Long time reader, first time caller! I was so honored and excited to chat with Marg Mowczko after fifteen years of learning from her through her articles on her blog, www.margmowczko.com, and Facebook interactions. I was so delighted by her genuineness, humor and intelligence.
In this episode of The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast, I interviewed Marg Mowczko, a prominent voice in the conversation about women in ministry and biblical interpretation. We discussed Marg’s faith journey, the complexities of understanding Scripture, and the impact of patriarchy on faith. Marg shared insights on key biblical passages from the Apostle Paul on men and women, emphasizing the importance of context and the need for a more egalitarian approach to ministry. Our conversation highlighted the transformative power of faith and the necessity of using one’s gifts to serve and uplift others.
Visit www.margmowczko.com to explore Marg’s fantastic articles; if you scroll down to the bottom of her About Page, you can listen to her beautiful music. And here are links to her articles dealing with the passages we talked about in this conversation: 1 Timothy 2:11-15, Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11:2-16
Also, I mentioned an excellent book I read in seminary called Stages of Faith that approaches faith from psychology’s stage theory, that describes the movement of faith from unambiguous to accepting more mystery with maturity.
Marg’s last word: Paul’s overarching theology of ministry was: you have a gift, use it, use it to build up others. Because salvation builds up, belonging to Jesus builds up. It’s not about subordinating people.
You can watch our episode on YouTube or find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and more! Please help us spread the word by subscribing, rating, and sharing with a friend.
TRANSCRIPT:
Ruth Perry (00:15)
My guest today on the Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast is the wonderful Marg Mowczko. I feel like I’ve known you forever because I started reading your blog probably 15 years ago. I was a complementarian and I heard God’s call to ministry and so I had a lot of questions about that because I had been reading the Bible through a patriarchal lens all my life at that point. I was 30 then. And so I found your blog, margmowczko.com and I read all your articles and they were so accessible and so easy to follow. And so you have been a guide to me, a spiritual sibling in the faith that I’m just so honored that you would come on my podcast and chat today. I started my blog about empowering women in ministry.
And the work that you’ve done is just such a resource for the church. And so that’s what I want to talk to you about today. But first, I’d love to hear more about your personal faith journey yourself, Marg. How did you come to know the Lord? Did you grow up in the faith?
Marg Mowczko (01:15)
I grew up in a fairly dysfunctional family but my mum had a strong faith and we went to church every Sunday in a Dutch Reformed Church which was quite staid but I still loved it. I just loved everything about church and I would just watch and sing hymns, but it wasn’t until I was about 10 in year 5 that I felt like I really started a relationship with Jesus.
So I went to a camp. My mum by then was a single mum and she was working. So every holiday she would send us off to Christian camps, which were the best time. And in my adult years, I did a lot of camp ministry because camps were so influential on my faith. But anyway, at the very first camp, at the end of the day, there was a speaker who got up and spoke and I still remember the story and it’s you know about a girl called Elizabeth yada yada yada and so when that story ended I knew exactly what I wanted to do and while all the other girls went off to get their hot chocolate at the end of the evening, I went to a dormitory and I just prayed and I said Jesus I want you, words to that effect, and I want the Holy Spirit.
Because it was the first time I really heard and I paid attention to the Holy Spirit and I actually had a really strong tangible unexpected experience because, I wasn’t hyped up at all, I was excited because I’d heard about Jesus in a way that I’d never heard before and I was excited about the Holy Spirit but I certainly wasn’t expecting anything and I just got flooded with something and because of that I’ve never been able to doubt God. I still have lots of questions but because as I get older God seems to be getting more mysterious and more big so I have more questions than ever but yeah right from right from that moment.
And I know sounds cliched, but I was totally in love with God and at that moment and ever since I knew that nothing was as important as serving God and that feeling has never left me. So even though I’ve had an ordinary life, I’ve got married, I’ve had kids, I’ve had jobs. but serving God was actually always has been my top priority and I’ve had a few more experiences like that along the way where God really unexpectedly just did something.
Ruth Perry (03:55)
I relate to that. I feel like I’ve never personally had doubt, although I’ve had a lot of questions. I read a book in seminary called Stages of Faith. Have you ever read Stages of Faith?
Marg Mowczko (04:07)
No, but the title does ring a bell.
Ruth Perry (04:11)
It’s by James Fowler and he talks about how our faith develops similarly to how we go through stages, developmentally, emotionally and mentally, and that faith goes from being very black and white to more mysterious as you mature in your faith, which is really beautiful. That you’re able to just open up your hands and kind of accept more mystery.
