three, lines four and six are parallel to one another, each ending with a stylized phrase consisting of εἶτα followed by a group of people in the dative case (τοῖς δώδεκα and τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν, respectively), between which lines is situated the non-parallel line five. Moreover, the four instances of ὅτι in the first half of the creed are mirrored by the four instances of [ἔπ]ειτα in the second half of the creed. It should be noted that ὤφθη seems to have been replicated in lines four through six as a further mnemonic device serving the same purpose as the symmetric literary structure—namely, ease of memorization and subsequent repetition in public worship.[20] Taken together, all of these considerations clearly point to the oral and confessional nature of verses 3b–6a, 7 as a single unit.

In light of the preceding discussion, therefore, the cumulative force of (1) and (2) permits little doubt that both verses 6a and 7 are original to the creed.

III. The Creed’s Understanding Of The Resurrection Of Jesus

In order to determine what Jesus’ followers believed about his resurrection in the first five years after the crucifixion (ad 30–35), responsible historical criticism dictates that we consider only the most primitive material coming directly from these disciples—namely, the 1 Cor 15:3b–6a, 7 creed—rather than anachronistically reading their concept of resurrection through the lenses of later material. Astonishingly, modern exegetes who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus commit precisely such an anachronism when reasoning that (1) Paul’s use of ὤφθη c. ad 55 to describe his resurrection appearance enables us to determine the character of the appearances recounted in material fully twenty years earlier. From a historical perspective, Paul’s interpretation of the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Corinthians is simply irrelevant to the original understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. To illustrate, suppose for the sake of argument that Paul, by employing ὤφθη to depict his visionary experience, intended to say that his experience possessed the same character as that of the preceding disciples. But it is a non sequitur to conclude there-from that the appearances of the preceding disciples were, in fact, visionary, as no reason has been given by skeptics of Jesus’ bodily resurrection to think either that Paul correctly understood the character of their appearances or that Paul was being truthful when equating the character of his appearance with theirs. Certainly doctrinal misunderstandings existed between Paul and members of the Jerusalem church, as abundantly evidenced by his denunciation of the “false brothers” (2 Cor 11:26; Gal 2:4; cf. 4:17; 5:12) and “false apostles” (2 Cor 11:13) from Jerusalem. We already know, moreover, that Paul had a vested interest in portraying the Jerusalem apostles as being on a par with himself (2 Cor 11:5; 12:11; Gal 2:9), which would furnish no little motive for falsely downgrading the quality of their experiences to match the level of his visionary experience. Hence, the original understanding of Jesus’ resurrection must be discerned from the 1 Cor 15:3b–6a, 7 creed in and of itself, shorn from its Pauline commentary.

When we turn to a textual analysis of this creed, the linguistic evidence renders apparent that its formulators regarded the resurrection of Jesus as a bodily, grave-emptying event. The chronological sequence of Jesus’ burial and resurrection in the second and third lines of the creed reveals that the body in the tomb was physically raised: “and that he was buried and that he was raised (ἐγήγερται) on the third day.”[21] Quite significantly, the verb ἐγείρω (lexical form of ἐγήγερται) means “to cause to stand up from a lying or reclining position with the implication of some degree of previous incapacity.”[22] Since dead bodies were buried in a prone position, the verb must be referring to the raising of a formerly prone corpse to the standing posture of a live body.[23] This concept of resurrection cannot refer to the immortality of the spirit, which can neither lie down nor stand up, but must refer to the resurrection of a physical body out of a tomb. For this reason, the Greek vocabulary demands that the composers of the creed believed in the bodily resurrection and empty tomb of Jesus. To argue that (2) the formula does not recount the empty tomb is therefore untenable and can only be maintained by reading verse 4 in translation while ignoring the original text. Proceeding to verse 5, the verb ὁράω (lexical form of ὤφθη) is an elastic term which, just like its English equivalent “to see,” does not by itself specify anything about the character of what was seen—in this case, whether the resurrection appearances recounted in the creed were bodily or visionary.[24] This qualitative question can only be settled by appealing to already known information about the character of what was seen. Since ὤφθη stipulates that “he,” that is, Christ, “was seen,” and the previous two lines clearly affirm that the same “he”—namely, his physical body—emerged from the grave, the context naturally indicates that the physical, bodily Jesus was seen by the witnesses listed in verses 5–6a, 7. Therefore, we have extremely good grounds for concluding that the earliest disciples who composed the 1 Cor. 15:3b–6a, 7 creed both regarded the grave-emptying resurrection of Jesus as historical and attested that they themselves had seen the physically risen Jesus after his death.

At this juncture of our study two further points merit attention. First, although earlier granted for the sake of argument, it is far from obvious that Paul, by using ὤφθη, intended to say that his resurrection appearance was qualitatively identical to those of the disciples listed in the creed. Rather, the context suggests precisely the opposite. Notice that Paul, in his appended verse 8, does not follow up the threefold sequence of καὶ ὅτι ὤφθη. .. ἔπειτα ὤφθη. .. ἔπειτα ὤφθη with either (a) ἕσχατον δὲ πάντων ὤφθη κἀμοί (“and last of all he was seen also by me”) or (b) ἕσχατον δὲ πάντων ὤφθη κἀμοί ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι (“and last of all he was seen also by me, as to one untimely born”). If Paul wanted to imply that his appearance was identical in character to those of the original disciples, then he surely would have used (a) or (b). Not only would the diction of the fourfold ὤφθη in either (a) or (b) suggest that Paul claimed no difference between his experience and those of the other disciples, but the position of ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι (“as to one untimely born”) after ἕσχατον δ̀ὲ πάντων ὤφθη κἀμοί in (b) would render ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι as a temporal indicator, affirming simply that a period of time elapsed between the appearance to τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν Tramv and himself, with no bearing upon the quality of his experience. Instead of either (a) or (b), Paul intentionally breaks the diction of the threefold ὤφθη by writing ἕσχατον δὲ πάντων ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι ὤφθη (“and last of all as to one untimely born he was seen also by me”), thereby separating his experience from that of the previous disciples. This observation rules out the possibility that Paul is here attempting to convey that he experienced Christ in a manner qualitatively identical to those listed in the creed. But Paul moves one step further. By placing ὤφθη κἀμοί (“he was seen also by me”) after ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι, Paul explicitly shows ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι to be a qualifying phrase which modifies ὤφθη κἀμοί rather than a temporal indicator. Hence Paul uses ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι to explain how the character of his appearance was qualitatively distinct from those recounted in the primitive tradition. While the previous disciples “saw” Jesus in the normal fashion, Paul admits to have “as to one untimely born seen” Jesus—namely, to have seen him in an abnormal fashion. This is one reason why Paul asserts in the next sentence, “For I am the least of the apostles, who does not deserve to be called an apostle” (v. 9). For these reasons, John Dominic Crossan is forced to rightfully conclude on this score:

I take very cautiously, therefore, the presumption that Paul’s entranced experience of the risen Jesus was the only or even dominant experience of earliest Christianity after the crucifixion. Paul needs, in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11, to equate his own experience with that of the preceding apostles. To equate, that is, its validity and legitimacy but not necessarily its mode or manner. Jesus was revealed to all of them, but Paul’s own entranced revelation should not be presumed to be the model for all others.[25]

Far from alleging that his experience possessed the same character as the resurrection appearances recounted in the creed, then, Paul goes to great pains to insist that his experience differed in character from the appearances to “those who were in Christ before I was” (Rom 16:7).

Second, many commentators, most notably Robert H. Gundry in his magisterial Soma in Biblical Theology, have exploded the old ploy to construe σῶμα ψυχικόν as “physical body” and subsequently oppose it to σῶμα πνευματικόν (“spiritual body”).[26] By way of summary, σῶμα is never used in the NT to denote anything other than the physical body or the human being with special emphasis on the physical body.[27] Hence to maintain that σῶμα πνευματικόν refers to a σῶμα made out of πνεῦμα (“spirit”) is self-contradictory, for an immaterial body composed of πνεῦμα, by definition, ceases to be a σῶμα (“physical body”). Rather, as William Lane Craig points out, Paul discloses the meaning of ψυχικόν and πνευματικόν in 1 Cor 2:14–15: “A ψυχικός ἄνθρωπος (‘soul-ish human’) does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him or her. .. but the spiritual human (πνευματικός) discerns all things.”[28] Here we find that ψυχικός and πνευματικός represent opposite dominating principles towards which a person can be fundamentally oriented—either the person’s own ψυχή (“soul”) or the πνεῦμα (“Spirit”) of God.[29] Clearly ψυχικός ἄνθρωπος does not signify a “physical human,” but rather a human primarily inclined towards the selfish desires of his or her own soul. Likewise, πνευματικός does not refer to an immaterial human, but rather a human primarily inclined towards the desires of the Holy Spirit. It logically follows, therefore, that a σῶμα ψυχικόν (“soul-ish body”) is a body instinctively steered by the will of the soul, while the σῶμα πνευματικόν (“spiritual body”) is the same body of flesh as the σῶμα ψυχικόν but instinctively steered by the will of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the notion that Paul’s doctrine of resurrection in 1 Cor 15:44 opposes the physical body to an immaterial spiritual body is seen to be vacuous.

IV. Conclusion

We close this essay with a synopsis of its principal findings. The precise length of the 1 Corinthians 15 creedal formula, which dates no later than ad 35 and was drawn up by the original followers of Jesus in the Jerusalem church, spans verses 3b–6a, 7. We have found fallacious the two arguments against the bodily resurrection of Jesus most commonly associated with this creed. The proposition that (1) we can infer from Paul’s use of ὤφθη to describe his visionary experience of Jesus that the previous disciples also had visionary experiences suffers from two fatal flaws. First, (1) is guilty of extremely poor historiography, as it is simply anachronistic to assert that the Pauline portrayal of Christ’s resurrection c. ad 55 has any bearing on the preceding disciples’ understanding of his resurrection at least twenty years earlier. To give a parallel from Reformation studies, (1) would be analogous to recovering Luther’s theology from the writings of Melanchthon or Calvin’s theology from the writings of Beza, which any historian of the early modern period would deem absurd. Second, Paul intentionally qualifies ὤφθη with ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι in order to emphasize that the resurrection appearances to the earliest disciples were qualitatively different from his experience of the postmortem Christ: while the recipients listed in the creed saw Christ in the normal fashion, Paul saw him in an abnormal fashion. By his own admission, then, Paul recognized that Christ appeared to him in a different mode or manner than to the original disciples. Moreover, all three rungs of the historical trajectory traced by (2) from the formula’s omission of the empty tomb to the irrelevance of the tomb for the Christian Way to the Pauline dichotomy between physical bodies and immaterial spiritual bodies are seen to be specious. Both the chronological sequence and Greek vocabulary in verse 4 demand the empty tomb, thus revealing the indispensability of the vacant tomb for earliest Christianity. Since ἐγήγερται necessitates that the corpse of Jesus emerged from the grave, the object seen by the creedal witnesses is naturally taken to be the physically risen Jesus. Hence the creed itself indicates the bodily character of the resurrection appearances reported therein. This doctrine of physical resurrection was shared by Paul, whose language of σῶμα ψυχικόν and σῶμα πνευματικόν serves not as a contrast of substance but of orientation. The former is a physical body predisposed to carrying out the desires of one’s own soul, while the latter is the same physical body but now predisposed to carrying out the desires of the Holy Spirit as a result of divine transformation. By implication, if believers will in the apostle’s estimation physically rise from death at the general resurrection and Jesus was “the first fruits” of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:23), then it follows immediately that Paul himself regarded Jesus as having physically risen from the dead.[30] In sum, all three layers of the Jesus tradition—including within the first layer, most importantly, the earliest creed formulated by his original followers—unambiguously affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Notes

