I've been slipping in my usual thoughts on the weekends. One that I noticed this May term teaching NT is that 1 Corinthians 11 combines both the ancient sense of husband headship with women engaging in prophetic ministry.
In 1 Corinthians 11, it is assumed without argument that women pray and prophesy (and thus speak) in the Christian assembly (that is, in church). The issue with the veiling is so that they can do so without shaming their "heads" (that is, their husbands).
This is a case study in how women can engage in ministry to men without contradicting the headship of their husbands. The point is that one cannot use the headship passages to argue against women in ministry. 1 Corinthians 11 speaks of women who both "preach" to men and yet who are under the headship of their husbands!
Of course I personally see husband headship as a cultural thing (cf. my observation that this very language is not biblical but secular in Paul's day). In our culture it makes little sense to institutionalize the husband as the head of the household whether he be an idiot or a genius. Christ has redeemed woman from the Fall and in the kingdom there will be no such distinctions. Why would we institutionalize something in conflict with the kingdom trajectory?
This brings me to another thought I had of late. These matters of concrete living in this world have so much to do with how things play out in human cultures. One startling discovery I realized in the last 6 months is an inconsistency in my biblical theology on the issue of remarriage after divorce.
With regard to divorce, the NT has strong words against a man or a woman who would sin against their spouse and children by divorcing them. There is also the sin against God when such things proceed from selfishness or the desire to sleep with a person other than one's spouse. Intentional sin is never excusable.
However, I and others have at times belabored over the biblical teaching on permissable circumstances for remarriage. Important here is probably the matter of where a divorced person stands in relation to their former spouse. Is reconciliation possible?
But the "aha" moment for me mainly came from reading Richard Hays' discussion in Moral Vision. I had continued even to the present operating with the old legalistic, "biblical legislation is transcultural" paradigm in thinking about remarriage.
But of course, if Christ's death atones for all sin, then this fact has implications for the divorced. Forgiveness (with all the usual stipulations with regard to true repentance and such) implies a return to purity, a clean slate. The limitations on remarriage in the biblical text, which themselves hold a double standard depending on whether you are a woman (can't) or a man (discouraged but not sinful) relate directly to ancient Mediterranean culture.
Biblical limitations on remarriage after forgiveness of divorce by God have to be seen as just as time bound repercussions as the continuance of slavery or the subjection of the wife to the husband. If atonement does not imply a restored virginity, then Christ's death has not truly wiped the slate clean. Limitations on remarriage can only have to do with concrete earthly realities, not with timeless theological principles.
What startles me is that it took me so long to see that this is a consequence of full atonement!
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The "catch" here used to be the notion that once a person was remarried every time they had sex with their new spouse they were sinning against their [original] spouse--a willful and continual sinful pattern. But I know few folk who take that position now.
But even in those days there was the pre-marital sex issue. Some thought that the first person you slept with was legally your first spouse---and then if you then married (after pre-marital sex with another person) you were sinning every time you had sex with your spouse. Even the many conservative folk rejected this as "let" the atonement cover this pre-marital sin.
Then there was pre-conversion divorces which were "covered" also even then.
The challenge I see today might be more from willful "upgrade divorce" where one partner dumps their spouse "because I can do better" or sometimes "I was so young and didn't know what I was doing" or "I got the wrong one" or "he has changed."
However a bigger issue for today for some is the separation of sex from marriage--moving sex back to the dating relationship and living together before deciding to get married. Marriage not meaning "we will have sex now" but meaning "we intend to stay together for life and submit to the economic legal side of marriage. It seems that culture today teaches us to be "word-virgins" more than physical virgins--that is refusing to say the words "I love you" sometimes until long after sex. Some day I'd love to hear you speak to this issue from a biblical perspective. To what extent can a young person "rely" on the atonement for repeated forgiveness of serial sexual relationships on the way to marriage?
Ken,
Thanks for these words...especially the last line, "What startles me is that it took me so long to see that this is a consequence of full atonement!" For it takes someone to come out of years of paganism to really appreciate the full effects of the atonement. It seems to me that folks raised in the church talk about Jesus taking care of (little) sins.
When I speak as a guest lecturer in Marriage and Family classes, I often speak of a restoration of virginity. But its sad to say; its the perspective that I come from.
Keith, one catch I think you hint at is the catch of the unrepentant, the person who uses the idea of forgiveness as an excuse to sin, the diabetic who goes on a drinking binge and gives himself an extra shot of insulin. We don't fool anyone when we play these games--God knows whether we are truly repentant or not, even when we try to fool others under the guise of such explanations.
Dave, you are a consummate example of true purity by God's grace!
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