Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1136: Rethinking 1 Corinthians 11:2-16: Dr. Lucy Peppiatt

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

In this podcast conversation, Lucy walks us through her reading of 1 Cor. 11:2-16, where she argues that Paul is quoting and interacting with various ideas that the Corinthians themselves believe. Dr. Peppiatt has been Principal at Westminster Theological Centre (WTC) since 2013. She teaches courses in Christian doctrine and in spiritual formation. Lucy holds bachelor’s degrees in both English and Theology, and completed an MA in Systematic Theology at King’s College, London, and a PhD through the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Her research interests are Christ and the Spirit, Charismatic theology, theological anthropology, discipleship, 1 Corinthians, and women in the Bible. Lucy is part of Crossnet Anglican Church in Bristol, which is led by her husband, Nick Crawley. Together, they have four sons and four daughters-in-law.  Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

If Theology in the Raw has blessed you or challenged you or encouraged you on some level, then I would like to invite you to consider supporting the show by visiting patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month and get access to various kinds of premium content like monthly Q&A podcasts, the ability to ask me questions and dialogue with other Patreon supporters. Gold level supporters are able to participate in monthly Zoom chats where we talk about pretty much everything. Those chats can get pretty wild sometimes and I absolutely love it. So join the Theology in the Raw community by signing up at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of

Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Lucy Pepiat, who is the principal at Westminster Theological Center in the United Kingdom, where she's been since 2013. She has an MA in systematic theology from King's College in London and a PhD through the University of Otago in New Zealand. Hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. She's written several books, including this one, if you're watching on YouTube, Women and Worship at Corinth, Paul's Rhetorical Argument in 1 Corinthians. So her thesis in this book is really remarkable and fascinating and challenging. I read it last summer and I was like, gosh, I really want to

have a conversation with Lucy because I have a lot of questions about her take. And just so she goes into great detail about her reading of 1 Corinthians 11. So 1 Corinthians 11, verse 2 to 16, which is arguably one of, if not the most difficult passages in all of Paul's letters. I think most scholars would agree with that. She has an interesting take on this passage because there's several verses within this section that just seem to not be true. They're just a problem. There's several problem verses in this section, if I can refer to them as problem verses, and I think we should and can. Lucy is going to argue, as she will show very clearly in this podcast, I just want to kind of prep you ahead of time, is that there are several statements within this section that

don't come from Paul's own mind, but it's Paul quoting various slogans and statements from the Corinthians themselves. And he does this in several occasions in 1 Corinthians, where he will quote a slogan from the Corinthians, and then Paul will respond to that slogan. And that's pretty indisputable. There's like at least six to 10 different times he does that in Corinthians. Usually they're shorter statements. Lucy argues that Paul is doing that here in 1 Corinthians 11 verses 2 through 16, only here he's actually quoting larger chunks from the Corinthians' own viewpoint, and then Paul will respond to that. Even she says she could be wrong. She's not

going to take a bullet for this, but it absolutely does smooth out the passage and makes it much more readable. So that's where we're headed. I would invite you. I rarely do this, but if you want to get the most out of this podcast, it'd be really helpful if you had your Bible open. In fact, before even moving forward, I would encourage you to maybe read this section two or three times, kind of think through it, familiarize yourself with it. She'll go through in detail the passage, but you're just going to get the most out of it if you're already familiar with this passage going in. So without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Lucy Pepiat. Hey friends, I'm here with Lucy for a little Bible study here in the early, well, early morning, my time.

It's afternoon, your time out in the UK. So, Lucy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm really excited about this conversation. It's great to be here. Thanks, Preston. So, I was telling you offline, I read your, well, I read, you know, you've written several books, but your book, Women and Worship at Corinth, Paul's Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians.

I read it last summer. I know it's several years old now, but I've just started digging into 1 Corinthians 11, and I am just ripping my hair out. This passage is so difficult. And even somebody that just has an English Bible knows it's difficult because it talks about head coverings and seems to deny that women bear God's image. You're like, what is Paul doing here? And then he swings to the other side and say, no, there's interdependence here. And just an initial reading in the English is confusing, but then you dig deep into the scholarship, the words, and it gets even more confusing. So I'm excited to have you wrestle, help us wrestle with this passage. And I told you offline,

I really hope your thesis is correct. It is a bit original. You're drawing on some other people that have said something similar. I would say it was a hard sell for me, but the more I thought about it, I'm like, the explanatory power of your thesis is like an argument in and of itself. Anyway, I'm going to stop talking. I would love for you to start wherever you want to start. Help us understand this passage and the proposal that you're suggesting in your book. Yeah, thanks, Preston, for having me on to talk about 1 Corinthians 11 particularly. My experience was exactly like yours when I came to start studying 1 Corinthians 11

in earnest, I would say, because I'd read it a number of times before I sat down to really study it. And when I began to study it, to try and make enough sense of it to teach it, I think that was the difference for me. You know, I was thinking, okay, a lot of people are asking me, what do you think about Paul's passages on women? Especially when I became a principal of a college. And so I thought what I do, I need to try and understand this well enough so that I can stand up in front of a classroom and I can give an explanation, you know, that was coherent. That's what I was looking for. you know, that was coherent. That's what I was looking for. And I had a sort of instinct that it would take me a few days. And then it took me a few years, literally years, I'm not joking,

of trying to understand how we might be able to bring some kind of coherence out of this text. And what I find interesting is that I want to do that. So I think I have to put that up front, you know, that there are many scholars who just think it is an incoherent text and don't try and make it make sense. Do you know what I mean? But if you're from an evangelical background

or from a certain type of background, you function with the assumption that the Bible is going to teach us something about God and about ourselves. And so this passage was so important because it was a passage about men, women, and God. And it has been used in the church, by the church, to set up very, very definite structures between men and women, which would then give men authority over women,

