I. What About Solos and Unison Readings?

The ASV sets off three chapters of 1 Corinthians, 12-14, as a unit, separating them from chapters 11 and 15. Those three chapters are devoted to miraculous powers, spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:1, 4: 14:1, 12), which were bestowed by the laying on of the apostles’ hands (Acts 8:18; 19:6; Romans 1:11; 2 Timothy 1:6). With the death of the last person on whom an apostle’s hands had been laid those miraculous powers ceased (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:8).

The three chapters discuss a first century activity which is impossible in the 20^th century. However, some principles originally set forth for the church assembly in the time of miracles are still true today: (1) teaching, by ordinary voice or by singing (1 Corinthians 14:4, 15, 19, 26); and (2) male leadership (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

Speaking or singing while another was on the floor would be "confusion," of which God is not the author (1 Corinthians 14:33). Each speaker or singer was to take his own "turn" (14:27). This means that solo speaking and solo singing were authorized.

No one questions solo speaking today, but solo singing in our times is not "expedient" (1 Corinthians 6:12). Though not wrong in itself, solo singing in the assembly today quickly degenerates into a performance, not a worship service. The assembly becomes a theater with a display of a pleasing voice. Vanity enters. Humble worship on the part of the singer is hardly possible, and presentation may be distracting to the audience.

In a Pennsylvania City a Lutheran soloist, seeing the advertisement of our gospel meeting, phoned to offer her talent. When she was told she would be welcome to sit in the audience and sing with the congregation she did not come.

Even if solo singing could today pass the test of expediency, in the case of a woman soloist, as described above, it could not pass the test of masculine leadership "in the assembly" (1 Corinthians 14:34-35). The fact that some women did have miraculous gifts in New Testament days (as Philip’s four daughters, Acts 21:9) does not mean that they exercised their gifts "in the assembly," for "it is shameful for a woman to speak [as a leader] in the assembly" (1 Corinthians 14:35), though she is to sing with the whole congregation (Ephesians 5:19). Also she is to speak in the assembly when she is asked the question, "Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?", just as Sapphira publicly answered a question without taking the leadership (Acts 5:8).

Masculine leadership is taught, not because God and Paul were prejudiced against women, but because by creation women are men’s assistants, men’s helpers, with built-in, custom-made qualities of God’s workmanship to supply men what they lack (Genesis 2:18).

Though this by God’s plan is man’s world, God saw that he needed help, and so he created woman "for the man" (1 Corinthians 11:9). Though man needs help, yet God made him "the head" of the woman (1 Corinthians 11:3), and a two-headed creature is a freak. As to the propriety of talking with Satan, Eve did not consult her husband, her head. Instead she started the "Women’s Lib movement."

However, sometimes the situation is abnormal, when a woman must take the leadership, either in the home (as Abigail, 1 Samuel 25:19; as Lois and Eunice, 2 Timothy 1:5; 3:14) or in government (as Deborah, Judges 5:7; 21:23).

As to unison readings, emphases are brought to some people in the assembly that cause them to pay more attention to the words than for one person to do the reading. Other people do not need that change. But if some are more edified by unison reading those people are worthwhile.

Some of the psalms are antiphonal -- one chorus of singers replied to by another chorus -- as Psalm 2, as Psalm 24. So today the whole assembly could be divided into two choruses singing back and forth to each other, or there could be pulpit readings replied to by readings done by the audience. Both speaking one to another and singing one to another are included in Ephesians 5:19: "speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and plucking the strings of your heart to the Lord"; and in Colossians 3:16: "teaching and admonishing one another, in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs."

II. What About the "Veil" and the Holy Kiss?

1 Corinthians 11 does not refer to a local custom at Corinth, but goes back to creation when God made man "the head" of woman (11:3). However, the word "veil" is not in 1 Corinthians 11. The usual meaning of "veil," a covering for the face, is found when Moses put "a veil on his face" (Exodus 34:33; 2 Corinthians 3:13).

Not a veil for the face, but a removable covering for the head (a hat? A shawl? A handkerchief?) is the teaching of 1 Corinthians 11. If (in the assembly, cf. 11:18) the woman is without such a covering, "let her be sheared; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be sheared or shaved, let her cover her head" (11:6). The covering is a sign of man’s "authority" (11:10), an authority not originated by egotistical men, but by God himself in four steps: God, Christ, man, woman (11:3). If it is not wrong for Christ to have a head, or for man to have a head, then it is not wrong for woman to have a head.

Man "is the image and glory of God," while woman "is the glory of the man" (11:7). Man was not "created for the woman, but the woman for the man" (11:9). Adam was excited when he first saw Eve, and so proud of her, as his exclamation reveals: "This is the time! Bone from my bones! Flesh from my flesh!" (Genesis 2:23). So the teaching that husbands ought "to love their own wives as their own bodies" goes back to the Garden of Eden! (Ephesians 5:28).

No right thinking man feels superior to women, for every man since Adam had a woman for a mother (11:12). Neither sex is superior to the other, for "the woman is not without the man in the Lord," nor "the man without the woman" (11:11).

In God’s sight the woman’s covering (artificial, removable) gives her a correct appearance in the assembly, and the absence of such a covering (a hat?) gives man a correct appearance in the worship service. John T. Lewis, at a baptismal service on the bank of a creek, as he started to lead a prayer, saw a man with a cap on. Bro. Lewis stopped, and asked the brother to remove his cap. As an uncovered woman "disgraces her head" (v. 5), so a covered man "disgraces his head" (v. 4).

Many interpreters try to make the covering a woman’s hair, but verse 6 refutes that fallacy: "If the woman does not cover her head, let her be sheared; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be sheared or shaved, let her cover her head." Furthermore, if the covering commanded is hair, "only a baldheaded man" (Guy Woods) could worship acceptably.

