The Scriptural Tradition of the Headcovering Explained

Good morning. I was tempted to use that old dinosaur thing in the back that Carl always pulls out. And I took it home and I tried.

You know, even me, being a technology guy, I'd rather that thing. But the detail that I want to show you in pictures and things I just don't think is going to work. So I finally just gave in to the new way of doing things and we'll hope it all works.

It makes you a lot more nervous when you have projectors and wires and I hope it all works. But this morning I'd like to talk to you a little bit about something. I know you all know my heart.

Let me just open this so it stops doing that. I don't like when we do something and we don't know why. And I would like this morning to give a teaching on why we do something here in this church.

So I'll go back a little bit in time. I remember years ago when we first started fellowshipping in a home church. And we had done it because we had started seeing in the Bible that there were things we were not obeying and we were not practicing.

And we would slowly be examining the scriptures as to what they meant. I remember going through 1 Peter and seeing all the truths there. And during that time we became non-resistant.

And then as time went on we came to a place where the group started talking about the head covering. And I remember my wife, she actually told me this morning she would just get up and go outside with the children. She didn't like us talking about that topic.

She just hoped we would forget it. And it was a struggle for her. And so I remember years ago she came to me as the group was trying to decide where we stood.

And studying it together she said, Jeremy, I want you to study this thing in depth. I want you to be sure you believe it. And I never want to turn back.

I want you to be so sure that you'll never change your mind the rest of your life. That's a lot of burden on somebody. But that's what I tried to do.

And so this morning I would like to do that. I would like to go back and answer the why the best I can. I've spent some time studying this again and looking back at sources.

And that's why I wanted to bring the projector here. Because I want to go back and look at some sources through church history. But the first thing before we discuss this, and by the way, this is going to be more of a teaching, a whole lot less of a preaching.

So prepare that you're sitting in more of a classroom mentality here. But we all need to be honest. I think if we're honest, first of all, we're going to realize that we are surrounded by the world.

And that world puts pressure on us all the time. That world makes us question. I'm sure you're like me, where once in a while you question, why do I do this? Why do I look like this? Why do I believe this? I'm so different with all this voting stuff with Trump.

Did any of you question, well, why don't we just go vote? In some ways you might stop and think, it makes sense. I mean, why not vote for the better of the two evils? But there's a chuckle there. But you might question those things sometimes and wonder why.

Well, the world puts this pressure. You need to see all this Christianity doing it this way, and we're the odd bunch. We're the odd ducks that don't do it the same way.

And so I want to be honest with that this morning. And that's one of the reasons why once in a while we need to talk about this, because doubts go through our heads. We sometimes wonder.

Number two, I think we also need to be honest with our own hearts. You can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. And for sure in this passage you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say.

So we need to be objective. The word objective means that we don't allow our feelings and our opinions to enter in. And that's really hard sometimes to do when you think about it.

And Jeremiah, it says, I think it was Jeremiah, it says, the heart is deceitful above all else. Now stop and think about that. That deceitful means it's cunning, it's sly, it's trying to deceive you, and it says above all else.

That means that the heart is deceitful above all things. Your heart inside of you is more deceitful than most things out there. I remember that sermon Roger preached, if you remember, where the most dangerous thing in the world, and we're all wondering, is it money, is it this, is it that? And he finally comes, it's your own heart at the end.

And that's the truth. It's deceitful above all else. And it says, and desperately wicked, desperately wicked.

Do you know what the word desperate here means is involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad, it's impossible to deal with. Your heart is, it says it's impossible to deal with. It says only through Christ, only through the Holy Spirit can we actually get light on something.

So we need to be honest this morning that our heart wants to lead us astray and we can make scripture say whatever we want, including me standing here right now preaching. You know, it's true. I could skew stuff too.

And that's why the Bereans were more wise. Okay, so let's all turn to 1 Corinthians 11. And I want to just look at this passage quickly.

We do not have a lot of time, and I have a lot of material here, so I really would not like to have to break this into two sermons if possible. So we need to kind of move quickly where we can, but slow down if I possibly can where we need to. 1 Corinthians 11.

Let's just quickly read it through. It says, Be you followers of me even as I am of Christ. Now I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances as I deliver them to you.

But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man, the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.

For that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, for as much as he is the image and the glory of God, but the woman is the image of the man. For man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.

For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman, but all things of God.

Judging yourselves, is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering. But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. I want to point out a couple of things here.

First of all, in verse 2, we read that he has something. He says, I praise you, brothers. Now, I want to also point down, in verse 17, he has something he's not going to praise them about in this chapter.

