Among those who take Scripture seriously there has been a continuing debate about the propriety of women’s ordination. The best case that can be made against the ordination of women is to appeal to Paul’s letters to places where it says that women should not teach men. For example, Paul said to the Corinthians according to the ESV: “the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (1 Cor 14:34-35). Also, Paul said to Timothy, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (1 Tim 2:11-12).
The problem is that those who take Scripture seriously need to study it more if they think this is the end of the matter. For example, there are women who are praying and prophesying in church earlier in 1 Corinthians. Prophesying is a form of teaching. Paul did not have a problem with it. There are also a number of examples of women teaching men in Scripture including Priscilla. And there are clearly women deacons so those passages that require they be the “husband of one wife” can go the other way around for both deacons and elders (what is ruled out by the phrase is polygamy and homosexuality and shacking-up; the phrase does not rule out single men and women). All of these things are clearly much more complicated than it might seem on a first read.Any number of objections might be made including noting that all of the apostles were men. All apostles were elders and all apostles were men but that does not mean that all elders were men. Moreover, there is no male or female in Christ Jesus. And Jesus always elevated women and gave them dignity and appreciated their contributions. I think that the reason for Paul’s comments probably reflect two things that were going on. For one thing Paul wanted to maintain order in the church and there were women who were chatting. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he would generally speaking want women to be quiet. But secondly women had more authority in the church than they had ever had in the culture or really ever before Jesus. They could receive the mark of the covenant (circumcision being reserved for men in the Old Testament) for them and their household under them and they could hold office (clearly deacons, appears that some served as elders). And so it would seem that Paul reacts against the abuses of this newfound liberty (not that it is totally new, i.e. Miriam and others). In other words, he may be reacting against abuses where women were using church office to lord it over their husbands. All of these things are somewhat conjectures because of the nature of letters — we do not have a full picture of the situation.
Going back now to the above-quoted passages, the question should be why they translated “men” as husbands in the 1 Corinthian passage without rendering women as wives. The difficulty is that the word for women can also be wives and the word for husbands can also be men — it is the context that determines and usually the context would be that if there are both women and men mentioned then it is addressing husbands and wives. The “their own” adjective really mandates rendering “men” as husbands in the 1 Cor passage and therefore should lead the translators to render “women” as wives. One lexicon I remember reading even said that whenever you have both words it should be rendered husbands and wives. Thus modifying the translation would read “the wives should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to [chat], but should be in submission [to their husbands], as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a wife to [chat] in church” (1 Cor 14:34-35). And “Let a wife learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a wife to teach or to exercise authority over a husband; rather, she is to remain quiet” (1 Tim 2:11-12). No one would argue that a wife was not supposed to sing or chant or speak the words of the liturgy along with the rest of the congregation — thus chat would be a much better way to render it in the passage (wives teaching is not even in view in the 1 Cor passage, you have to see the 1 Tim passage for that). Thus the issues are chatty wives and wives abusing their new freedoms to teach and lead men by lording it over their husbands. Also there are cultural issues involved as well because what submissiveness looks like changes from culture to culture as is evidenced by the discussion Paul makes about hair. But this clears the way for seeing why women could speak in church and even teach and even lead as we see in many passages.
The appeal to submission that Paul makes assumes the relationship of husbands and their wives. He cites the “law” — the Torah — where we see in the beginning is a statement about marriage. (The marriage relationship is one of mutual submission and I have addressed that before in other venues…that is not the issue I want to tackle here but marriage points us to the relationship of Christ and His church). So those who want to argue that if you have no problem with the husband being the head of the wife in the marriage relationship then you should have no problem with men having headship in the church forget that Jesus is the only head of the church. Never are men said to be the head of women generally speaking — husbands are the head of their own wives as Jesus is the head of the church. There is one head in the marriage relationship. There is one head of the church — Jesus (not the pastor and not any of the elders).
These are comments meant to address primarily the issues of those two passages…much more could be said to defend the ordination of women…and I am conscious that I have probably stated these things better before in other settings and that this article could be much improved to make the case even more strongly.
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