Head Coverings: The Supernatural Sexual Modesty View

We finally get to what is probably the most unusual and yet most powerfully explanatory approach to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16: the “Supernatural Sexual Modesty” view.

However, in order to do this, a disclaimer needs to be made first: This should also be called the PG-13 view, because it is not suitable to share this perspective with young children. In other words, parents should not teach this view to their children until AFTER they have “the birds and the bees” conversation. It is that weird. But once you unravel the whole idea, you will be amazed by how much sense it makes of a passage that is already super-weird to begin with.

That being said, this Supernatural Sexual Modesty view of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 does not convince everyone. For example, apologist Mike Winger, from the video in the first blog post in this blog series calls this view “annoying” and “problematic.” He even mistakenly calls this view “new,” which is a demonstrably false statement, but with this argument and a host of others he just pounces on this viewpoint in his video.¹

Now, I LOVE Mike Winger. Mike has some incredibly helpful videos, including the one highlighted in the first blog post in this series. But I do not think Mike Winger understands the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view very well. A lot of egalitarian scholars, on the other side of the never-ending “women-in-ministry” debate from Mike Winger, do ridicule the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, too. In fact, it took me a few times through it myself to get a feel for what is going on, so I will not be surprised if the majority of readers are not impressed, at least at first.

The truth is, the view I am going to summarize here is ….uh…. frankly…. well, yes…. WEIRD. At first, it will sound like something out of the X-Files…. or the Twilight Zone …. or perhaps in today’s world, Stranger Things. However, the explanatory power of this view is so strong that I would encourage folks to hang in there while I try to explain it.

Are you ready? Are the kids already in bed? Have the neighbors stopped watching what you are up to? Good. Now let us begin.

Everything about head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11 (well, maybe not “everything,” but we try to hit the highlights here at Veracity)

It All Starts From an Unlikely, Obscure Figure From the Old Testament: Enoch

One of the other weird passages of the Bible is in Genesis 6. There the Bible talks about the “sons of God” having relations with the “daughters of men,” and their progeny were the Nephilim. This story falls on the tails of a brief mention of Enoch, a man who walked with God before being taken up by God, in Genesis 5:21-24. God was so bothered by what happened in Genesis 6:1-4 that he caused a great flood to punish wicked humanity. Another pretty weird Bible passage, huh?

Well, Bible scholars through the centuries have puzzled over what is really going on here in this text. What few Christians today know is that in the days of Jesus, the Book of Enoch played a major role in describing what happened in Genesis 6. The Book of Enoch was a well-known work of Jewish writing in Jesus’ day. Portions of Enoch were found among the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Various early church fathers wrote about Enoch quite a bit. However, you are not going to find it in your Bible….. well, at least not the whole book.

The Book of Enoch is directly quoted in the New Testament, such as in the book of Jude, verses 14-15, and partially quoted or alluded to in several other New Testament books. This does not mean that the Book of Enoch is necessarily inspired. But it does mean that what we read in the Book of Enoch summarizes a lot of the thinking that at least some Jews and Christians adopted during the era of the New Testament… and because it is in our New Testament, whatever Jude is saying carries the authority of Scripture.²

Enoch tells the story basically like this: The “sons of God” were angelic-type supernatural beings created by God that dwelt in God’s divine council. However, in Genesis 6, a number of these “sons of God” rebelled and had sexual relations with the “daughters of men.” Their offspring were the “Nephilim.”

OK. You can go ahead and que up the spooky music from the Stranger Things Netflix series soundtrack….

In Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 blockbuster film, Noah, starring Russell Crowe, these Nephilim were fictionally imagined as huge rock monsters. But in the Enochian perspective, grounded in the thought of first century Jewish thinkers, these are the giant “Watchers,” products of a great angelic rebellion.

This may sound really super-spooky to you, but there is more. In Jesus’ day, there were Jews who wondered if another angelic rebellion might happen again. Some scholars have suggested that the Apostle Paul was concerned about this as well. For once Jesus was revealed as the Risen Christ, this would make the demonic powers of the world even angrier, and hoping to target the church and destroy the Christian movement. For Paul, spiritual warfare was indeed very, very real:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12 ESV)

God took Enoch (Genesis 5:24). From Figures de la Bible, Gerald Hoet and others, 1728.

The Enochian Perspective on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

Alas, what does this all have to do with 1 Corinthians 11:2-16? Ah, I am glad you waited around to find out.

In the Greco-Roman world, the standard ideas about medicine were…. let us just say…. not quite in alignment with modern thinking. The great Greek philosopher Hippocrates, the father of medicine and originator of the Hippocratic Oath, taught this:

Hair is hollow and grows primarily from either male or female reproductive fluid or semen flowing into it and congealing (Hippocrates, Nat puer 20).

Hair grows most prolifically from the head because the brain is the place where the semen is produced or at least stored (Hippocrates, Genit. 1).

Aristotle also pretty much taught and believed the same thing. While this would not pass muster with your family doctor today, this was how a lot of ancients viewed the function of hair. Hair acts as a kind of sponge, sucking up reproductive fluid. This was particularly important for women, as it was believed that a woman’s hair acted as a reproductive organ, absorbing the semen from the man during sexual intercourse. The longer a woman’s hair was the more likely that a woman would be fertile and able to bear children. It was as though a woman’s long hair was thought of as a “testicle.”

Men, on the other hand, were encouraged not to have long hair, as this worked against the woman’s hair’s ability to soak up the semen coming from the man. It was man’s nature to eject reproductive fluid as opposed to retaining it. In other words, the shorter the man’s hair and the longer the woman’s hair, the more likely the procreative act would succeed and produce children.