women, which would then give men authority over women and mean that women have to have some kind of covering, whether that's a physical covering, like a head covering, which many churches have done through the ages, or a metaphorical covering, which is, you know, you can do this if a man is present. That's how it's been interpreted. I hope we'll dig into why that's highly problematic. But anyway, so I knew it was an important passage anyway, and then I started studying it and started reading as many commentaries as I could on it. And what I came to after a while, really, was that I felt that people were not bringing out the problems enough

and weren't actually being I suppose honest enough with the text or letting the text be itself and so what I would suggest if anyone's, I would say this is going to be much better and more interesting for you to listen with the text in front of you. So to open a Bible, you know, if you're driving or walking, then maybe come back to the podcast later with your Bible in front of you, because there are things that you're going to want to see for yourself, I would say, for sure. to see for yourself, I would say, for sure. What I normally do if I'm teaching it is that I read it out, which I won't do because it takes quite a while, but I would read it out and I would just let people sit with it for about five, at least five minutes, looking through it themselves, maybe even a bit longer, and then asking them to feed back to me the things that they find difficult about the passage. And I normally get some really good answers if I say to people,

imagine Paul walked in and was standing here next to me or sitting here next to me. What would you like to say to him about this? And when I say that, it honestly elicits some pretty strong reactions. Because when people are invited to react to the text for what it is, I think there's some honesty that comes out. And at the sort of benign end of the spectrum, people will say, it's really confusing. I just don't even get it.

And then at the more pernicious end, women are highly distressed about this, and often many men. So one man said to me, it makes me want to rip this page out of my Bible. He said, I have two daughters and I just I want to just rip this page out, he said. So I thought, wow, I've never that was that was one of the strongest reactions I got from a man. Interestingly, so so I tried to sort of approach it really as a scholar. I think that was my attempt because, you know, like I said, I thought, well, can I could I teach this? Can I tell people what this means? And so then I thought, if you don't mind, I was just going to to read through.

These are some of the problems that I found, which I think any audience brings these up if I ask them. So the first one was, what does it mean for a man to be the head of a woman, which is the word that Paul uses, which is kephale in Greek, which is a physical head, if Christ is the head of a man and God is the head of a man and God is the head of Christ so you have these three pairings all between two partners who have unequal relationships supposedly or do they and then so then you're really confused because you're like wait a minute but Christ is God and so in what way is God the head of Christ if Christ shares his identity with God? And

are we talking about a man or are we talking about a husband and a wife? Because the words in Greek are exactly the same. And actually husband makes more sense in this context, but that's like a whole rabbit hole in itself. Then I had a question of why does a man dishonour his own head, which I'm guessing is Christ, if he prays and prophesies with his head covered? What's the particular issue or problem with the man covering his head? How do we make sense of that? And why would it dishonor Christ? And especially in the Jewish tradition where men did cover their heads when they prayed. And we assume this is Paul.

Why does a woman praying and prophesying with her head uncovered dishonor her head who is the man not it's not herself it's dishonoring the the masculine partner there and is her head a specific man so is it her husband or is it men in general so is it every man in that who's in the in the space with her. Lucy, can I get just a clarification? Because this is really important. So you're saying, I mean, obviously the word head in 11.3 is metaphorical. It's not a physical head. And we can get in maybe to the meeting there. You're saying in verse 4, praying and prophesied, having your head covered,

shames his head. The second head at the very end of verse 4, that's still referring metaphorically. The first head in verse 4 is physical, second head metaphorical. And you're saying verse 5 basically does the same thing. Yeah, but it could be, well, it could be either your own head or it could be your metaphorical head, which is the one above you or the one, you know. So the difficulty for us is that it's almost a hierarchy, right? The way that 11.3 runs, that Christ is the head of man,

man's the head of woman, and God is the head of man, man's head of woman, and God is the head of Christ makes you think, oh, there's God first, then Christ, then man, then woman. And then woman's the head of no one. So woman is the head of no one. I mean, you have to say that. So where's the dishonor? I was reading it and I was thinking, but what, but, but you're not, there's no answer for this of, if you're shaming someone so badly that he thinks he needs to write about this and give them some, what's the shame? Where does it come from? some kind of, what's the shame?

Where does it come from? And what you realise that what the text does to women is that it communicates to them that they are carrying a shame of which they don't know about, you know, before being what, a woman? Maybe, maybe. So it kind of opens you up to that, which is really difficult. Especially as then, there's this verse about having your head shaved.

Well, if you do that, if a woman does that, she may as well, you may as well shave her head. Now, some scholars will say, oh, you know, this is definitely hyperbole or it's in the passive. So she might as well, you know, or she, sorry, it's not in the passive. She might as well shave her own head, this is tantamount to her behaving so shamefully that it's like her being a prostitute in the middle of the worship assembly. And so you may as well do something to her to make sure everybody knows that's what she's doing because that's tantamount to that. So anyway, yeah, go on.

Well, you point out in your book, if I remember correctly, so this is the verse six. If she, what is it? Sorry, I keep going back and forth from Greek and Hebrew. If the woman, I'll just read the NIV. If the woman does not cover her head, the NIV says she might as well have her hair cut off. But the Greek simply says, let her be shorn. Like, it's technically a command, right? And that would have been, yeah, if a woman, I think if I remember correctly in the first century, if a woman's a prostitute or commits adultery, sleeps with another man's

husband, it would be, I mean, just under like death penalty, basically, like to have her head shaved off. She walks around, everybody knows that she is an outcast now. She has slept with a dude's husband or whatever. So this is a very strong command. This is not, well, she might as well, at least in the Greek, is that correct? Am I understanding that correctly? I mean. Yes, you are. And so this is what I was reading. And I was thinking, And so this is what I was reading. And I was thinking, this isn't a joke. Like this is not, you know, the symbolism or the act of shaving a woman's head and the symbolic nature of that in all cultures through all centuries is horrific.