In verse 17, it says, I declare unto you, I praise you not. So in this first part, he's saying he praises us for something. He praises the church of Corinth for something.

And he says, I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances. Now, this word here, ordinances, I'm not even going to begin to try to pronounce it. I don't know Greek like that.

But it means an apostolic revelation received from Christ and delivered. That's at least how Paul puts it. And we can get that by turning to two passages.

I want you to turn to 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2, chapter 2, verse 15. This is the same Greek word. Who can tell me what the word is here? Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by epistle.

What do you think that word for ordinances is? Tradition. So he tells the brothers over at Thessalonia that he says, stand fast in this ordinance, this tradition, which you have been taught, probably by Paul, either whether it was by an epistle or whether it was in person. Chapter 3, verse 6 says, Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourself from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us.

Same word, tradition. This verse here, Paul is saying that the traditions he was teaching them are so important that if somebody is not walking according to them, you should withdraw yourself. That's pretty strong language.

We could debate about that all day, what that means. But let's just remember that what Paul was using when he said an ordinance was very important. He was saying over to the Thessalonians, these traditions, these ordinances I'm passing unto you, you need to stand fast in and you need to guard them.

You need to withdraw yourself if people are not holding to them. Very important. Back to 1 Corinthians, chapter 11.

He goes on and he says, I would have you to know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is man and the head of Christ is God. I'll just quickly write on here. We can learn from this passage that this is about authority.

We know that he lists this out, this level of authority. And I will quickly say this is not that Christ is not any less of value or equality than God the Father. But he is less in authority.

He is less. He has subjected himself in authority in the same way woman is of no less value or equality than man. But God has set it up and he did it this way to say that woman is under and subjected to authority.

That's what we're learning in this passage. Verse 4 and 5. We read, it says, The head of every man is Christ and the head of woman is man and the head of Christ is God. Verse 4. Every man praying or prophesying with his head covered dishonors his head, but every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

The third thing we learn from this passage is this is not just talking to women. How many of you ever, when you think of the head covering, we all think this is a problem with women, right? Women need to wear head coverings, right? This is not that. It is to men and women.

Did you notice that? It says every man, every woman. This is a passage to both genders. And we need to remember that.

That this is not, he was addressing them. He was bringing some things to the Corinthians that they needed to maybe even change a little. But they needed to see that this passage was to men and women.

Now verse 6 says that it would be as if she, verse 5 says it would be as if she were shaven if she was not covered. And in verse 6 it says for the woman be not covered, let her be shorn, which is cut short. How many of you would like, ladies, how many of you would like to wake up this morning and realize all your hair just fell out? I think that's what Paul's trying to talk to.

He's trying to say that this would be not a good thing. You would struggle if all of your hair, your hair later on says is your glory. And this was what was hard for my wife.

When we started discussing the subject is we're talking about something that is very meaningful to a lady, her hair. And when we all of a sudden say it's all going to be gone, that becomes a shame for a woman. It's even a shame for a man, right? But maybe we can handle it a little more.

My wife asked me what would I feel like. Well, it's coming out slowly. I'm getting used to it.

And as we keep reading, we read in verse 10 that for this cause ought the woman have power on her head because of the angels. So we now read that it's not just about authority or creation order, but it's also because of this thing, the angels. Now, was it good angels? Was it bad angels? Was it the angels that are in each church, maybe pastors? I don't know.

We don't have time to get into that. Some of the early church felt it was bad angels. But there's a reason Paul gives.

He tells us it's because of the angels. And we're not here to decide why, but we're here to decide what Paul is meaning by all of this. Verse 10 also says that she should have a sign.

She should have, for this cause, she should have power on her head because of the angels. So not just the angels, but this word power. This word is translated in some places in your Bible.

I think it's the Greek word exousia, and it means authority. So sometimes it's translated power. Sometimes it's translated authority.

I think it's the same word where it says let everyone be subject to authorities or powers in the King James, so the higher powers. And so it's a sign of authority. When a woman wears a covering, she is saying, I'm subjected to God's plan and his authority plan.

And it's a symbol of power on her head, the Bible says. Okay. ESV translates this, she should have a symbol of authority.

And the New Living translates this, a woman should wear a covering on her head to show she is under authority. So we would read this passage and maybe we could just shut the book and say, okay, we all understand why we're wearing coverings and let's go home. But there's a lot of objections.

And that's where I thought instead of trying to read you a bunch of boring quotes and tell you what something might look like, we'll do it on this and maybe you can follow along a little better. So let's go through some of the objections. Can everybody see that? Is it clear? Let's make sure this can't be any clearer.