If you are with me so far, these are the assumptions that undergird the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view. If all of this still sounds completely crazy, then you can pretty much stop reading the rest of this blog post. It is not going to make sense to you. But if you are ready to go on, then you are in for something that will forever change how you read your Bible. If you stick with it, you will be amazed at how it all fits together.

The key to unlocking the mystery of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is found in verse 10, which summarizes why Paul is concerned about the shame induced by immodest dress in this entire passage:

That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels (ESV).

The focus here is on this last phrase, “because of the angels.”

Who are the “angels” that Paul is talking about? In the Enochian perspective, these are the divine beings created by God that sit within God’s Divine Council.  If you have never heard of the concept of the “Divine Council,” you might want to invest some time  later after reading this blog post to investigate what this is all about.

Now, some of the angelic beings in the Divine Council had already rebelled in the days before Noah, but not all.

Furthermore, in verse 15, some scholars suggest that the Greek word peribolaion , translated typically as “covering” should be better translated as “testicle.” In the current ESV translation, the second half of the verse reads:

For her hair is given to her for a covering.

The more accurate, or at least the less euphemized translation, less suitable to younger Bible readers would be:

For her hair is given to her for a testicle.

Do I have your attention now?

Yes. You read that right. Paul is talking about testicles. Paul is connecting a woman’s hair to the concept of testicle.

Stick with me on this.

In 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Paul is teaching the Corinthians to act modestly when they gather together for corporate worship, as they are entering into the presence of sacred space. During the divine liturgy of Isaiah 6:2, that well-known passage where the seraphim places a hot coal to Isaiah’s lips, the seraphim has wings which cover their “feet,” a euphemistic way of saying “testicles,” as an act of modesty.

Likewise, Paul is teaching that men and women coming to worship should be properly dressed. In 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, men at prayer should not wear head coverings because they should not be confused with being women. A man’s hair does not play the same role in human fertility like a woman’s hair does. In 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Paul is therefore urging women to wear head coverings, while urging men to not wear head coverings, not simply as a sign of modesty, and not only as a means of differentiating between male and female, but more than that. Women should consider doing this in order to signal to any angelic powers bent on rebelling against God again that they need to “BACK OFF!”

To summarize, the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view has three main components:

• Supernatural:  It has to do with an act of spiritual warfare against any rebellious angelic powers from trying to repeat the disaster in Genesis 6 from happening again.
• Sexual: It acknowledges the sexual differentiation between male and female as sacred within the sight of God.
• Modesty: It encourages Christians to act and dress modestly when they participate in a Christian worship service, and not offend the holiness of God.

Is it starting to make sense now?³

Watch out, ladies!! For if you were living in the first century, where Greco-Roman culture intersected with Christianity, you might be in danger of attracting angelic powers with the exposure of your long hair. The Apostle Paul would urge you to present yourself more modestly when gathering together for Christian worship, as an act of spiritual warfare against those “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12 ESV), who might try to destroy the church.

Criticisms of the Supernatural Sexual Modesty View

Having said all of that, it must be acknowledged that this solution sounds so weird, so bizarre, for a passage of the Bible that is so weird and bizarre to begin with, that critics of this view will definitely push back against it. I will admit that the sheer weirdness of the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view is the greatest weakness of this interpretation. Nevertheless, in my mind, this interpretation has the best explanatory power, as it accounts for the greatest amount of Scriptural data.

• It explains why Paul makes a reference to the doctrine of creation in this passage, with respect to how male and female relate to one another.
• It explains why head coverings are important for women.
• It explains why women should have long hair, and men NOT to have long hair.
• It makes sense of why Paul brings up “angels” in verse 10.
• It explains why Christians should not be contentious about the matter, in verse 16.
• It covers all of the bases.

This particular blog post will be a bit longer in this series than the others, as I am compelled to answer the most common objections against the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, some of which are thoughtful and deserve a rightful response, and other objections which raise way more problems than they try to solve. So here we go:

First, some say that there is little to firmly ground this view explicitly in the passage. If this perspective was really at work in Paul’s mind, then why does he not directly come out and tell us the Enochian story?⁴

But does Paul really need to be so explicit here? The Book of Enoch may sound completely esoteric to us in the 21st century, but it simply was not that way in the days of Paul and Jesus. Jude directly makes a reference to the Book of Enoch. Various early church fathers commented about Enoch’s influence in understanding the Bible.

Yet a more obvious  answer to this objection is really not so complicated: This is PG-13. While the influence of the Book of Enoch was extensive across the world of 1st century Judaism and Christianity, Paul chose not to get into the gory details about some angels possibly getting into sexual relations with human women because the topic was so sensitive. Just as it was in the first century, there are some topics that are generally not thought to be acceptable in polite, public conversation for us today. For Paul, it was better to speak as euphemistically as possible. In other words, stay hush about it. There are children in the room.⁵

The same response can be given to those who wonder why this explanation has been lost for so long in the history of the church. Talking about “the birds and the bees” is just as difficult for any generation when speaking with children. It is just plain awkward, and the whole sexual modesty aspect could easily have been set aside as something not suitable for normal family conversation as history moved forward during the early years of the church. In the early years of the church and on into the medieval period, we have no record of children being shuttled off to their Sunday school classrooms, while their parents listened to a PG-13 rated expository sermon. Instead, the normative practice would have been for children to be present during most sermons, thus making expository teaching concerning an Enochian perspective on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 less common.

