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babbred -> RE: Head Covering - One Stop Thread (6/15/2005 8:10:50 AM)
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An excellent resource for subjects like this is How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Dr. Gordon Fee and Dr. Douglas Stuart. We used it as textbook in one of my bible classes, and it really is a good resource for how to interpret the bible properly. They analyze the different types of writing styles in the bible and how to read and interpret them without imposing your own viewpoints on the text. I especially love the first line of their introduction.
Every so often we meet someone who says with great feeling, "You don't have to interpret the bible; just read it and do what it says."
Then later they add:
But if plain meaning is what interpretation is all about, then why interpret? Why not just read? Does not the plain meaning come simply from reading? In a sense, yes. But in a truer sense, such an argument is naive and unrealistic because of two factors: the nature of the reader and the nature of Scripture.
The first reason one needs to learn how to interpret is that, whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same as the Holy Spirit's, or the human author's, intent. However, we inevitably bring to the the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understanding of word and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.
The need to interpret is also to be found by noting what goes on around us all the time. A simple look at the contemporary church, for instance, makes it abundantly clear that not all "plain meanings" are equally plain to all. It is of more than passing interest that those in today's church who argue that women should keep silent in the church on the basis of I Cor 14:34-35 at the same time deny the validity of speaking in tongues and prophecy, the very context in which the "silence" passage occurs. [emphasis author's]
I have read numerous books on this subject, all of them, like the above, written by evangelical, orthodox Christians. (And available on cbd.com, hardly a bastion of liberal, un-Christian thought.) Based on those books, I believe that Paul's instructions here were cultural. The city of Corinth was notorious for its temple prostitutes. Unlike other women, these prostitutes were allowed to roam the streets uveiled, and with their hair cut short. Paul wanted to believing women to distinguish themselves from these prostitutes, hence the need for modesty and covering up, and hence his talking about the glory of long hair.
Should every word of the bible be taken literally for today? Everything I have read says no. In fact, Gordon and Fee have two chapters on the subject, when they deal with the book of Acts and with the epistles. I tend to follow their line of reasoning. The early church did many things that we don't do today. For instance, it says in Acts that the church sold everything they had and owned what was left in commuity. Anybody want to volunteer for that today?
And once again, before people start crying that these are liberal authors trying to destroy the truth of Christianity as we know it, let me remind you that they are not. They are conservative, evangelical, orthodox Christians. One of the books I have was written by the founder of the largest non-denominational missions organizations in the world--not likely to be a raving liberal. And Dr. Fee is a professor at Regent College, which is an evangelical bible college.
BTW, I Cor clearly says women were prophecying in church. In fact, it says that in the passage everyone's been quoting. So if you want to take everything in the NT literally for today, then you have to allow women to prophecy in church.
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