Wormwood said:
Oz,
Thank you for your response.
We also have NT examples of women in ministry. Let us not confuse participation in ministry with the elimination of any kind of role distinctions. Since I know argumentation and rhetoric is important to you, I would classify this as a false choice or false dichotomy. It does not have to be all or nothing here. This is the very argument I felt was incredibly weak in the Fuller articles. The notion is that if we accept 1 Timothy 2 "as is" then it is an absolute prohibition and therefore contradicts the passages in 1 Cor 11 and those elsewhere that imply women served in various capacities in ministry is just not true. I do accept the notion that women prophesied, aided the ministries of Jesus and the Apostles and even taught in informal settings (such as Aquilla and Priscilla). So lets not paint this as "an anti-woman" position. This is a straw man and I am not "anti-woman" in any sense of the word. As I mentioned before, I believe that women are able to serve in just about any capacity in the local church but I do accept 1 Tim. 2 and other texts to be meaningful passages that address the role of eldership and leading the local congregation in doctrinal instruction.
As you mentioned above, women had public ministries in the OT. I dont see this as indicative the the cross removed role distinctions between men and women.
The issue I raised with the OT examples was that of prophetesses (e.g. Deborah) who spoke to Israel (including men) for God. So here we have deliberate, authoritative women in ministry. But you seem to want to deny that authoritative role for OT women to have any continuing expression in the NT. At no point have I suggested an elimination of role distinctions. That's a straw man you have invented against my position.
There is a major difficulty in understanding the meaning of
authentein (to have authority) as it appears only this one time in the whole NT and because it is a present tense imperative of
authenteo it means that these women were continuously having authority. But what's the meaning of
authenteo? Arndt & Gingrich's Greek lexicon gives the meaning as '
have authority, domineer ...
over someone' (1957:120). In the word study edited by Colin Brown,
The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol 3, Brown's word study on
gune (woman) points out that '1 Tim. 2:12 might be interpreted not as an absolute prohibition of women teaching but as a repudiation of allowing them to domineer and lay down the law. The hapax legomenon
authentein can mean both to have authority over and to domineer' (Brown 1978:1066).
I must say that this is truly a head scratcher. So you are arguing, on the basis of the generic term "adelphoi" that Paul is explicitly teaching that both men and women teach in the public assembly? Yet Paul specifically says in verse 34-35
I just do not follow your logic here at all. You are saying that the generic term "adelphoi" overrides the specific command of Paul, using "the Law" (not a specific heretical teaching or contextual problem with women in Corinth) as rationale as to why women should have an attitude of submission rather than teaching authority in the church. So, because "adelphoi" can refer to both men and women that this carries more weight that Paul specifically telling women to not teach but remain in submission. This is like me saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have all come here to teach, learn and grow. Ladies, you cannot teach." Then someone saying, "well because you said "Ladies and gentlemen, we are all here to teach..." this means that you want women to teach ...regardless of what you said after that." I just dont know how to respond to this other than just pointing to the plain language of the passage which clearly shows that even though Paul is clearly addressing men and women, he also clearly prohibits those women he is addressing from teaching in the assembly. Its just that simple. I just dont know how the language could be any more clear and to miss it suggests that someone is determined to see something that isnt there.
Could it be that you don't follow the logic because of your presuppositions about the meaning when it is allegedly stated that women should not teach men (1 Tim 2:12) and women are told to remain silent (1 Cor 14:34-35).
Adelphoi (brothers and sisters) and NOT 'brothers' only overrides nothing. In 1 Cor 14:26 (NIV) we have this statement by Paul that affirms women in teaching ministry: 'What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up'. This affirmation is:
- Addressed to brothers and sisters in Christ, adelphoi;
- 'When you come together' is an indication of the gathering of the assembly of believers;
- What should happen when brothers and sisters in Christ meet in the church gathering? 'Each of you', i.e. ekastos, both brothers and sisters - men and women - have opportunity to engage in the vocal gifts of a hymn, a word of instruction (i.e. didache, which is teaching. Remember the post biblical document, The Didache?), a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation'.
- However, 1 Cor 14:26 (NIV) is in the context of 1 Cor 14:34 (NIV), 'Women should remain silent in the churches....' Can't you see the massive contradiction? Verse 26 women can speak; verse 34 women CANNOT speak according to your interpretation.
- In my understanding, 1 Cor 14:34-35 (NIV) solves the misunderstanding: (1) The women should be in submission, as the Law says; (2) How do they demonstrate that submission? 'If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church'.