The Jewish community themselves nearly tossed the Song of Solomon out of the Old Testament canon because the topic of sexuality in that book was deemed inappropriate for children. Why then should it surprise us that this viewpoint about 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 got quietly swept under the rug at some point in the history of the church? Saint Augustine, perhaps one of the most, if not THE most influential early church father, essentially threw out the Enochian angelic ‘”sons of god” having sexual relations with the “daughters of men”‘ interpretation of Genesis 6, by around the late 4th or early 5th century. Augustine’s reinterpretation of Genesis 6, which came to dominate the medieval church, did not help matters in preserving the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view.⁶

However, Augustine is not the only one to blame for diminishing the influence of the Book of Enoch in early Christianity. Some church fathers, like Tertullian, favored including the Book of Enoch in the canon of Scripture. But it is not necessary for the Book of Enoch to be included in the canon of Scripture to have influence. Interestingly, there are a number of “sequels” to the Book of Enoch that were written during the early church period, such as 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch. Even with the famous Dead Seas Scrolls, teachings associated with Enoch were highly elevated in that community that hid the scrolls in the caves near Qumran. But because many Christians began to lose touch with the Jewish roots of Christianity as the church within the predominantly Gentile communities of the Greco-Roman world, the influence of writings from the Second Temple period of Judaism began to wane, and the Book of Enoch fell out of favor by many by the time the medieval church rose to prominence. Saint Augustine himself was one of those leading doctors and teachers of the church who knew very little about ancient Jewish writings outside of the Old Testament.

As the late Dr. Michael Heiser put it, the writers of the New Testament actually read other books, just like Christians today read books other than the Bible, such as the works of C.S. Lewis or Rick Warren. Essentially, the Book of Enoch was kind of like the Mere Christianity or The Purpose Driven Life, in terms of its influence in Jewish thought outside of our standard Old Testament. Just because our New Testament writers, like Paul, Jude, or even Peter, read other books, or were at least familiar with the ideas found in books like Enoch, does not take away from God’s ability to give a New Testament writer an infallible message to be recorded in our New Testament texts.⁷

Secondly, a number of people today are frankly skeptical of angels, demons, etc. They might believe in Jesus and/or believe in God, but they find the whole topic of angels, demons, and any other divine beings to be completely unreal. The answer to this objection is to say that ultimately Christianity implies at least some aspect of the supernatural. The core belief is the resurrection of Jesus itself, which directly indicates a miracle. So, if you concede a miracle like that, the existence of supernatural beings is not that far behind. Plus, the New Testament talks a lot about supernatural beings on the move in the time of Jesus and Paul. But there is quite a bit of debate as to how such supernatural beings interact with our world today, a topic that is too much to get into here. Suffice to say, the Bible treats supernatural beings, who are nevertheless created by God, as real beings.

A very common, yet frankly odd, pushback is to say that Paul would not use an ancient, fallible understanding of medical science embraced by the Corinthians in order to communicate God’s infallible truth through the Bible. Even more, in the minds of some, they would reject the concept that Paul himself might actually believe this ancient scientific view to be true. There is a lot to be said here, so I will just push this off to an appendix at the end of the blog post, for those who are interested……. ^APPENDIX

Other Views Regarding the “Angels” of Verse 10

A final pushback is offered by an array of critics who believe that Paul’s reference to the “angels” in verse 10 of our passage has nothing to do with the Enochian perspective.

For example, a traditional way of reading verse 10 is to say that the “angels” in this verse were the angels who were watching God creating men and women in the image of God. Out of respect for these angels, who were created before humans, and who assisted God in the creation of those humans, God is preserving his divine order of the man being in a position of authority over the woman. While this view is still quite plausible, it does not rule out the Enochian perspective in the slightest, in and of itself.

Another way of understanding the angels is to say that the word “angel” is simply a reference to “messenger,” and this does not necessarily refer to any supernatural being. For example, some say that the “angels” of verse 10 are visitors to the Christian worship service, perhaps Christians from another community. In this case, Paul encourages women to use head coverings so as not to offend such visitors or “messengers.” Another possible meaning of the “angels,” particularly those drawn to the Quotation/Refutation view, is to say that the “angels” are Chloe and her people, as Chloe was mentioned elsewhere in 1 Corinthians.⁸

Frankly, all of these alternative ways of understanding who the “angels” are weak. First, there is nothing in Paul’s writings that would indicate that Paul had any interest in what the angels were doing when humans were being created. Furthermore, we have no explicit references to either visiting Christians as “angels” or Chloe and her people as “angels” anywhere in the Bible. It is more likely that when an early church father like Tertullian makes specific reference to the Enochian view of angels with 1 Corinthians that the early church knew better about what this passage meant than more modern interpreters. Unless there is some hitherto undisclosed reference to this passage among the early church fathers, no other view comes close to explaining the meaning of the “angels” in verse 10, regarding how the early church understood this passage, prior to Augustine. More and more scholars today are convinced that the Enochian view of the angels carries with it the greatest explanatory power.

Who Has the “Symbol of Authority” in Verse 10?

One more look at the first part of verse 10: Is this about Paul requiring women to have a symbol of authority over their head, or is it about Paul saying that women have the authority themselves as to whether they should wear a head covering? As discussed in the blog post regarding the Hairstyle view, the idea that women are to be subject to authority, which is generally assumed with the Traditional view, then introduces a completely new meaning to the concept of that Greek word exousia, for authority, which would be inconsistent with every other instance of exousia in the New Testament.

In the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, the focus in this verse is moved away from the man having authority over the woman and more towards the woman having authority over the angels, which makes much better sense of the passage without introducing some new, foreign meaning to exousia. After all, Paul says elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 6:3 that we are to judge angels, which surely includes the women (1 Corinthians 6:3). A head covering, or even the hair “done up,” warns any potentially rebellious angels to back off, thus preserving God’s intention that only human men are to have sexual relations with women.

