[This is high-level theological nerd-dom. Proceed at your own risk.]
I fell in love with Augustine over the passage below, which is from de Trinitate, Book XII, sections 10-11, Edmund Hill’s translation. Augustine is a fourth-and-fifth century African theologian writing mainly in Hippo, North Africa. Among other things he is credited with having invented the autobiography as we know it, in his book Confessions. He is, among feminists, also infamous for saying unpleasant things about women. Which is why I was all the more astonished to read Augustine’s exegesis of Paul, below, on the question of whether or not women ought to cover their heads in church.
The passage Augustine is exegeting is 1 Cor 11:7-13, in which Paul begins, “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.) That is why,” Paul continues, “a woman ought to have a veil on her head,” and he finishes with the knockout punch (wait for it), “because of the angels.” Then he goes on parenthetically, “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.”
Clear? Good.
I love Augustine’s tone, which is quite a lot like Paul’s; just as forceful, just as idiosyncratic, and just as full of roaring high spirit, or what Bonhoeffer called hilaritas. (And in case you don’t brave the whole thing, Augustine’s argument is that Paul is being symbolic in this passage, and that only fools would claim women do not have the image of God.) My favorite sentence:
“So it is clear what the apostle intended to signify, and he did it symbolically and mystically because he was talking about the covering of the female head, and if this does not refer to some hidden sacramental or symbolic meaning, it will remain quite pointless.”
Here’s the whole lot:
10. But we must see how what the apostle says [in 1 Cor 11:7] about the man and not the woman being the image of God avoids contradicting what is written in Genesis: God made man to the image of God; he made him male and female; he made them and blessed them (Gn 1:27). It says that what was made to the image of God is the human nature that is realized in each sex, and it does not exclude the female from the image of God that is meant. For after saying God made man to the image of God, it says he made him male and female—or at least with the other punctuation, male and female he made them. So how are we to take what we have heard from the apostle, that the man is the image of God, and so he is forbidden to cover his head, but the woman is not and so she is told to do so? In the same way, I believe, as what I said when I was dealing with the nature of the human mind, namely that the woman with her husband is the image of God in such a way that the whole of that substance is one image, but when she is assigned her function of being an assistant, which is her concern alone, she is not the image of God; whereas in what concerns the man alone he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman is joined to him in one whole. We said about the nature of the human mind that if it is all contemplating truth it is the image of God; and when something is drawn off from it and assigned or directed in a certain way to the management of temporal affairs, it is still all the same the image of God as regards the part with which it consults the truth it has gazed on; but as regards the part which is directed to managing these lower affairs, it is not the image of God. Now the more it reaches out toward what is eternal, the more it is formed thereby to the image of God, and so it is not to be curbed or required to moderate or restrain its exertions in this direction, and therefore the man ought not to cover his head(1 Cor 11:7). But as regards that rational activity which is occupied with bodily and temporal things, too many advances into this lower territory are dangerous, and so it ought to have authority over its head (1 Cor 11:10); this is indicated by the covering, which symbolizes its need to be curbed. This hallowed and pious symbolism is pleasing to the angels. For God does not see in time, nor does anything new happen in his sight or his knowledge when some temporal and transitory action is performed, in the way that such actions affect either the fleshly senses of animals and men, or even the celestial ones of angels.
11. That the apostle Paul had worked out a symbolism of something more mysterious in the obvious distinction of sex between male and female can be gathered from the following: while he says elsewhere that the true widow is one who is left all alone without sons or grandchildren and yet that she ought to hope in the Lord and persist in prayer night and day (1 Tm 5:5), here he says that the woman after being led astray and falling into deviationism will be saved through bearing children, and he added,If they remain in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety (1 Tm 2:14). As though it could count against a good widow if she did not have any children, or if those she had refused to remain in good behavior. But what we call good works are like the children of our life, in the sense in which one asks what sort of life a man lives, that is, how he conducts his temporal affairs—the life which the Greeks call bios not zoe—and these good works most frequently consist of services of mercy. So it is clear what the apostle intended to signify, and he did it symbolically and mystically because he was talking about the covering of the female head, and if this does not refer to some hidden sacramental or symbolic meaning, it will remain quite pointless.
12. After all, the authority of the apostle as well as plain reason assures us that man was not made to the image of God as regards the shape of his body, but as regards his rational mind. It is an idle and base kind of thinking which supposes that God is confined within the limits of a body with features and limbs. And does not the blessed apostle say, Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, the one who was created according to God (Eph 4:23); and even more clearly elsewhere, Putting off the old man, he says, with his actions, put on the new who is being renewed for the recognition of God according to the image of him who created him (Col 3:9)? If then we are being renewed in the spirit of our mind, and if it is this new man who is being renewed for the recognition of God according to the image of him who created him, there can be no doubt that man was not made to the image of him who created him as regards his body or any old part of his consciousness, but as regards the rational mind, which is capable of recognizing God.
Now it is with respect to this renewal that we are also made sons of God through Christian baptism, and when we put on the new man it is of course Christ that we put on through faith. Is there anyone then who would exclude females from this association, seeing that together with us men they are fellow heirs of grace, and the same apostle says somewhere else, You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all you who were baptized in Christ thereby put on Christ. There is no Jew nor Greek, there is no slave nor free, there is no male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:26). Surely this does not mean, does it, that female believers have lost their bodily sex? But because they are being renewed to the image of God†35 where there is no sex, it is there where there is no sex that man†36 was made to the image of God, that is in the spirit of his mind. Why is it then that the man†37 ought not to cover his head because he is the image and glory of God, while the woman ought to because she is the glory of the man (1 Cor 11:7), as though the woman were not being renewed in the spirit of her mind, which is being renewed for the recognition of God according to the image of him who created him (Col 3:10)? Well, it is only because she differs from the man in the sex of her body that her bodily covering could suitably be used to symbolize that part of the reason which is diverted to the management of temporal things, signifying that the mind of man does not remain the image of God except in the part which adheres to the eternal ideas to contemplate or consult them: and it is clear that females have this as well as males. So in their minds a common nature is to be acknowledged; but in their bodies the distribution of the one mind is symbolized.