Okay. I think that's it. So the first objection, this is a pretty, I haven't really heard this one a lot, but this objection says that Paul didn't really intend this for all the churches.

He just intended it for the Church of Corinth. Let's all just jump back to chapter one of Corinthians. And I actually have it on the slide so you can watch it there too if you want.

But Paul says in verse one, Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ to the will of God and Sothenes our brother unto the church of God, which is at Corinth to them that are sanctified in Christ. Jesus called to be saints with all that in every place call upon the Lord, the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours. So Paul starts off this book saying this is not just about Corinth.

It's about the whole church with all that in every place call upon the Lord. And in many times, Paul tells churches, hey, why don't you share this book with that church? There wasn't some idea that it was just the things he had to say was just to one church, especially when we talk about ordinances. And one of the early church writers confirmed this.

He said this right here. This was 150 years later. He says throughout all of Greece and certain of its barbaric.

And by the way, we think of barb, barb, however you say that. We think of like guys gnawing on meat and like just savages. That's what I think about.

But barbaric simply meant outside of the Roman and Greco cultures. And so these were countries that were outside of those areas. So down in Africa, maybe, maybe there wasn't Roman rule there yet.

So what he's saying is throughout of all of Greece and even in barbaric provinces, like you might put foreign provinces, the majority of their churches keep their virgins covered. You may think, well, he said the majority. Well, you need to realize that this guy is writing a track or a treatise to the church, all the churches saying and trying to say why they need to cover their virgins, not just their wives.

But unmarried women. And the church was a little bit like, well, what should we do? Should we cover our unmarried women or should we just cover our married women? Is it a wife thing? Is it an all women thing? And so he's not just saying, he's specifically addressing the virgins. He's saying most churches cover their virgins, let alone all the churches cover their wives.

And I do have that. We could talk about that if I remember. ESV translates it, wives, and I might have that in my notes.

I think I do. Okay. So I think that's enough time on that objection because that's not a big one you hear very often.

Let's talk about this one. The head covering was a cultural practice. How many of you heard that before? That's probably the biggest one or the way I was raised.

I'll show you the other one. And so the idea was Paul was encouraging the church to do it the same as the society around them or because of the society around them. He had concerns.

So his commands were because of the culture around them. Maybe it was because of these things that would mean it was a bad thing. It's kind of the same thing as the holy kiss.

Was the holy kiss something that was just their culture? You know, we see certain cultures are all greeting each other on the cheek. And so we say, well, in our culture, it's a handshake. So should we change it to a handshake? Or is this an ordinance that we should follow directly? So that's the question here.

Was it something that was cultural or was it not? Well, to address that, I want to look at an image here. And I want to talk a little bit about the culture around them. Now, in this next image, you're going to see this is Augustus.

Now, Augustus was some kind of Roman Caesar or ruler. And this word, does anybody know what this word pontifix maximus means? Anybody? From my understanding, it means high priest. I think this maximus is like high.

I believe this pontifix means priest. And so he's in this sculpture. There's many, many sculptures of him in places where he doesn't have a head covering on.

But in this picture, he has a head covering on because he's acting as the high priest. That's significant because when he was, and this is not the high priest of Christianity, this is the high priest of their Roman gods, all of their temples, their pagan temples. So when he would go there and offer a sacrifice, he would pull his robe over his head.

That was their culture. In their culture, in the Roman culture, men covered their head when they were praying, when they were prophesying, when they were in a church service, essentially. Okay, here's another picture.

This is Augustus also as pontifix maximus. He's got, clearly has a head covering. If you're curious if that's a guy, he's got a beard too.

Here's a coin. This is Julius Caesar as pontifix maximus, and he has a covering on. It's very, very accepted, and you can do this.

You can just look it up, and I'm not pulling your leg. This is how their culture, the Roman culture, dealt with men in worship or temple-like situations. Here's a picture of a Roman temple sacrifice.

You can see this man over here, he's got this axe-like device. They're bringing this ox in, and the man here, the high priest, and this is pagan, is offering, he's got a covering on. Here's another one to make it a little clearer.

You can see that there's a bull back there, and it's a temple of Jupiter, optimus maximus. I'm not sure what that optimus stands for, but you can see the high priest here, or whatever he is, officiating the ceremony, has a covering on his head. So I'm just trying to show you that in Roman culture, men covered their heads in religious services.

Now this is a Greek picture, some old artifacts, some old art from that time. You can see up in the left, the woman does not have a covering on, and she is offering something, a liquid offering. Here, the man has a wreath on his head, but the woman here doesn't, and I don't know what the thing on her head is.