Marg Mowczko (04:34)
Yes, yeah, especially with reading the Bible. People often say there are no contradictions in the Bible and I just find that statement quite unhelpful and I don’t even want to use the word contradictions, but there’s a lot of layers and I just quite like the tension that the whole Bible narrative gives to our faith. But you know, there is, is a trajectory that we can outline in the Bible, you know, pre-fall, fall, lots of messy stuff, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.
But yeah, I’m really happy living with not the contradictions but with the different messages that the Bible gives. Actually, Sometimes I’m not happy I should say that because there are some horrible stories in the Bible as well. But I love the Bible and I don’t mind that sometimes there aren’t clear cut answers in the Bible. Yeah I’m fine with that.
Ruth Perry (05:36)
So when you were 10, you became a Christian at camp. And then did you remain Dutch Reformed?
Marg Mowczko (05:43)
I was a kid, so I still went to my mum’s church. I went to an Anglican church and a Presbyterian church every now and then because my mum did night duty on Saturday night so sometimes she was unable to go to church the next day so sometimes because I love church that much that I would just walk to the nearest churches and that was a Presbyterian church or an Anglican church so it’s very ecumenical right from the get-go.
Ruth Perry (06:09)
Where did your faith go from there?
Marg Mowczko (06:11)
Yeah, so at that camp I learnt that if you wanted to be a Christian you had to read the Bible and it was recommended that you start at John.
And because I was a very good girl in those days and did as I was told, I did that. And so I got a Bible. We had one at home and I read John and I loved it. I loved it. And so then I just kept reading and I read Acts and I’ve still to this day, I remember reading Acts and trying to get my head around what was happening in the church at that time, which looked nothing like the church I went to.
And then of course you read Romans which still blows my mind. So I’ve been a Christian 50, I’m 60 now, for 50 years and every now and then I think oh I should read Romans again and every time I do it just blows my mind and I just kept going. And I should say almost from the get-go too that I’ve just loved Paul. I’ve never had a problem with Paul. Yeah I really love his letters.
Ruth Perry (07:17)
Did you have a call to ministry as a child as well or did that come later?
Marg Mowczko (07:23)
Well, like I said, almost from the beginning, I felt that there was nothing as important as serving God. And this was a conversation I had with God a lot growing up because in the Dutch Reformed Church, the only women we saw as ministers, and none of them had a title or a position, let alone a paid position, was the organist, the pastor’s wife and the very occasional missionary woman that we heard about. And I’ve never really liked organ music. I didn’t want to be a pastor’s wife because to me, even as a girl, I looked like she was missing out on all the fun. She was serving coffee and cake while the men were having these great discussions that I wanted to be a part of.
And a missionary’s wife looked like it was too hard. So I didn’t want to do any of those things. So I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. So from a really young age, I just did whatever I could do. So I was the youngest Sunday school teacher ever. I played guitar in church services once we had guitar in the evening services and camp ministry. I was like the youngest, like the very first camp went to people mistook me for another camper that’s kind of how young I was and so I got involved in whatever I could get involved with.
Ruth Perry (08:46)
When did you start writing music? I was just listening on your website to some of your music and you are a songbird. Such a beautiful voice, such a gift.
Marg Mowczko (08:54)
Thank you. Music’s been a huge part of my life, a huge part and I think almost as soon as I started picking up the guitar, I think because with piano, especially the way I was taught piano, it didn’t really lend itself to songwriting but with guitar, pretty much as soon as I started learning guitar, I just started writing songs as well. So that was my main ministry for many years and then I lost my voice with menopause which I’m still really devastated about so I can barely sing at all which is horrible but that’s when I started writing my blog I just put more effort into writing.
Ruth Perry (09:38)
What year did you start your blog?
Marg Mowczko (09:39)
I’m really bad with dates but you said you’ve been reading it for about 15 years and I think that’s probably when I started it. So before then I had a MySpace. I’m gonna say 2009.
Ruth Perry (09:53)
Wow, so I might have been one of your very first followers.
Marg Mowczko (09:56)
I know when you said that I thought wow you must have found me pretty early on if you’ve been reading my blog for 15 years.
Ruth Perry (10:04)
Yeah, so I thought you would be an excellent guest for the Beautiful Kingdom Builders audience because I know just how transformative and how hard the work has been for me to undo patriarchal interpretation of Scripture and all the ramifications of patriarchy in my life and in the conditioning that I received growing up with that worldview and that perspective.
