New Testament InterpretationAnswered

What does 'because of the angels' mean in 1 Corinthians 11:10 about women's head coverings?

A viewer asks Robert to respond to a video by Jimmy Akin on head coverings, especially what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 11:10 when he says women are to wear head coverings 'because of the angels.'

Answer

The context of the whole passage is the order of nature: God, then Christ, then man, then woman, then children, a hierarchy of authority that cannot be changed. Jimmy Akin never referenced that context and instead, following the Protestant scholar Michael Heiser rather than any Father, medieval, pope, council, or catechism, claimed that a woman's hair was regarded as a sexual organ that could arouse the men or even the angels, so it had to be covered. That is absurd; everyone knows how children are conceived, and while a woman's whole body can be attractive, there is no reason to single out the hair as some organ transmitting sexual seed. If that false idea were really Paul's reasoning, then God would be inspiring Paul to teach truth by means of a falsehood, which cannot be. As for 'because of the angels,' the Greek angelos can mean messenger, but it overwhelmingly means angels, and the context must license the rarer sense, which here it does not; so the natural reading is angels. The angels are themselves in the order of creation, above men, and they know their rank and recognize when someone tries to usurp a higher rank than she should, as women do when they refuse to display the order of creation. Paul then appeals to nature: nature itself gives women long hair as a natural covering and distinguishes the sexes, and if nature teaches that, then the woman is to reinforce it by wearing a head covering when praying or prophesying, as a sign that she is under the authority of her husband and the church. Paul says she puts exousia, power or authority, on her head. And he insists this is not culture but the command of the Lord, adding in verse 16 that neither he nor any of the churches has any other custom. The Church practiced this from the first century onward, and the 1917 code even required veils; the 1983 code simply does not mention it, which does not overturn a practice grounded in the unchanging order of creation.

Dr. Robert Sungenis

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