In the Greek culture, there wasn't any specified, you had to or you couldn't. They didn't do that, according to what I found. And then lastly, we all know the Jewish culture, priests covered their heads in the temple.

The point here is that there wasn't a specific cultural practice. Some cultures did it different, some cultures did it this way. I'm going to read you from Tertullian again, and he was from 150 years later, after Corinth.

He was an early church theologian, so he was living around the year 160 to 220, and he was probably writing this about 150 years after Corinth. He says, This is in his same treatise about virgins wearing veils, but he's saying, Don't try to ascribe this, don't try to assign this to some kind of custom. This is what we do.

I want to go up to the second objection. That's the objection of culture as in the culture right around them, and Paul is saying, let's do it like the culture. If all the culture shakes hands, let's shake hands.

If all the culture doesn't wear coverings, let's not wear coverings. I don't think that was the case. The second objection is the head covering was a culture practice, but a woman without a veil associated themselves with prostitutes.

Now, how many of you have heard this argument before? You bring it up, and the first thing somebody says is, Well, the Corinthians did that back then because there were prostitutes who would not wear a veil, and therefore, if the Christians would take their head coverings off, they would look like a prostitute. That's how the line of thinking goes. I've heard that one a lot.

That came into being in the Adam Clark commentary in 1831. This is from his commentary. This was and is a common custom through all the East, and none but public prostitutes go without veils, and if a woman should appear in public without a veil, she would dishonor her head, her husband, and she must appear like to those women who had their hair shorn off as the punishment of whoredom or adultery.

Sounds good. The problem is, David Berceau did a bunch of research into this, and this was the earliest commentary he could find it in with no evidence of it actually being the case, and I read multiple places who said the same thing. How many of you know who R.C. Sproul is? He is like a Calvinistic Presbyterian.

He's now dead, but he was a Calvinistic Presbyterian theologian. We wouldn't probably line up with him a lot of things, but he says he's a lone voice in the wilderness who still believes this. He can remember as a child being in his mother's church with the women wearing coverings and watched it leave.

We'll get to that later, but he made this point. He said, you have to interpret what is principle and what is custom. The burden of proof is always on the one who says it's custom rather than principle.

So if Paul was teaching custom, then we don't need to do it. If he was teaching a principle, then we need to do it. Which one is it? Is it custom or principle? He goes on, when the Apostle Paul gives the reason for instruction that he imposes upon the church, you never, never, never substitute a different one.

And Paul doesn't say that the ladies cover their head because of prostitutes walking around with bare heads. In fact, he appeals to creation, and if anything transcends, that means rises above and goes from generation to generation, local customs, it's creation order. That's this thing right here.

The reason he gives for the woman to cover is her glory and it shows submission to her husband. It's the submission of the wife to the husband cultural. Now, when he said that, he said this live, he said, it's looking like it is nowadays, and everybody chuckled because it's kind of becoming that way, right? It seems to be a cultural thought even there.

But the idea he's saying here is Paul gives us the reason. He doesn't say it was because of prostitutes. He gives us the reason.

He says it was because of this. He also said it was because of angels. Okay, so let's keep discussing.

David Burceau had an interesting, years ago when I first was studying this, he had a book called Common Sense, and I don't think it's in print anymore, but I really appreciated some of his thoughts in the book about this subject. And he says this, how about the interpretation that the only reason that this passage was written was so that the Christian women of Corinth wouldn't be mistaken as prostitutes or pagan priestesses? If that is what the passage is all about, why is part of it addressed to men? This isn't just about prostitutes, and he's telling the men they need to take off their coverings, remember? It's not just about women. It's not just about pagan priestesses.

He goes on, furthermore this interpretation contradicts what Paul said in verse 10. Remember, he said in verse 10, therefore the women ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. If this modern interpretation is correct, then Paul is either in error or he is lying.

Paul gives us the reason. We should be very, very careful to come up with our own reasons when Paul gives us the reason why. So here are some of the reasons Paul gives us.

He gives us, first of all, the creation order and the headship authority. He tells us about the angels. And then he tells us towards the end of the section about nature's witness.

That's where he said, does not even nature itself teach you with long hair and all of this? And he also says another reason is all the churches were practicing it. So this nature's witness here, what he's saying there is that God gave a woman long hair in a natural way to prove. Whether you're Christian or not, he gave you a natural covering.

And then Paul's point is to say, and in the spiritual way, you also need a covering. So he's trying to compare the two and say, this is an example of why we need to cover. Let's go on to the next objection.

We do not have enough time to get into that any deeper. How many of you heard this one? This is how I was raised. A woman's long hair is given to her covering.