With that translation of the first part of 1 Corinthians 11:10, it takes aim at certain ways the writings of Paul have been twisted to lay the blame for all of humanity’s problems on the women. By Paul saying that the woman has the authority “over her own head,” he is saying that the woman is in the position to thwart angelic rebellion. This is different from the idea proposed by some extreme complementarians which suggests that “women are more easily deceived than men,” in 1 Timothy 2:12-15. Such an idea is completely at odds with Paul elsewhere in the New Testament. For example, in Romans 5:12ff, Paul lays the blame for sin entering the world completely on Adam’s shoulders, never once mentioning Eve.⁹

The advantages of the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 are several in other ways, as compared to other viewpoints. First, it gets you beyond the whole complementarian versus egalitarian debate, a debate that perplexes and divides many Christians, including prominent evangelical Bible scholars. For example, whether you believe that the Greek word for head, kephale, means “authority” or “source,” or even “preeminence,” this is largely irrelevant to the point of the passage. To settle those matters, you would have to go to other passages, like Ephesians 5:22-24, to try to figure all of that out. If the whole argument about what “head” (Greek kephale) means stresses you out, then the advantage of the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view is that it largely bypasses that whole discussion. The meaning of “male headship” is still important, but in the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, the questions that normally dominate in the complementarian versus egalitarian debate are secondary to what Paul is getting at with his concern about angels.¹⁰

Both complementarians and egalitarians affirm the idea that modesty is important, and that appropriate dress is vital to how believers should enter into a worship environment with other believers. You can pretty much adopt almost any other primary component you find convincing from another view, and splice that into the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view.  But the main takeaway concerning Supernatural Sexual Modesty view for the complementarian/egalitarian debate is that 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 has little to do with making any substantial dent into the discussion.  Paul’s concerns here in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 are quite different.¹¹

Likewise, the debate over head coverings versus hairstyle becomes largely irrelevant for the same reasons. What a woman actually does with the hair is not as important as what it signifies. Both head coverings and hairstyle suggest modesty. Both address the possible threat associated with discouraging the rebellion of angelic powers.

Furthermore, the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view affirms that the differences between male and female definitely matter to God. The sexual differentiation that God built into creation is something to be honored and not played with or confused. It takes seriously the idea that when believers gather to worship the Living God, they are to do so out of reverence and awe for a Holy God, and not act in a way that brings shame on anyone.

There is a lot of “heavy lifting” in this blog post, I know, so I will give readers a break and few weeks before concluding with some final analysis. In that next and final blog post in this blog series, we will once again look at the question of how we should try to apply 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 to the life of the Christian today. Is the head coverings or hairstyle part of this passage related to a cultural custom or a universalized command? Wait for this concluding blog post to appear to find out!!

From Darren Aronofsky’s Nephilim in his 2014 film, Noah. Rock-creatures that look like the tree-creatures in the Lord of the Rings?… That might work well in Hollywood cinema, but unfortunately this does not help us to understand the message of Genesis 6 and the Book of Enoch, which subsequently informs Paul’s thinking in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, according to the “Supernatural Sexual Modesty” interpretation of the passage.

……………………………….

^APPENDIX
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APPENDIX: A Defense of Scripture’s Use of Ancient Science/Beliefs to Reveal God’s Infallible Truth

I hesitated to write this appendix, because I was concerned that it might derail the valuable train of thought which I have been hoping to engender throughout this whole summer blog post series. But I anticipated that some readers might still balk at this underlying issue, so it still needs to be addressed….

Some Christians feel uncomfortable about the idea of God using ancient science or other beliefs as a means of revealing infallible, inerrant truth to us today. For example, in the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view being proposed here, God has inspired the Apostle Paul to take an ancient scientific understanding of how human sexuality works, which we no longer adopt today in the 21st century, as a vehicle in which to teach three of God’s infallible truths:

1. The reality of a supernatural world, made up of angelic powers.
2. God’s original purpose for creating male and female as the intended sexual partners for one another, and not some other sexually immoral arrangement.
3. The principle of modesty when gathering together for Christian worship.

However, some will push back to say that Paul would not use an ancient, fallible understanding of medical science embraced by the Corinthians in order to communicate God’s infallible truth through the Bible. Those who hold this objection would say that it would be wrong for God to accommodate to some fallible, limited cultural understanding of science, or whatever, in order to reveal infallible truth. They would say that an inerrant Bible could never accommodate any fallible, understanding of man in order to communicate God’s inerrant message. Nevermind the historical fact that the famous 16th century Reformer, John Calvin, championed this sense of accommodation while fervently defending the inerrancy of the Bible. Still, the claim is stated that if God were to do that kind of accommodation, then the Bible would no longer be inerrant, which is not an acceptable assertion.There are several responses to make to this objection.

First, anyone who takes this objection seriously will have tremendous difficulties trying to explain why Genesis 1:6-8 gives us a description of a world with an ocean of water beneath it, corresponding to our present day oceans, and an ocean of water above something like a steel vault (what the ESV calls an “expanse” and the KJV calls a “firmament“).  Unless you are a Flat Earther, I do not know of anyone who believes that there is non-metaphorical ocean (or oceans) of water somewhere above our heads, corresponding to the oceans of water below, separated by a hard-surfaced firmament. Every Bible interpreter I know reads this body of water above our heads in some metaphorical sense, even if it is simply water vapor, as in “clouds.”