And it’s just very insidious and hard. I mean, the fruit of patriarchy from my perspective now, is just so bad. But I can 100 % empathize and have compassion for people who have that perspective because for 30 years of my life, that’s how I read the Bible and understood it. And it really did feel like scales falling off of my eyes
to read the Bible through a new lens. But something that you do on your blog is you take passages about women and explain them so clearly and then you get a lot of engagement from people who disagree with you. And so you’re a very valuable person to just explain both views of a passage. Because a lot of people are trying to convert you back to patriarchy, I assume.
Marg Mowczko (10:57)
Hmm. Yeah, I don’t know if I get as much pushback as some people, but I definitely get some pushback. And sometimes it can just be nasty, but sometimes it can be constructive. But the thing is, makes me think harder. And so often that pushback is helpful to me because it helps me to explain things better. It sharpens my focus. It makes me adjust my views if I need to because I really try to be careful not to overstate things. I really want to stay as true to what I think the Bible is saying and not overstate things.
Ruth Perry (12:03)
I was wondering if you could walk us through a few passages, maybe from Paul or wherever you would like to go in the Bible. Kind of like you do with your “Nutshell” articles. And maybe start with what would the complementarian interpretation of that passage be and then explain it to us from the egalitarian view, if that’s possible.
Marg Mowczko (12:25)
Right, yeah, yeah so that’s something I kind of don’t do a lot. I do critique views. I really try not to critique people. That’s one of my values as well. Because like you, I grew up hearing, I didn’t know the word complimentarian, but I heard and I saw, I saw patriarchy demonstrated in the church all the time and you just absorb it as a child.
Ruth Perry (12:39)
Yeah.
Marg Mowczko (12:54)
But in my writing, I tend to just go, this is what I think, without necessarily critiquing the complementarian view. And then people hopefully can make up their own mind. Sometimes I kind of forcefully say, well, this is what I think the Bible says. But sometimes I actually go, well, these are ideas and…
Not that I actually say you can make up your own mind. I really hope people do make up their own mind or that they’ll at least think about it. So, but let’s start with 1 Timothy 2:12, perhaps, because that’s the big one. That’s the one that gets quoted at me all the time, because I do tend to focus more on women in ministry than women in marriage for some reason. But anyway, so with 1 Timothy 2:12, my approach is to look at the context. So 1 Timothy 2:12 says I do not allow a woman to teach and I put a comma there or to authentein is the Greek word there, a man and authentein is a really key word that I’ll come to in a minute.
So if we just start there that’s really not a good idea we at least have to look at the very verse above it which is, A woman needs to learn in quietness and in full and then we have this word submission which I’ll have a look at in a minute too. Those two verses really belong together because in the Greek it starts off with this little phrase in quietness in verse 11 and verse 12 ends with this little phrase in quietness. So it’s an inclusion, it’s a unit. I know not everyone thinks that Paul wrote 1 Timothy but I’m just going to use the word Paul. So Paul said to Timothy, a woman needs to learn in quietness and in full submission.
I do not allow a woman to teach, comma, and the comma is in the King James. So it’s not just me who thinks that comma should go after that. Yeah. And then it ends with in quietness. So that’s a unit. So to me, if we look at it in this tiny bit of context, let alone in the full context, it’s good advice. A woman who needs to learn, she needs to learn, she’s not allowed to teach anyone and then and she’s not allowed to authentein a man. And authentein there’s been so many people writing on this word including me I think I’ve got four maybe five articles just on authentein to see how it’s used in other Greek texts because Greeks been a really big part of my faith journey too. So you know I love the Bible.
At the age of 10 I picked up John, loved it and I’ve been reading the Bible ever since and at some point I found out that the New Testament was written in Greek and I thought one day I’m going to learn how to read it in Greek and that’s something that I’ve been pursuing for a couple of decades now so I can sort of pick up the New Testament and read it in Greek and I read other texts as well in Greek.
So verse 11 and 12, a woman needs to learn, she’s not allowed to teach. Well, if a woman still needs to learn, then yeah, she shouldn’t really be teaching and she shouldn’t be domineering a man. And that’s how I take authentein or controlling a man. And there’s a few English translations that are now conveying that sense because it doesn’t have anything to do with ordinary authority.