You know, women are shaved in order to shame them. I mean, it shames them, it shames their family, it shames everyone around them. And, you know, obviously in physical terms, it takes months for that hair to grow back, right? So you're carrying that shame for weeks and weeks and weeks. So I kept, you know, I'm getting to all these things and I was thinking, this is really,

it kind of just sticks in a horrible way. So then I think my biggest problem really with the passage and the scholarship about the passage was that there were many people, many scholars who wanted to make sense or give the passage some kind of coherence and make it ameliorate the impact of it, you know, so to lessen the impact of what I'm trying to describe, which I have seen women react to and men and scholars almost sort of pretending that's not there and then saying well it must have been cultural because it must have been cultural because um we don't wear head coverings now

and there was this practice of wearing head coverings. So Paul clearly just thinks that in order to be sensitive to the cultural mores around them, that women should wear head coverings, right? And I got to verse 7 and I thought, well, wait a minute, you can say that, but Paul gives a very clear reason for why women should wear head coverings. And he spells it out from verse seven to verse nine. A man ought not to cover his head. Oh, sorry, for both, you know,

for the man not to, for the woman to. Since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. for man did not come from woman, but woman from man, neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. If we read that in the Quran, we would be all over that. We would be like, see, you Muslims are so misogynistic. How do you don't even think women

are creating god's image like this is yeah anyway so i what i like to do in a classroom of christians is i read it out and then i say is that true and i know i'm being annoying and provocative because i know that they they feel i'm trying to trap them because they want, because it's the Bible. So it's the Bible. And so they want to say, uh, yes,

but then they look at it and they're like, no. And I say, so then I push them and I say, where does it, where does it say in the scriptures? Where else does it say in the scriptures that man alone is the image and glory of God and woman is the glory of man? And they, they, if they know their Bibles, they know it doesn't say that anywhere. Bibles, they know it doesn't say that anywhere. And that what in fact it does say in Genesis is that in Genesis 1, that male and female are made in the image and likeness of God, and doesn't say anything about glory. And in Psalm 8, it talks about glorious human beings, but that again is all human beings, not just men.

And then verse 10, it is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head because of the angels. Your translation there is straight from the Greek. because of the angels. Your translation there is straight from the Greek. Some translations say a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, but the Greek simply says a woman ought to have authority. I'm just trying to translate from the, yeah, the most literal translation on account of this, the woman ought to have authority on over her own head or over her head.

Over her head, yeah. So even putting in over her own head is a bit of a slip, I think. Well, it's an interpretive. So I'm reading from the, I've got up in front of me at the moment, the NIV. But there's lots of different, if you look at all the different translations, you'll see that there are, so some talk about woman as the reflection of man, not glory, but actually it's glory. It is doxa, it's glory. I think it should be translated glory. So anyway, so I like saying, is this true? And then people get squirmy and they're like, oh, I don't want to have to answer that question because they think,

they read it and they're like, but it's not the whole truth. It isn't, you know, it's not the whole truth. It's like a little twisting of the truth because woman and man together are made in the image and likeness of God. And it's also not true that the woman was made just for the man. You know, that's not her raison d'etre. It doesn't say that.

It does say that the woman was made as as this partner oh what was the phrase i heard oh gosh i can't remember now i had a really good phrase from carmen imes on uh as a oh bother it's gone out of my head that's so annoying i think she she talked about had carmen on this podcast a while back and yeah she she uh, I'm blinking on it too. But I know, yeah, she had a great way of interpreting Ezra. Ezra, in Genesis 2.18, sometimes translated helper. But as everybody points out now, the same words used of God, quote, helping Israel through military victory. So it doesn't imply inferiority.

Helping Israel through military victory. So it doesn't imply inferiority. If anything, it implies, could even imply superior strength because it's often used of God's relation to Israel. But definitely doesn't. I've got it. She uses deliverer. Deliverer. That's for Ezra. Okay.

And that's fantastic. So, it's not true that God creates a man and then creates a woman for him just as his kind of, you know, to feed all his needs. your church background, but I have heard very close to that kind of teachings in the church today. The metaphor that I heard given to potential wives is when you get married, you get in the boat and you row with him. He's going somewhere and you get in the boat and help him out. If you heard this metaphor and help him row to where he's going, you know. And there is this kind of implied, if not explicitly stated, idea that, you know, the woman is created to help the man do what he is called to do. And that is your raison d'etre, which is based partly in passages like this. And I think I'm misreading the Genesis too. Well, exactly. So this was what I was seeing,

as I was seeing all these sort of undercurrents and subtexts in this, I call it my passage now, in my passage, because I've spent years of my life reading it and re-reading it and praying about it and over it. my life reading it and praying about it and over it and and and it's like it's like being sort of fed this partial truth that you think oh is it is it maybe there's something in this that I'm supposed to be able to see something here but actually when and then I was looking at it and I was thinking but no because and even then so i was deeply troubled really by seven to nine then i did later after i'd written women in worship i wrote an essay

um on the on a reception history of these verses which was really interesting because what i realized was that for for probably about 1800 years the the scholars had routinely understood these verses as saying that a woman was subordinate to a man. And there was no question that she wasn't, he was created in God's glory and she wasn't. But they also equally found that awkward and difficult. And so we'd try and find ways out of it. And I won't go into that,

but Augustine has an absolutely wonderful kind of, it's labyrinthine argument about how it doesn't really mean that women are subordinate, even though it kind of says that women are subordinate. And it's it's really really funny and interesting um because he clearly is disturbed by it you know and even calvin's disturbed by it and this idea that it really sounds like it's a rewriting of the creation story but and and they do admit that right so? So that's a bit interesting to me.

And then, but then even you get in our own text from 11 to 16, sorry, from three to 16, you get to verse 12 and it says, "'For as woman came from man, "'so also man is born of woman, "'but everything comes from God. And so I was reading all of this. I got to verse 10, thought this is all, A, not just puzzling, but deeply troubling. And then you get to verse 11, and you think, well, now it sounds like he's backtracking.