Furthermore, the ancient Hebrews themselves considered the “heart” to be the seat of the mind (1 Samuel 13:14). They also considered the “kidneys” (though sometimes also translated as “heart“, as in Psalm 73:21, or “inmost being“, as in Proverbs 23:15-16) as the seat of the emotions.  However, modern medicine tells us that the “heart” is a pump and the “kidneys” are a filter, whereas both the mind and the emotions are scientifically located in the brain. Somehow, we are able to use “heart” and “kidneys” in a metaphorical sense without losing confidence in the inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible…..Well, at least, I hope that is the case.

In none of the instances mentioned above can a successful case be marshalled to say that the biblical author was somehow “teaching science,” in any infallible sense, though some have tried. Such concerns are ancillary to the purposes for which these texts are written. When interpreters try to move in such a direction you end up with passages of Scripture that would have been incomprehensible to the original author, and even more confusing to the contemporary reader.

However, this does NOT mean that certain “scientific” ideas are not to be found within Sacred Scripture. There is a creation by God of the universe, out of nothing, whereby Jesus as the Christ and Son of God pre-existed the created world (Colossians 1:15-17). The laws of physics put in place by God are fixed and unchanging (Jeremiah 33:25-26). But when we insist that every isolated text in the Bible must conform to how we view the world scientifically today, we risk distorting the original historical context for which those passages of Scripture were written.

Secondly, it would not be necessary for Paul to have believed in this fallible understanding of medical science himself in order to teach this Supernatural Sexual Modesty view. Rather, Paul could simply have been accommodating his teaching to the limited cultural understanding that the Corinthians possessed, in order to teach them Gospel truth. Christian missionaries working in cultures with outmoded ideas about science and other erroneous beliefs do this type of thing all of the time, in order the present the Gospel to people who lack a Christian worldview.

For example, Christian missionaries working among animistic tribal groups will take some of the beliefs that animists have about “evil spirits” in order to teach them that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than any of their other “spirits.”  Even the Apostle Paul, when preaching to the pagan philosophers at Mars Hill in Athens, in Acts 17, appealed to their belief in an “Unknown God,” to suggest that the God of the Bible as revealed in Jesus is that “Unknown God.” Paul regularly appealed to pagan poets in order to build bridges for the Gospel: “We see in a mirror dimly.” (1 Cor. 13:12, from Plato, “Phaedo”), and later, he quotes “Bad company ruins good morals.” (1 Cor. 15:33, from Menander’s Comedy, “Thais”). But in none of these cases is Paul making any endorsement for a pagan worldview that undermine his Christian perspective.

If all of this is true, then why should Paul not make an appeal to the Aristotelian scientific views of his young, mainly-Gentile, Christian community in order to teach them godly principles of Christian worship, etc.?

Thirdly, the problem with this erroneous way of thinking is that it assumes that part of the job of the Bible is to reveal scientific truth to us, without paying any attention to the intent of the Scriptural author. It assumes the mere mention of scientific falsehood in the Bible to be an unqualified endorsement by God of that falsehood, and that in order to preserve a high view of Scripture we need to find some way to dismiss such accommodation. But such an assumption is wrong headed. Is it really the purpose here, particularly with Paul in 1 Corinthians, to teach us medical science? We need to understand the intended purpose that the Scriptural writer had in mind, and not try to impose some 21st century concerns about science upon someone living in an era who was not concerned about such things.

It is better argued that Paul is intending to teach a theological truth that we should be sexually modest in our dress when approaching God’s presence in worship. Paul is not trying to give a human biology lesson. For that matter, neither is Jesus trying to give a botany lesson to his followers when he says that the “mustard seed” is “the smallest of all seeds” (Matthew 13:31-32), which is not scientifically accurate by a long shot, as there are plenty of seeds which are smaller than the mustard seed. To force the Apostle Paul into that mold of being an infallible science revelator distorts the actual teaching that Paul is trying to get across.

The principle of accommodation to limited human understanding is embedded in the very act of the Incarnation itself. The Son of God entered human history, dealing with humans with all of their fallible, limited understandings of reality in order to teach us the true reality of things, as created or otherwise determined by God. If God can only reveal himself in an ancient cultural context where perfect knowledge of scientific matters equivalent to 21st century standards is required, then this assumption actually creates way more problems than it tries to solve.

A perfect example is the doctrine of the Ascension. In Jesus’ day, many people believed that the gods lived “up there” in some part of the astronomical cosmos, near the stars or the planets. Some historians say that the more philosophically inclined would not have bought into all of these Greco-Roman beliefs, but undoubtedly the less philosophically inclined would have. A great deal of ancient pagan philosophy taught against the concept of creation ex nihilo; that is, creation out of nothing, suggesting that God did not exist outside of the creation order as the New Testament teaches, but rather that the gods dwelt within the cosmos.

Romulus, the fabled founder of the city of Rome, according to some reports is said at his death to have ascended to heaven on a cloud with the assistance of Mars, the god of war. Some dead Roman emperors like Augustus were said to have ascended to heaven as well. All of this sounds fanciful to us today, but not to your average first century Corinthian. Aside from the most philosophically inclined, they believed reports of ascension to be historically real. Does this mean that when Jesus ascended to heaven that he took off like an Elon Musk rocket ship and landed somewhere on Jupiter or Saturn? Or course not.

Yuri Gagarin became the first human launched into space in 1961, as a Russian cosmonaut. When he did that, the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put words into Gagarin’s mouth at a press conference to say, “I don’t see any God up here.” Khrushchev wanted to shame Christians by suggesting that there is no God “up there” in outer space. But this did not destroy Christianity as Khrushchev was hoping, since Christians believe that when Jesus ascended to heaven, he took his place alongside God the Father, not on some distant planet, but rather in a realm outside of the created order.