1. Recent examples of this allegation include Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus (London: SCM, 1994) 33-109; Marcus J. Borg, “The Truth of Easter,” in Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) 130-35; Michael Goulder, “The Ex planatory Power of Conversion-Visions,” in Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli, eds., Jesus’ Resur rection: Fact or Figment? (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000) 96-99; James M. Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed),” JBL 101 (1982) 7-17; Pheme Perkins, Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1984) 94.
2. Lüdemann, Resurrection 48–54; Borg, “Truth of Easter” 132.
3. Marcus J. Borg, “The Irrelevancy of the Empty Tomb,” in Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998) 122-23.
4. Lüdemann, Resurrection 171–72.
5. Joachim Jeremias, Die Abendmahlsworte Jesu (4th ed.; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967) 95-98; Jacob Kremer, Das alteste Zeugnis von der Auferstehung Christi (3d ed.; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1970); Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (London: SPCK, 1972) 10-11.
6. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) 319.
7. Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (New York: Scribner, 1966) 101-2.
8. Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983) 98.
9. It should be noted that the place where Paul received the tradition is irrelevant to the question of where the tradition originated. The linguistic evidence marshaled by Eduard Lohse (Martyrer und Gottesknecht [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963] 113) and Berthold Klappert (“Zur Frage des semitischen oder griechischen Urtextes von I. Kor. XV. 3–5, ” NTS 13 [1966–67] 168–73) seems to me overwhelming in favor of the creed’s Jerusalem origin; as Lüdemann correctly observes, “For even if the tradition came to Paul by way of the community in Antioch, it would only have reproduced what it too had received—from Jerusalem” (Resurrection 36).
10. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2 vols. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989) 1.453, 2.125; BDAG 383.
11. Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus (Joplin, MO: College, 1996) 155.
12. Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus (San Francisco: Polebridge, 1998) 454. Lüdemann, one of the seminar’s most prominent members, flatly declares regarding 1 Cor 15:3b–6a, 7 that “all the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus” (Resurrection 38).
13. Habermas, Historical Jesus 155.
14. Lapide, Resurrection 99.
15. William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1989) 3-4.
16. Peter Stuhlmacher, Das paulinische Evangelium (Gbttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968) 268-69.
17. Ibid.
18. Craig, Assessing 5–6.
19. Habermas, Historical Jesus 155.
20. Fuller, Resurrection Narratives 11–12; Jeremias, Eucharistic Words 102–3.
21. Lüdemann’s thesis that the burial is here unrelated to the resurrection but is rather a qualifying remark to certify Jesus’ death (“Opening Statement,” in Resurrection: Fact or Figment 44) has been decisively refuted by Craig (“First Rebuttal,” in Resurrection: Fact or Figment 47–48; Assessing 49) as contrary to the creed’s chronological fourfold ὅτι-structure, which serially orders the independent events of Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and postmortem appearances as possessing equal importance and equal weight.
22. This definition is a conflation of the two primary meanings of ἐγειρω from Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon 1.216; cf. BDAG 214–15.
23. Craig (Assessing 90–115) supplies further creedal evidence for the empty tomb by illustrating through a careful consideration of all the possible interpretations of τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτη that this phrase most probably served as a time indicator for the women’s discovery of the empty tomb “on the third day,” according to Jewish reckoning, after Jesus’ crucifixion.
24. Wright, Resurrection 323; Robert H. Gundry, “Trimming the Debate,” in Resurrection: Fact or Figment 116–17.
25. John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994) 169.
26. Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 29-80; see also Craig, Assessing 120–59; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987) 775-86; Craig L. Blomberg, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994) 315-16; Wright, Resurrection 347–56.
27. Gundry, Soma 168.
28. Craig, Assessing 126.
29. William Lane Craig, “Resurrection and the Real Jesus,” in Real Jesus 172–73.
30. A plethora of additional considerations, of course, also demonstrate the bodily nature of the Pauline doctrine of Christ’s resurrection, including the apostle’s metaphor of sowing and raising (1 Cor 15:42) and the fourfold use of τοῦτο (1 Cor 15:50–55), both of which emphasize the historical continuity and numerical identity between the body interred in the tomb and the spiritual body. For two extremely thorough analyses of such considerations see Wright, Resurrection 207–374 and Craig, Assessing 117–59.

Recognizing And Successfully Averting The Word–Faith Threat To Evangelicalism

By Kirk R. MacGregor, Ph.D.

[Kirk R. MacGregor is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Northern Iowa.]

Judging by its extraordinary success in both the religious and secular marketplaces, the Word–Faith Movement is one of the fastest–growing and most influential ideologies claiming allegiance to the Christian tradition. This fact is evidenced, for example, by Church Report’s 2006 list of “50 Most Influential Christians in America,” which includes a total of eleven Word–Faith leaders, four of whom (Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, T. D. Jakes, and Paul Crouch) rank among the top ten.[1] It is also illustrated by Time Magazine’s 18 September 2006 cover story “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” focusing on the teachings of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer, whom the piece identifies as “Protestant evangelists” and “within [the] ranks” of evangelicalism.[2] At least three ostensibly Christian television networks – TBN, ISPN, and Daystar Television – devote over three–quarters of their airtime to Faith programming. Moreover, some of these programs, especially Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, Joyce Meyer’s Enjoying Everyday Life, Kenneth Copeland’s Believer’s Voice of Victory, and Benny Hinn’s This Is Your Day, comprise regular staples in the secular market. The popularity of the Faith Movement has also grown through its publications, which are prevalent (and sometimes dominant) in Christian bookstores as well as the inspirational racks of secular bookstores. Thus Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston’s Lakewood Church, boasting to be America’s largest congregation with an average of over 30,000 worshipers weekly, reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller List with his 2004 Your Best Life Now.[3] This feat has been more than equaled by his prolific female counterpart Joyce Meyer, whom the Detroit News describes as “the country’s leading female evangelist” and “the top–selling female Christian author in America.”[4]

As a historian of Western religion in general and Christianity in particular, I find all of this quite disturbing, not so much for what is happening on the surface but what is happening below the surface. That is to say, as initially appalling as it may be, I am far less concerned with the “health and wealth” aspects of the movement, which historically are nothing new, as I am with the underlying theological infrastructure upon which the movement is based and from which its views on abundance are an outgrowth. Thus, while greed and faith–healing among professed Christians does not imply Word–Faith theology and could logically emanate from a plethora of belief–systems utterly distinct from the Faith one,[5] the Faith system does logically necessitate that its adherents are entitled to material and bodily prosperity. Despite its use of Christian vocabulary, this system of thought is radically different from historic Christian orthodoxy on, minimally, theology proper, anthropology, and soteriology.[6] For these reasons, if belonging to the Christian tradition is defined as subscription to essential Christian doctrine as encapsulated in the ecumenical confessions of the first five Christian centuries, then the Word–Faith Movement is not Christian but should instead be regarded as a new religious movement (NRM). Sadly, the average layperson is unable to see beyond the surface–level employment of traditional terms, such as “faith,” “being born again,” “image of God,” and “eternal life,” to the strikingly different meanings that Faith churches ascribe to them. These observations, in my judgment, disclose the ultimate danger of the Faith Movement. While it is very easy for laypeople to hear Faith broadcasts or read Faith books and believe they are encountering sound doctrine, they are, in fact, gradually being initiated into a new worldview, as they immediately observe its deceptively appealing fruits and then, once those fruits are embraced, they begin to seek out and gradually accept the proposed theological rationale for their production.

One can profitably compare the Faith proselytizing strategy to that of Mormonism. In its television advertising campaigns and evangelistic pamphlets, the LDS Church never explicitly presents its sine qua non doctrine of eternal progression – namely, that we, like God the Father, must follow the path of Mormonism to ourselves become gods who procreate spirit–children and eternally rule over our own worlds – as this would sound too bizarre. Hence the average layperson (and even some prominent scholars)[7] would never dream that such represents the theological rationale for the LDS teachings that are commonly presented, such as strong family values, peace with God, and enhanced knowledge of Christ. But when one decides to become a Mormon, one assimilates over time the proposed doctrinal causes for the effects one has come to cherish, without objecting to one’s overseers that since the alleged causes cannot be logically deduced from the effects, the latter furnish no guarantee of the former’s validity. Such would be analogous to questioning a physician’s explanation for the effectiveness of a prescribed drug after that medication has provided healing. Similarly, if the typical church attender were to watch a Lakewood Church or Enjoying Everyday Life broadcast, having never previously heard Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer, one would immediately understand the prosperity message (comprising at least 28 minutes of the half–hour) but would also hear one or two traditional doctrinal ideas (comprising a maximum of 2 minutes) discussed in contexts where they seem somewhat out of place; in other words, where their usage neither makes much sense nor appears particularly objectionable. Writing these off as at worst trivial mistakes that in no way detract from the overall message, analogous to those made by one’s local pastor every Sunday, one tries the so–called “name it and claim it” mechanism and, when desired events occur, one interprets this as proof of the Faith message. One then begins to watch the television program on a regular basis, naturally wishing to mature in one’s insight by discovering why the formula works and therefore paying more careful attention to the elements one previously found confusing. Over about a month’s time, one gradually sees the causal links between these threads of doctrine and the Faith formula as well as how the threads fit together, finally coming to apprehend the overall theological fabric. Like the Mormon convert, one will not be so presumptuous as to disbelieve the resulting construction; after all, how dare the pupil suggest that one’s instructors lack understanding of their own praxis? From this point forward, the person is on a path leading to divorce from biblical Christianity and initiation into a new religion devoid of salvific power.

Foundations of Word–Faith Theology

If one watches Lakewood Church, Enjoying Everyday Life, Believer’s Voice of Victory, This Is Your Day, or any other Faith program for a month (which I have done as part of my research), then one will apprehend the basic Faith theological structure coupled with some extraneous beliefs unique to a particular teacher or set of teachers. Employing the criterion of multiple attestation to separate universally held tenets from ideas embraced by some but not all of the movement’s leaders, the following summation of essential Word–Faith doctrine emerges. In other words, the subsequent tenets constitute the metaphysical presuppositions to which all Faith teachers demonstrably subscribe.