And honestly, it makes a lot of sense. If you read over the passage quickly and you don't really study it, it makes sense because it says a woman's hair is given to her covering. And so for years, I never thought anything different because that's what it says in verse 15.

Her hair is given to her as a covering. So let's read the passage, and I should back up before I tell you. Let's do a little rule here.

If long hair equals a covering, and short hair equals no covering, if that's what it really is, then let's take the passage and let's replace the words. Let's put long hair where covering is and short hair where no covering is and see if it makes sense. This is to me one of the biggest arguments that this and one other that convinced me.

And here we go. Let's go through it. This is doing that.

Every man praying or prophesying with long hair dishonors his head. But every woman that prays or prophesies with short hair dishonors her head, for that is as if she were shaven. For if the woman has short hair, let her hair also be cut short.

But if it be a shame for a woman to have her hair cut short or shaven, let her have long hair. Now, I'll just give you a funny thing that happened. Last night I was working on this and one of my sons walked in the room and he reads this and he says, that makes no sense.

Why are you even thinking about putting that up? It makes no sense. And I had to explain that, well, that's the point. It doesn't make sense for it to say, for if the woman has short hair, let her also have short hair.

It doesn't work. David Purcell in that Common Sense book said this, to follow modern interpretation, Paul would be saying if a woman does not have long hair, let her also have her hair cut off. How reasonable is that? If a woman's hair is short, it is because it is already cut off.

Can a man's hair be long while he is doing other things? This is the second thing that convinced me. When he decided to prophesy, let's read that again. Can a man's hair be long while he is doing other things? Then when he decides to prophesy, he suddenly has short hair.

So I remember reading this passage and thinking, okay, this is a command for while I'm praying and prophesying. I'm supposed to uncover my head. If my hair is long hair when it's covered and short hair when it's uncovered, how do I go, okay, time to prophesy, make that short, and now it's time to not prophesy, make it... Okay, the other way around.

You know what I'm saying. How do you take that on and off? What's that? Okay, you have a way. You have a way to do it.

If Paul was addressing length of hair, why didn't he just come out and say it? And that's the point. I want to give one other thought on this, another thing that convinced me. It's two different Greek words.

So when we're talking way at the... There's two parts of the passage. There's the first part talking about the covering and the second part talking about the hair. Okay, and what's hard about all of this is the word is used covering and covering, right? So we all, for a woman's hair, it's given to her for a covering, and we're like, well, see, there you go.

But the thing is, is in Paul's language, when he wrote it in Greek, he did not use the same words. So it would be like if I read the first part of the passage and I didn't use the word covering. I used the word veil, and then I used the word covering here.

You would immediately maybe think of something different because I'm using two different English words. But see, the translators, not that it's wrong, they chose to translate both different Greek words the same thing. And so you can clearly see, I'm not a Greek scholar, but you can clearly see they're two different words, right? It doesn't take much looking to say these are two different words.

I know kata, I know that much means down upon, and I know peri means around. So periboleon is kind of a wraparound. Kata means on top.

Okay, there's a little bit more that helps with this idea of long hair. One of the early Christian writers from 130 AD, he translated 1110. Remember it says a woman has a sign of authority on her head? Well, he translated when he wrote it, a woman ought to have a veil, a kaloma, however you say that.

Now why is that significant? It's because he understood that whatever this power on her head would was a veil, when he wrote it. He knew it wasn't just a hair. He didn't say her hair.

A woman ought to have long hair upon her head. He said a woman ought to have a veil. Now this was an early church writer writing 130 years later or something like this, or maybe 100, and he's rewriting Corinthians.

Two other quick arguments here. Back in the book of Haman, well not Haman, but about Esther, Haman in Esther, there was an old Greek Old Testament, so that means all the underlying words were Greek instead of Hebrew. The word used when Haman hurried to his house morning, it was the same kata, it was the same Greek word kata used in verse 4 of this, and he was covering his head in mourning.

So the Jewish writers that knew Greek were using the same words as actual cloth. That's the point. I'm not going to take the time to go through these two arguments.

If you want to know about later, come talk to me about this word anti, and some people make a distinction about that, but we don't have time for that right now. So let's go with the fourth objection. Paul was saying if you don't want to wear a covering, you don't need to.

That is found in verse, I think it's 16, where he says, if any man seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. That's kind of a confusing sentence, I admit it. If you want to be contentious, we understand that.

We have no such custom. What does that mean? We have no such custom? Does that mean we don't do this? If you want to be contentious, we really don't do this. Or does it mean if you want to be contentious, this is just how we do it.