If you look at how this word is used in other Greek texts, it’s actually quite a rare word as a verb, which is another thing. This word, authentein there’s a couple of relative nouns, but I actually don’t think looking at the nouns is helpful to understanding the verbs because, you know, language can do different things over the years and I think the verb has a separate sense to one of the nouns that means murderer. I don’t think understanding it as to do with murder has any value.
So that’s how I understand those two verses but if we sort of zoom out a little bit further if we look at 1 Timothy 2 beginning at 8 all the way to 15 because context is everything it’s just everything all of 1 Timothy 2, 8 to 15 is Paul addressing problems in the Ephesian Church, poor behavior in the Ephesian Church. He’s addressing the problem of angry men in verse 8, he’s addressing the problem of overdressed rich women in verses 9 and 10 and then he goes from the plural men and women to singular which is a clue that now he’s talking about husband and wife relationship because people think it’s about ministry and it could be both because teaching is to do with ministry but the authentein bit I think is to do with a husband and wife. A woman isn’t allowed to dominate her husband and Chrysostom uses exactly the same word a couple of hundred years later when he says a husband shouldn’t authentein his wife.
Because this is not healthy relationships. But Chrysostom thought that husbands should sort of have authority, but they shouldn’t authentein. And authentein there is translated in some English translations as act the despot.
It’s this controlling even in like really well-known lexicons. I don’t know if you can see the lexicons this one right there Yeah, the first definition is to have full power over. We’re not talking about a benign authority or a benign leadership. We’re talking about this domineering full power over someone and Paul saying I don’t want a woman to have that over a man probably a wife to husband relationship, Chrysostom says I don’t want husbands to have that relationship. It’s bad behavior. Authentein has no place in Christian relationships. So Paul’s addressing bad behavior, he’s not saying no woman anywhere for all time is allowed to teach a man.
And it’s got nothing to do with healthy authority within the church. And I don’t think that’s very hard to see that even in English translations, except I guess when they use the word exercise authority. Exercise authority is a really unfortunate translation of authentein.
Ruth Perry (19:14)
Well, that would be one of those examples of a contradiction where Paul is seemingly saying women can’t teach, but then he sends Phoebe with his letter to the Roman church and commends Priscilla for teaching. so it’s easy when you’re reading the Bible and latching onto a verse like 1st, Timothy 2 12, where you’re crystallizing a worldview from one sentence in the Bible and then you have to ignore other passages in order to do that.
Marg Mowczko (19:38)
Yeah, from one verse, yeah. Yeah, it’s literally one verse in the Bible that says a woman is not allowed to teach and the church has made a mile out of that verse and not understood that Paul’s addressing bad behavior here.
And the fact that in a lot of discussions, ministry comes back to authority, authority, authority over is really unfortunate. So to me, the authority to minister in anything is an authorization. I prefer the word authorization, an authorization from God, an authorization from the Holy Spirit who gives gifts. And then hopefully the congregation recognizes those gifts.
But ministry is service. It’s not about an authority over someone. We’re all brothers and sisters. So the fact that 1 Timothy 212 is used so much, but also the fact that people have sort of really hung onto this word authority that occurs only in English translations, obviously, because it’s an English word, and then made a mile out of it, is really sad. It’s not about having authority over anyone. It’s about serving people and using your gifts.
Ruth Perry (20:53)
How do you explain Paul’s use of the word head then in Ephesians and Corinthians about the man?
Marg Mowczko (20:58)
Yeah. So first of all, I prefer to look at Paul’s use of head in Ephesians separately, because in Ephesians he uses it three times in a head-body metaphor. And the way he uses it is just astounding and that’s not an overstatement because Paul’s vision of the church is really quite mind-blowing. So in Ephesians 1, Paul uses head in two ways.
Also, head to me is a sort of spatial metaphor, head is at the top and he uses head and feet so that’s very spatial, head is like the most important or the most high status person and feet is the lowest status person. So it is about status, it is about spatial things but he also uses it in Ephesians 1 in a head body metaphor and the church is not under Jesus feet in Ephesians 1. We are his body and we are his fullness because I think Paul is speaking in the present tense but we are the fullness of Christ so if we are the fullness of Christ where is the hierarchy there is hierarchy in head feet absolutely but where’s the hierarchy with head and body if we are the embodiment of Christ’s fullness?