Like he's correcting himself almost. Yes. Yeah. Or maybe I went too far. Maybe I better just pull back a bit, you know. And so you get this nevertheless. And the more that I would read the scholars who had Greek, the more that I would understand and looking through the Greek that this little word, plen, which is put in there in verse 11, I think universally scholars will say that it has some kind of adversative weight. So it's like you're coming to a point where you actually are

going to change direction so you say so we and we say never that well i've got in my bible nevertheless but i'm not sure that i'm curious lucy this is a genuine question because my greek is way more rusty than yours what's the difference between, I mean, I know De, Ala, and then Plen. Is that a gradation of strength there? Because De can mean, it can even mean and, but sometimes, but Ala is much stronger. Is Plen even stronger than Ala? Well, I understand it is, but I would be happy to be corrected. But yes. It is strong at the very least. It's a very strong adversative conjunction. Yes. And actually, if you look up where else it occurs in the New Testament, you do see that it

comes at points where the writer is wanting to just push the next point as a kind of, yes, but, you know, I've said, but now I'm saying this. And so I think it is a strong word. Anyway, in a sense, regardless of whether it is or not, there's a disorientation that occurs at verse 11 because you've been led in one direction and then you're suddenly led in another one, especially on this thing of how men and women relate. So, but nevertheless, or plen, you know, what I'm really saying is,

or what I'm saying is, in the law, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. Whereas woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. And I'll come back to, but everything comes from God in a minute. So he's moving from this unequal asymmetrical relationship of the man is made in the image and glory of God and woman is made for him and she's dependent on him and she's derivative of him and there's all this sort of language of inequality to suddenly having a language of equality and mutuality which is much more resonant of what we've had in 1 Corinthians 7 which is the most astonishing sort of treaty really on marriage coming directly from Paul about the mutual relationship sexual relationship actually of husbands and wives

using the word authority which is the only time he uses the word authority in relation to men and women. And that is to say that they have a mutually authoritative relationship over each other's bodies, which is extraordinary for him to say. So when you get to verse 11 and 12, you're thinking, oh, 1 Corinthians 7. You know, it sort of spins you back there because you've got this alter dependence and then you've got this this equality of provenance is how i would put it where he where one comes from one and then one comes from the other so you have this sort of um cycle where you you think uh from genesis 2 that woman comes from man. But then you get this amazing process, birth, life and birth process in the world where every single person who was born

comes from a woman. Every single person, every single man and woman comes from a woman. And Eve is the author of life. She's the one, you know, she is the mother. She's the mother of everybody. And she says about Cain, with the help of the Lord, I have created a man. So she, you know, she births the human race so i i the idea that woman just comes from man is very lopsided and not at all biblical and it's limited to the one instance between adam and eve right i mean it's it's not happened once in the garden whereas the second point here of man coming

from woman is happens obviously throughout creation i mean throughout time and um exactly throughout all history yeah and then also i think being paul i think is also we're meant to be you know brought back to the incarnation i think and and mary's birthing of christ anyway so and then he says but everything comes from god now it so when i was reading it i thought oh now i wonder this is interesting because he set up this head the idea of a head you have a head if you're a woman or a man or christ um and but then in one corinthians there's a very strong theology that god he comes to it in one corinthians 15 where he says god will be all in all and everything will be subject to him. I think that's 1 Corinthians 15, 28, I think. And this seems to be foreshadowing what he's going to come to in 1 Corinthians 15, is this idea that God is somehow the one who is over all, and that there is no head apart from God, really. So everything comes from Him,

and everything is going to go back to Him. That's the picture you get in 1 Corinthians. It is, yeah, verse 28, 1528, so that God may be all in all. Yeah. So I'm just taking people through, you know, slightly verse by verse. But this is, in a way, it's great because it lends itself to us bringing questions at each verse. You know, each verse you're like, oh, now I have another question and another question. So verse 11 and 12 create more questions for us. You know, we're like, wait a minute. Now I feel totally disorientated because you led me in one direction. Now you've switched it up on me.

And now you've told me that we're all interdependent and now everything comes from God. So what's happened to the head thing now? I don't know what's happened to that. And then you come to a rhetorical question. Now that should cause you to ask lots of questions because Paul loves rhetorical questions, especially in 1 Corinthians. And when he asks them, he's asking the Corinthians, he's highlighting faulty thinking on their part. So when he says, judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?

Now, it's interesting here because he's dropped the prophecy idea and just said pray. And if you were, I mean, this is the other thing I like to ask people. Just take it out of context. And just if someone came up to you and said you're a Christian can I just ask you a question is it proper for a woman to pray to God without wearing head covering hey you know and then you think oh well and then you think well am I just saying mmm of course she could pray with a head i go because i'm a western christian because then so then you get self-doubt you're like oh maybe if i was an eastern christian

i would say no it's not proper no she should wear a head covering to pray and maybe that was what was in paul's mind but then i want to go back again to say, no, but he's already told you the reason. He's told you the reason. So the reason he said is because you're not the glory of God man is. But now he's asking a question. And if you were asked that question cold, honestly, you would say, of course, it's okay for a woman to pray with her head down. Do I, you know, I pray in this room. This is the room I pray in every morning. What if I thought I had to sit here or kneel here and put something on my head before God because somehow in front of him,

I have to cover some kind of shameful element, wherever that is, whether that's in me, on me, outside of me, I have to cover it over because I'm not in God's glory. What does that do to me as a woman, as a human being, as a prayer, what does that do? So, you know, everyone, I don't think it's difficult for people to see the whole thing as highly problematic. And then there are various other things that come now thick and fast. So verse 14, doesn't the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him? Now, the more I looked into that, the more I found that really fascinating because in Acts 18, 18, it says that when Paul left Corinth, he shaved his head or cut his hair

because of a vow he had taken. Now, nobody knows exactly what this means, but what scholars think is that when he went to Corinth, he took a Nazarite vow not to cut his hair. And we do know he was in Corinth for 18 months. So if he had stuck to this Nazarite vow, he would have been growing his hair for 18 months. And anybody who has grown his hair for 18 months and anybody who has grown their hair for 18 months will know exactly how long that hair gets and it would have been shoulder length yeah about nine nine inches i mean it's half an inch a month right so yeah yeah so average half an inch a month for a healthy person um he had long hair, well longer than mine. And so my gut feeling was that this long hair was a problem for the

Corinthians and not for him. I didn't think he thought that nature thought that, you know, teaches us. I was like, but wait a minute, he's a Christian. He's a christian not not a stoic so um so why does he think anyway so uh and then there's a kind of um really strange verse at the very end which or two strange verses if a woman has long hair but if a woman has long hair it's her glory so if a man has long hair it's a disgrace if a woman has long hair it's her glory woman has long hair, it's her glory. So if a man has long hair, it's a disgrace. If a woman has long hair, it's her glory. And you're thinking, wait, I thought we were talking about head coverings, not hair. Could be both.