- So, something was happening with rowdy women in the church gathering who were creating disorder. They were told to shut up, i.e. 'remain silent in the churches'. Wherever such misbehaviour was going on, these women were to be silent. That should be the end of the story so that
- Women can get back to proper functioning (as in 1 Cor 14:26) when the church gathers. However, this verse prohibits the permanent closing down of women in ministry in the NT church, including the church of the 21st century.
Clearly this is a passage [Gal 3:28] about the application of grace to all people and has nothing to do with role distinctions in the home, church or workplace. No one is arguing here that women are inferior to men or that women do not have the same inheritance or value in Christ any more than one would argue a child has less value in Christ than authoritative parents or a boss has more value than his servant because of the authority he/she has.
Yes, it does refer to God's grace. However, it has deep application in refusal to discriminate against women.
The context of Eph. 5:21 clearly lays out how we "submit to one another." It is an error to suggest that this implies mutual or reciprocal submission. Αλλελων does not always indicate a reciprocal action. For instance, John 4:33 says "So the disciples were saying to one another, "No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?" Obviously the disciples were not all the disciples took turns saying this back and forth to each other. Some were saying it and others were listening. Likewise we are told to "wash one another's feet." Obviously this does not mean I was every person's feet and every person then washes mine. A person's foot only needs to be washed once by one person. Luke 12:1 says "so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another." Truely it would be a feat if every person somehow managed to step on every other person in the crowd while themselves being stepped on by every person! Revelation 6:4 speaks of a situation in which men would "slay one another." Clearly not everyone is being killed by everyone else and they themselves are killing everyone who is killing them! No, some were killing and others were dying.
The point is simple. This Greek word does not always imply a reciprocal, two-way action. As one author put it, "Though the use of allelon in these exhortations makes every Christian a potential actor and at the same time a potential recipient of the action, only the circumstances will determine who fulfills which role in any given situation. And the circumstances of life usually dictate that at any given time some persons will have the role of actor and others will have the role of recipient of the action, with no thought or necessity of mutuality or reciprocity in that situation."
In the context of Eph. 5, Paul expounds upon the command to submit to one another by illustrating various circumstances by which some are actors and others are recepients. By your rationale, parents should submit to their parents in the same way that children submit to their parents...if both are Christian. Clearly, this is not what Paul is teaching.
Where did I raise Eph 5:21? I didn't. This is a straw man.
You are asking me to believe the following based on your interpretation:
1. Even though Paul does not mention the assembly of believers when referring to women prophesying, but does on three different occasions when he calls for them not to teach but to be in submission, that we should still assume women prophesied in the assembly (and therefore were teachers and elders as well).
2. Paul is only saying women should be silent because of contextual situations in these specific congregations (to which we have no historical evidence) even though the literary context says nothing of the sort, but rather implies universal application due to creation, the Law and so forth.
3. Paul would use "the Law," creation, and his (and the churches) normative practice as rationale to silence particular women in a limited context who are ignorant or heretical.
4. Paul sees the ignorance and heresy of these women to be of greater significance than the ignorance or heresy of men, which is why he singles them out and demands all women in these cities to be silent even though the problem is with a specific few.
5. That the Holy Spirit would inspire the Apostle Paul to write these generic, universal prohibitions to women in general without reference to the specifics of their situation to be preseved for all believers and that future generations would learn to read between the lines to discover that is not at all what God means. Rather, when he says women cannot teach and must learn in submission in the assembly to the congregations in Corinth and Ephesus, that he actually means women should teach or else those believers are sexist and "anti-woman."
I'll deal with your points according to your numbering:
1. This is a false statement. Paul DOES mention the assembly of believers when referring to women who prophesy. In 1 Cor 14:4 (NIV), it states, 'Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves, but
the one who prophesies edifies the church'. We've already established that women prophesy and they can't engage in a ministry of edifying the church if they are not in the church gathering. This is further emphasised in 1 Cor 14:5 (NIV): 'I would like
every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you
prophesy.
The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues,unless someone interprets,
so that the church may be edified'.
Your view on women forbidden to teach and must be in submission is refuted by the translation of
authentein (1 Tim 2:12) as meaning 'domineering' (see above).
2. We most certainly have contextual reasons to indicate women who were told to 'remain silent' were to 'inquire about something' and 'should ask their own husbands at home' (1 Cor 14:34-35 NIV).
3. You have imposed your own meaning at this point and not given what I wrote.
4. Again, this is your imposition on what I stated. I will not continue to engage with you in discussion if you distort what I wrote like this. We can't have a responsible discussion when you invent what I wrote.
