We have been very happy in our new church home, All Saints' Petersham. Today in church we had one of those moments that church attending ought to give you - a moment of real discomfort and dissonance. Frankly, if your church isn't making you uncomfortable some of the time, then change. Well, I mean, if your church doesn't allow the word of God to make you feel uncomfortable...
You see, we had a reading and a sermon from 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. And I am not just going to trot out the old line about how this challenges our cultural assumptions blah blah. That is a device used by complementarians to avoid being themselves listening too carefully to the text. (Mind you, at least they are listening to the text...)
No: this text is a test to see if we really do hold to the authority of the Scriptures. Do we really believe it when the reading is finished and the reader says 'this is the word of the Lord'? Can we really say 'thanks be to God'? This text, it seems to me, refuses to be mastered by the knowing exegete. It is teasing and mysterious and confronting and awkward. What can 'on account of the angels' mean? What does Paul mean by 'nature teaches us' (phusis)? It's the Bible at its best - turning our worlds upside down. Judging us just when we thought we were going to judge it. It can only be preached - and heard - with fear and trembling (and full marks to our preacher, Antony Barraclough, for not flinching).
Let me be honest: I don't like what this text is saying. I don't see how it makes sense (yet). It seems offensive and it is embarassing. But shouldn't the word of God - if it really IS the word of God spoken into the dark world - get precisely that reaction from me? And doesn't this word prove trustworthy and true again and again?
28 comments:
As both a long-haired man and a feminist, I think this passage simply serves to demonstrate that Christians are on the whole much more moral than the 'good' book they venerate.
Hi Michael,
it's an interesting, allusive post about the passage. I have a small question, and a larger one about what you've written.
My minor question arises from the fact that it probably wasn't a very mysterious, confronting and awkward passage to its original hearers. Presumably, relatively widely held understandings of *nature* and at least a bit of a clue of why angels might be interested in female head-coverings helped make the passage comprehensible. And, aren't these things, at least in principle, something the "knowing exegete" ought to explore and explain as far as that is possible?
My major question is, "How, in your experience, does *this* particular word prove trustworthy and true again and again? Isn't your struggle with what it says precisely because you find it hard to discern its truth in your situation?"
Hmm. I think Paul says some pretty tricky things in 1 Corinthians as a whole, which would be hard to get in any context! And I imagine the letter as being counter-cultural to its hearers - not in this bit necessarily. But granted -the knowing exegete most certainly ought to get busy with it.
re the second of your questions: what I mean is that the Bible as a whole proves true to my situation. If it is ornery in places, then I tend to give IT the benefit of the doubt... or plug away and see what comes in to view. Assume that the problem is with me, not with it...even when I can't see quite how always.
I think I want to point to the contigent nature of some of these problems. Reading the Scriptures is a task that takes centuries to get right. So what if we haven't got it all nailed down right now?
oh, and Dave: your fundamentalist reading practices are showing.
Thanks Michael. I appreciate and agree with all the points you've made in your comment, though your original post seemed a bit dismissive of exegetes (knowing) and complementarians (smug - though I also happen to disagree with their position) in a way that was a bit OTT to me.
But I still wonder, when we no longer share Paul's view of *nature*, (and I don't think that's necessarily a problem, though we have to be clear how our differing understanding is formed and how it relates to our valuing of Scripture as "God-breathed") what cultural practices are appropriate expressions of the "natural" or "God-given order" in church?
And, therefore, in what way is this text a *test* to see if we really do hold to the authority of the word of God? What, for example, are you going to differently having heard a sermon on this text that you "don't like" and "doesn't make sense"?
Peace
Ben
Oh, sorry. By the way, if it wasn't already self-evident, I'm just as muddled as the next person.
I appreciate what you said, "the Bible as a whole proves true to my situation. If it is ornery in places, then I tend to give IT the benefit of the doubt" but you did premise the post on valuing *this particular passage* as the word of God which judges you, turns your world upside down and for which you are thankful.
Lastly. Sorry, for the multiple commenting. It'd be trolling or harrassment in any other forum...
But, your comment "Reading the Scriptures is a task that takes centuries to get right" really resonated with me. I think it's true, but isn't it the evangelical curse to be saying *this century* what the culturally appropriate exegesis and application of Scripture should have been *last Century*?
Michael, your responses to critics seem disappointingly ad hominem. I'd expect that from a kid on Yahoo! Answers, not a scholar with a doctorate.
Dave: on the contrary. You left a drive-by and ad hominem comment, and you got a drive-by answer.
It is a typical Ditchkinsian tactic to read the text of scripture in the most flatly literalistic way, then only to dismiss it with a flip remark, isn't it?
