I’m unable to follow how you’ve come to the conclusion that St. Paul & some of the Church Fathers believed in that tale.
Perhaps you’re not taking in St. Paul’s & the other Church Fathers Entire discourse why head covering for women is necessary - Natural Law & Divine Law, but instead are focused only on misinterpreting the Additional (not sole) argument for head covering St. Paul used “because of the angels” and taking that & somehow relating it to the non-inspired book of enoch rather than reading what they understood that to mean. Again I can’t follow the basis for making that Huge leap.
St. John Chrysostom wrote re: head covering women that even if they didn’t do it for their husbands/men that at least they ought to do it to “reverence the angels”. This dismisses any conclusion that the angels St. Paul spoke of were fallen angels as no Christian woman would be expected to reverence evil fallen angels.
I focused on “because of the angels” because you used the quote in your original post and because you noticed that these early Church Fathers used it as an argument for veiling women all the time, not not just while at church or during prayer.
Re John Chrysostom: of course I don’t say that his angels are fallen angels, only that this kind of thinking did evolve (see post #18). The talks about a link with the ancient Oriental tales about incubi and the Jewish Book of Enoch are not new at all (see
here or
here or here): so first we have fallen angels that shouldn’t be tempted, then we have heavenly angels that shouldn’t be tempted, then we have simply heavenly angels that are to be revered.
If the whole argument about angels were clearly about asexual, immaterial creatures immune to temptation, God’s emissaries who are present when people gather together in churches to pray, then 1) it would have been strange to ask only women to cover their heads “because of the angels” (being as human as women, men have to revere angels too) and 2) the interpretation of Tertullian about bareheaded women being guilty of tempting angels would have been impossible.
But let’s assume that the argument involving angels had to do strictly with reverence. Why do I still say that this is dishonest?
Paul asked women to cover their heads only when praying and prophesizing, while Tertullian and John Chrysostom went further and inferred that women should cover their heads all the time. This extrapolation invalidates the whole argument about the necessity of revering angels while praying and betrays instead the Fathers’ idea that a woman’s body is a walking temptation to men and that it should be constantly covered from head to toe. “It has also been commanded that the head should be veiled and the face covered; for it is a wicked thing for beauty to be a snare to men”, says Clement of Alexandria.
Furthermore: “For that you ought to be covered nature herself by anticipation enacted a law. Add now, I pray, your own part also, that you may not seem to subvert the very laws of nature; a proof of most insolent rashness, to buffet not only with us, but with nature also”, says John Chrysostom. But the long hair of women is not a natural given (men can have long hair too), but a cultural standard, an adornment of their heads that enhances beauty; that’s why it’s not considered modest enough for these Fathers, who demand an artificial head covering precisely because they saw women’s hair and face as a source of constant temptation. For whom? Well, not for celestial angels. “Arabia’s heathen females will be your judges, who cover not only the head, but the face also, so entirely, that they are content, with one eye free, to enjoy rather half the light than to prostitute the entire face”, says Tertullian.
So this was the point: women should make themselves invisible because men want to protect themselves from their own lust, not because God or angels demand it as an act of reverence. If a woman refuses to be invisible, she is to blame for all the evil in the world. John Calvin expressed this thinking in all its illogical glory: “So if women are thus permitted to have their heads uncovered and to show their hair, they will eventually be allowed to expose their entire breasts, and they will come to make their exhibitions as if it were a tavern show; they will become so brazen that modesty and shame will be no more; in short they will forget the duty of nature….So, when it is permissible for the women to uncover their heads, one will say, ‘Well, what harm in uncovering the stomach also?’ And then after that one will plead [for] something else: ‘Now if the women go bareheaded, why not also [bare] this and [bare] that?’ Then the men, for their part, will break loose too. In short, there will be no decency left, unless people contain themselves and respect what is proper and fitting, so as not to go headlong overboard.”
And during WWII I guess all the Rosie’s should have stopped riviting and gone home as well.