First, God is a spirit, where a spirit is construed as the organ that produces the force of faith. It should be emphasized that the premise “God is a spirit” constitutes an identity statement, such that any further spirits which come into being will, by definition, be gods.[8] Faith, in turn, is understood as the most elemental substance of all matter and thus the raw substance out of which all material objects are created. To illustrate, the composition of a piece of paper consists of pulp, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and ultimately, faith. Moreover, words are the containers of faith and the instruments by which faith produces its material effects; therefore, by speaking faith–filled words, a god can create her or his own reality. Accordingly, God spoke the universe into being via words filled with faith, a notion which Faith teachers support by a woodenly literalistic reading of Genesis 1.[9]

Second, the imago Dei is understood as the imago Dei essentialis, or comprising the same species of being as God, and not, as historically affirmed by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox thought, the imago Dei accidentalis, defined positively as the freedoms of pleasure, counsel, and choice and negatively as the freedoms from misery, sin, and necessity.[10] Due to the equation of deity and spirituality, Adam and Eve, essentially speaking, were spirits and so “little gods,” whom God gave two accidental faculties for survival on Earth, namely, bodies for physical movement and souls for analytical thinking.[11] During the 1980s and 90s, Faith teachers frequently and unreservedly asserted that primal humans were “little gods,” which doctrine plus its corollaries met with sharp and widespread denunciation by evangelicals.[12] Therefore, in this decade they have generally but not entirely avoided the language of “little gods,” which has led some observers to claim that the movement has dropped this and similar concepts from its repertoire.[13] However, such changes are cosmetic rather than substantive, as the Faith Movement has retained exactly the same anthropology but recast it in theological vocabulary acceptable to most Christians. This new terminology either logically or contextually necessitates that original humanity is of the same species of being as God: examples of logical entailment include “having the (very) nature of God,”[14] “the nature of Jesus,”[15] “the life of God,” and “the God–kind of life,”[16] and examples of contextual entailment include “the champion in you,”[17] “the new nature,”[18] and “the champion God made you to be.”[19]

Third, the biblical notions of spiritual death and spiritual rebirth are construed literally as the death and revivification of the spirit, where in the interim the spirit does not cease to exist but lies dormant like a corpse, leaving the other two parts of the trichotomous anthropology intact. In the Fall, Adam and Eve suffered spiritual death, meaning their spirits died, such that they ceased to be little gods and degenerated to mere body–soul humans lacking the faculty to generate the force of faith and to speak things into being.[20] Owing to the Word–Faith traducian view of the Fall, every human is born with all three parts – body, soul, and spirit – but only the first two parts are alive while the spirit is nonfunctional. But by accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, we are born again, namely, our spirits are reborn or brought back to life, thus restoring us to our divinely intended status as little gods who have power to speak words of faith and create material blessings, including health, wealth, and prosperity. While John 10:34 and Ps. 82:6 are used as proof–texts for this position, to avoid controversy it has frequently been couched in Pauline nomenclature as our being “sons and daughters of God” and “joint–heirs with Jesus.”[21] These phrases Faith teachers interpret as our being the natural children of God, i.e., having the same nature as God, and conspicuously omit Paul’s insistence that we are instead children by adoption with a nature qualitatively distinct from, and ontologically lower than, God.

While it has been amply demonstrated that such beliefs (as well as further deviations from historic Christian orthodoxy) are embraced by veteran Faith teachers like Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn,[22] many people would find it shocking and therefore dispute that newer and more popular teachers, such as Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen, truly subscribe to the aforementioned system. To definitively settle the issue, I will allow these teachers to speak for themselves with excerpts from their recent oratory. Addressing the loaded and admittedly controversial topic of “who you are in Christ” in 2003, Joyce Meyer makes explicit the convictions that she usually leaves implicit in her preaching, even citing John 10:34 and Ps. 82:6 as support.

You know, why do people have such a fit about God calling his creation, his man (not his whole creation, but his man), little gods? If he’s God, what’s he going to call them but the God kind? I mean, if you as a human being have a baby, you call it a human kind. If cattle has another cattle, they call it cattle kind. So, I mean, what’s God supposed to call us? Doesn’t the Bible say we’re created in his image?. .. The Bible says right here, John 10:34, let’s read this again: “And Jesus answered, Is it not written in your law, I said, you are gods,” little “g”? So men are called gods by the law, men to whom God’s message came, and the Scripture cannot be set aside or cancelled or broken or annulled. Now if this is true, “Do you say of the one whom the Father consecrated and dedicated and set apart for himself and sent into the world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God?” See, when he began to say, “I am the Son of God,” then they began to yell, “Blasphemy.” Well, how many of you know that we are sons and daughters of Almighty God? He has birthed us, we are born again, new creatures in Christ Jesus.. .. You ought to study Psalm 82. God stands in the assembly of the representatives of God. That’s us, you know? See, I am a representative of God. The Bible says here that God stands in the midst of those representatives. In the midst of the magistrates or the judges he gives judgment as among the gods, little “g.” Verse 6, “I said, you are gods, since you judge on my behalf as my representatives, indeed, all of you are children of the Most High.” It is important that we know who we are and that we walk with that power–consciousness.[23]

Notice that for Meyer, we are sons and daughters of God in exactly the same way that Jesus was, a notion expressed by more brazen Faith teachers as “being every bit as much an incarnation of God as was Jesus of Nazareth,” thus making Jesus “no longer the only begotten Son of God.”[24] In his 2005 sermon “Receiving God’s Mercy,” Joel Osteen echoes this sentiment, denigrating “religion” (obviously historic Christianity) for its doctrine of sin and ascribing to the born–again believer the language formerly reserved by the Nicene and Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creeds for Jesus.[25]

I want to talk to you today about learning to receive the good things that God has in store. And really, God has already done everything he’s going to do. It says in Ephesians that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing – past tense, he’s already done it. I know when I first started ministering, before I would come out to speak, I would pray and pray, “God, please give me your anointing; God, please help me, please, God.” But one day I found in the Bible that God has already anointed us. He’s already given us his power and ability. You don’t have to beg God for that; you’ve simply got to start acting on it. Now before I come out, I just boldly declare, “I am anointed. I am well able to do what God has called me to do.” See, I don’t have to pray about that, I don’t have to beg God for that. I just have to rise up and receive it by faith. And really, begging God doesn’t get his attention.. .. And I don’t mean this to sound wrong, but many times this goes against everything that religion has taught us. You will never rise up in your authority as long as you have some kind of feeling of inferiority. One time I was praying at this big event here in town and there were several other ministers there with me and the man that went right before me, he is a very well–respected leader in the community and a very fine gentleman. But he prayed about the most depressing prayer that I think I have ever heard. He said, “God, you know how unworthy I am to even stand up here before you. God, you know what a wretched sinner I am, and I don’t deserve your goodness, and God, how could you even use anybody like me,” on and on. Man, by the time he got finished, I felt like I needed to go repent. I felt like I was about that tall. I just wanted to hang my head in shame.. .. I wanted to ask him afterwards, “Did you really mean what you prayed? You said you were weak, you were defeated, you were an old sinner, you were unworthy.” Listen, I’m not going to declare that kind of junk over my life. I’m going to put on my robe of righteousness. I know God approves me. I know God is pleased with me. I know that I have been accepted; I have been made worthy. Well, you say, “Joel, we are just all old sinners saved by grace.” No, the truth is, we were old sinners, but when we came to Christ, we are not sinners anymore; we are sons and daughters of the Most High God. We have been changed. We’ve been born into a new family. We are new creatures and, sure, we may sin every once in a while; you may make some mistakes. But that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.[26]

Further, in his audio abridgement of his 2004 bestseller Your Best Life Now, Osteen draws the Word–Faith consequences of our having “the very nature of God”:

Just as it is imperative that we see ourselves as God sees us and think about ourselves as God regards us, it is equally important that we say about ourselves what God says about us. Our words are vital in bringing our dreams to pass. It’s not enough to simply see it by faith or in your imagination. You have to begin speaking words of faith over your life. Your words have enormous creative power. The moment you speak something out, you give birth to it. This is a spiritual principle, and it works whether what you are saying is good or bad, positive or negative.. .. Our words become self–fulfilling prophecies.. .. The Bible clearly tells us to speak to our mountains. Maybe your mountain is a sickness; perhaps your mountain is a troubled relationship; maybe your mountain is a floundering business. Whatever it is, you must do more than think about it, more than pray about it; you must speak to that obstacle. The Bible says, “Let the weak say I’m strong. Let the oppressed say I’m free. Let the sick say I’m healed.” Start calling yourself happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how big your God is![27]

Both of these quotes disclose the ultimate objective of Faith theology, namely, a deistic view of God from the advent of one’s spiritual life to the grave. That is to say, while God’s transformative power is necessary for our regeneration and for providing everlasting life upon death, during our time on earth God simply provides us with a source of objective morality and companionship – he cannot be relied upon in the midst of our deepest problems. Rather, God has already done everything for us that he will ever do – namely, turned us into little gods with the same ability to generate faith that he has – and now expects us to use that ability to solve our own problems. By coming to God in prayer and asking him to solve our problems, we are, on the Faith view, actually spitting in his face, every bit as much as a person who is given a new car by a friend does by refusing to drive it but begging the friend for transportation. Kenneth Copeland makes these points with chilling clarity in a 2005 sermon.

Now, just in a nutshell, let me give you God’s plan, why Jesus was born in Bethlehem. God said to Adam, “Go into all the world, subdue it, replenish it; have authority over everything that walks, flies, crawls, swims, and creeps.” Now that’s the will of God. Adam gave it away. Jesus came to get it back. He got it back. And in the 28[28] chapter of Matthew, moments after he was raised from the dead, he said, “All authority has been given unto me both in heaven and in earth, both in heaven and in earth.” And then he immediately, the first thing he did with that God–given authority was exactly the same thing that Father did in the Garden of Eden. He said, “Therefore, you go in my name into all the earth.” Now what he has authorized or given us authority to do, he will not do for you. He said, “Whatever you bind on earth, I’ll back it. Whatever you loose on earth, I’ll back it.” Now let me tell you what he did not say; sometimes you can learn as much by what he didn’t say as by what he did. He did not say, “Boys, I’m going into all the earth. I’m going to preach the Gospel. I’m going to lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover. I’m going to speak with new tongues, and I’m going to cast out the devil. If I drink any deadly thing, it will not harm me. I’m going; you boys, come follow me.” He did not say that! What did he say? “You go into all the world. You preach the Gospel to every creature. You lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover. You bind the devil. You cast him out. You drink any deadly thing, it will not harm you.” Now you try to get him out of the boundaries of that will of God, and he won’t go. “Oh, Jesus, if you’d just come lay your hand on my fevered brow. If you’d just send an angel, it would be alright with me.” You say, “Oh. .. oh, brother Copeland, I just don’t have that kind of authority, I just need Jesus to come do it for me, I’m just waiting on the Lord.” He’s not going to get out of God’s will for you or me or anybody else – no. I’ve had the Lord say this to me: “Get up from there, you big baby, and take authority! I gave you the authority.”[29]

It is perhaps the greatest irony of the Faith Movement that a system of thought which arguably focuses more on supernaturalism than any other actually yields a more dangerous humanism than those who profess the appellation, since the supernatural power one relies upon is not God, but one’s own. This seemingly furnishes an advantage over secular humanism, which forces one to persevere through life via only one’s natural power.