So I will admit that I don’t actually understand fully what it means to be Christ’s fullness and also fullness itself is a theological term that was used in certain ways especially in the second century that I can’t quite put my finger on but if we then go to Ephesians 4 again we have head body metaphor and this one’s a lot easier to understand and this is where it says that Jesus gave gifts to be apostles and prophets pastors teachers so that we, the church, hold onto the head and we become like the head. We grow to the stature and maturity of the head. So again, we have the head who, in its most basic metaphorical sense, has sort of a higher status because it’s at the top spatially.
But again, we’re not his feet. We are connected and growing and fastened to this head so that we become, the full stature of Christ. So if there is a difference in hierarchy, it’s not that much if we are to measure up to the full stature of Christ. in a context we’ve read how Paul uses head, in Ephesians 1, head, body in Ephesians 4 and the underlying sense or the main sense of course is connection and unity because the head and body, they’re together, they belong together. So if we’ve been reading along and not just sort of dive in at Ephesians 5 where it says Christ is the head of the church and this is the example that Paul then gives to husbands.
We won’t be having this sense of head here, feet here because the wife isn’t the feet, the wife is the body connected to the head and often when we get to Ephesians 5 and the picture of Christ in the church, we often sort of focus on Christ giving himself sacrificially and even though the cross isn’t mentioned and death isn’t mentioned, that’s usually what we have in our head, but Christ lowered himself even just by coming to earth as a human, he literally came down to our level.
But that’s only half the story because Christ also sanctifies the Church and kind of lifts the Church up to his level because in verse 27 I think it says that he sanctifies the Church so that he can present the Church to himself and the Greek word there is endoxis which sometimes is translated splendour which to me doesn’t mean a lot but the main definition of endoxis is high ascension which again is kind of a status word. So Christ came down to our level but he lifts the church in high esteem and so again it’s not head feet it’s head body and high esteem and you know I’m reluctant to say that we are on exactly the same level as Jesus I’m very reluctant to say that.
But the way that Paul speaks about the church, it’s pretty close. He says we’ve been raised in heavenly places belonging to Jesus, becoming his child is about being elevated. It’s about being raised. It’s about becoming like Jesus, about being transformed.
And in Paul’s views, not only are we being transformed now, but when we die, our bodies will be transformed and be like Jesus’s body. So, yes, Jesus is our Lord, he’s our Savior, Messiah, and yet he’s also our older brother and we are to become like him. So in Ephesians five, when Paul’s talking about husbands and wives, he’s not saying husbands are the head and wives are the submissive followers. No he’s saying husband, lowers himself what are the exact words I really need the exact words
Ruth Perry (26:09)
husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Marg Mowczko (26:08)
Ephesians 5.25 is when Christ and gave himself.
Yeah. So that’s it. but then it talks about husbands doing stuff, which kind of doesn’t make a lot of sense.
But if we understand that husbands in the first century did have a higher status, than their wives. And then we understand that Paul is saying husbands love your wives as your own male bodies, that has an effect of elevating their wives in status because if that man is loving his wife as his own male body how is that not treating her with equal importance or equal consideration? And it does take a little bit of unpacking to see what Paul’s saying.
I also want to point out too that when Paul starts speaking to husbands in Ephesians 5 and he says, love your wives as Christ loved the church, people again, they make a mile out of that and they make this into this big, honorable, chivalrous concept that is a particular duty of husbands. But Paul uses almost exactly the same Greek words further up in exactly the same chapter, which again is why we shouldn’t just look at these verses in isolation, we need to read them in context because in Ephesians 5 verse 2 he says exactly the same thing to everyone that we all are to love as Christ loved the Church who gave himself for her.
We’re all supposed to have that sacrificial love, but husbands needed an extra reminder. And I think still today, a lot of us need this extra reminder that we’re all to love as Christ loved the church.
Again, we’ve lost sight of who Paul was and what his vision was for the Church and his vision for human relationships within the Church. And like even Colossians 3.19. He says to husbands, love your wives and don’t be harsh with them.
And throughout the centuries, it’s like been the opposite. Husbands haven’t really loved their wives and they’ve been very harsh. Some Christian husbands have been incredibly harsh with wives. It’s not rocket science. It’s just, do unto others, all those one another verses in the Bible sort of get thrown out of the window and people focus on these few verses about marriage and they make it about decision making they make it about leadership. I often say husbands are never told to lead their wives; Paul never says husbands lead your wives.
Actually, let me be really specific. There’s no New Testament verse that says husbands lead your wives or have authority over your wives or even like be the person responsible for your wives.