A woman’s long hair is used by Paul as a comparison with the artificial covering. Nature itself, he says, teaches a distinction between the sexes. As long hair on a man dishonors him, so its pressure on a woman is her "glory" (vs. 14-15).

A mistranslation of the Greek preposition Paul used in verse 15, anti, has caused some to think that a woman’s long hair is the only covering under consideration. If Paul in verse 15 equates the hair with the covering he contradicts himself in verse 6, as shown above. So the translations that say a woman’s long hair is given to her "for" (KJV, ASV, NAS), "as" (NIV), "instead of" (NWT) a covering cannot be accurate. Though in other contexts anti is correctly translated "for," "as," "instead of," in the context of 1 Corinthians 11 another accurate meaning of anti, "opposite to," "over against," "corresponding to," and "answering to" (as found in Luke 10:31-32; John 1:16; 1 Peter 3:9) gives harmony and makes sense: "the long hair is given to correspond to her [artificial] covering" (v. 15). In v. 15 the word for the covering is peribolaion, a "throw around," a "wrap," a "mantle."

Woman’s long hair is a personal "glory to her" (11:15), but, more importantly, her artificial covering shows respect for her "head" (11:3). Her long hair and her covering go along together; they correspond to each other, and without the artificial covering Paul said that she might as well be without her long hair (v. 6). With him, then, it is double or nothing.

After the inspired apostle had shown that God wants a sexual distinction in the assembly displayed by the woman’s double covering, and after he had shown that nature itself points to a sexual distinction by long hair on the woman and short hair on the man, "we have no such custom" as a bare-headed woman or a head-covered man, "neither do God’s congregations" (v. 16).

Some day that if one holds that women are to have two coverings and men not either one, that to be consistent one must also hold to the doctrine of "the holy kiss" (1 Corinthians 16:20). However, the kiss as a greeting or a token of affection differs from the doctrine of the covered woman and the uncovered man in that the teaching about the covering goes directly back to God’s plan from the day he created man and woman, making man "the head of the woman" (1 Corinthians 11:3), while the practice of kissing does not go back to any plan of God. Apparently kissing was humanly devised with no divine instruction: Jacob kissed his father and his cousin and his grandsons (Genesis 27:26; 29:11; 48:10). Aaron kissed his brother, and Moses kissed his father-in-law (Exodus 4:27; 18:7). Samuel kissed Saul (1 Samuel 10:1). David and Jonathan kissed each other (1 Samuel 20:41).

What the New Testament did was not to institute a new commandment, but simply to command that the kiss of greeting among Christians be holy, springing from sincere love, not amorous or sexual, but altogether spiritual, loving (agapao) one another "from a pure heart" (1 Peter 1:22). An inspired regulation on the right kind of kissing was necessary, Clement (220 A.D.) thought, for he wrote:

Evil surmising may have been back of the criticism that a preacher received because he kissed each girl as she came up from the water of baptism, but not the young men. When asked about his practice, he said, "They are precious lambs, and I want them to know that Jesus loves them." Then he was asked, "Does Jesus only love ewe lambs?"

The humanly devised kiss of greeting and of affection is still practiced in many countries. Television shows it often among the Arabs and the Russians. When Hugo and Lois entered the assembly hall of the church in Rome, Italy, in 1975, we were pleasantly shocked to be greeted with a kiss at the door. In America hand-shaking has taken over, which should be firm and loving. Some Christian hand-shakes show no affection.

III. How Do 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy 2:8-15 Differ?

The passages do not differ as regarding masculine leadership. However, the Timothy passage spreads out masculine leadership beyond the assembly to all of life. Though a woman is to do her own private praying (1 Thessalonians 5:17), when men are present men are to lead the prayers "in every place" (v. 8).

However, in a congregation of four men and a few ladies, where no man would lead a prayer or wait on the Lord’s Table, a lady wrote to G. C. Brewer asking what they should do. Those ladies knew that never, if a man was present, were they "to teach or to have authority over a man" (v. 12). Bro. Brewer replied, "There are no men there. Those with trousers on just look like men. You ladies must take over."

The Corinthian passage shows that "it is shameful for a woman to speak in the assembly" (14:35), but it is not shameful for her to speak and to teach in other places. Christian women, dragged from their homes, continued to tell others the story of Jesus (Acts 8:3-4). Pricilla helped in teaching a preacher in error, apparently in her home (Acts 18:26). Older women are to teach the younger women (Titus 2:4-5). These are non-assembly, any time, any where, worthy activities, whereas the Corinthian passage deals only with the assembly. And even in the assembly women are to speak, as already pointed out, in confessing Jesus and in singing.

The Timothy passage, dealing with day-by-day activities, does not command the woman "to be silent" (sigao, as in the Corinthian passage), but "to be in quietness" (hesuchadzo, v. 12). The word "quietness," by the way, not only describes women’s everyday activity, but also men’s (1 Timothy 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 3:12). The Lord commands all of his people:

The Timothy citation shows that women are to adorn themselves modestly, which naturally would be expected not only at church but everywhere and all the time (2:9). The Corinthian citation does not deal with women’s attire.

Women’s primary responsibility is motherhood, about which the Corinthian passage says nothing, but the Timothy passage says much (2:15).

Every informed person, and every one who thinks that he is "spiritual," should acknowledge that what Paul wrote (about singing or a covering or leadership or kissing) is "the commandment of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:37), and that he did not teach anything as a conformity to a local custom, but that he taught the same thing "in all the churches" (1 Corinthians 4:17); 7:17; 14:33).