Word–Faith leaders know full well that a straightforward presentation of their teachings would prove incredibly offensive to the average Christian. Herein lies the danger of the Word–Faith appeal: by clearly, and seemingly presenting from Scripture, only the “bait” of prosperity, when laypeople bite they are “hooked” by metaphysical commitments which fly in the face of biblical truth. Since a great deal of ink has already been spilt over refuting these commitments, no time will be lost here rearticulating such critiques.[30] However, virtually nothing has been said by way of helping pastors and other Christian leaders eliminate people’s motivation to take this bait – namely, the idea that health and wealth constitute entitlements of the covenant the believer has with God. Until people are rationally persuaded that this idea is false, generic denunciations of the movement’s greed and self–centeredness from the pulpit will prove counterproductive: not only will it be seen as rock–throwing, but it will convince people of the Faith teachers’ frequent charge that their opposition is “watering down the promises of God” based on “tradition” and “religious brainwashing.”[31] Therefore, we must present to our congregations and church groups an apologetic showing that the Faith bait is biblically impossible, the formulation of which will occupy the remainder of this presentation. Our apologetic will proceed in two steps: first, by supplying the necessary background information; and second, by employing that information to refute the alluring bait. In this way, we shall cut the Faith Movement off at the pass and rescue our sisters and brothers in Christ from embracing its errors.

Demonstrating the Faith “Bait” as Biblically Impossible

We shall begin by adopting the Apostle Paul’s assessment of God’s covenantal work with Israel. For Paul, the various bĕrîthim (covenant–related promises) from the time of the Patriarchs to the Jews’ return from the Babylonian Exile may be summarized as the outworking of two distinct covenants: the Abrahamic Covenant, initiated in Genesis 12 and 15; and the Mosaic Covenant, foreshadowed with Abraham in Genesis 17 but implemented on Mount Sinai (Galatians 3; Roman 4). We may profitably employ this Pauline dichotomy as an interpretive framework for shedding light on the Old Testament historical data. The Abrahamic Covenant, as David J. A. Clines points out, may be subdivided into three divine promises: to give Abraham an heir and nation; to bestow the Promised Land upon this nation; and to enter into a saving relationship with anyone who places faith in Yahweh.[32] While promises one and two are unconditional and concern the Jewish community, the final promise is conditional, non–ethnic, and individual in nature, made between God and the believer.[33] It is this third aspect of the Abrahamic covenant, which Clines helpfully styles the “relational covenant,” that concerns our purposes here.[34] Unlike the relational covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is God’s communal pact between himself and the totality of biblical Israel as a tribal confederation or nation.[35]

As reciprocal dealings between various persons and God, the relational and Mosaic covenants not only possess distinct beneficiaries (the individual believer regardless of ethnicity vis–à–vis the ethnic Jewish community) but also contain separate terms and consequences for either adhering to or violating those terms. Hence these covenants feature differing mutually contingent human obligations and divine obligations. For the relational covenant, the human terms comprise personal commitment to and trust in God as the sovereign ruler of all earthly affairs (Gen. 15:6; Gal. 3:6–9; Rom. 4:3–5, 17); in response, God promises to accompany the individual throughout life as one’s guide and friend who can be relied upon amidst all earthly tragedies (Gen. 26:24; 28:15) and to protect the individual in the hereafter, assuring the individual’s dwelling “in the house of Yahweh forever” (Ps. 23:6). With the advent of the general resurrection model between the eighth and sixth centuries b.c., the previously vague assurance of protection in the afterlife was given substance: at death, the soul or spirit of the believer would temporarily inhabit a penultimate state, called Paradise or “Abraham’s bosom,” until being rejoined with its transfigured resurrection body on the Day of Yahweh, at which point the complete person, body and soul, would reside in the transfigured physical universe or “new heaven and new earth” (Isa. 65:17; 66:22).[36] Interpreting the Genesis references to “blessing” (12:2–3) and “seed” (12:7; 13:15) Christologically, Paul terms the promises of the relational covenant “the blessing of Abraham” (Gal. 3:14). The basis for this covenant, insists Paul, is the imputed righteousness that God graciously credits to the believer upon faith in him (Rom. 4:1–12), defined not as a intellectual adherence to certain facts about God, but rather as entrance into a “spiritual marriage” with God the Husband marked by the personal commitment and trust of a bride (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 3:14, 20; Ezek. 16:32; Hos. 2:16; 2 Cor. 11:2).[37]

By contrast, the terms of the Mosaic Covenant are communal obedience to the Decalogue plus the 613 other mitzvoth, which include circumcision, animal sacrifices, kashrut or dietary laws, a yearly calendar of festivals, and a host of detailed regulations fostering a national identity as God’s “set–apart” or holy people (Ex. 20:1–23:19; all of Leviticus; Deut. 4–27). In exchange for obedience, God would furnish the Israelite community with protection, stability, and prosperity in the realms of politics, economics, finance, and health (Deut. 28–30). These rewards had nothing whatsoever to do with the afterlife but were strictly concerned with the earthly maintenance and success of the Israelite nation.[38] At this point we must emphasize the fact that the Mosaic Covenant never promised these benefits to any individual Israelite obedient to Torah, but to the community as a unit if obedient to Torah. The Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 28–29 makes this fact explicit, as it addresses God’s “holy people” (28:9) and “all the Israelites” (29:2) with the second–person singular pronoun ’atth and second–person singular verbs rather than with the second–person plural ’attem and second–person plural verbs, thereby making the promises applicable to the group at large and not each member within the group. Moreover, as the Prophets remind us, the Mosaic Covenant was an all–or–nothing agreement, where, within certain self–disciplinary limits by which Israel could “purge the evil from among” themselves (Deut. 13:5; 17:7; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21, 24; 24:7), 100% of Israel was either inside or outside the covenant depending on whether there existed full communal obedience to its mitzvoth. If Israel were outside the covenant, then the extensive curses listed in Deut. 28:15–68 would befall the nation irrespective of the piety of any particular Israelite, the sum total of which curses Paul styles “the curse of the Law” (Gal. 3:13). However, such exclusion from the Mosaic Covenant due to the sins of the community did nothing to exclude the pious Israelite from the relational covenant, as evident by the Prophets who were often simultaneously under the Mosaic curse but enjoyed a personal relationship with God, and were thus recipients of ultimate salvation, under the Abrahamic relational blessing.

Paul’s argument in Galatians is directly addressed to a congregation, during a time when the “Way” or primitive church was still a sect of Judaism (c. a.d. 56),[39] under pressure from Pharisaic believers in Jesus, the so–called “Judaizers,” to submit to the terms of the Mosaic Covenant. Far from divorcing the Way from Judaism, Paul insists that belonging to the Way constitutes the only path to truly being Jewish, as the Way, alone of all the sects of Judaism, teaches the only path to salvation by which anyone in history has ever been saved, including Abraham.[40] Thus Paul can write to the Romans in the same decade, “A person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code” (Rom. 2:27–28). But if the Way is Judaism in its purest expression, the question arises, how can its adherents fail to keep Torah without falling under its curses? Paul responds that the original Abrahamic Covenant represented God’s overarching vehicle for relations with humanity and was in no way set aside by the Mosaic Covenant, which God installed as a temporary measure to block sin among the Israelites until the coming of Messiah (Gal. 3:19–25). Upon Jesus’ inauguration of the Kingdom of God, the divine purpose of Torah was completed;[41] however, since God cannot lie, its curses still had to be borne. According to Paul, this assumption of the curse was performed by Jesus at the cross; by becoming a curse for us, Jesus neutralized “the curse of the Law” for all believers, such that the Mosaic Covenant in its entirety – terms, blessings, and curses alike – has been annulled, leaving the Abrahamic Covenant, brought into dramatically sharp focus by God’s self–revelation in Jesus,[42] as the sole means of divine–human relations for both Jews and Gentiles.

In sum, Paul informs this Way Jewish assembly, comprised of ethnic Jews and Gentiles, that Christ has brought an end to the Mosaic Covenant. Because of this fact, and also because the community is not keeping the prerequisite mitzvoth, it is doubly impossible for the Way to receive the earthly blessings in Deut. 28:1–14. Hence for Paul the foil of “the curse of the Law” is not “the blessing of the Law,” as the Law has been taken out of the way; rather, its foil is the qualitatively better “blessing of Abraham,” as it ensures their intimate communion with God the Trinity in time and eternity. As F. F. Bruce pointed out in his 1982 essay “The Curse of the Law,” this conclusion is guaranteed by the fact that the two hina clauses of Gal. 3:14 – hina eis ta ethnē hē eulogia tou Abraam genētai (in order that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles) and hina tēn epangelian tou pneumatos labōmen dia tēs pisteōs (in order that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith) – are coordinate to each other, such that “the ‘blessing of Abraham’ which Gentiles receive ‘in Christ Jesus’ is incomparably greater than the sum of all the blessings which in Deut. 28:1–14 are set over against the curses of the preceding chapter; it is their reception of the Spirit through faith.”[43]

Despite Paul’s distinction, Word–Faith teachers are notorious for their confusion and subsequent conflation of these two covenants. This strategy allows them to combine favorable aspects and delete unfavorable aspects of both covenants into a sort of “revisionary covenant” considerably different from either of its two constituent elements in terms of its scope, terms, and rewards. Regarding the scope of the revisionary covenant, it is individual in nature, pro relational, and not merely applicable to a larger group, pace Mosaic. Regarding its terms, Faith teachers nominally take from the relational covenant faith in God as focused upon Christ, where faith itself is not spiritual commitment or marriage but a spiritual force, and disregard the Mosaic stipulation of keeping the over 600 mitzvoth. Regarding its rewards, Faith teachers combine the relational benefits in the afterlife with the Mosaic material benefits in the earthly life. Thus from the historian’s perspective, the Faith Movement not only falsifies the relational aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant by invalidating biblical faith (as has been copiously argued elsewhere), but also takes a series of blessings never given to an individual but to a nation conditioned upon obedience to an extensive list of commands and turns it into a series of blessings made to individuals conditioned by no such obedience. In sum, the Faith understanding of the covenant between God and the believer is extraordinarily bad history and therefore biblically invalid.