But if you look at all the verbs in Ephesians 5 where Paul is addressing husbands, love is mentioned six times. The verb for love and the agape love, which I know again some people made a really big deal. think that agape always means this self-sacrificial love, it doesn’t necessarily, but that’s another story. But it’s still a strong love. So husbands love your wives; six times
love is used when Paul is addressing husbands. He never tells husbands, lead your wives.
I heard someone say there’s a patina over Ephesians five. We’ve heard so many sermons, we’ve read so many blog posts or whatever. And so a lot of people just read Ephesians five and just assume it’s about the husband being the leader, they assume it’s about husband being the decision maker, the one being responsible for finances, but you just don’t find that in Ephesians five.
Yeah, we need to get rid of that patina, sort of scrub it all down and just look at the words, look at the verbs, the doing words that Paul actually used when he spoke to husbands, and wives.
Ruth Perry (30:06)
I think we end up having a lot of implications in our theology about God when we don’t understand that love doesn’t control and love doesn’t dominate. That God’s love for us, he doesn’t control us or dominate us. He’s given us free will. He’s sent his son to die for us. And to model that kind of love, we’re not going to lord authority over each other, Paul says. We just read our own worldview into the Bible.
Marg Mowczko (30:33)
Totally. Yeah. I just saw this comment the other day and gender discussions aside, I was thinking we just approach our relationship with God so differently. Yeah, who we think God is certainly affects how we relate to his children. Yeah.
Ruth Perry (30:56)
Were you going to explain how Paul uses head in 1 Corinthians as well?
Marg Mowczko (31:00)
Ah sure, sure. So he uses it in 1 Corinthians 12 and that’s probably one of my favorite passages in the Bible where Paul has his vision for the church as a body and all the parts are working together in unity. People you know hearing Greek, reading Greek, in the first century head was about status.
So if you’re the head, literally have a higher status. Often you will have more influence and you might have a leadership role, but head is not synonymous with being a leader and I think that’s really important. In Ephesians 5, first century husbands and Christ do have a higher status than the church but Paul wanted to minimize that status and he used that head body metaphor to signify that and to show that the head sort of becomes lower and the body becomes higher.
And also in 1 Corinthians 12, there’s this verse where it says, we shouldn’t give more honor because the head normally had more honor, but just generally speaking about the body, we shouldn’t give more honor to the parts that already have it. They already have honor. He actually says we need to give honor to the parts of the body that don’t have it. And, where are the sermons on that? You know because who didn’t have honor in first century Corinth? It was slaves. And we know from the rest of 1 Corinthians that slaves were definitely a big part in that congregation. He’s talking about women and we definitely know that there were women. We even hear about Chloe and we hear about women who were praying and prophesying.
So according to first century standards, these people would have less honor than freeborn men with a bit of money. And so Paul’s saying, let’s not honor the people who already have honor. It actually says there’s no need to do that. Let’s give honor to the people who lack it.
So the first thing I’d like to say about the passage in 1 Corinthians 11 where it says man is head of woman is that this passage isn’t really about marriage. It’s about ministry and the men and the women who he’s speaking about. He’s not even speaking about the broader church here. He’s talking about the men and the women who are praying and prophesying and they’re doing essentially the same thing. Paul doesn’t differentiate. There’s men praying a prophecy and there’s women praying a prophecy and he doesn’t say that any of them should stop.
So I think whatever we think about 1 Corinthians 11, we need to keep in mind that men and women were ministering in a very similar or identical way and Paul is not telling anyone to stop, but he is addressing their hair or head coverings. So I think scholarship is pretty divided on this. A lot of people think it’s head coverings for women and not head coverings for men. I think it’s hairstyles. We know definitely in the second century that some women were cutting their hair and even dressing like guys, Christian women, when they were becoming Christians, sexual renunciation.
It was huge, but it starts in the 50s. So if you read 1 Corinthians 7, people were choosing not to get married and people in the Corinthian church who were already married were having sexless marriages or they were leaving their spouse altogether because they felt that sex was somehow a contaminant. And we see this idea just repeated throughout the centuries in church. It was huge in the second century and it started early. We see it literally in Corinthians, so we know that there were people in the Corinthian church that were renouncing sex.
And the people who were doing this were probably the hyper spiritual people. So I think some of these women were cutting their hair, which would have been really odd in first century Roman Corinth because we can see from frescoes and statues that women wore their hair long but tied up. That was the respectable hairstyle. So if suddenly these women in Corinth were cutting their hair, that’s a very provocative statement. And it could also be that some of the men were having long hair. We know that philosophers sometimes grew their hair long.