And then he says, for long hair is given to her instead of a covering. And he uses the word anti, which is instead of. And it's a bit naughty, I think, of translations that don't translate that instead of. Because, and I think the reason people don't is because it does create so many problems once you do it. So if you do that, if you let the Greek speak for itself and you say, but her long hair is given to her

instead of a covering. Then you have to go back through the whole lot all over again and go, well, wait a minute. Well, why on earth did he say that they should be covered then? If she has long hair, she doesn't need a covering is the logic of verse 15. Exactly. And then the final real problem is that he says, we have no other practice. And so then you're thinking, well, no other practice and nor do any of the churches of God. We have no such custom, he says, we have no such custom and neither do any of the churches of God. And you think, well, then why doesn't it come up in any of the other epistles?

you think, well, then why doesn't it come up in any of the other epistles? Well, you know, if this is so important and so awful, we should have, there should be somewhere else that we find this. And in fact, in 1 Peter, sorry, 1 Timothy, we find instructions about how women shouldn't braid their hair or should braid their hair. And you think, well, if it's covered, why does it matter? So, so yeah, so so those were all and there were loads of other things that i so i i was mired in um difficulties and i really love paul and i think he's brilliant and and i think he's a brilliant scholar i think he was the greatest apostle, sorry to Peter, but I think, you know, I just sort of, to me, he was. And this troubled me.

And then I was wrestling with it for a long time. And then two things happened that made me wonder whether something else was going on in the passage. And the first thing was that I went to a conference, a little day conference with Doug Campbell in London. And I heard him talking about rhetorical arguments, which for him is in Romans. And he's done a lot of work on that. And I'm still not sure what I think about that. And I'm still not sure what I think about that, but I was fascinated by the idea, you know, like, oh.

And then, of course, I clicked that I'd been reading all these commentaries on 1 Corinthians, and I knew that 1 Corinthians was a response of Paul's to a letter that they'd written to him, and everybody talks about it as half a conversation, and that there was this other narrative running through it and when scholars think that he's citing something that the Corinthians have already said they just whack it in quotation marks because there's no quotation marks in the original and so that little seed was planted in my mind of kind of, this quotation marks thing in 1 Corinthians is all still under debate.

Like there's some other stuff in there that people are going, well, it could be this as well. It could be that as well. And we could put that in quotation marks. And I thought, well, what if we, well, what if some of this is in quotation marks? What if it was supposed to be. And so that planted that seed. And then... Real quick, can we, for the audience that might be unfamiliar with what you're saying, I want to point out that there's several passages in Corinthians that virtually every scholar that I know, even translations now, would say that Paul is quoting a slogan from the Corinthians. So if you want a clear example in 1 Corinthians 6, 12, when Paul writes, you know, I have the right to do anything. So the NIV actually has this in quotation marks. I have the right to do anything you say. So Paul's quoting them, but not everything is beneficial. Then he quotes them again.

I have the right to do anything. That's Corinthians. Now Paul responds, but I will not be mastered by anything. That's pretty indisputable that Paul is actually quoting something that they're saying, even though the quotes aren't in the original Greek. But you have very similar things going on in 7-1, 8-1, 8-4, 10-23, 15, 12. I'm just getting this from your book, by the way. You list all these out. And so I wrote them on my margins and I went back and looked at each one. So that's kind of where we're coming, that this kind of sets you up, that Paul fairly frequently is fond of quoting something they say.

And we have to discern that from the text. He doesn't come right out and say, well, he kind of does say in some places, now you've said, you know. Yeah, you do get a signal in some places and in other places you don't. So like there's an interesting, so chapter eight is really interesting because there's a little dispute going on

about whether chapter eight, verse eight, is Paul or whether it's the Corinthians. So, but food doesn't bring us near to God. We are no worse if we do not eat and no better if we do. So some people think that that's the Corinthians and that the reason they are eating food sacrificed to idols is that they think that. Ah, interesting.

But then verse 9 is they switch back to Paul. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights doesn't become a stumbling block to the weak. Oh, that's interesting. Do you see? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's impossible. So some people, some scholars are putting 8a and b in quotes. Okay, interesting. Okay, yeah. So there's some disputed ones as well. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, so I knew that, well, I didn't know, I sort of did know it, but then it kind of

landed more firmly in my brain of this is slightly up for debate, you know, about where these quotation marks are. And if you go and do look through all the translations you can find you'll find that some translations don't even have any quotation marks yet they did just decided no they're not in there we're not putting them in and others have more than others and etc so and then the thing that sort of dawned on me in a very powerful way, as I was reading through all these commentaries, I realized that everybody was willing to admit,

and if you, once you hear it, you realize it, that Paul is targeting the men in this letter, by and large. So if you, and then you start to think about it the men in this letter by and large. So if you, and then you start to think about it and you go, oh yeah, like the, so there's the man who is having sex with his father's wife, and that's like an egregious crime. I mean, that's, you know, it's got some sort of particular awfulness about it.

It's even a crime in Roman. It's incest in Roman law, even though obviously they weren't blood relatives. And then he talks to the people who are going to prostitutes. Well, that's the men. The who are going to prostitutes. Well, that's the men. The men are going to prostitutes. When you get to chapter 14, when he says, did the word of God originate with you? Are you the only ones it has raised?

