R.C. Sproul on Head Coverings

In the fourth message entitled To Cover or Not to Cover? from his 5-part series The Hard Sayings of the Apostles, R.C. Sproul argues that it is a moral duty for a woman to cover her head during public worship, and to do otherwise is to violate a biblical principle—to sin against God.

The Glory of the Woman

But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.

1 Corinthians 11:15

Commenting on the above passage, Sproul explains:

"…Paul appeals to creation, and in creation man is given the superordinate role. He's not superior to woman, but he's given the position of leadership, and the woman is given the position of subordination. Is there any compensation for that? Yes, she gets her glory; she gets a special glory that the men don't get. And that glory, strangely to our ears, is related to her hair—so her hair becomes a symbol of the added glory that God adorns the woman with. That may sound, as I say, absolutely silly to our culture today, and primitive, simplistic, and unsophisticated. But it's no small thing to recognize that universally, among the human race and in history, it's been a persistent thing that culture after culture after culture has regarded the female gender of the human species as the fairer sex. Isn't that interesting? If you look in the animal kingdom, which is usually the more brightly and colorfully adorned? The male or the female? The male lion or the female lion? The male lion. The pheasant. The cardinal. Birds, animals. Traditionally, it's the male that gets all the special adornment, but not with homo sapiens. With us, the beauty is focused on the woman. That's her glory, and it is symbolized by her hair, which identifies her as a woman. One of the ways we, historically and classically, have been able to identify a woman coming from a distance is her hair. And so, Paul says when you come in the church, cover that glory! Cover it as a sign of submission."

The Angels

For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. 

1 Corinthians 11:10

Regarding Paul's reference to the angels in the verse above, Sproul describes a celestial scene to capture the weight and solemnity of the church assembled to worship God:

"…the point is that, for the sake of the angels, we are talking about the host of heaven, and that when we come together in solemn worship and in the assembly of the saints, we come before the very presence of Christ and before the throne of God, and the whole host of heaven. And in that heavenly sphere, there is an order that is established. The angels subordinate themselves to Christ. Christ subordinates himself to his head, the Father, in heaven itself. And man, who is made in the image of God, is called to subordinate himself to the heavenly powers, and the wife is supposed to show her submission to this whole cosmic order of the authority of God, of Christ, and of the host of heaven."

Custom vs. Principle

In an excerpt of the aforementioned message, Sproul explains the difference between a custom and principle, and weighs what's at stake with the head covering:

"A biblical principle would be 'whatever is not of faith is sin' (Rom. 14:23). And so the burden of proof is always going to be on those who argue that such and such a command is custom and not principle. If you're not sure, then the principle that applies is: treat it as a principle, because if you treat a custom as a principle, the only guilt you bear is for being overly scrupulous. But if you take a principle of God and treat it as a local custom, and don't observe it, you have sinned against God. … If anything transcends local custom it is those things that are rooted and ordered in creation. That's why I'm very frightened to be loose with this passage."

In the "Principle vs. Custom" episode of the Knowing Scripture Video Series (1982), Sproul similarly states:

"If you treat a passage that God intended to be binding on you forever, and you treat it as a mere local custom and dismiss it, you are guilty of disobeying God and doing violence to his holy law."