Conclusion

It is my sincere hope that the aforementioned apologetic may be rapidly disseminated from pulpits and, in turn, propagated by laypeople and clergy alike in their relationships with fellow travelers on the path of following Jesus and in their evangelistic encounters with non–Christians. Once laypeople are equipped with this comprehension of Paul’s evaluation of the Hebrew Biblical covenants, the appeal or “plausibility structure”[44] of Word–Faith theology collapses. As an added benefit, it will enable people to better understand the Bible, God, and the nature of his salvific work. In this way, we can thwart the rapid growth of this new religious movement and, through persistence, excise it from the popular perception of evangelicalism while replacing it with one predicated on advancing the Kingdom of God.

Notes

1. “50 Most Influential Christians in America,” The Church Report (Scottsdale, AZ: Christy Media), [Online], available: http://www.thechurchreport.com/mag_article.php?mid=643&type=year [13 April 2007].
2. David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” Time, 18 September 2006.
3. Lois Romano, “The ‘Smiling Preacher’ Builds on Large Following,” The Washington Post, 30 January 2005.
4. Kimberly Hayes Taylor, “Her Ministry Reaches Millions,” The Detroit News, 12 September 2003.
5. As, for example, these aims emanated from much of sixteenth–century Spiritualism, including the Zwickau prophets and the peasant forces led by Thomas Muntzer in the 1524–25 Peasants’ War, who certainly had no theological affinities to Word–Faith thought.
6. D. R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 185.
7. I am here referring to Richard Mouw’s outlandish but highly publicized allegation that the pivotal LDS doctrine of essential identity between God and humanity has become passé in Mormon theology, which allegation Ronald V. Huggins has decisively refuted in “Lorenzo Snow’s Couplet: ‘As Man Now Is, God Once Was; As God Now Is, Man May Be’: ‘No Functioning Place in Present–Day Mormon Doctrine?’ A Response to Richard Mouw,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49.3 (2006): 549–68.
8. Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church (TBN, 5 November 2006); Joyce Meyer, Enjoying Everyday Life (INSP, 20 November 2006); Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (TBN, 26 November 2006); Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day (INSP, 9 November 2006); cf. McConnell, Different Gospel, 116–21.
9. Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church (TBN, 8 November 2006); Joyce Meyer, Enjoying Everyday Life (INSP, 1 November 2006); Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (TBN, 19 November 2006); Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day (INSP, 10 November 2006); cf. Robert M. Bowman, Jr., The Word–Faith Controversy: Understanding the Health and Wealth Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), 105–14.
10. Kirk R. MacGregor, A Central European Synthesis of Radical and Magisterial Reform (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), 44–46; Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1985), 143–45.
11. Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 97–104.
12. Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1997), 107–20; McConnell, Different Gospel, 122–23; John F. MacArthur, Jr., Charismatic Chaos (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 331–36.
13. Ted Rouse, Understanding the Grace and Covenant of God (Huntsville, AL: MileStones International, 2005), 47.
14. Kenneth Copeland, Now Are We In Christ Jesus (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1999), 6; Joel Osteen, “Receiving God’s Mercy,” CD #JC0262 (Houston: Joel Osteen, 17 April 2005).
15. Joyce Meyer, “Me and My Big Mouth”: Your Answer Is Right Under Your Nose (New York: Warner Faith, 1997), 230–31.
16. Benny Hinn, “The Glorious and Eternal Power of the Blood of Jesus” audiotape (Irving, TX: Benny Hinn Ministries, 2001).
17. The motto of Osteen’s Lakewood Church, displayed on the church’s website as well as during the introduction of every Lakewood Church telecast.
18. Meyer, “Me and My Big Mouth,” 229.
19. Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now (New York: Warner Faith, 2004), 64.
20. Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church (TBN, 19 November 2006); Joyce Meyer, Enjoying Everyday Life (INSP, 13 November 2006); Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (TBN, 7 November 2006); Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day (INSP, 28 November 2006); cf. Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 137–45.
21. Copeland, In Christ Jesus, 2, 8; Osteen, “Receiving God’s Mercy,” CD #JC0262; Joyce Meyer, “Authority and Opposition,” audiotape #1236 (Fenton, MO.: Joyce Meyer Ministries, 2003).
22. See, for example, Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy and Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis.
23. Meyer, “Authority and Opposition,” audiotape #1236.
24. Kenneth E. Hagin, “The Incarnation,” The Word of Faith (December 1980): 14; Copeland, In Christ Jesus, 8.
25. Particularly Osteen’s unwitting evocation of the phrases “very God of very God” and “one in nature with the Father” in his provocative depiction of believers as possessing “the very nature of God.”
26. Osteen, “Receiving God’s Mercy,” CD #JC0262.
27. Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now (New York: Time Warner Audiobooks, 2004), CD 3.
28. Kenneth Copeland, “The Believer’s Voice of Victory” program on TBN, 1 May 2005.
29. For thorough critiques see Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 97–228, McConnell, Different Gospel, 101–220, Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, 59–276, and MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos, 322–53.
30. Kenneth E. Hagin, “How Jesus Obtained His Name” (Tulsa: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1989), tape #44H01.
31. David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch, JSOTSup 10 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978), 26.
32. Paul R. House explains that this aspect of the covenant “amounts to one friend’s trust of another friend’s promises. Because of his faith, God considers [Abraham] righteous, or rightly related to God, and thus secure in the Lord.. .. Paul concludes that Jesus fulfills the promise of international blessing, for Jesus is the offspring of Abraham who mediates salvation to all persons” (Old Testament Theology [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998], 74, 76); cf. Andrew E. Hill and John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 74.
33. Clines, Theme of the Pentateuch, 26–27.
34. An understanding reinforced by George Mendenhall’s demonstration that the Mosaic Covenant is cast in the form of a Suzerainty–Vassal treaty, which Ancient Near Eastern kings made only with redeemed or conquered nations and never with individuals (Law and Covenant in Israel [Pittsburgh: Biblical Colloquium, 1955], 11–12).
35. Jay A. Holstein, The Jewish Experience, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Burgess, 1990), 169, 306–07.
36. Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice–Hall, 1998), 276–81; House, Old Testament Theology, 291–92.
37. Hill and Walton, Survey of the Old Testament, 140–41; House, Old Testament Theology, 191–92.
38. Although Galatians could be dated as early as 48 (if sent to South Galatian rather than North Galatian churches), the religio–historical context of the epistle would remain the same in any case; for a thorough discussion of the chronological issues see Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, 4th rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 465–81.
39. Oskar Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 171–75; cf. Acts 22:1–16; 24:14.
40. This is not to suggest, however, that believers are exempt from natural law, or the moral law that Paul insists in Romans 2:12–16 is written on the heart of every human being regardless of culture or spatio–temporal location (many aspects of which law appear in the Decalogue), for its requirements are amply attested outside the Mosaic Covenant as universal ethical imperatives for all humanity in both Testaments of Scripture (for a handful of illustrations see Prov. 6:16–19; Ps. 94:1–6; Isa. 33:15; Jer. 7:5–10; Mt. 15:19; Mk. 7:20–23; 12:29–31; Gal. 5:19–21; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; 1 Tim. 1:9–11). Rather, Paul argues that regulations based exclusively on the Mosaic Law – namely, those which were socio–culturally particular to biblical Israel – need no longer be kept. (Hebrews 7:11–10:18 would push the argument one step further by insisting that they should no longer be kept since their symbolism has now been definitively realized in the time–space order by Jesus.)
41. That the covenant announced by Jesus was both a continuation and extension of the Abrahamic Covenant is the reason why the two form–critically earliest oral traditions reporting the Last Supper, the pre–Markan passion narrative and the Eucharistic creed (both formulated in the a.d. 30s), respectively depict the cup as “my blood of the covenant” (Mk. 14:24) and “the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25); for a thorough analysis of these traditions see Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 2 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1977), 2:21, 364–77 and Joachim Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, tr. Norman Perrin (London: SCM, 1966), 101–05. As E. J. Carnell aptly summarizes: “Abraham is a blessing to all nations because Jesus Christ is the true offspring of Abraham. There is one covenant; it unites both economies in the Bible” (The Case for Orthodox Theology [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959], 18).
42. F. F. Bruce, “The Curse of the Law,” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honor of C. K. Barrett, eds. M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982), 33.
43. Bowman, Word–Faith Controversy, 197–99; McConnell, Different Gospel, 132–46; Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, 65–71.
44. I borrow this phrase from Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 45.

Is 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 a Prohibition of Homosexuality?

By Kirk R. MacGregor

[Kirk R. MacGregor is Assistant Professor of Religion, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.]

Throughout church history 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 has been one of the least understood and therefore most controversial passages in all of Scripture. Here Paul commanded women to cover their heads and men not to cover their heads during, at least, church assemblies. Since the sixteenth century three main responses to this text have emerged, all based on the presupposition that the text means that women are to don a head garment of some kind. First, some groups have insisted that women wear a bonnetlike “prayer covering,” veil, or hat in church and often in all settings outside the home. Second, others, who seek to discover and reapply the principle of the temporal directive for female head garments that was exclusively applicable in late antique Mediterranean society, consider that the passage has been properly applied when certain ministerial offices, usually pastor and elder, are limited to men.[1] Third, the most common approach simply ignores or glosses over the text in an attempt to avoid ecclesiastical controversy. However, if the presupposition underlying these approaches is false, then all of them fail to grasp the central issue confronting Paul.

This study contends that the reasons marshaled in favor of the view that by κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων (“having something down from the head”)[2] Paul referred to some form of headgear evince fatal hermeneutical and historical flaws. Rather, the principles of grammatical-historical exegesis render it highly probable that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων refers to long hair, as seen in verses 14-15. Consequently Paul forbade men from wearing long hair and women from wearing short hair. Drawing on contemporaneous Jewish, Greek, and Roman sources, this article indentifies the purpose of Paul’s injunction as the prohibition of both homosexuality in the church at large and the particular practices of men and women appearing and behaving in ways characteristic of the opposite sex which were indicative of homosexuality.[3] Such a solution harmonizes with the known problem of homosexuality at Corinth as well as with Paul’s graphic admonition against the full range of homosexual behavior (6:9) distinctive to this epistle.[4]

Determining the Meaning of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων

Two lines of evidence are proposed in suggesting that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων denotes some kind of veil. They are extra-Pauline linguistic evidence and historical-cultural evidence. Noting the occurrence of κατακαλύπτω (“to cover”) and its cognates in 1 Corinthians 11:5-7 and 13, the linguistic contention appeals to the Septuagint usage of this same verb in Genesis 38:15, where Tamar pretended to be a prostitute by covering her face before Judah, and in 2 Chronicles 18:29, where the king of Israel planned to disguise himself before battle. Since the contexts of these passages suggest Tamar and the king covered themselves with clothing, it is inferred that κατακαλύπτω generally implies a garment as its indirect object, thereby making a garment the most probable antecedent of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων.[5]

However, this reasoning suffers from several defects. Standard hermeneutical procedure dictates that the meaning of any equivocal item should first be sought from the pericope itself and subsequently tested for consistency against its semantic range. The veil view seeks to determine the meaning of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων, not from its own connotation in outside sources (which may itself be questionable), but by extrapolating from a noncognate verb in outside sources. Hence any inference reached by this method would at best be inconclusive. But even granting, for the sake of argument, the efficacy of this procedure, its present application is still suspect because it overlooks the many counterexamples in the Septuagint where κατακαλύπτω portrays covering with something other than a garment.[6] Examples include Exodus 29:22, which mentions the fat that covers a ram’s entrails, and Isaiah 6:2, where each seraph before the divine throne covered its face with two wings and covered its feet with two wings.[7] Taking the full scope of grammatical evidence into account, κατακαλύπτω is found to be an elastic verb spanning all manner of covering; by itself the verb conveys no information about the covering agent. However, the most devastating criticism of the extra-Pauline linguistic argument is its disregard for the covering explicitly supplied in the pericope itself: “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman wears long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair has been given to her as [ἀντὶ] a covering [περιβολαίου]” (vv. 14-15). Αντί conveys the notion of equivalence (“as, for”) rather than substitution (“instead of, in place of”).[8] Accordingly κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων ought to be viewed as a reference to long hair, in the absence of compelling contextual or linguistic grounds to the contrary.