Which one does it mean? Here are the verses, just looking at a modern translation. There are three different translations of this verse. NASB says we have no other practice.

That makes it a little more clear. NIV says we have no other practice. And New Living, I mean, if you want to say, which one's the most modern and thought for thought and away from literal, they have the opportunity here to make it seem like it's for sure not anything.

They say we have no other custom than this. David Bersow says, if we say that Paul was saying there is no other practice than to be unveiled, so in other words, that's just not our practice, then why did Paul even bother to write this practice at all? We have him giving all this counsel about, you know, the angels and the order of creation. But then he says at the very end, if you don't like this, then don't follow them for no one else is following them either.

Using logic and common sense, that doesn't make sense to go through all these verses about this angels and higher order. And then at the end say, nobody's following them anyway, so don't worry about it. This is a Greek scholar.

He said, how do we recognize verse 2 with verse 16? That is to say, because the practice was paradosia, which is ordinances, it was put on the level of orthopraxy. When Paul says it was an ordinance, it puts it at a very high level. It was a doctrine that the early church followed.

Since it was on this level, most of the churches followed it religiously. Hence, Paul could appeal to what other churches were doing, verse 16, as an appeal to the reasonableness and pragmatic outworking of this tradition. What he's saying is, Paul could say, all the churches are doing it this way.

It's an ordinance that I'm passing to you. This is how we've all agreed to do it. And that was the case.

Here's a picture of all the churches. Rome's not in there, but thousands of miles apart or something like that, at least a thousand is what I read. And they were all practicing this according to early church writings.

And even what Paul said, this is what we do. Tertullian, 150 years later, said this, so too did the Corinthians themselves understand him. In fact, at this day, 150 years later, the Corinthians do veil their virgins, not just their wives, their virgins, what the apostles taught, their disciples approve.

Tertullian, a writer from Carthage, is saying it's still happening in Corinth. R.C. Sproul said, the wearing of fabric, a fabric head covering in worship was universally practiced of Christian women until the 20th century. What happened? Did we suddenly find some biblical truth to which the saints for thousands of years were blind? Or were our biblical views of women gradually eroded by the modern feministic movement that has infiltrated the church of Jesus Christ, which is the pillar and ground? The church has rejected, this is his son, the church has rejected this practice in the last 30 or 40 years, not because of new interpretive insights, but because of pressure from the world.

Generally, until 50 years ago, every woman in every church covered their head. What has happened in the last 50 years? We've had a feminist movement. Another objection is the head covering only needs to be worn in a church service.

We have to move along. But you can clearly see that when we start off with 1 Corinthians 11, he does not address coming together as a church until verse 17. So everything up to that point, we can't say for sure is in a church service.

And it doesn't make a lot of sense because in chapter 14, he tells women they need to be silent in the church, right? So why would he now say, this is a church service because you're praying and prophesying. And then in two, three chapters later, he says, oh, and be silent. This is obviously a gift that was given to women.

You are to pray and you are to prophesy, just you're not to do it in a church service according to what Paul says in chapter 14. So this is my most exciting part that I want to talk about. And I want to, one of the other things that convinced me was church history.

And sorry, if we go a little over, I'll try to move quickly, but I don't want to miss what's important here. Like R.C. Sproul said, he said, who are we, if this has been the practice for 2000 years, who are we now to now come up with new biblical insights? Here is one of the earliest writings. It says from Clement, he was a theologian from Alexandria.

He said, women and men are to go to church decently attired for this is the wish of the word since it is becoming to pray unveiled because of the angels let her be veiled. Tertullian. It is not strange since it is not among strangers that we find it, the head covering, but among those with whom we share the law of peace and the name of brotherhood.

In fact, at this day, still their virgins veil, what the apostles taught their disciples approve. I already read that earlier. Hippolytus.

He was a Roman theologian. He said, let all the women have their heads covered with an opaque clock, not with a veil of thin linen, for this is not a true covering. Obviously he thought of it as a cloth.

And I wish Jeremy Brackett was here. He'd tell me how to say this word. I'm Bryce sister.

He was in the 300s, fourth century. Indeed it talking about the man's head ought not to be hidden for the glory of God is seen in the man. A woman therefore ought to cover her head in the church out of reverence.

Jerome. He was in the fourth century. He was the one who translated the Latin Vulgate and he was describing women in monasteries and he said, he said they would not go about with heads uncovered in defiance of the apostles command for they wear a close fitting cap.

Christosanem. He was a Bible commentator. He said, however, even if the Corinthians were then contentious, yet now the whole world has both received and kept the law.