He's talking to the men. So I think there's a particular problem at Corinth with the male leadership. And I think that the male leadership, they're arrogant, they're divisive, they have factions, they are not respecting Paul and his authority. They are not respecting Paul and his authority. And they are abusing the poor, which comes out in the second half of 1 Corinthians 11. And so once I had started thinking along these lines, I thought those kind of men oppress women.

That's the age old story of the world. And I thought, what if the problem here was the men and women? We have assumed all along, and I was reading commentary after commentary after commentary, that was assuming that the reason Paul was putting women in head coverings was because the women were a problem. They were a problem somehow. What was the problem? Who knows? But they weren't made in the image and glory of God, whatever that means.

And I thought, but what if that was what the Corinthians thought about women? And so the Corinthians had put the women in head coverings because they were hierarchical, because they thought that men were the head of women, because they thought that if women appeared in the public assembly and they weren't covered, that somehow they were going to dishonor those men there, which would have been terrible for them because they were locked into the shame on a culture, which we know from the letter and we know from our history. And these Corinthians were utterly syncretistic. I mean, they had,

I forget which scholar it is, but someone said, they didn't just have one foot in the world and one foot, they had both feet firmly planted in the world. I think that's Christleton or someone, you know, and you think, I've been reading all these guys, all these male scholars who are saying, this is what's happening to the men in Corinth. And nobody sits down and says, so maybe they're also oppressing the women. And if they were oppressing the women, what would it look like? And it certainly would look like them telling them to sit down, be quiet, put your head covering on. And if you have something to ask, ask your husband at home, which is what comes out in 1 Corinthians 14. And so once I had gone down that road, it's like, honestly, I just couldn't turn.

I just couldn't turn back. I mean, I know I might be wrong. I mean, I never say, oh, I think I'm really right about this. I absolutely know I could be wrong about this. But once I saw it, I literally couldn't unsee it. And I thought, I honestly think that was the problem. And if that was the problem, and then I began to unpick all the threads, all these things that I had taught, you know, that we went through at the beginning of this podcast is saying there's this

problem and this problem and this problem and this problem. And suddenly, all those problems are assigned to the Corinthians. Can you go through and quickly summarize then, kind of go back through the passage just briefly, like which parts of 1 Corinthians 11 are you suggesting are slogans from the Corinthians and which parts is Paul responding to that? Just so people can kind of have it. Yeah. And I do want to point out, I'm sure I'll say this in intro, but your book lays this out very clearly. In fact, even at the end of the book, at the very end of the book, you even have your own kind of reading where you, you, you say, here's what I think is a slogan. Here's what I think is Paul. So it's super, the great thing about your book,

Lucy, if I can say, I mean, it's, it's very scholarly response. It's very responsible on a scholarship level, but it's very easy to read too. Like remarkably for an academic-ish book, it's very readable. So even if somebody is not a scholar, I think they'll very much enjoy the book and it's not terribly long, which I appreciate. Yeah, no, I'm not. I always try and make them longer than I run it. I'm like, I've said what I want to say. I don't have anything else to say. But so and just to say, I wrote, I did write a simpler version of my argument in Unveiling Paul's Women, which it's a Bible study. And it's much shorter, because unlike you, Preston, many people said, your book's far too complicated for me to read. Could you please write something simpler? So I did. Anyway, but thanks for the affirmation.

So if you've got your Bibles in front of you, starting at verse two, I would ascribe verses two and three to Paul. I praise you for remembering me and everything and for holding to the traditions just as I pass them on to you. But I want you to realize, so here I would have, I just slightly tweak that, the tense that Paul uses allows us to say something like,

but I wanted you to know, I was kind of wanting you to understand. So it's fine to put it in the present, but it does have this sense of, you know, I'm coming from this place where I wanted you to know. So I wanted you to understand that the head of every husband is Christ. So I've actually put that I am happier with that as husband because I think one of their issues because when you get to 14 the issue is between husbands and wives and so I think they have a particular issue with the wives needing to be seen to be covered in in the presence of their husbands. That's just my

conjecture. But I mean, as I said, I can't prove any of this, so I don't know. But I want you to realize that. And then that also does fit in better with Ephesians 5, of course, where Paul uses the language of head with husbands and wives. So I want you to have understood that the head of every husband is Christ and the head of the woman is a husband. But you could, so like you were saying, we could have an and there, we could also have a but. But in one sense, I think he's trying to qualify what he's saying. And the head of Christ is God. So he finishes, he's got these three pairs. And in the sort of rhetorical tradition, the final pair is the most important.

And so he's framing everything by finishing with God, by saying, but the head of Christ is God. with god by saying but the head of christ is god so if you if you if you've got a line then the most important thing is that the head is god and when you get to verse 12 he's kind of wrapping something around i think by saying and everything's coming back everything comes from god anyway so everything comes from god everything's going to come back to God. So I think although this idea of the head is his, he's trying to qualify that by saying, we've got these earthly structures, but in the heavenly structures, you have a different picture. heavenly structures, you have a different picture. So, and he'll come to that. I'll come back to that, but he'll come to that in verses 11 and 12. So I think that's him. I don't see why it wouldn't be particularly. But then from verse four to verse, so verses four and five, I think, is their theology and their practice. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonours his head,

but every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head. It's the same as her having a head shade. You could almost put a question mark after that. You know, so it's like he's quoting it back to them and going, really, you know, you, you, I've read this in your letter. So he's putting it back to them. This is the issue, right? You've told me this, that this is what you think. And then verse six, I think, is him. So my proposal is that this is a reductio ad absurdum on his part. So he throws this in to kind of show them the ludicrous nature of their proposal.

He's drawing out their own logic, right? If that's true, then here's where this is going to lead to. Yeah. Yes. So you've said that if a woman prays and prophesies with her head uncovered, it's the same as if she had her head shaved. You're saying that, that it's that serious? Well, if it's that serious, then if she doesn't cover her head and it's so disgraceful, then you should shave her head.

