The Role of the Woman in the Assembly

Should sisters really be covered and silent during the meeting?

An article by

Part I. Adam's Rib -- His Erstwhile Achilles Heel
Part II. The Veiling of the Woman's Head

I. ADAM'S RIB -- HIS ERSTWHILE ACHILLES' HEEL

The woman, who was created by God to be a suitable helper for Adam has been historically employed by the forces opposed to God to assist in compromising the man. The special emotions given to her by the Lord to aid her in her being an affectionate companion to man, are cunningly used by the serpent to cause her to question the authority of God.

The first manifestation of sin in Adam, was found in the woman. The serpent found it easy to cause her to question not only the authority of God over them, but also the authority of Adam over her! As a result, God warned the woman (not yet called Eve) that she would seek to control the man.

We know this is the proper interpretation of this cryptic passage because the same hebrew construction was used in Genesis 4:7 when God said to Cain,

The man was to condescend to his companion in love, giving honor to her as the weaker vessel. The enemy has perverted this Godly inclination to cause the man to submit himself to the control of the deceived woman. A perversion of the emotion which effused from Adam when he first beheld the woman --

-- could cause Adam to leave even his Everlasting Father to cleave to the woman who is in disobedience to the Word of God.

This combination of the woman's desire to control the man, despise his authority, and the man's desire to submit to the disobedient woman thus becomes the destruction of the man. The natural, even providential inclination to break ties with one's father and mother has been corrupted and misdirected so that the man in joining to the woman leaves not only father and mother, but God. Adam, typifying the male posterity to issue from his loins, is brought into the place of weakness, contempt and finally death...

Solomon, a son of Adam and undoubtedly the wisest man ever to have lived, was subject to this weakness...

Samson, the physically strongest man ever to have walked under the sun was no match for the wiles of Delilah!

Ahab, entrusted with the stewardship of ruling over Israel, abandoned all that was right to please his wife, Jezebel, following her in the worship of various Canaanitic Gods and Goddesses.

Herod being more concerned for the affections of Herodias and her daughter, killed him who warned him of the unlawfulness of taking her to wife, him whom Christ said was the greatest man ever to have lived (Matthew 11:11).

Some of the greatest victories gained by Satan in modern times against the kingdom of God have been through his use of these weaknesses of the woman and the man. All one need do is glance at a newspaper in recent days to witness the downfall of such men as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart to see what harm has been done. Even when we acknowledge that what motivated these men was not the glory of God but ungodly gain, we can still see that women exerted such a heavy influence on these men that they chanced all they had gained through greed for the sake of what could be offered by the immoral woman.

Many of the cults today have been started by disobedient and deceived women. Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventism, Theosophy, The Foursquare Gospel, The World Wide Church of God (Began with visions received by H. W. Armstrong's first wife), and countless others have in common that they were begun by the evil imaginings of disobedient women who fancied themselves against all that has been written, to be in receipt of special truth which had gone heretofore unrevealed. It is Babylon revisited -- the religion which was, is not, and yet is. A religion wherein the male is emasculated, the Goddess is elevated, and which sacraments are mediated by a priesthood of females.

This same Babylon can move into the meeting of the assembly. The assembly meeting is that special "Coming together" (Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 11:17-20, 33-34, 1 Corinthians 14:26) wherein the Lord is "made known to us in the breaking of bread" (Luke 24:35), and in which the Word of God is taught through various speaking and singing ministries. The Lord has graciously seen fit to give us much instruction on this matter so that the obedient might not fall prey with the disobedient. Speaking through the apostles Paul and Peter, He gave us very strict guidelines concerning the role that women play in the assemblies. Too often, like the Pharisees who appealed to the device "Corban" to evade the 5th commandment, disobedient men have sought to disregard these "traditions" of Paul by employing "logical" arguments why these commands are no longer applicable today. Those who seek to be obedient in regard to the role of women are labeled "legalists", "chauvinists", and "misogynists". Some have used the argument that because we live in "enlightened" times; that these things are no longer necessary today. On the contrary, these things are more necessary today than they have ever been. Was God somehow "not with the program" when He commanded the covering and silence of sisters in the assembly? Others have said that to be "in Christ" is to be in the masculine, and as women grow in Christ they grow in the masculine! There are those who say that because Paul said,