It is better to say that the Ascension of Jesus accommodated to the fallible pagan understanding that the gods lived “up there,” in order to show that the God of the Bible dwells in a heavenly realm far beyond the created order of things. Jesus could have just disappeared before the eyes of the apostles, after the Resurrection, to signal that Jesus as the Son was going to reside at the right hand of the Father. But instead, Jesus deliberately chose the concept of ascension, reminiscent of what had been attributed to Romulus and others, to illustrate Jesus leaving this worldly existence to go be with the Father.

You could get Luke the Gospel writer “off the hook” by suggesting that Luke understood that the “heaven above” where Jesus ascended to is not some planet or asteroid where Jesus resides to this day, but rather should be understood metaphorically. However, it is much harder to argue that Luke’s Gentile readers would have all grasped the metaphorical logic of Luke’s “heaven” so easily.

The Bible is not teaching that Jesus lives “up” on something like the former planet Pluto anymore than to say that the Bible is teaching the doctrine of Hippocrates and Aristotle regarding the spongy characteristic of hair to draw up human semen. God uses concepts that would have made perfect sense to ancient persons, that would make little sense to us today, expressed through the words of the biblical writer, to communicate Gospel truth which transcends cultural limitations.

Hardly anyone living today would describe the ascension story of Romulus as anything more than a falsehood. But just because the Bible mentions the concept of ascension does not mean that the Bible is teaching the ascension of Romulus to be a true, historical event.

In other words, adopting the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view has nothing to do with supposedly attacking the inerrancy of the Bible. Far from it. What it does do is take seriously the intended purpose for which Paul was writing, so that we can interpret the text correctly, which is the aim that the doctrine of inerrancy has in the first place. For if you think that the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view is attacking inerrancy, you might as well toss out the Ascension of Jesus because it uses the same language and concepts familiar in the Greco-Roman world, which accepted the ascension of Romulus into the heavens without question.

However, I, for one, believe in the Ascension of Jesus. I hope that if you are a Christian, that you do, too!

For the reasons stated in this appendix, I conclude that this particular objection to the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view causes many, many more problems than it tries to solve.

Notes:

^{1. It is difficult to imagine that this view is “new,” as Mike Winger puts it, considering the fact to be explained further along in this blog post, that contemporaries of Jesus took seriously the Enochian perspective on Genesis 6, of an angelic rebellion against the Lord. Several influential Christians in the early church, including the 2nd century Tertullian,  believed Enoch to be a candidate for being included in the Old Testament canon. The Ethiopian Orthodox church actually did include Enoch in their canon. Whether or not Enoch should have been included in the canon is not the point, and is irrelevant to the argument. Rather, it is the influence of the Book of Enoch that plays a key role in early Christian thought that matters, which is far from being “new.” Mike Winger also claims that this Enochian inspired view is “irreverent” with respect to God’s Word. Would Mike Winger be willing to tell Tertullian that?  Tertullian states: “It is on account of the angels, he says, that the woman’s head is to be covered, because the angels revolted from God on account of the daughters of men” (On Prayer, 22.5). Tertullian is writing nearly 1900 years before our time here in the 21st century. Is that what Mike Winger thinks is “new?” Much of the same goes for other Jewish writers, such as the author of the Testament of Reuben, written sometime during the Second Temple period, near the time of Paul (Testament of Reuben, 5.6): “For it was thus that they charmed the Watchers, who were before the Flood. As they continued looking at the women, they were filled with desire for them and perpetrated the act in their minds. Then they were transformed into human males, and while the women were cohabiting with their husbands they appeared to them. Since the women’s minds were filled with lust for these apparitions, they gave birth to giants. For the Watchers were disclosed to them as being as high as the heavens.” This sounds a lot like Paul’s reference to the “angels” in 1 Corinthians 11:10. ↩}

^{2. See Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ, Appendix: IV, pp. 248ff, for examples of these allusions from the Book of Enoch in the New Testament. Much of the research for the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view comes from the work of the late Dr. Michael Heiser. I first wrote about the importance of the Book of Enoch for understanding the shape of the New Testament about ten years ago here on Veracity.  ↩}

^{3. For a more detailed description of the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, please review the podcast by the late Dr. Michael Heiser. The backstory on this stems from a group of peer-reviewed biblical studies papers over the last twenty years. A scholar at Xavier University, Troy Martin, ……    Listen to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 86, for the full explanation about head coverings and Enoch from Dr. Michael Heiser:    ↩}