So I think he's trying to push, that's where I see him pushing them, which kind of then resolves the terrible issue of it sounding as if Paul's saying, if she doesn't do that, then you should do that to her. Do you see? Right, yeah. So then he goes back to their logic.

So I think that verse 7 to 10 is the Corinthians, and I think this is their, I think in a way it's great. I mean, it's sort of, because it gives you such clarity. And also, it's so plausible. You that makes you second guess yourself that you're, can I say that I don't agree with this? Am I completely stepping out of line if I say, I think that's wrong? I'm reading it and I don't think that's Christian theology. But can I say that or does that make me feel a little bit sick

to say that? Do you see what I mean? And that's exactly how it works. You get enough partial truth to make you doubt yourself in saying, I'm not, oh, is that right? I don't think that's right. I like how you point out this is how heresies work. They often are based on a passage of scripture, a theme of scripture, and they're just tweaked a little bit to where somebody who's less learned maybe would be like, well, okay, I guess that's what the passage is saying. And here they're using biblical, I'm assuming your argument to be true here, you know, this is the Corinthians, they're using, this is a potential reading of Genesis too. You could get this kind of interpretation, whether it's the best reading

or not, it's up for question. But you can see where somebody's like, oh, well, okay, I guess I'm not created in God's image, even though I thought it was. Yeah, totally. And actually, many Christians, like you said, Preston, many Christians think like this today. They do. They think that because the first creature that was made was male. If if that creature was fully male, there's a debate about that. But you know, whatever. So the first one, then and then, you know, there's a whole there's a whole theology of headship and precedence based on Genesis two, and one Corinthians 11, and Ephesians 5,

that leads you right here. And they all mutually endorse each other, all those different talents. And everyone goes, oh, that proves it. You know, men are the head of women and therefore, because they came first, and so they're in charge and women need to follow and you know it goes just goes on and on and on so it's quite a big blow to that argument if this is corinthian and not paul

which is not lost on me obviously but i do actually think it does make way more sense of everything so i would just say and, then you've got the angels. And this also is great because you, because you can totally see how someone could sell that to you. You know, you, the angels, don't you think? Because the angels are watching the, you know, Because the angels are watching. And the angels are the kind of guardians of this behavior and how men and women should be before God in the public space.

And if you step out of line, there's going to be angels there saying, you know, and the offense will go right up to God all through the cosmos. And it's really interesting because it's in 1 Corinthians where Paul says to the Corinthians, don't you know you're going to be judging angels? So, I have this feeling that they had a very developed angelology where the angels were kind of quite powerful beings in their midst and potentially mediators, you know, and judges, judges. And Paul's like, they're not gonna be judging you,

you're going to be judging them, which is crazy because I didn't even know what that means, but anyway. So anyway, so there we go. That I think seven to 10 is the Corinthians and then kick back into Paul, verse 11 makes way more sense. He's now combating their faulty views with his proper Christian view of male and female,

men and women, for God, in the Lord, and everything else. And then he says, then it's his rhetorical question to them, judge for yourselves, is it proper? And then I think that verse 14 is him having a bit of a, a laugh, it's slightly sarcastic. You know, doesn't the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it's a disgrace to him, but if a woman has long hair, it's her glory.

So he's throwing back at them a sort of stoic idea that they would have believed, you know, at one point, that if a woman has long hair, it's one point that if a woman has long hair, it's a glory. If a man has long hair, it's a disgrace. I think they probably hated Paul having long hair in Corinth. I think they probably thought he was a complete sort of, you know, waster. And what was he doing? And it was so embarrassing, this supposed apostle who wanders around with long hair. So anyway, I think he's bringing something up.

And then he says, for long hair is given to her instead of a covering. And that's his kind of trump card. He plays that. And then he says to them, look, we don't have this practice. We have no such custom in our churches. We don't cover women to pray. And if anyone wants to be contentious about this, you need to know I'm not behind you. When I got through your book, and then I said, okay, I'm going to reread this passage, which you just did. I mean, it did. It's like a puzzle came together. It's like you have this

puzzle, pieces everywhere, and all of a sudden, you arrange all the pieces. I was like the, it's like a puzzle came together. You know, it's like, you have this puzzle pieces everywhere. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden you arrange all the pieces. I was like, Oh, there's a beautiful picture here. I guess I would imagine. And even say in the book, like you, you can't, it's not like you can do a, you know, point to something explicit in the text that proves this. Like, it's not like Paul some kind of greek word he uses when he's when he's alerting us to some something he's going to quote like um what is that the biggest what would be if you play devil's advocate with yourself like what what would you say is the biggest pushback or i'm sure you've received pushback to this and what's the strongest counter-argument to what you're saying um i think the strongest well the, the thing is, in one sense, there just isn't one apart from it's not in there.

You know, we can't, there's no warrant for what you're doing. Yeah. That you're messing about with the Bible. That's the strongest. Yeah. You're inserting things that aren't there. And I'm like, I know, but that's what a lot of other people have done in other places in 1 Corinthians. So I sort of think, yeah, I know. I know that. But so what about the, so take out all the other

quotation marks. Do that then. Then they'd respond, yes, but those are short. There are a couple of phrases. Here you're proposing larger chunks. Would that be? No, there isn't really an argument against what I'm doing. A, because I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just giving a hypothesis. You know, I'm giving an option.

I think what I like to say to people is, of course you have choices of how you want to interpret these scriptures. This, for me, gives me a kind of peace about this passage. But if you don't want to go down my route, which I completely understand, I don't mind at all, as long as you admit how problematic this passage is. And that's where I find people get stuck and don't like, because they want it to be benign and they want Paul to be right all the time. And I think that I've shown that A, it's not benign. It's awful for women and men. And B, it's incoherent and the theology in it is dodgy. So if you want to keep it together and say all of it's Paul, then please rewrite your portrait of Paul. That's what I want to say. Please do that. So, um, I, I did talk to an, uh, an egalitarian writer about your thesis. I won't name his name cause I don't know if I'll represent him well, but I said, what do you think about Lucy's thesis?