that since there is no male nor female in Christ, the scriptures which make distinctions about the behavior of women in the assembly must be speaking of unbelieving women, carnal, or "outer court" female christians. In this same scripture, Paul says there is no longer bond nor free! This must have been very confusing to those christian slaves to whom he himself gave the following commands:

While indeed there is no male nor female, bond nor free, Jew nor Greek in Christ, there are orders of service, and various gifts. Just as Paul said,

Just as the foot should never seek to usurp the position of the hand for which it was never designed, neither should the woman desire to perform service for which she was never designed.

II. THE VEILING OF THE WOMAN'S HEAD

Let's take a clear and illuminating look with obedient hearts at one of the most controversial issues of assembly worship, a teaching at which the disobedient stumble (1 Peter 2:8) and which offers to the lover of God, the gentle milk of the word on the wonderful role He has for the obedient and wise woman in His assembly! The following is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthian assemblies, chapter 11:2-16.

Let's begin to look at this portion of scripture verse by verse.

Paul begins this very daunting task of persuading his hearers of a very difficult teaching by congratulating them for earlier obedience in bearing with the traditions he had taught them. It is always good to set a positive tone when approaching such a charge as this, and so he does so in a way that assures them that what follows is just as binding upon them as the previous teachings he had shared with them. Earlier in this letter he had said,

The traditions and mysteries of which Paul was God's faithful steward were consistently taught by him throughout all of the assemblies. He made a special emphasis in this letter of the concept of uniformity of practice or tradition among the assemblies. Later in this letter he would say,

The Holy Spirit, anticipating the argument that these instructions were in response to a parochial problem of the Corinthian assembly and have no pertinence in the practice of the assemblies today, thus makes it clear that the "traditions" delivered by Paul, were to be universally received and obeyed.

Paul's first concern is to remind them of God's order for spiritual authority. He uses his revelation in the "image of God" -- the human anatomy to convey the order of "Headship", or as we might refer to it, "the chain of command". The head is the captain of the body. All messaging is routed through it, four of the five senses through which the external world is perceived are located there. The head is also given the position of preeminence, being located at the very top of the body. For these and many other reasons, the head is a fitting type to impart the truth of spiritual authority.

God is the head of Christ. Christ told us that His food was to do the will of His Father, His Head. He, being the express image of God, acting both as the Angel of the Lord and the Incarnate Christ, was God's vehicle for accomplishing His will of "gathering together all things into one". (Ephesians 1:10). Though it could not be construed as untoward for Christ to claim equality with God, (Philippians 2:6-7) He did not seek the place of preeminence above His Head, but rather sought to obey His Head fully, until He Himself surrenders all to God in the fullness of time. (1 Corinthians 15:28)

This Christ, Himself is Head to the man -- that is, to the male. Christ is the seat of our senses; His eyes, our window to the kingdom, His ears, our conduit to the lips of God, His nose, conveying to us the sweet savor of obeying His will, His tongue by which we taste Him and find Him pleasant, His very forehead bearing the name of Him whose children we are! It is to Him that we voice our sorrows, fully expecting Him to respond as One who cares for His own body, (Ephesians 5:29) in much the same way our own heads receive signals of pain from its various members, returning suitable instructions resulting in relief and comfort.

And finally, the man is head to the woman. What God is to Christ, and Christ is to man, the man is to the woman. Because God is the Head of Christ, is Christ therefore diminished? Should Christ be indignant at the Headship of God? Does He not have His own glory? Will not "every knee bow and every tongue confess" that Christ is Lord? Should man resent the Headship of Christ or seek to usurp His Christhood, His Person, His Work? Should therefore in like manner the woman do likewise, averring the equality of male and female, choosing to exploit this gift of equality to the frustration of the will of God? Should she not rather, in the spirit of Christ's attitude to His Head, "being in the form of man, and thinking it not robbery to be equal with man, make herself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and come in the likeness of a woman..."?