Christians of all kinds know that there is a gap between then and now. And so they engage in the difficult process of trying to interpret an ancient text and apply it. What is intended to universal and what is intended to be a culturally-contextualised expression of a universal principle? How does this fit with the rest of Scripture?
Good post.
Ya gotta think in pictures people!
Here's my colourful take on it...
http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2009/05/07/holy-warriors/
It's not ad hominem to state that the citation you discuss is immoral, and that was the point I made in my comment.
An ad hominem argument (and I can't believe I have to explain this to a post-doc), is one that attacks the opponent, not the opponent's position. For example, calling me a fundamentalist instead of dealing with my claim that your scripture is immoral.
While you are under no obligation whatsoever to preach to those outside your choir of lambs, your poor critical thinking skills do not go unnoticed by me and the other atheists who monitor your blog.
I know very well that the Bible displays very little relevance to today's thought. I believe that's because secular ethics, from the religious and irreligious alike, have dragged Biblical morality kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
That you guys have to employ tricky rationalisations to make your book fit the real world is of no concern to me, although it is hilarious at times. But is it really my 'literalistic' reading of the excerpt that leads me to conclude that Christians today respect women more than Paul?
It IS ad hominem to suggest that Christians are somehow duplicitious or hypocritical or stoopid in 'venerating' a book whose teaching they then don't accept.
And yes, it is your literalistic and piecemeal and selective reading of Paul (learnt straight from that great self-congratulator Dawkins) that leads you to your conclusions. If Christians respect women it is because they learnt it from Paul's radical egalitarianism.
Following the zeitgeist in terms of ethics is a fraught strategy, no? What prevents us from the moral blindness to which we are so prone? I am not for a moment conceding that the Bible is irrelevant to the contemporary world. What I am saying is that its strangeness is something we need.
"Its strangeness is something we need."
Well said.
It is impossible to impose ANY foreign worldview, modern or otherwise, onto the Bible. It will never be accommodated to the current ephemera. It comes in like a sword and violates our thinking until we think the way God does. Then it has dambusting consequences in every area of life.
It is a weapon to crush the head, to bring death and resurrection in us, and in the world. It carves up nations like a sacrifice and makes them a pleasing aroma to God. It rebuilds cultures from the inside out, and is the fount of all western society, art, literature (and literacy), music, government and charity.
And western atheism is a little leech hanging off this grandeur, a little horn with a big mouth, totally dependant on the longsuffering and mercy of Christ the ascended King.
Secular humanism is but a perversion of Christianity. As a 'Christianity without Christ', and thus bankrupt, it can only ever survive on borrowed capital. It is a temporary wart.
What happened to your attack on "smug complementarians"?
Ah - well i realised that that comment was open to some misunderstanding. Since I count meself as being in that camp, I thought the force of it was self-critical as much as anything. So, I changed it. Sorry if it makes the above discussion a little less lucid.
Just thought I'd dive in: my church makes me uncomfortable (should it?) because:
a) systems are put before people
b) those who are disconformers are sidelined, not cherished, supported and loved (I'm talking quirky personality, not belief here)
c) there ain't no community for those who don't flash the private school pedigree
d) performance is put before people's feelings, effort and affection for Sunday morning services
e) church is 'done' to us, not a meeting in the Spirit
f) the Bible is taught, but disconnected from our life concerns, mostly
g) we often skip or attenuate prayer in our family service, and only get to read one Bible passage
h) clergy are available to talk...to their mates, clique, boosters or admirers
i) there's more, but they're the main ones.
And this is in a major bible-belt church with a full phalanx of Moore graduates serving (opps, I mean 'in charge').
Thanks for the post on Scripture Michael. I seem to remember Tim Keller somewhere describing the authority of Scripture as God's right to disagree with us. Because he can do that through the Scriptures it suggests that a personal relationship is on offer. Were he to always make me feel comfortable I might suspect that he is just a figment of my imagination.
[Writing from Geneva, where it is still a normal time of day:]
Sorry to bypass the discussion, but I want to pick up on some points in the original post. (It does not pay to let more than half a day go by if one wants to attend to posts here.)
Michael:
If you "don't see how [this text] makes sense (yet)", how do you know that you "don't like what this text is saying"?
Despite what may be its smarmy appearance, I mean this as a serious question. You ask whether "we really do hold to the authority of the Scriptures" while taking it as read that you or we know what it is for the Scriptures to be authoritative, but the Scriptures are various in nature. If you don't know what to make of this text even in its own terms—and in my ignorance of the then-contemporary culture at this level of detail, I will freely admit to having always found its local point opaque—how do you know what to make of it for us? And if you don't know what to make of it, in what respect is it useful as a test case?