On the other hand the historical-cultural contention appeals to archaeological evidence that the wearing of “liturgical head coverings” by men and women during the late Republic and early Empire served as a common feature of Roman piety. The historical-cultural approach appeals to the point that respectable Palestinian Jewish women publicly veiled their bound hair for the sake of modesty, because in public unbound hair designated a prostitute. Since Corinth was a Roman colony with a Jewish synagogue, the Corinthian congregation is said to have naturally integrated the respective cultural practices into Christian worship, which Paul then aimed to control.[9]

This claim too is marred by shortcomings. Hermeneutically it violates the legitimate use of historical background for checking or testing the plausibility of exegetical conclusions initially derived from the pericope. Putting the cart before the horse, this contention employs historical factors to determine the interpretation of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων in a way that overturns the meaning suggested by the passage.[10] Even worse, this contention cannot stand on its own merits because its inference is based on partial archaeological and textual data. The full spectrum of archaeological findings paints a portrait of first-century Corinth as a cosmopolitan city with an eclectic amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultural elements. Consequently specific evidence from Corinth itself is needed to posit the adoption of any particular Roman or Jewish custom. But such Corinthian evidence points to the opposite conclusion. Pre-Roman Corinthian culture displayed an absence of head coverings for men and women alike, as indicated by ancient Greek pottery.[11] Moreover, as Thompson points out, archaeological finds from Corinth in the Roman period show the first-century preservation of this local custom. These discoveries include sculptures of Greek women and portraits of Roman women with uncovered heads as well as vase paintings of both genders praying and engaging in ecstatic speech without headgear, thereby effectively ruling out the infiltration of foreign tradition.[12] By the same token, no textual evidence exists that the Palestinian stigma toward unbound female hair ever found its way into Hellenistic Jewish synagogues.[13]

A final irony of the extra-Pauline linguistic contention and the historical-cultural contention is that they both overlook Paul’s first stated concern in 11:2-16, namely, the problem of men praying or prophesying κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων. On this score Murphy-O’Connor rightly observes, “The major commentaries and translations attest the widespread conviction that the point at issue concerned women alone. Acceptance of this consensus invariably colors the exegesis of this passage, to the point where some commentators refuse to take seriously the reference to men. In fact, men figure equally prominently in this section, and neither grammar nor language distinguishes this reference from those concerned with women.”[14] Hence any interpretation of κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων which, in its preoccupation with the garb of women, fails to explain how men dishonor their heads is not an adequate explanation. But a constant stream of documentation illustrates that from preexilic Israel to the destruction of the second temple Jewish priests prayed with turbans on their heads (e.g., Exod. 28:4, 37-38; 39:28; Ezek. 44:18; m. Yoma 7:5). So it is absurd to suppose that Paul, a former Pharisee and self-confessed “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5), was distressed to the degree evinced by the emotional tenor of 1 Corinthians 11:4, 7 over men praying with a covering on their heads.

Further, if Paul’s disquiet concerned a covering, then it is inexplicable why he neither specified the nature of the garment nor wrote κατὰ κεφαλῆν (κατά plus the accusative), which would here convey precisely the desired meaning of “resting or hanging upon/on his head.” Instead Paul employed κατά plus the genitive, which is adversative and so conveys the nuance of emerging and moving away from a source, yielding the translation “out of,” “from,” or “coming out of.”[15] Hair is clearly something that flows out of the head, its source, unlike headgear that rests or hangs on the head and obviously does not feature the head as its source.[16]

Notably this factor led John Chrysostom to insert κομῆν (“hair”) as the necessary object of ἔχων.[17]

Given the identification of περιβολαίου (“covering”) as long hair (v. 15), it follows that having one’s head uncovered is equivalent to having short hair. Substituting “with long hair” for κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων, the antithesis of verses 4-5 coheres both internally and with the surrounding context: “Every man praying or prophesying with long hair [κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων] disgraces his head, but every woman praying or prophesying with short hair [= with her head uncovered] disgraces her head, for it is one and the same as having been shaved [ἐξυρημένῃ].” While a natural comparison exists between having short hair and having been shaved, that is, having the shortest possible hair, no such connection can be plausibly drawn between lacking headgear and having been shaved. The unique ability of the proposed reference to long hair to unify the text is reinforced in verse 6, where κατακαλύπτω is portrayed as conveying the opposite meaning as two unequivocally hair-cutting terms: “For if a woman has short hair [= is not covered; οὐ κατακαλύπτεται], let her also be shorn [κειράσθω]; but since it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn [κειράσθαι] or to be shaved [ξυρᾶσθαι], let her be covered [κατακαλύπτέσθω].” Only if the woman is covered with long hair does the contrast with having very short hair (being shorn) and having the shortest possible hair (being shaved) make sense.

The notion that hair is the issue discloses the simple logical flow between verses 7-12 (typically regarded as an aside incongruous with its surrounding context)[18] and the preceding and succeeding verses of the pericope. In verse 7 man is said to be the image (εἰκὼν), or the finite reflection and imperfect shadow, of the infinite and perfect God (cf. Gen. 1:27). Man is also portrayed as the glory (δόξα) of God, just as woman is portrayed as the glory (δόξα) of man (1 Cor. 11:7). Paul did not say woman is the εἰκὼν of man, since she is not ontologically inferior to man as man is inferior to God; instead she is the same species of being as man (Gen. 1:26-27). The ontological equality of the sexes and ontological inferiority of both to God are reinforced in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12: “However, in the Lord neither is woman independent of man nor man independent of woman; for just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman, but all things come from God.” For Paul, therefore, δόξα has nothing to do with ontological status. Rather, as Fee explains, x being the δόξα of y means here that x is both similar to y and differs from y in some respect.[19] Further, the consecutive sequence (“man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man,” v. 7) implies that while God is similar to man and man to woman, God, man, and woman comparatively differ from each other in the same respect. Obvious from the chronology of Genesis is the fact that God and man are similar by virtue of man’s creation in the imago Dei and that man and woman are similar by virtue of their common species. But in what single aspect do all three comparatively differ? Since Genesis 1-3 does not address this question, the answer must be implied by Paul himself if his reasoning is to be valid.

In view of Paul’s stated rationale behind the consecutive sequence, “For indeed a man ought not to have his head covered” (v. 7), the proposed indirect object “with long hair” shall be assessed for its ability to elucidate the text. At this juncture it should be noted that, contrary to popular artistic depictions, Jewish men of late antiquity typically wore their hair short, a fact indirectly proved by m. Nazir 1:2-3. This passage, which tradition criticism has shown reflects norms in the first century A.D., characterizes the long hair of a Nazirite as the visible sign of his consecration, where the minimum period for which such a vow could be made was thirty days (Num. 6:7). However, thirty days of hair growth would pass entirely unnoticed if Jewish men typically wore their hair long. Thus they must have worn their hair rather short, in conformity with Ezekiel 44:20. “Also they shall not shave their heads, yet they shall not let their locks grow long; they shall only trim the hair of their heads.”

Moreover, archaeological and textual research since the 1860s has decisively established that in both Greek and Roman society, men normally wore short hair and women long hair.[20] Accordingly the degree of hair length constituted a single aspect of comparative difference between God, man, and woman. God, as an immaterial being, has no hair; man, being like God but different from Him in respect to hair length, has short hair; woman, being like man but different from man in respect to hair length, has long hair. Therefore the differing lengths of hair not only comprise the necessary thread linking God to men to women but also illustrate the necessity of verses 7-12 in the logic of the pericope. Verses 2-6 dictate various hair lengths for men and women, a command substantiated by three independent lines of evidence: (a) verses 7-12 argue for these hair lengths based on the Old Testament; (b) verses 13-15 argue for these hair lengths based on nature; and (c) verse 16 argues for these hair lengths based on widespread Christian practice.

Besides displaying the broad function of verses 7-12, the hair-length hypothesis illustrates the logical contribution of two particular claims of this section to Paul’s case. Paul’s allusion to the sequence of creation, “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created because of woman, but woman was created because of man” (vv. 8-9), amplifies the theological statement of verse 3, “But I want you to know that the head [κεφαλὴ] of every man is Christ, and man is the head [κεφαλὴ] of woman, and God is the head [κεφαλὴ] of Christ.” Whatever the precise meaning of κεφαλὴ is here, Paul clearly used the term metaphorically rather than literally to convey that Christ owes respect to God the Father, men owe respect to Christ, and women owe respect to men by virtue of the divine order established in time and space through creation and redemption. Since, as verse 7 indicates, man and woman are the glory of (i.e., similar to but differing in some respect from) each other, man and woman must avoid shaming their figurative “heads” by preserving these differences. As Gundry-Volf underscores, Paul showed men and women “their obligation to bring glory—each to the particular one whose glory they are by creation—which they do through distinctive masculine and feminine hairstyles.”[21]

That women should wear long hair provides the missing piece of the puzzling verse 10, “A woman ought to have authority over her head because of the angels.” Despite the fact that most translations insert the words “a symbol of” before “authority,” the grammatical evidence inveighs strongly against this gloss, since the expression ἐξουσίαν ἔχειν (“to have authority”; cf. Rev. 11:6; 14:18; 20:6) always means to exercise authority rather than to submit to it. The verse thus signals that the woman should take charge of her hair and keep it under control by wearing it long rather than short.[22] This interpretation coincides nicely with the reference to angels, for several passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate the presence of angels in the assembly (4QDe 10:11; 1QM 7:4-6; 1QSa 2:3-11; 4QMa). These texts affirm that angels symbolize and monitor the observance of the order of creation during worship, and they warn that these guardians of order are offended by ceremonially impure persons who take part in the assembly.[23] Consequently women must wear long hair in worship to respect the order of creation upheld by the angels who are indeed present and watching its observance, an idea foreshadowed by Paul’s earlier suggestion that angels observe what happens in the world (1 Cor. 4:9).[24]

The Significance of Hair Lengths for Sexual Differentiation

The query immediately rises, What made Paul concerned with hair lengths of different genders? In particular why did he find it disgraceful for men to wear long hair and for women to wear short hair? Fortunately a wide range of contemporary sources, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, help answer that question. Late antique Mediterranean social custom regarded the natural order (φύσις) as dictating that the natural hair lengths for men and women were respectively short and long. Therefore inversion of this order amounted to a form of cross-dressing whereby dissidents abdicated their given gender identity in favor of the opposite gender and presented themselves as homosexual. Writing between 30 b.c. and A.D. 40, the Hellenistic Jewish thinker Pseudo-Phocylides admonished parents, “If a child is a boy, do not let locks grow on his head. Braid not his crown nor make cross-knots on the top of his head. Long hair [κόμαν] is not fit for men, but for voluptuous women. Guard the youthful beauty of a comely boy, because many rage for intercourse with a man.”[25] Here long hair in men and boys is portrayed as effeminate. And the transition from the hairstyle of boys to their protection demands for Pseudo-Phocylides the equation of long male hair with homosexuality.