5. My explanation of the meaning of
authentein (above) explains further why what you say about what I mean is incorrect. The difficulties with 1 Cor 14:33-34 (NIV) - silence of women when the church gathers - are so serious that leading evangelical commentator, Gordon Fee, has written: 'On the whole, therefore, the case against these verses [being included in 1 Cor 14] is so strong, and finding a viable solution to their meaning so difficult, that it seems best to view them as an interpolation. If so, then one must assume that the words were first written as a gloss in the margin by someone who, probably in light of 1 Tim. 2:9-15, felt the need to qualify Paul's instructions even further. Since the phenomenon of glosses making their way into the biblical text is so well documented elsewhere in the NT (e.g., John 5:3b-4; 1 John 5:7), there is no good historical reason to reject the possibility here' (Fee 1987:705).
And yet my argument is simply this:
1. Paul does not specifically mention the assembly in the context of speaking about women prophesying and we see many occasions where people (including women) publicly prophesied outside the assembly of believers.
2. When Paul does specifically mention the assembly of believers, he always says women are to not teach or have authority and uses creation and the Law as his rationale. We should therefore accept this as a binding prohibition in the assembly of believers.
Therefore, women can prophesy and teach, but not in the formal setting of gathered believers.
So how am I the one that is going against the context here!?
1. As I've demonstrated, Paul did mention women prophesying in the church - for the edification of the church (1 Cor 14:4-5 NIV). In these two verses
ekklesia (church) is used. I can't understand how you are ignorant of such a basic demonstration of prophesy for the edification of the church - not the individual.
2. That is your interpretation where you have not taken into consideration the 'domineering' meaning of
authentein in 1 Tim 2:12 (NIV). Your conclusion is loaded with traditional hermeneutics. It is not a binding prohibition against all women teaching men and women in a mixed group. It is a prohibition against women who want to domineer.
By the way, I've just re-read all of 1 Tim 2 in the Greek and the word for assembly,
ekklesia, does not appear.
Therefore, women CAN teach and prophesy in the church gathering, but women who want to domineer are to remain silent and are forbidden from teaching.
I never made the argument that women cannot prophesy. And they most certainly did not do this in the assembly (1 Cor. 14:34-35). Again, to use 1 Cor. 14:26 to argue they did when a few sentences later Paul explicitly forbids it is just a baffling leap to me. The only way a person can read 1 Cor. 14:26-35 and determine that women prophesied in the assembly is if they have already determined this to be true before actually reading that section of Scripture. I think if you were to pull any person off the street and had them read this section (even using the phrase "brothers and sisters") and then ask them if this passage teaches that women can teach and prophesy in the local assembly, no one would say, "yes." At least no one with a reading comprehension level beyond that of a 2nd grader. I am not trying to be mean here, but I think sometimes scholars can do such mental gymnastics that they can convince themselves of all kinds of things when a child reading the text would clearly know better. Scholarship should help us explore the depth and rationale of Scripture in greater detail, not turn it on its head. When scholars find ways to take explicit prohibitions (whether its women pastors, greed, or homosexual unions) and turn them into positive affirmations, we should proceed with great caution.
I have shown your statement about women not prophesying in the assembly to be false (see above).
It's 'baffling' to you because you don't seem to want to deal with the contradictions of these passages, 1 Cor 11-14.
It is false to say that I believe in women prophesying in the assembly because I have a 'already determined' this view, i.e. it is my presupposition. I have shown you that I got this meaning directly from the biblical text of 1 Cor 14:4-5 (NIV).
Pulling people off the street is not the way to do biblical exegesis when we are dealing with a translated language and a passage that is 2,000 years removed from the actual happenings. Have you ever tried to interpret Plato, Aristotle, Basil of Caesarea, Chrysostom or Augustine when you only have the English translation?
'
At least no one with a reading comprehension level beyond that of a 2nd grader'. That's a disgusting put-down of my hermeneutics. Please withdraw your flaming insult.
What you have said about scholars comes with your own bias. Yes, there are scholars who have done much damage to the cause of Christ, but so have journalists and laity in the local church. There are many scholars with whom I am extremely grateful for their careful exegesis and attempts to explain the Greek and Hebrew texts with their many nuances.
I have become exhausted by your false twisting of what I've written and refusal to admit what the text states.
Oz
Works consulted
Brown, C (gen ed) 1978.
The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol 3. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House / Exeter, Devon, UK: The Paternoster Press.
Fee, G D 1987.
The First Epistle to the Corinthians (The new international commentary on the New Testament, F F Bruce gen ed). Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
opcorn: 