He's like, well, I, I want it to be right. That sounds great. You know, but I don't, since I, he felt like he could, um, smooth out the passage without saying these are slogans, you know? Um, you know, so it's like, I don't, I don't need that to still arrive at a position of equality with women. Part of it's how he understands kephale, the word head, and how he would interpret 11.7 to 9 or 11.7 to 10. What do you think? And I just recently read like Cindy Westfall in this passage, Keener, obviously, you know, there are egalitarian

scholars who basically argue that Paul is not denying that women bear God's image or whatever. Are you just not satisfied with some of those exegetical attempts? I mean... Yeah, no, I'm totally unsatisfied with their attempts. And I think that I would like them to do more research on the reception of this text throughout history and today. Anecdotally, I can tell you that is not how men and women read that text. And I think it's really interesting. So if you try, you know, I said to you at the beginning of this podcast, I wanted to know how to teach this passage.

And when I started looking at how they tried to describe it, the egalitarians, I was like, this is so convoluted. If I tried to teach what you're saying to me, I would feel like I was not representing this passage at all. I feel like I would be twisting it around to try and get an answer that I wanted. And that's the irony, because I know 100% for sure people are going to say, oh, Lucy Peppier, you know, she's just put those quotation marks in to try and get the answer she wants. I can promise you the egalitarians do exactly the same. They twist it up. I'm not joking. I've read enough of them to know. And the only people I

respect properly in the reading of this passage is the ones that read it as a subordinationist text, because that's what it is. That's it is i'm just like just call it you know let and and the person the reading i absolutely love of this passage is michael lakey's image and glory of god is absolutely brilliant and i i love michael as a person and I love his reading because to my mind, he is the only person I've read who lets the text tell you what it's saying. And he says the cultural codes in this passage are abhorrent and non-transferable to the modern day. And I just like, well, thanks for saying that, Michael,

because that's a great relief to hear. So he would read it as a heavy subordinationist, like women are just simply not equal to men. And Paul is reflecting the cultural kind of view. Yes. He just says, well, that was Paul's culture. That's what he believed here. And also, I think he thinks it's slightly quaint

to for somebody to think that Paul would be consistent in all his writings, you know, across time and in all the epistles. And I think he thinks that kind of, it's not that he looks down on people who think like that, because he understands it. But I do think he sort of thinks it's slightly naive, you know, to think that there would be this coherency. And he's just saying, look, I'm a Bible scholar, I've got this text in front of me, I'm going to tell you what it says. And here's what it says. And I love that approach.

I'm going to tell you what it says and here's what it says. I love that approach, yeah. And I read his book and I was, honestly, although it was awful reading it, like thinking, gosh, if this was Paul, that's absolutely terrible. But then this sort of weight came off me because I thought, thanks for saying that. You know, thank you for just speaking the truth. Anyway, so that's what I would say to the egalitarians is I would say you are quite, you know, you twist this text around more than I do, quite frankly. That's what I think. I've read, you know, a lot of the major

ones so far. And it's such a dense passage that it's hard for me to keep in mind i've got like pages and pages of notes and who said what i did find um i just recently went back and reread it uh judith gundry wolf's article on this of all the other options i i think probably the most compelling but it does take a bit of work to get to where she wants to go and i think that's kind of your point like either way we are all i want to say monkeying around with the text, but we have to like, it's, it takes a bit of work, you know, to, to smooth this out a little bit to help Paul out. But, uh, you quote her fairly positively in your book, I think. I mean, you, um. Oh yeah, yeah. I, I, so I, I, yes, I appreciated her work as well. So where I diverge from Judith Gundry-Wolf is that she thinks that the two narratives in the first half and second half,

so everybody sees that. I mean, I can't think of anyone who doesn't think that there's some kind of a break at verse 11. She thinks that they are kind of complementary, that you can blend them in some way and that the second one takes precedence, but the first one still has meaning. I suppose a lot of it does well the way I come to a text is I'm a pastor. And so I'm like, well, so pastorally, where's this going to take you? You've told women they have to do this and then you've told them then they don't have to.

And you told them they have to do it because of this. And then you told them they don't have to because of something that's, you know. So a lot of what people want to do is to say, oh, no, Paul gives the argument and then he balances it with a counter. That's where they go, right? Yeah. And I just think, I'm sorry, that just leaves you utterly confused. And the result of the text has been an unqualified hierarchy between men and women where men are in charge and women have to follow them. So just look at what it's done to the church. Look at that. And then tell me that it's self-evident that it's somehow egalitarian. It is not. Yeah. Well, I'm going to let my audience continue to wrestle with this. Lucy, thank you so much for stirring up our thinking at the very least. And what I love about even being honest

with the problems in the text is it drives us deeper into the text. So I see that as honoring the text, not dishonoring the text at all. That's how I'm wired. I love being honest with the problems. Then I roll up my sleeves and say, all right, let's get to work and figure this out. Work, before I let you go, where can people find you? And do you want to say a quick, I got to go in just a couple minutes, but a quick word of advertisement with your school. Like you have different programs and stuff you're offering. Would love to, if people are looking for further theological education, to check you guys out. Thank you. That would be lovely. We are a UK college and we have hubs all around the UK. So

we do part-time study for people who are busy with work, life, ministry. And you can find us at wtctheology.org.uk. We have a number of offerings, including a non-accredited, fully online foundations course in theology, which is open to anyone around the world if they can come in at the time we run it. So there'll be a new one starting in September. And we also have a few free resources on our website. And obviously, I have a number of books if people would like to read those. And I'll say, I have a lot of UK listeners and Canadian listeners, but majority US-based listeners. But I studied in the UK, and I can honestly say for my US audience that is maybe looking for a theological education, I can't tell you how much I love the British evangelical environment.

It's so, it's just depoliticized. You just go after the text. There's so much more honor for the text. You're able to kind of talk. Yeah, anyway, so I would encourage my US audience to check it out. Lucy, thank you so, so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.