^{4. A number of both complementarian and egalitarian scholars will push back against the idea that peribolaion should be translated as “testicle”in verse 15. In this footnote, we can consider egalitarian critics, and then complementarian critics in the subsequent footnote after this one:  Marg Mowczko suggests that the appeal to Aristotle and Hippocrates should be offset by the fact that we have no evidence of writers closer to the period of Paul who write about the concept of women’s hair acting as a sponge for semen. A counter-argument to Mowczko would be that certain older ideas about biology and science can die hard. The fact that some even in the modern world believe the earth to be flat is incredible enough, but it still happens. Just because no one refuted Aristotle or Hippocrates in the days of Paul on this point does not mean that their ideas no longer held sway among the Greco-Romans.  Furthermore, Aristotle and Hippocrates continued to have influence on the sciences well into the medieval period, well beyond the time of Paul. What Mowczko has not demonstrated is anywhere where a contemporary of Paul has shown that the ideas of Aristotle and Hippocrates had been falsified. Mowczko’s argument therefore fails as an argument from silence. Furthemore, Mowczko dismisses as “absurd” that a woman’s hair can simultaneously be a woman’s “glory” and still be considered a “testicle” (verse 15). The Song of Solomon extolls the beauty of a woman’s breasts, does it not? Nevertheless, despite the weakness of such arguments, there are others like Lucy Peppiatt who reject the translation of “testicle” as almost laughable. Peppiatt spends less than two pages in her academic treatment of this viewpoint articulated by Troy Martin before dismissing it: “That this argument is even considered seriously enough to warrant refutation is bemusing to say the least.” (Peppiatt, Women and Worship at Corinth, p. 58). In response, a simple answer would be to say there are a number of ancient beliefs that we in the 21st century would consider to be laughable which were taken quite seriously in ancient times. Nevertheless, we still speak of the sun “rising’ and “setting” even though geocentrism was discarded several hundred of years ago. The heart (Proverbs 4:23) , or some other internal abdominal organ like the liver or kidneys,  is still considered to be the seat of the emotions, Scripturally speaking, even though cognitive  science today clearly shows that the human heart functions primarily as a pump whereas emotions are triggered by processes initiated in the brain.  One must be careful when making such a critique as the same logical steps can be used to undermine Christian belief as a whole, as in the common contemporary skepticism about the existence of miracles, such as the miracle of Resurrection, the core Christian claim. The problem with both Mowczko and Peppiatt is a failure to take the evidence from Second Temple Judaism concerning Enoch seriously enough to inform Paul’s thinking. Furthermore, Philip Payne’s “hairstyle” view suffers because it forces the reader to think that 1 Corinthians 11:15b must read as “For her long hair is given to her for a covering” , in which the word “long” is inserted into the text but not found in the original Greek. A reference to “long hair” would imply that a particular hairstyle is in view in verse 15b. This would indeed work, except for the fact that you are inserting a word into the text that does not really exist in the text. For if simply the “hair” itself is a “covering” (peribolaion) , with no descriptor like “long” modifying it, this would tend to contradict other parts of the passage which see the “covering” (or veil) as something distinct from the hair itself. However, if the  “covering” (peribolaion) of verse 15b is a euphemistic reference to the woman’s hair as a testicle, any potential contradiction within the passage is resolved. Note that  “to cover”  (Greek “kaluptō“) , in verses 6 and 7 (and a derivative in verse 3), or its opposite “to uncover” ( Greek “akatakaluptos“), in verses 4 and 13, is a different word from “covering” (peribolaion) of verse 15b, which strengthens the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, for it makes sense for Paul to use a different word for “covering” with the euphemistic connotation for “testicle” in that verse.  ↩}

^{5.  Now we get to the skepticism about the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, from a complementarian perspective, as with Mike Winger:  Mike Winger offers a great deal of pushback in his video, beginning about the 5:24;30 minute mark, trying to show how the Greek word peribolaion, often translated as covering, does not mean testicle. Mike Winger’s counter-argument to the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view might prevail on this point, but if Paul is trying to be as euphemistic as possible in this letter, Mike’s pushback is really irrelevant. Granted, if you do not accept the strong probability that Paul has concerns about an Enochian angelic rebellion corrupting the Christian church, then the explanatory power of the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view evaporates. Yet consider that the Apostle Peter knew very well the Enochian story of Genesis 6. Peter arguably quotes from Enoch, similar to what we read in Jude, tying together the incident of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” in Genesis 6 with the Great Flood of Noah which followed, as punishment:  “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:4-5 ESV).   For if in addition to the New Testament authors Peter and Jude, Paul has Enoch in the back of his mind, then this changes the ballgame. In an earlier part of the video, Mike Winger does mention the Enochian view of angelic rebellion but he does not adequately connect it to the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view. Mike Winger thinks that the primary concern associated with the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view is the angels lusting after women. But because “lusting” is never mentioned in the passage, Mike dismisses this as a legitimate possibility for interpreting this passage. Mike dismisses Second Temple extra-biblical literature as telling nothing about what is going on in this passage, despite the fact that an earlier interpreter of this passage, Tertullian, does exactly this in his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Mike says that the context in this passage is about honor and shame and not about lust, reiterating again this is some type of “new idea” added to Scripture, thus completely ignoring Tertullian. However, the problem with Mike’s objection is that he is drawing a false dichotomy here. For the concern in the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view is indeed primarily about modesty in dress, which is all about honor and shame. Lust only comes into play as a means of bringing about shame, which is what Paul is trying to prevent. Paul wants the women of Corinth to resist the lure of angelic lust in order to affirm their honor and avoid shame, as an act of spiritual warfare. That is how modesty actually works. Women should dress modestly, not simply to discourage lust, but primarily to affirm their human dignity and avoid shame.  Another concern Mike Winger has is about why only to urge head coverings during a worship service, and not all of the time. Furthermore, Mike objects in saying the head coverings are not all that powerful in preventing angels from lusting after women, suggesting that only a full covering of the entire head would fit here….. as though unless a woman is fully clothed with nothing but a blanket can prevent a man from lusting after a woman????  The answer should be straight-forward in that it is in the sacred space and time of corporate worship where people are most vulnerable to spiritual attack. If a believer is not regularly involved in meeting together with other believers to worship God, and being under the influence of sound teaching, then that believer will be ill-equipped to deal with the spiritual warfare against them in other areas in their life, no matter what they try to do outside of the congregational meeting. In our contemporary age where dressing up to go to church has fallen out of fashion, where Christians regularly go to church in their flip-flops in some settings, it is understandable why Paul’s teaching about appropriate dress might fall flat for today’s Bible readers. Even more strangely, Mike insists that this view not only should require the woman to always where a head covering, both inside and outside of church, but that this is not a culture-bound practice, if this view is correct.  This objection will be addressed in the next and final blog post in this series, but in short, if the whole idea behind the “hair-as-testicles” premise is built on a scientific perspective which has long been superseded, it is difficult to sustain an argument that head covering specifically  is still applicable for today. Mike then wonders why the supernatural sexual modesty does not also require men to wear head coverings.  Is it perhaps because Genesis 6 teaches that the “sons of God” were attracted to the “daughters of men,” and not the “sons of men?” Frankly, Mike’s critique of something that he finds bizarre goes bizarre himself from that point onward in the video. At one point he even argues that the Greeks did not wear head coverings in their pagan worship, which is completely false, according to what I show in the next blog post, while the Jews did wear head coverings, though this was only for the male priests, and not all Jews. The final objection in this earlier part of the video is that the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view is “shiny,” and that people should be wary of  “shiny” things. The problem with Mike’s perspective is that the value of this view is its explanatory power, and not its “shiny” features. Just because something is “shiny” does not mean that it offers great explanatory power. The other objections related to this in Mike Winger’s video seem pretty irrelevant. In fact, a number of the arguments that he uses to support his view of angels can be used to support the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view as well….. Mike Winger holds to an idea which Michael Heiser describes as this: “Paul is referring to supernatural beings thought to be present within the local church, assigned by God to ensure community purity and proper worship” (Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon, p. 150).  Winger’s adoption of this view is correct, and even consistent with the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view.  However, what Mike Winger’s view  fails to do is to offer a satisfactory explanation as to what actually connects head coverings to the interest of the angels (Heiser, Reversing Hermon, p. 154).  In other words, why do the angels care about women having head coverings, and not men, and what does this all have to do with proper worship? Mike Winger offers no reasoning here, whereas the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view does!! In the Supernatural Sexual Modesty view, the concern is about the sexual propriety of women, demonstrating that “Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Corinthians 11:9). Women are to be the proper sexual partner for men. Women are not meant to be sexual partners for angels. (1 Corinthians 11:10). Mike Winger’s view fails to connect the dots here.   ↩}