About A.D. 35 the Jewish philosopher Philo condemned male homosexuals for “the provocative way they curl and dress their hair. . . . In fact the transformation of the male nature to the female is practiced by them as an art and does not raise a blush. Such people merit that one should burn with zeal to spill their blood in obedience to the Law which commands that one should kill with impunity the pervert who falsifies the stamp of nature, not permitting him to live a day or even an hour, since he is a disgrace to himself, to his family, to his country, and to the whole human race.”[26] Because some men have naturally curly hair, Philo’s conjunction “curl and dress their hair” must indicate that homosexual men let their hair grow longer than normal, thereby appearing to be female.

This invective displays three striking parallels to Paul’s argument. First, Philo maintained that homosexual men violate the pattern of nature, the same charge Paul levied against men wearing long hair (1 Cor. 11:14). That long male hair carried homosexual overtones sheds new light on Paul’s otherwise inexplicable reference to nature (φύσις), for the only other Pauline instance of such an appeal, characteristic of the Greek philosophical tradition, occurs in a denunciation of homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27. “God gave them over to passions of dishonor [ἀτιμίας, the same term used in 1 Cor. 11:14]; for even their women exchanged the natural [φυσικὴν] function for that which is contrary to nature [φύσιν], and likewise also the men abandoned the natural [φυσικὴν] function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving the retribution which was their due.”

Second, in identical language Philo and Paul (1 Cor. 11:14; cf. v. 4) condemned homosexual men and men with long hair for disgracing themselves. Third, Philo noted the deviance of homosexual men from the human race at large, just as Paul emphasized the departure of men and women with improper hair lengths from the universal practice of God’s churches (v. 16).

The equation of long male hair with effeminacy and homosexuality was common in pagan authors as well. The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus devoted an entire treatise to the cutting of hair (ca. A.D. 65), portions of which read like a commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Musonius alleged that “since hair is given as a covering by nature [ἐν φύσεως], the hair should be cut only to take away what is useless.” He strenuously objected to men “cutting the hair on the front of the head differently from that on the back of the head,” that is, cutting the bangs short while letting the back grow long. He wrote, “That which seems to them good-looking is quite the opposite and does not differ from the efforts of women to make themselves beautiful. . . . Such men can endure appearing as women and being seen as womanish, something that real men should avoid at all costs.”[27] Similarly Musonius’s disciple Epictetus, in his discourse to young men on beauty (A.D. 108), condemned the actions of men who wore their hair for the purpose of looking like women.

Young man, whom do you wish to make beautiful? First, learn who you are. . . . Your reason is the element of superiority which you possess; adorn and beautify that, but leave your hair to God who fashioned it as He willed. Come, what other designations apply to you? Are you a man or a woman? A man. Very well then, adorn a man, not a woman. Woman is born smooth and dainty by nature, and if she has much hair she is a sensation and is seen in Rome among the beauties. But for a man not to have much hair is the same thing. . . . But what of a man who wishes to be a woman rather than a man? What a dreadful spectacle! All will be scandalized. . . . Man, what reason do you have to reproach your nature? Because it brought you into the world as a man? What then? Ought it to have brought all persons into the world as women? . . . Transform yourself entirely into a woman so that we cannot deceive ourselves. Do not be half-man and half-woman. . . . Shall we make a man like you a citizen of Corinth or a warden of the city?[28]

Epictetus wrote particularly about actions taking place in Corinth; from this testimony it is clear that Corinthian men wore their hair long for the express purpose of portraying themselves as female and conveying a homosexual lifestyle. If, as Epictetus suggested, such men should not be granted citizenship in Corinth, how much less, for Paul, should their scandalous dress be tolerated in the church. Hence Paul stipulated that the prohibition of such dress is such an obvious moral principle that it constitutes the only custom held by the otherwise quite diverse churches of God (v. 16).

By the same token classical authors pointed out that women who wished to convey male sexual overtones cut their hair short so that they would look like men. Thus Apuleius observed (ca. A.D. 155), “Short hair was normal for a man, and therefore a woman who wanted to disguise herself as a man cut her hair short.”[29] Likewise Lucian of Samosata, in various works dating between A.D. 160 and 170, emphasized that short hair was the sole distinguishing trait that physically marked a woman as a lesbian. He accordingly noted that a lesbian could easily be recognized as “a woman with her hair closely clipped in the Spartan manner, boyish-looking and wholly masculine.”[30] While describing the lesbian Megilla, Lucian called attention to “her head shaved close, just like the manliest of athletes.”[31] In light of the foregoing evidence one can see why Paul could appeal directly to the Corinthians’ sensibilities regarding short-haired women praying or prophesying, for in approaching God or speaking as His representatives (vv. 13-14) they were in open defiance of their God-given gender roles and in apparent homosexuality. For Paul, therefore, when men with long hair and women with short hair performed religious duties, they committed the monstrous blasphemy of violating the sexual purpose for which they were naturally designed while standing in the immediate presence of their Designer.

Conclusion: From Ancient Context to Contemporary Application

Paul’s exhortation that men pray and prophesy with their heads uncovered and that women pray and prophesy with their heads covered meant that men must perform their religious duties with short hair and women their religious duties with long hair. This would ensure that men looked like men and women looked like women, thereby precluding the cross-gender identification and obvious homosexual overtones conveyed by men looking like women and women looking like men.[32] That Paul’s remarks concerning head coverings were aimed at the prohibition of male effeminacy, female masculinity, and their implied homosexuality fits like a hand in a glove of the Sitz im Leben disclosed by the remainder of the Corinthian correspondence. For in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Paul had already condemned the full scope of homosexual behavior in uncharacteristically graphic language: “neither μαλακοὶ or ἀρσενοκοῖται . . . will inherit the kingdom of God.” Although dismissed on theological grounds by contemporary advocates of homosexuality in the church, the linguistic and historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the conjunction of μαλακοὶ and ἀρσενοκοῖται functions as a merism. Μαλακοὶ signifies the passive partner in homosexual intercourse and ἀρσενοκοῖται signifies the active partner in homosexual intercourse, a fact recognized by the majority of New Testament critics across the liberal-conservative spectrum.[33] This explicit denunciation coupled with the aforementioned extrabiblical evidence proves that homosexuality was a major problem in the Corinthian church. This problem along with its associated cross-gender appearance and behavior resulted from what Thiselton styles an “over-realized eschatology.”[34] In other words a certain number of the believers regarded themselves as belonging completely to the new age and so possessing a “wisdom” (2:6) that rendered the moral values of the present world irrelevant and transformed these members of the new age into τελείοι (2:6), πνευματικοί (2:15), and σοφοί (3:18). Hence the community took pride in the incestuous relationship of one of its members, which vividly depicted their freedom from outmoded standards (5:1-2). Similarly, if Jesus’ kingdom inauguration healed the rift between male and female, the Corinthians felt entitled to blur the distinction between the sexes, a feat that homosexuality accomplished par excellence. Since male effeminacy, female masculinity, and homosexual practice violated Jewish standards in exactly the same way as the Corinthians’ approval of incest, O’Connor rightly remarks that “scandal was the symbol of their new spiritual freedom; the more people they shocked, the more right they felt themselves to be.”[35] With unease and irritation predominating his tone, Paul sharply upbraided the Corinthians for their spiritual underdevelopment, explaining that Christian freedom from the Mosaic Law in no way absolved believers from the eternal principles embodied therein, which principles comprise God’s unchanging law (6:12-20; 9:21; 10:1-13).

Moreover, the exegesis of this passage further illuminates several of Paul’s concerns in 1 Corinthians. The power of the gospel both affirms the goodness of the created order and transfigures it, rather than abandoning the physical world for a spiritual realm accessible only to the illuminated (1:17, 19-22, 27; 2:4-7; 3:18-19). When the gospel is applied to gender relationships, the Holy Spirit works through it to transform those relationships to exactly what they would have been had humankind not fallen into sin, thus illustrating that the gospel accomplishes the redemption of the physical and spiritual aspects of life as an inseparable unity (11:3, 7-9, 11-12). In short, the gospel consummates the natural order, as accomplished through the resurrection (15:21-28, 35-57); it does not destroy or overturn it.

Such an understanding ran contrary to the Corinthians’ philosophical preference, endemic to Greek thought of the time, for a salvation of the soul that ultimately laid aside the prisonhouse of the body at death (15:12-19); in the meantime, the Corinthians felt they could exploit their bodies as they saw fit (6:12-20; 15:32-34). This exploitation, evinced in homosexual appearance and behavior, disregarded the centrality of Christ, who stands as the κεφαλή of every man (11:3). His bodily resurrection, as the firstfruits of those who sleep (15:20), guarantees that all facets of the natural order will be perfected in the new heavens and new earth; how then can alleged followers of Christ undermine the very order that Christ died and rose to redeem (6:14-15)? In condemning homosexuality in the church Paul reinforced his larger theme of Christ’s preeminence (1:4-8, 17; 2:2; 3:11; 5:7; 7:35; 8:6; 16:22) and strove to convince the Corinthians that, as members of Christ’s body (12:12-27), they could not work at cross purposes to each other. Some could not invest themselves in the work of the Lord while others destroyed what God had created; some could not approach God in worship as those who through their good works increasingly prepare the world for Christ’s second coming (3:10-15; 15:58) while others approached God in violation of all that the Second Coming represents. Instead, all believers must be unified in the work of the Lord, knowing that their labors for Him, like good seeds, will ultimately be brought to fruition at the Last Day.