Perhaps I should be more exact, and say: I don't like what the text appears to be saying at first blush. And I think I can say coherently: I don't understand parts of it (comprehension-wise) and I don't understand parts of it (doesn't appear immediately to make sense of my world as I experience it).
It's a test case because I have to take its authoritative dimension as a word of God on trust - since the pieces don't quite fall into place yet.
Hope that makes a better fist of it than previously. Perhaps it is my poor critical thinking skills that are the problem :-)
Fishing for praise a little bit there, Michael, but here I go rising to the bait: whatever you might happen to lack, I wouldn't have said critical thinking was the first in line.
To the extent that the point is about taking the authoritative dimension of the passage on trust, I don't really have a quarrel. But your post seemed to be saying something more, or different, to that. Maybe I'm at a disadvantage here, having missed the original form of the critical comment on complemenarians. (The post in what I understand to be its modified form is not entirely clear at that point.) I'm also at a disadvantage not having heard the sermon.
I've made the point often enough that I don't know how to cash in much evangelical rhetoric, and that in some cases, if there is an apparent way to cash it in, it seems to be a bad thing. And the standard lines on obedience to Scripture fall into this category. There was an argument in the generation above ours, which I dimly recall: basically, whether in teaching the perspicacity and self-interpretation of Scripture we'd fallen into the (false) idea (and moreover innovation) that all Scripture was equally clear. Most people wouldn't state it that baldly, of course, because that would sound too silly. But in implicit form the idea is certainly abroad.
"It's a test case because I have to take its authoritative dimension as a word of God on trust - since the pieces don't quite fall into place yet."
Isn't that begging the question, though? It's a test case because it's a test case? But what does taking *this* passage as the word of God (and I agree that it is) on trust actually *mean* for you, for me, for a church in Newtown, in Kathmandu, or wherever?
Sigh. I'm tired. Show me where Paul says the same thing in Romans, or Jesus in the Gospels, then I'll expend what few, precious brain cells I have left on the problem.
And while you're at it, could someone please explain to me why my wife can't grab the testicles of my oponent if he has me in a sleeper hold? (Deut 25:11-12)
Re Deut 25:11-12, it was fighting dirty, and offspring were important, as the Levirate law in the preceding verses shows. If the opponent were a Levite, it would also make him ceremonially unfit (Lev 21:20).
This chapter might seem like a jumble of unrelated laws, but like many others it follows the Tabernacle pattern, beginning with the Ark (Law-Word) and ending with Sabbath rest (Shekinah).
Cool - I repent of my glib anti-intellectualisms. That makes sense. You're not a theologian, are you Mike B?
No, but don't tell anyone.
My amateur explorations have led me to the conclusion that this Book is way smarter than we are.
So, when we come across something that grates, doesn't seem to fit or is just plain bizarre, there is always really good reason for it. Passing anything off as a "vestigial organ" just doesn't cut it in my opinion, no matter how much we want to do it.
Typology and literary structure very often answer the questions. A good example would be the "test for harlotry" found in Numbers 5. It seems incredibly strange, until we realise that the Lord applied this test to Israel after the golden calf incident, and this same test is applied to first century Israel in the Revelation (the harlot with the cup).
Here's a great quote I found the other day. Let me know what you think of it:
“In recent years postliberal theology and certain strands of Reformed thought have seen typology and chiasm as an essential method of biblical study.
While some forms of postmodernity are helpful to the church, most are not as avant garde as they pretend.
Ironically, liberals and most conservatives have the same method of bible study: you the individual must learn as many facts about the text as possible, importing back into the text foreign paradigms (or more accurately, bad foreign paradigms).
Typology, however, provides a subtle but deadly maneuver against modernity: it challenges modernity’s use of reason and forces it to think in terms of story and symbol, which by definition it can’t do.”
My pastor did his doctoral thesis at Fuller Seminary on communicating the gospel effectively to "oral and event orientated cultures". The amazing this is that this is exactly how the Bible is written. So many things won't be understood by us until we are willing to submit to a Bible-regulated understanding of its symbolism. (This in no way undermines its historicity, but demonstrates God's sovereignty over history.)
Mike B - I hope you're not asking me for my opinion on your quote. I'm only allowed to comment on this blog on the basis that I provide comic relief. Or something like it anyway.
Me too. I thought I was!
A couple of years ago, we were doing a 1 Cor series and of course my delightful rector handed me this passage (it was compensation for also being given chapters 13 and 15). In any case, when the passage was read, the reader began with an apology, saying that he had been asked to read the passage and that he disagreed with it. It was a fun way to start a sermon...
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