I gotta have my orange juice.

Jason Garwood recently proposed a reading of Paul’s head-covering passage that attempts to address apparent inconsistencies by using “quotation theory.” Quotation theory proposes that some of the text is not Paul’s writing, but his quotation of a previous letter from the Corinthians.

This made me wonder how we might apply quotation theory to 1 Corinthians 14. It seems to me that you could take the following statements to be quotations:

• “For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries.” (v. 2)
• “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself” (v. 3)
• “if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays” (v. 14)

To me this is not really satisfying. It is interesting that it pushes against the idea of a private prayer language; but it requires Paul to be humoring the Corinthians more than pushing back against them, which doesn’t seem to strike the right balance. If what they are doing is allowable but immature, then I would expect more pushback: “though by this time you ought to be teachers.”

Quotation theory is quite a powerful scalpel; many folks want to use it to disregard the latter part of 1 Corinthians 14. It is an easy way to play the game of “has God indeed said.”

I’m still mulling over the interpretive key I suggested a year ago (see also this quote from James Rogers).