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[Bob Pickle]

I'm trying to determine when between 1901 and 1952 the shift in thinking occurred regarding 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2.

WOMEN PROPHESYING WITH UNCOVERED HEAD

R. L., of Dundas, asks us to explain what Paul meant by the statement that "Every woman that prayeth or prophesyeth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head" 1 Cor. 11:5.

THAT women would prophesy was indicated long ago, and they have done it creditably and helpfully. God does not dishonour women by the secondary position which he has assigned them in some things. The consecrated Christian man was to prophesy with head uncovered because in his prophesying he was the representative of Christ; the woman was to prophesy with her head covered because she was man's helpmeet, not his overlord, placed in a secondary position to the man. There was a custom, both among the Greeks and the Romans in those days, and among the Jews an express law, that no woman should be seen abroad without a veil. In those days none but "women of the street" went without that covering. If a woman in those days should appear in public without her veil, her covering, she dishonoured her head—her husband. She then appeared on an equality with "abandoned women." Women proved guilty of adultery were punished by having their heads shaved. By the law of Moses, women suspected of adultery were stripped of their veil (Num. 5: 18). Women reduced to a state of slavery had their hair cut off—lost their covering, as Achilles Tatius tells us. This, we think, explains why it was that Paul directed that women should not publicly pray or prophesy without their covering. It was the law of respectability. Anything else would have rendered Christianity odious in the eyes of the worldling who knew what the veilless or uncovered woman indicated to the world at large in those days.

The same correspondent wishes an explanation of Paul's statement in 1 Tim. 2: 12: "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."

One of the penalties pronounced upon Eve for her sin in accepting the suggestions of Satan and in inducing her husband to commit the same sin, was that she was to be in subjection to her husband. The Lord said to her: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." The Greeks had a saying in the ancient days, "Nature suffers not a woman's rule." It was never intended by our Creator that woman should rule. He did not make her frame to bear the burdens of rulership and defence. That was man's prerogative. Adam was first formed, then Eve; not created out of the dust as he was, but taken out of his side—not to be above or beneath, but a helper, an assistant. Both could not have the pre-eminent position; so God gave it to the stronger, more robust. And yet the position of woman in the world is no less important than that of man. She has her duties and perogatives as truly as man has his. A woman lowers herself when she seeks to be a man in spite of her frailer sex.

In the public assemblies in those early days it was considered appropriate for the men to ask questions, when a man was speaking, to altercate, to object, and to attempt to refute; but this was not permitted to the women; because it was considered indecorous for a woman in a public assembly to dispute with a lecturer or preacher. Women contending with men in public assemblies over points of doctrine would have brought confusion and have put the early Christian church, if it had permitted it, into disrepute with the unconverted everywhere. The better class of the heathen would have looked down upon the Christian assemblies as places of brawling, and that would have militated against gospel work.