He said they may have been struggling with this at the beginning because if any man seemed to be contentious, but he's saying now the whole world's practicing it. Augustine. It is not becoming even in married women to uncover their hair since the apostle commands women to keep their heads covered.

And just to give a quick, I can't take the time to quote all the quotes I read in this. If you ever want them all, I can give you some really great resources. But in the Catholic Church, in the Council of Angers in 453, they upheld the practice of a covering, a real cloth covering.

And the Council of Auden, they upheld it again in 578. In the Synax of Auxerre in France, they upheld it in 585. Pope Nicholas upheld it in 866.

The Council of Liège in 1287. And then in 1917, the Code of Canon Law, which said men in a church or outside a church, while they are assisting at sacred rites, shall be bareheaded. Women, however, shall have a modest covering.

Sorry, I said that wrong. Shall be covered, have a covered head and be modestly dressed, especially when they approach the table of the Lord. That was in 1917, within our century.

Here's a list of people that we know. There was a whole bunch of more names I never knew, but these are names I knew. Thomas of Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Bunyan, Roger Williams, Charles Spurgeon, the Church of England, the Methodist Church, John Wesley had writings about it, the Moravian Church, the Salvation Army.

You mentioned them with their big hats. Well, they wore that. The actual commander guy who wrote for them, I don't remember his name, he said it was because of 1 Corinthians 11 that they wore those hats.

So now we're going to look at some pictures. Now, this is from the catacombs from the year 200. That is a long time ago.

Whenever you see the hands up like this, this is what Christians did to pray. I thought that's interesting. Remember, it says I would have men raise holy hands from prayer.

In all of the early pictures of Christianity, you'll see their hands up, and that means they're praying. Maybe we need to start practicing that more. But, of course, nobody would see anybody doing it because we're all closing our eyes while we're doing it, but this is on the catacomb of Priscilla.

And this is supposedly her praying. Notice the guy in the background doesn't have his head covered. Neither do those guys over there, but she does.

Here's another catacomb from the year 200 of a woman praying. It's in Rome. This is in the year 300, a picture of Gaiordani.

And it's her catacomb in Rome. You can see she's got a very thin covering on her head. This here is in the 300s.

It's gold glass in a catacomb in Rome. You can see she's praying, and you can see she's got a covering on her head. Here's another picture from the 400s.

This is a mosaic from the tomb of Victoria. She's got her hands out like this, like she's praying. She's got a shawl wrapped around and up over her head.

This is from the 400s, another praying lady. This is from the 500s. I think this one is so neat.

It was from Italy, and it's a fresco. The sign above her head is the sign for Christ, so it means she was a Christian. It's over her tomb.

The two books here and here have the spellings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Gospels. The flames coming out, I only can imagine, represent the fire of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God. She's obviously praying.

She has her hands up, and she has a covering on. I think that's neat. This is from the 900s.

The inscription I saw about the artwork was silent prayer, but she obviously has a covering on. Here is a choir of virgins. This is on the benedictional, a super old book.

It's really interesting, really, really old from the 900s of these old drawings. This is called The Choir of the Virgins, and this is in England. Notice the ladies, the virgins, all have coverings on.

This is from the 1100, 12th century. It's a crypt of San Baggio in Italy, and she has a covering on. You could go through this over and over and over.

There are pictures upon pictures from back in those times in the 1000s, in the 1200s and 1500s, a lot of, like this. These are all paintings from those times. I was just struggling a little, because here's the deal.

You see a woman here with a covering on, but you see a man with a hat on. Right? You see a woman here with a covering, and you see a man with a hat on. So what's the deal? I can't figure it out.

Same thing here. A woman with a covering and a man with hats on. This is a painting from 1504.

So it's obviously a normal practice for women to wear coverings all the time in normal life, but it wasn't so much a practice, I guess, for guys all the time to wear, they seem to wear hats sometimes outside of, so what I thought to myself is we need to look for paintings and engravings and photos with people in church services. If I can find those, then we can see what people were doing. So here's the first, one of the oldest ones I found.

This is from the 1400s. It's an Italian painting, and it's called Saint Bernardo Preaching. And when, it's not in a church service, by the way, it's out, it's, he's preaching, but it's outside, so that may have been considered differently, but either way, zooming in, you can see these ladies have coverings on.

And, what I found interesting here is this guy's taking off his hat, like he's coming into a church service. Not sure. This is from the 1500s, and it's a Dutch painting of Martin Luther preaching.

I think it's on a, like an altar or something in a building back there, I think Germany. And just look at that a little bit. Martin Luther's preaching up here.

They're giving her communion. They're giving him communion. They're listening to the preaching.