I got a couple of blog posts where I really quote a lot of people around the first century where they discuss hair. I know some people have said that it had sexual connotations but I don’t think that’s really the case because a lot of frescoes and busts and pictures show women with their head uncovered, respectable women. And I know that there’s sort of discussions from Greek physicians, you know, Hippocrates and stuff, many centuries before Paul’s time, who spoke about hair in sort of a sexual way. But I just don’t see that in writings from the first century. So basically, I don’t think it’s got anything to do with creating lust. Let me say that. I think it’s got everything to do with just social respectability. I’ve actually got a picture here of a scene in Pompeii. I don’t know if you can see the women I just always have that there because I like it.
There’s just oodles and oodles of busts and coins, of the empress, and she doesn’t have her head covered. So if there’s something sexual about hair, why aren’t these women who want to be portrayed as respectable and as honorable women, why do they have their hair just uncovered but long and bound up? Okay, so let me try to get to the point. So the bigger problem with 1 Corinthians 11 is it’s really hard to make cohesive sense of the whole thing because it is like Paul’s contradicting himself and that’s because I think he’s talking about two different scenarios and this is explained by different people in different ways but this is how I explain it and also this is how Judith Gundry explains it.
So the first section is about reputations in broader Corinth. So Paul wants the Corinthians to tone things down a bit. The church was a small group in the mid first century and it was a very vulnerable group. Being a Christian could be quite liberating for people and Paul is just saying, pray and prophesy but men do this with your hair and women do this with your hair and I think it’s because of social respectability in the broader society.
I haven’t even touched on the word head because men have a higher status than women. And that’s what I think this head is about. And we still have to honor or acknowledge at least that social differentiation for the sake of reputations. So God has a higher status than Christ the Messiah, and then Christ has a higher status than every man and then he goes singular man has a high status the woman and I think this is referring to Adam and Eve because another thing to keep in mind when reading this passage beginning at verse 2 to 16 is to keep in mind that men and women were doing the same thing but also Paul refers to creation quite a lot.
and I think that man and woman in 1 Corinthians 11.3 is probably Adam and Eve. Anyway, so men and women they can pray and prophesy but Paul wanted them to do something respectable about their heads. So he doesn’t want women to cut their hair and right at the end he says a woman’s long hair is her glory or that word can also be translated reputation because I do think it’s about reputations.
Okay, so the first half is about reputations in broader Corinth and verse 10 is the crux of this passage because I do think it’s written as a chiasm. Paul makes certain points until he gets to the main point and then he repeats it and the main point has to do with angels and I do think those angels are human messengers In the New Testament that word is used several times for human messengers and it’s even used for the spies who Rahab helped. So in James the same word is used for the spies because people were suspicious of new religious movements. You know, Rome had been through so much upheaval but under the current, well since Augustus things had calmed down a bit. There was some degree of stability and people wanted to keep it. They didn’t want new uprisings and new crazy religious ideas to get out of hand.
Anyway so I think the top half is about reputations it brought a Corinth but then Paul says well but don’t take it too far effectively he’s saying that so in verse 11 he says but or nevertheless for those of us who are in the Lord, that’s us in the Lord. So now he’s talking about relationships within the body of Christ. And again he alludes to Genesis. Head, in verse three is about firstness.
Who comes first because firstness was attached to honor so the man comes before the woman Adam comes before Eve but then he’s saying but in the Lord that means nothing because just as woman came from the first man every other man ever since has come from the body of a woman he doesn’t use all those words but that’s the meaning because ultimately everything comes from God and in this whole passage you see it more clearly in the Greek because where a word is used in a sentence can give it more emphasis but three times he brings it back to God so it’s not about people it’s not about male and female because everything ultimately comes from God and that’s why God is mentioned at the beginning as well because I think God is at the end of that sentence as well in the Greek.
So verse three.
Because because we’re talking about husbands being the head or man man being the head of woman because I think it’s Adam and Eve or at least a vague illusion, a vague illusion to Adam and Eve. But it’s not if it really was a hierarchical top down thing, it would be God, Christ, every man, man, woman sort of in that order. But it’s not it’s all around the place because he’s actually bringing it back to God in the Greek. And like I said, three times.
And we’re so caught up in all these little debates about who’s more important, God. That’s who’s more important. That’s the answer. That’s what Paul wanted to say. It’s not whether ultimately male people are more important than female people or whatever. No, it’s God. God is the ultimate source.