^{6. Saint Augustine of Hippo favored a newer view, as compared to the Enochian view of Genesis 6, that the “sons of God” were the progeny of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Augustine had very little exposure to the literature of Second Temple Judaism. For a defense of the Sethite view championed by Augustine, see this article by the late R.C. Sproul. Sproul largely rejects other views because to him they suggest parallels between “Greek and Roman myths about gods and goddesses mating with human beings” and the Bible. However, the Enochian perspective being discussed in this blog post is derived from Jewish and Christian sources, and not from Greco-Roman sources.  Other comparisons with different viewpoints include a reflection by William F. Cook, and another blogger at “Meeting God in the Margin.”  ↩}

^{7. Sadly, the late Dr. Michael Heiser died in February, 2023, but his contribution to the church has been to alert believers about the importance of the Book of Enoch and its influence on the New Testament. ↩}

^{8.  Marg Mowczko cites Jerome Murphy-O’Connor as to the identity of the angels: They are “visitors from other churches such as Chloe’s people, who no doubt were the ones who reported to Paul on what they found scandalous in the Corinthian liturgies“. Murphy-O’Connor’s argument would have better force if Paul had simply mentioned Chloe’s name again, instead opting for the term “angels.” Paul NEVER uses the word “angels” (Greek angelos) to refer to any human being anywhere else in his correspondence. So, it seems very odd for Paul to break from this standard practice in this instance. The traditionalist view on the “angels” is articulated by Mike Winger in his video cited in the first blog post in this blog series. A brief summary of various perspectives on these “angels” is provided by the late evangelical New Testament scholar Anthony Thiselton:}  

^{Thiselton’s conclusion tends to favor the fifth, or last position, which actually appears to overlap the Enochian perspective to a certain degree. For a more thorough discussion of these variation alternatives to the Enochian perspective, championed by Tertullian according to Thiselton above, see Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ, Appendix: IV, pp. 248ff, Heiser illustrates numerous examples of  allusions from the Book of Enoch in the New Testament. In contrast with these other attempts to find a non-Enochian interpretation of the “angels” in verse 10, Michael Heiser shows that Paul’s thought lines up perfectly with the theology of angels as found in the Book of Enoch.  The following video excerpt from a lecture by Dr. Heiser summarizes his view:  ↩}

^{9. This would also set Paul against the Jewish author of the Testament of Reuben, who believed that women were to blame for their seductive powers in bringing about the downfall of humanity.  By placing the blame for the Fall of Adam, Paul is polemically responding to the author of the Testament of Reuben. A brief refutation of the “women are more easily deceived that men” argument can be found in this previous Veracity blog post.    ↩}

^{10. It is important to note that the NIV 2011 translation of 1 Corinthians 11:10, “It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels,” does not necessarily conflict with anything concerning male headship as advocated by complementarians, as presumably taught in the prior verses of this passage, or the following verses. Nor does it necessarily indicate that an egalitarian view is being endorsed in those prior verses, or the following verses.  1 Corinthians 11:10 is primarily about how women are to define boundaries with the angels, and only indirectly addresses issues of how women are to relate to men.  ↩}

^{11. The late Dr. Michael Heiser, who has done the most to popularize the idea that Paul had an Enochian understanding of angels in view in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, argued that both the complementarian and egalitarian readings of texts like 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 could be read either way, and have little bearing on the central idea that Paul wanted women to wear head coverings and for men to not wear them out of concern for lustful angels, who might rebel against God.  See Michael Heiser, Angels, p. 132ff. Michael Heiser is agnostic about the whole complementarian/egalitarian discussion. My own view differs from Heiser in that the passages in 1 Timothy and Titus can not be sufficiently supported by an egalitarian reading. See my review of Andrew Bartlett’s Men and Women in Christ.  For a more substantial review of this delicate and complex issue, see the Veracity multi-part blog series on “women in ministry.” ↩}