The exegetical findings presented here hold major ramifications for the wider question of how texts speaking to highly contentious socio-cultural matters are to be assessed within the canon of Scripture. All too often, a form of theological double-talk prevails in pulpits where the “meaning” of any such text is defined as what the Holy Spirit supposedly discloses to the pastor concerning the passage and not what objective criteria of grammatical-historical method prove to be the content most probably intended by the original author and understood by the original audience.[36] Veracity dictates that pastors first allow the text to speak on its own behalf before applying the text to contemporary situations. In the present case the historical evidence demonstrates that 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 forbade long male and short female hairstyles because they connoted feminine appearance and behavior on the part of men, masculine appearance and behavior on the part of women, and homosexuality implied by such gender deviance. Proponents of inerrancy should proceed to a straightforward application of this text which forbids homosexual practice, male effeminate and female masculine behavior, and dress indicative of the opposite sex.[37]

Notes

1. Considerable debate exists on this score between complementarians and egalitarians, revolving around the meaning of κεφαλὴ (“head”) in 1 Corinthians 11:3. However, its resolution is irrelevant to the argument presented in this article, which concerns only the passage’s primary message and is equally compatible with both secondary positions. For representative defenses of these positions see, on the one hand, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Kephalē in 1 Corinthians 11:3,” Interpretation 47 (1993): 32-59; and Wayne Grudem, “The Meaning of kephalē (‘Head’): An Analysis of New Evidence, Real and Alleged,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44 (2001): 25-65. On the other hand see Berkeley Mickelsen and Alvera Mickelsen, “What Does Kephalē Mean in the New Testament?” in Women, Authority, and the Bible, ed. Alvera Mickelsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 97-110; and Catherine Clark Kroeger, “The Classical Concept of Head as ‘Source,’ ” Appendix III in Equal to Serve: Women and Men in the Church and Home, ed. Gretchen Gaebelein Hull (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1987), 267-83.
2. Unless indicated otherwise, translations of Scripture and other primary sources are those of the author.
3. By “homosexuality” this article refers to same-sex erotic behavior (and not to the modern concept of psychological orientation toward such behavior, with which the ancients would have been unacquainted). Thus persons who, either by genetics or upbringing, have a psychological proclivity toward same-sex erotic behavior yet never act out such behavior are not the subject of the Pauline denunciation; for Paul, these persons should be commended for faithfully resisting temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). Although ancient Jews classified homosexual behavior within the larger category of sexual immorality, it was practiced among Greeks from the classical period onward, and by the first century A.D. it had become particularly widespread among upper-class Romans (e.g., Nero and Tiberius), who had absorbed considerable Greek culture. Thus such thinkers as Plato (Symposium 222C), Plutarch (Dialogue on Love 5), and Achilles Tatius (Leucippe and Clitophon 2.35.2-3) debated whether homosexual or heterosexual love was superior, and homosexual affection frequently appeared both in biographies (e.g., Arrian, Anabasis 4.14.3, 7; Cornelius Nepos, Pausanias 4.1; Alcibiades 2.2-3) and in fiction (e.g., Virgil, Eclogues 2.17, 45; 8.80-84; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.353-55; Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 4.12, 16; and Petronius, Satyricon 9, 11, 85-86, 92), sometimes even as the focus of the romance (e.g., Parthenius, Love Romances 7.1-3, 24). Notwithstanding its cultural acceptance, homosexuality lay outside the confines of Greco-Roman marriage and family; hence homoerotic trysts were permitted (for humans and deities alike; e.g., Homer, Iliad 20.232-35; Virgil, Aeneid 1.28; Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.155.61, 162-219; Euripides, Cyclops 583-87; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.23) while homosexual marriage, such as Nero’s marriage to boys (Martial, Epigrams 11.6; Suetonius, Nero 28-29; Tacitus, Annals 15.37), was considered unnatural. For further discussion see Craig S. Keener, “Adultery, Divorce,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 6-16.
4. While 1 Corinthians is the only epistle in which Paul explicitly charged his readers to avoid homosexual activity, the apostle elsewhere denounces homosexuality in general as sinful (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Tim. 1:9-11).
5. Thomas R. Schreiner, “Head Coverings, Prophecy, and the Trinity: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991), 126; and Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 506-12.
6. Κατακαλύπτω appears in the New Testament only in 1 Corinthians 11.
7. Additional examples from the Septuagint are Exodus 26:34; Leviticus 3:3, 14; 4:8; 7:3; 9:19; Numbers 22:5; Isaiah 11:9; Jeremiah 26:8 (Eng., 46:8) 28:42, 51 (Eng., 51:42, 51); Ezekiel 26:10, 19; 32:7; 38:9; Daniel 12:9; and Habakkuk 2:14, none of which features a garment as the covering agent. Numbers 4:5 involves a tabernacle curtain.
8. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 73-74; Charles K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Black, 1968), 250-52; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 181-82; and Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 153. Like κατακαλύπτω, περιβόλαιον is an elastic term that spans the broad concept of covering, so that the specific covering agent can be determined only from the immediate context.
9. Richard E. Oster, “Use, Misuse and Neglect of Archaeological Evidence in Some Modern Works on 1 Corinthians,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 83 (1992): 67-69; and Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 823-25.
10. As William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, and Robert L. Hubbard Jr. perceptively advise, “A final word of counsel for historical-cultural exegesis is: Keep historical-cultural background details auxiliary to content. Sometimes interpreters become so preoccupied with the historical-cultural insights that they identify the main point of a passage as something that is inconsistent with the textual wording” (Introduction to Biblical Interpretation [Dallas: Word, 1993], 178; italics theirs).
11. James B. Hurley, “Did Paul Require Veils or the Silence of Women? A Consideration of 1 Cor. 11:2-16 and 1 Cor. 14:33b–36,” Westminster Theological Journal 35 (1973): 194.
12. Cynthia L. Thompson, “Hairstyles, Head-Coverings, and St. Paul: Portraits from Roman Corinth,” Biblical Archaeologist 51 (1988): 99-115; cf. Brunilde S. Ridgway, “Sculpture from Corinth,” Hesperia 50 (1981): 432-33; and Charles H. Cosgrove, “A Woman’s Unbound Hair in the Greco-Roman World, with Special Reference to the Story of the ‘Sinful Woman’ in Luke 7:36-50,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124 (2005): 678-86. In addition, Thompson observes that if Paul were referring to some appropriation of headgear from Roman religion, such as the capite velato wherein the priest would pull part of his toga overhead during sacrifices, he would have based his argument on the pagan nature of the headgear and its correlation with sacrificing to idols, themes that Paul addressed elsewhere (10:18-22, 28-33) but that appear nowhere in the pericope under investigation.
13. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 823.
14. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 42 (1980): 483.
15. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 376, 743; Félix-Marie Abel, Grammaire du grec biblique suivie d’un choix de papyrus (Paris: Gabalda, 1927), 221; and James H. Moulton, Syntax, vol. 3 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Edinburgh: Clark, 1963), 268.
16. This point undermines Linda L. Belleville’s hypothesis that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων refers to the Roman religious capite velato (“Κηφαλὴ and the Thorny Issue of Headcovering in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” in Paul and the Corinthians: Studies on a Community in Conflict, Essays in Honor of Margaret Thrall, ed. Trevor J. Burke and J. Keith Elliott [Leiden: Brill, 2003], 215-31). Weaknesses in this hypothesis include (a) its failure to address Paul’s explicit preoccupation with hair (vv. 5-6, 14-15) and (b) given Paul’s equation of περιβολαίου with hair (v. 15), its gratuitous speculation as to some other type of covering, not to mention one based on a non-Christian religious custom.
17. John Chrysostom, In Epistolam Primam ad Corinthios 26.1, in Patrologia graeco-latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1857-1864), 61:213. Likewise the object “hair” is given in the marginal readings of the New International Version and Today’s New International Version. Exegetes who concur that κατὰ κεφαλῆς ἔχων refers to “long hair” include Richard A. Horsley, 1 Corinthians, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 152-57; Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1997), 185-86; Victor Paul Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul:Selected Issues, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 94-101; and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction ofChristian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 227.
18. For example Robin Scroggs claims that “the logic is obscure at best and contradictory at worst” between verses 7-12 and the rest of the passage (“Paul and the Eschatological Woman,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 [1972]: 297). Raymond F. Collins deems verses 7-12 a “convoluted toying with the Scriptures” (First Corinthians, Sacra Pagina [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1999], 403).
19. Fee, TheFirst Epistle to the Corinthians, 514.
20. Horsley, 1 Corinthians, 154.
21. Judith M. Gundry-Volf, “Gender and Creation in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16: A Study in Paul’s Theological Method,” in Evangelium, Schriftauslegung, Kirche: Festschrift für Peter Stuhlmacher, ed. Jostein Adna, Scott J. Hafemann, and Otfried Hofius (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 157.
22. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1997), 187-88.
23. Joël Delobel, “1 Cor 11, 2-16: Towards a Coherent Interpretation,” in L’Apôtre Paul: Personalité, style et conception du ministère, ed. Albert Vanhoye (Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1986), 386.
24. On the same score Philo remarked that angels functioned as “the eyes and ears of the Great King” who “watch and hear all” (De Somniis 1:140).
25. P. W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides with Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 81-83 (vv. 210-14).
26. Philo, De Specialibus Legibus 3:36-38.
27. Musonius Rufus, Discourse 21 (’Εκ τοῦ περί κούπας).
28. Epictetus, Discourses 3.1.24-36 (italics added).
29. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 7.6.
30. Lucian of Samosata, Fugitive 27.
31. Lucian of Samosata, Dialogi meretrici 5.3.
32. While differing in secondary details, this conclusion is foreshadowed by the work of O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” 485-90; and Philip B. Payne, “Wild Hair and Gender Equality in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” Priscilla Papers 20 (2006): 11-15.
33. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), 1:772; Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 135, 613; Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 306-32; Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 449; Craig S. Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 54-55; Hays, First Corinthians, 97; Fee, TheFirst Epistle to the Corinthians, 243-44; Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 118-20; D. F. Wright, “Homosexuals or Prostitutes? The Meaning of Arsenokoitai (1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10),” Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984): 125-53; David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 212-15; Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 166; Wolfgang Stegemann, “Paul and the Sexual Mentality of His World,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 23 (1993): 164-65; and David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 212-14.
34. Anthony C. Thiselton, “Realized Eschatology at Corinth,” New Testament Studies 24 (1978): 510-26.
35. O’Connor, “Sex and Logic in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16,” 490.
36. Sadly this approach was advocated recently by Douglas F. Ottati and criticized by the present author at the 2008 AAR Reformed History and Theology Group (see Douglas F. Ottati, Theology for Liberal Presbyterians and Other Endangered Species [Louisville: Geneva, 2006], 69-70).
37. To the extent that hair lengths still imply homosexuality or cross-dressing, they should be suitably altered, but no valid application can be drawn from this pericope for hair lengths per se, much less the wearing of head garments.