This principal of "Headship" thus becomes the foundation upon which Paul will build in communicating the reason the woman must be covered in the assembly.

Many of the persons in the assembly at Corinth and indeed in many of the assemblies were jews. In contrast to this instruction, the man was covered in the synagogue meeting.

In offense to his culture and traditions, the jewish man is told that he must now eschew the veil which "is done away in Christ", as it now brings dishonor to his Head, Jesus Christ. The man is a fitting symbol of the veil's being taken away. The veil had been worn as a symbol to recall the glory of God which faded from the face of Moses when he returned from his "face to face" meetings with God. This fading was a dishonor to Him whose glory is a light which darkness cannot overcome. (John 1:5) For that reason, the glory of God had to be covered, it could not remain on man until man had been made a suitable dwelling place for Him. But now that Christ has come and cleansed His dwelling place, preparing it to receive His glory which will never depart, the veil is taken away to symbolize the display of the glory which does not fade, the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ.

Contrariwise to the example of the man, the woman says Paul, who prays or prophesies with her physical head uncovered, dishonors her spiritual head, the man. To uncover her physical head is to symbolize her preference to remain under its control rather than to submit to the spiritual head given her by God. Her physical head, that controlling member of her body is covered to symbolize the submission of her own authority to the authority of the man.

As the apostle reveals a bit further on, it is manifestly disgraceful for a woman to be bald. The shaving of the head has been a common manifestation of rebellious women throughout history, and records available to us from the time of the writing of this letter testify to its prevalence then. Sinead O'Connor, a female rock musician at the time of this writing (1991) is considered to be on the "cutting edge" of pop culture because of her shaved head. She is known for the large chip on her shoulder and for being surly and egregiously unfeminine. While she may indeed be a phenomenon in our time, she is by no means the pioneer of such activities. The further explanation of this shame will become clearer in the meaning of the hair as we move on.

There are some who seek to escape the need for a covering by contending that the covering is met in a woman's wearing her hair long. As we can see in the foregoing passage, this cannot be the case. In their thinking, to be uncovered means to be shorn or shaved. Let's insert this meaning into this text and see what results.

As you can see, the passage loses all force when this meaning is applied. It doesn't say anything. It makes it appear that the choice is the woman's, whether she will wear long or short hair!

As will be revealed as we press on in this teaching, the hair is the woman's glory. To remove it is to leave the woman without glory, without relevance. It is preferable for her to shave off her glory and bear the shame herself, than to have her glory uncovered, the glory of her physical head competing with the glory shining forth from her spiritual head, the man. If she will not temporarily cover the glory in deference to the honor of her spiritual head, then let her remove the glory completely and bear her shame.

We see here the development of the picture already introduced, that the man is God's chosen vessel to symbolize His glory, being representative of His image. God is clearly portrayed throughout scripture as being a male, so the male is the appropriate, but by no means worthy vessel for this honor. The woman symbolizes the glory of the man. As man issued forth from the creative power of God, and as his purpose is to have fellowship with his maker, (1 John 1:3) even so, the woman issued forth from man, and her purpose; to be a suitable helper for him. (Genesis 2:18)

We have two glories explained to us here, the glory of God and the glory of man. When a man prays or prophesies, he must remove any head covering. In doing so, he indicates to God his recognition of the fact that,

When a woman prays or prophesies, she must cover her head inasmuch as she is the chosen vessel through whom God has chosen to display the glory of man. To display the glory of man when the glory of God is on display is to fall into the error of Satan who left his own estate, who said "I will be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14). It is to dishonor her spiritual head by the preference of her own physical head, by despising his calling -- his shining forth the unveiled and unfading glory of God.