They're baptizing a baby over here. Let's zoom in on that a little bit. So on the left, she's got a covering on clearly.

These other ladies have coverings on clearly, but the men don't have coverings on. On the right, Martin Luther doesn't have a covering. The men don't have coverings, but the ladies have coverings.

This is a painting from the 1600s, and I think it's a Catholic service, but you can clearly see the men have taken down their hoods, and the women have coverings on. Way in the back, you can see men taking down their hoods. This is an interesting picture.

This is an evangelical congregation, the Church of Zeis in Netherlands. And so you can kind of see up here, these ladies, I think they're like onlookers. They've got their big hats on.

This is from the 1700s. These guys are very sober sitting up here. These guys are all segregated from the ladies back here, and notice what they have in their hands.

They have their hats off. We'll zoom in. They have their hats off, and the ladies have all their coverings on.

Here's another picture. I had to throw this one in because I knew some of you would be excited to see Anabaptists, and I found one actually called Mennonites too of this old 1700 engraving. But I think these might have been Baptists.

I'm not sure what Baptists come from because at one of them, I saw them actually baptizing, like immersing. But notice the ladies all have coverings. How would you like to come to church service like this? All the ladies face the ladies, and then the guys sit around the back.

Some weird seating practices back then. There's one Lutheran. I saw all the men sit around the corners, and they had these little places.

They stood like this, and they had like little hands, and all the ladies sat in the middle. We think we have it all together. But the point is, they all have coverings on, and you can see hats hanging here.

They don't have hats, and these guys are holding their hats. These guys serving do not have hats on. This is a drawing, I think, from the 1800s.

It was called Singing in Church, and you can see that the ladies have bonnets on, and the young boys don't. There's another one, another drawing from the 1800s. Obviously, this is when we're moving into hats.

You can see the ladies now have hats on. The men do not have coverings on. Another drawing from the 1800s.

These ladies' dresses are a little extreme, but that's not the point today. The point is that they have coverings on, and the men don't. Notice this guy.

He's holding his hat. The men don't have hats on. The ladies all have coverings on.

This is a 1903 picture from a Greek Orthodox church in London. You can see it's quite a lot going on there, and it's hard to see down here, but the ladies are sitting here, and the men are sitting here. They're sitting segregated.

You can kind of see they have hats, but I did zoom in. You can see that they all have hats on. This is in the early 1900s, and over on the left, the guys all don't have hats.

This is from a 1940s Catholic service. Notice all the hats. It's pretty quick to see.

This is from a 1940s Baptist service. All the ladies have hats. I think the men are sitting back here.

The preacher doesn't have a hat on. This is a 1960s evangelist. Now, this is interesting.

We're in the 60s now, and we still have hats being worn, but if you look out through the congregation, you'll see a couple ladies not wearing hats. This is a 1960s Lutheran service. Same thing.

Still hats. A Catholic service in the 1960s. This is a Methodist service.

If you look real hard, you'll see little hats still on people. Now we're to the 1980s. What changed in just 60 years, in just 20 years, in just 40 years? How do these people's children... I was listening to a sermon, and he said, I never heard from the older generation that this was even a thing.

How do people all wear hats to church, and then their children don't even know why and stop? Unless it only turned into it was just something they did because they didn't even know why. This is another picture from the 1980s. No more hats.

They're gone. I'll leave it with this. We're going to close here.

The church has rejected this practice in the last 30 or 40 years, not because of new interpretive insights, but because of pressure from the world. Generally, until 50 years ago, every woman in every church covered their head. What has happened in the last 50 years? We've had a feminist movement.

Just to close here, I believe the reason why I practiced the head covering, why I chose to associate myself with a church that believes in practicing the head covering, was because, first of all, the text supports it. We looked at the text. We looked at how it didn't make sense without.

Second of all, I believe because church history supports it. The early church supported it. All through history, it supports it.

It seems a little hard for me to say we knew better than the people of the early 1st century, 2nd century. We knew better than them. They lived.

They spoke Greek. They knew Greek. They knew what was meant.

Yet, somehow, nowadays, we, 2,000 years later, have a better idea of how to interpret Greek. To me, that's dangerous. Anyway, I know this wasn't necessarily an inspirational sermon, but I'm hoping it just clears up some of those doubts in your heart, those times when you feel like, why do we do this anyway? Is this even needed? Is this even something that nobody else is doing it? I want to encourage you.

You're doing it for a reason. You're doing it for a good reason. I think God honors you for that.

I believe with having this symbol of authority on your head, he empowers you. He sends his Holy Spirit. Anyway, I thank you for your time and attention, and God bless each one of you.