But what happens all too often is we look at 1 Corinthians 11 3, we focus on that, we say what we think it means and we don’t read to verses 11 and 12 which is for us who are in the Lord are we in the Lord well then it doesn’t matter who’s first you know it doesn’t matter who the head is anymore because we’re all brothers and sisters.
So to summarize, head in 1 Corinthians 11.3 is about kind of who came first and it’s attached to honor so first part is about reputations in broader Corinth which he sort of backs up with this firstness idea. The second part after verse 10 is about relationships within the body of Christ because he wants them to acknowledge how society works and not bend too many rules but within the body of Christ that kind of hierarchical thinking has no place. And that’s where we hear more clearly that Paul’s actually talking about hair. He’s not talking about head coverings. Yeah. But that’s still debated.
That’s a really hard passage to unpack. So I hope that wasn’t too garbled. Yeah. But it’s very different to what we hear.
Ruth Perry (43:15)
Yeah. No, that was really interesting. Yes, absolutely. I think you nailed it. I mean, it all comes down to that we all come from God. And if we’re submitting our lives to God and we’re loving one another as all the one another passages command us to do, then all of those hierarchies and that need to have some over others, it kind of dissipates.
Marg Mowczko (43:43)
Yeah, and you can hear some of the early church fathers struggling with this because I think they recognized that in the New Testament there was this understanding that we are all just brothers and sisters but a lot of them believed that society would just crumble if there wasn’t someone in charge. There always had to be, even in marriage, which is a relationship of two people and I often say why does a relationship of two people need one person to always be the leader? There’s no other relationship where that’s needed or that that’s a good thing. If it’s an organization, sure, let’s have leaders. But a relationship of two people doesn’t need one person to always be the leader unless that other person is really incapacitated in some way.
But yeah, I do read some early church fathers who can say really, really great things about marriage and then they go, yeah, but if the man’s not the leader, then it’ll all go awry and I’m yeah I don’t think that could really envisage that but we know like my relationship with my husband and we’ve been married over 40 years we tried doing the leadership bit. It just didn’t work. It just didn’t work for us
And my husband, I wanted it because I was sort of the good girl who wanted to do everything I thought the Bible was saying. And my husband just wanted me to be myself. So I was the one putting pressure on him to be the priest of the family and all these things that I learned growing up, which have no biblical basis, especially in New Covenant understanding.
A relationship works better when people can just give their best without these artificial restrictions. It’s not rocket science.
Ruth Perry (45:27)
Well, I can say just because I’ve been watching you and listening to you and learning from you for so long that your life is a beautiful testimony to that kind of submission to God and prioritizing God’s way and not your own that you’re always seeking to honor and be faithful to God above all else. And your scholarship is a gift to the church. And your example of a woman in Christian scholarship and Bible study is a beautiful example to the church because women, our imagination is kindled by seeing women using their gifts to imagine what we can do for the Lord. And so it’s been really powerful for me to just learn from you, sit at your feet and appreciate the example that you show of discipleship to your Lord Jesus Christ. So I wanted to thank you for that.
Marg Mowczko (46:18)
But you don’t have to sit at my feet. Don’t sit at my feet. We’re even. Yeah, but I know even about examples because yeah, growing up, I had no examples. I didn’t want to be the organist. I didn’t want to be the pastor’s wife. I didn’t want to be the missionary and I didn’t know what to do. But I just did what I could do and I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. Yeah.
Ruth Perry (46:22)
Hahaha! Alright
Marg Mowczko (46:45)
Yeah, I know what you mean though about sitting at feet Yeah.
Ruth Perry (46:46)
Would you, yeah. Thank you for the correction now too. Do you have any last words that you’d like to leave this podcast on?
Marg Mowczko (47:01)
Hmm. yeah, I just…
When I read Paul and when I read him as a 10 year old and when I still read him as a 60 plus year old, I think his overarching theology of ministry was you have a gift, use it, use it to build up others. Because salvation builds up, belonging to Jesus builds up, it’s not about subordinating people. If we are reading Paul’s letters or anything in the Bible and we’re reading, we need to keep certain group down then we’re reading it wrong. Yeah, use your gifts and build up others. That’s Paul’s message.
Ruth Perry (47:39)
Amen. Thank you so much, Marg. God bless you and I’m excited to share this episode with everyone. Thank you.
Marg Mowczko (47:42)
It was my pleasure. Thanks Ruth.
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