Paul now introduces an entirely new element into the mix of this excellent revelation of the wisdom of God in revealing His glory -- the angels! The angelic host, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, are witnesses of the manifold wisdom of God in His plan and purpose for man. The assembly is a kind of classroom where God is revealing attributes of Himself to these beings they would never have had opportunity to observe were it not for the advent, fall and restoration of mankind. Where would angels have had opportunity to see His mercy, His longsuffering, or His Love which clothed Him in human flesh and suffered the full fury of sin and death on a cross? The angels were created by God to glorify Him. They have been prepared for this task by the provision of an insatiable curiosity about the person, work, purpose and plan of their Maker.

The angels do not simply worship God without regard to some aspect of His person. This would be empty worship of which anyone would be worthy! Angels and all who would worship Him MUST worship Him in spirit, and according to truth. (John 4:23) The angels respond in worship when they behold a particular glimmer in His glory which moves them to voice it in concert with countless others. The angels who behold the face of the Father, (Matthew 18:10) behold the unfading glory of God in His people in the meeting of the assembly. The assembly is the means through which He is revealing His wisdom to the angels. When the glory of man is lifted up by the forbearance of the woman to cover her head, the Lord is robbed of an opportunity to be glorified in the work He performed within the veil. When Jesus took His own blood into the veil, rending it from top to bottom, He sprinkled it on the mercy seat between the two cherubim. With their faces toward the mercy seat, they are witnesses to the eternal life of God, the blood of Jesus Christ, resulting in a new kind of resurrection life in His creatures. They marvel that what the law and its threat of death could never do -- that is make His creatures obey Him, the blood of Jesus Christ CAN do. Even this most difficult task, the act of a woman in covering her head, can be wrought through the resurrection power of the life of Christ!

Do not too quickly scoff at my insistence that the act of a woman in covering her head is difficult. Witness the theological gymnastics, the wresting, the damage the Word of God sustains at the hands of those who seek to escape what to them must be an unbearable burden! One might even speculate by the actions of some that the anticipated covering were to weigh 50 pounds!

For those who remain convinced that the head covering is merely a concession to 1st century Corinthian culture, of what application are these appeals to the example of Adam and Eve? What relevance has the principal of headship, the glories of God and Man, or the witness of Angels, to a feature of popular culture?

A second aspect of this scripture is its clear reference to the location of the symbol -- the physical head! There are those who will come even as far as to acknowledge the need for the symbol of authority, but will then balk at the veiling of the head, preferring instead to fulfill the spirit of these commands in the woman's wearing of some object of clothing which makes her distinct from the man! They would say that the wearing of a dress, high heels, jewelry, etcetera are all that is called for here. This passage states clearly that the symbol is to be upon the head.

Here also the covering is referred to as a "symbol of authority". In addition to its use in covering the glory of man, it is done in submission to her spiritual head, the man. In humility, she wears a symbol of her authority. By covering her head, she indicates a despising of the seat of her own authority, her physical head, preferring instead to submit to her spiritual authority, the man!

Lest we race headlong to the opposite extreme whence we came, Paul cautions the man not to despise the woman. Though she is from the man and created for the man, (1 Corinthians 11:7-9) the man was unable to survive without the woman. Even with the immediate fellowship of God Adam had before the fall, he required the companionship of a "suitable helper". God's plan for man included the woman, for the man is not without the woman in the Lord!

There is not a man alive who doesn't have a woman to thank for carrying him for nine months, and in great distress bringing him into this world. Let not the man gloat that he is not a woman as if there were some honor in being a man and not a woman. All things are of God! What do you have that you did not receive? (1 Corinthians 4:7) There is no merit in being one gender or another. Serve Him in the estate in which you were called. (1 Corinthians 7:24)

Having exhausted the issue of authority and headship, Paul now makes his appeal using the revelation in nature and the conscience of man. He makes the assumption that deep within us is a witness to the rightness of the covering of the woman when she approaches the Lord in prayer. He assumes that it is common sense that a woman should never prophesy or pray with uncovered head. His reasoning is that if it is unacceptable for a woman to pray or prophesy with her head exposed, how much more unseemly is it to take part in the assembly meeting when the Word of God is going forth and the Lord's Supper being celebrated? In other words, he is taking what he assumes they already believe to lead them on to a deeper understanding. Not only should the woman cover her head when she prays or prophesies, but she should be covered also in the assembly when she is to be silent, because she typifies the glory of the man.

