Humiliating head coverings

New Testament scholar Daniel Wallace elucidates four interpretations of 1 Corinthians 11, of which I will quote the last two, and his own view:

(3) The head covering is a real head covering and the text is applicable today, in the same way as it was in Paul’s day. Within this view are two basic sub-views:

• The head covering is to be worn by all women in the church service.
• The head covering is to be worn by women in the church service only when praying or prophesying publicly.

(4) The head covering is a meaningful symbol in the ancient world that needs some sort of corresponding symbol today, but not necessarily a head covering. This also involves the same two sub-views as #3 above. My own convictions are that that view 4 is correct. The sub-view within this that I adopt is the second one: women only need to wear some symbol when praying or prophesying publicly. ❋ Daniel B. Wallace, “What is the Head Covering in 1 Cor 11:2–16 and Does it Apply to Us Today?” (n.d.). https://bible.org/article/what-head-covering-1-cor-112-16-and-does-it-apply-us-today.

What should we make of this?

You should read the full article to understand my comments, but in brief:

Wallace’s summary of the exegetical arguments is good—but his reasons for shifting from view #3 to view #4 are puzzling at best:

…the early church practice of requiring the women to wear a head covering when praying or prophesying would not have been viewed as an unusual request. In the cosmopolitan cities of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece, no one would feel out of place. Head coverings were everywhere. When a woman wore one in the church, she was showing her subordination to her husband, but was not out of place with society. One could easily imagine a woman walking down the street to the worship service with a head covering on without being noticed.

Today, however, the situation is quite different, at least in the West. For a woman to wear a head covering would seem to be a distinctively humiliating experience. Many women—even biblically submissive wives—resist the notion precisely because they feel awkward and self-conscious. But the head covering in Paul’s day was intended only to display the woman’s subordination, not her humiliation.

Wallace is oddly ready to reject the symbol on the basis that our perverse culture hates its meaning. Because we hate what covering the head objectively represents, wearing a head covering is unbearably awkward for the women he knows. He uses the word “humiliating”—the sort of word we tend to reserve for being publicly exposed in some way, like having your skirt blow up while not wearing undies.

Why did he choose such an extreme description? What is it about these churches that makes it humiliating for women to wear head coverings, rather than merely odd or quirky or even embarrassing?

I think his analogy to the Lord’s Supper is as instructive here as it is awkward for his position:

Is it necessary for us today to use unleavened bread and real wine? Some churches make this a mandatory practice, others an optional one. Still others would be horrified if real wine were used… If the implementation of such an important tradition as the Lord’s Supper can be varied, then should not the much less important tradition of the specific role (and garb) of women be allowed some flexibility, too?

It seems to me that a church which has difficulty accepting the logic of “do what Jesus said to do as closely as you can” when it comes to wine, and thinks grape juice is an acceptable substitute, is a church in need of reforming. There is a sin issue there that needs to be repented of—and while God is forbearing with people obeying him badly as they work through learning to obey him better, at some point they either submit, or they harden their hearts.

The same thing seems to be true of a church that makes it literally humiliating for women to wear head coverings. If that’s the church atmosphere, the church needs to be reformed. So I think Wallace’s view #4 is an awkward compromise position. It is legitimate inasmuch as his point about the spirit of the command is a good one. But it is totally illegitimate inasmuch as the way to resolve that issue is not to invent some new, non-scriptural practice for obeying the principle of indicating headship—one that satisfies our cultural sensibilities—but rather to reform our cultural sensibilities to the scriptural practice given for obeying the principle.

This becomes fairly obvious when you notice that women across dozens of countries and nineteen centuries’ worth of different cultural sensibilities managed to obey 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 straightforwardly. What makes our sensibilities so precious that the practice has to change for them?