Paul now reveals another reason why it is that the physical head has been chosen as the place of covering. In addition to its being the seat of authority over the body, it is also the place of the glory of the woman! Earlier Paul touched on the subject of its being a shame for a woman to have short hair. Here we have the reason. The long hair is the woman's glory! Many have completely misunderstood the phrase, "for her hair is given her for a covering". They have taken this to mean that the long hair of the woman is the covering that is being called for here. As was demonstrated earlier, this view does severe injustice to the text. The word "covering" here is a noun. All earlier references to covering have referred to the act of covering. This noun could be translated "veil". The greek word is "parabolaion" which refers to a vesture, a mantle, something thrown about, a veil, an adornment. The only other place in the New Testament in which this word appears is in Hebrews 1:12 where it has been translated "vesture" in the King James Version. A verb form of this word, "periballo" appears frequently. In Revelation 4:4, it is used to speak of being clothed in white raiment. In Revelation 12:1 it is used to speak of a woman clothed with the sun. The verb used to speak of covering the woman's head is "katakalupto". It is entirely unrelated to the word "Parabolaion" used to speak of the "covering" or "veil". Kata is a greek intensive prefix which strengthens the force of the word. "Kalupto" means "to cover". It is the same word from which we get the english word "Eclipse". The word "parabolaion" or "veil" does not speak of a covering which conceals, but one which reveals! Just as the woman clothed with the sun (Revelation 12:1) was not wearing something which hid her, but glorified her, the hair of the woman in the assembly does not hide her glory, it IS her glory! And it is that glory which must be concealed.

Paul very wisely anticipated the disobedience of many to this teaching. He knew there would be those who would boldly proclaim the tendering of the neck to the ax, too small a price to pay for the glories which follow this life, but the covering of the woman's head to great a burden to bear! For those who cannot be convinced by the many arguments, all of which end finally in the glory of God, there is but one final argument. There is no other custom in the assemblies, but that the woman is to be covered. If you will not do it out of obedience, do it because it is the custom of the apostles and of the assemblies.

A final word on the issue of the covering of the woman being binding during the assembly meeting. Paul used the phrase, "neither the assemblies". The word "assemblies" here, is plural. Since it is plural, he is not speaking of our membership in that great unified body of Christ, but our being in individual assemblies, which are only manifest when we meet together. It is the custom of not The Assembly alone, but of the meeting. In conclusion, the woman should cover her head when she prophesies or prays, and when she is in the meeting of the assembly, when she is to be silent.

May God the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, prosper you in the power of His resurrection, that you might know Him through obedience to His Word, and by putting away the deeds of the flesh you may further unmask the glory which changes from glory to glory, even the glory of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Now to God our Savior Who alone is wise, be Glory, Majesty, Dominion and Power, both now and forever. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

"THE ANCIENT PATH" seeks in the spirit of the New Testament letters to Preach the Word and to correct, rebuke and encourage, with patience and careful instruction, the assemblies gathered to Jesus Christ. It ignores denominational divisions and reaches out to all who have ears to hear in these last days. Please do not ask for a doctrinal statement. We have none as we are constantly changing our understanding as we bring ourselves continuously into conformity to what we are learning from God's Word. To conserve resources, we do not distribute hard copies of these articles but make them available on the world wide web. You may download, create and distribute our articles in printed form. We ask that you let us know how you are using them so that we may determine the wisdom and /or effectiveness of continuing this ministry.

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