Is the Church (Emerging or otherwise) embodying a neo-Gnosticism? I pose the question since the current vogue for championing women’s ordination smacks more of Gnostic than traditional Christian teaching (i.e. orthodoxy). As I said in a recent discussion, maybe the Church is inclined to trade its New Testament for the 52 extant Gnostic codices found at Nag Hammadi, for it is only in these ‘jettisoned’ Scriptures that female authority is seen as the norm. Is this oneof the reasons why judgement must first begin at the house of God? I fear that we are losing sight of the importance of abiding by the rule of Holy Writ on many important matters.
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Gnosticism and the ordination of women
Ivan, this raises a huge number of questions and it’s difficult to know where to start. One thing that is perhaps worth kicking off with is why gnosticism? Just because sections of the church today are doing something that looks superficially like something that the ancient gnostics did does not mean that they share the same defining characteristics. A resemblance to gnosticism is not an argument against the ordination of women - unless, of course, it can be shown that the egalitarian position has been promoted on the same grounds, which I don’t think is the case. The egalitarian position does not rest on the transmission of gnosis to an elect; nor (amongst evangelical egalitarians at least) does it arise from a desire to introduce a female principle into the godhead. It is grounded rather in convictions about the equality of men and women in Christ, the work of the Spirit of the God who redeems through grace, and a self-giving model of ‘leadership/authority’.
Incidentally, the egalitarianism of gnosticism may have been overstated:
Whatever status women may have had in gnostic communities, this surely falls a long way short of the ideal expressed in Gal.3:28.
Gal. 3:28
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on what exactly this verse/passage means? What does this look like? It says there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, etc… How do we read this without letting go of the notion of gender distinction? (i.e. confusing gender samness and gender equality?) Anyway, would be interested in hearing your thoughts, I guess on this passage and on the subject in general?
Ian MacLennan Ontario, Canada
Neither male nor female
Gal.3:28 forms part of an argument about what is required for a person to become a descendant of Abraham and, therefore, to receive the ‘blessing of Abraham’, which for Paul is the gift of the Spirit. No one can be excluded from this inheritance purely on the basis of race, social status or gender.
To this extent the verse defines the basis for a new type of community, and we see Paul drawing conclusions from this later in the letter: for example, those who have attained the freedom of being a ‘son’, a descendant of Abraham, an heir of the Spirit, should use that freedom to ‘serve one another through love’ (Gal.5:13). I imagine he would have meant by this in practical terms that Jews should serve Gentiles, masters should serve slaves, and men should serve women - as, for example, the Roman Christians were urged to serve Phoebe (Rom.16:1-2).
Innate distinctions of gender, however, don’t come into this argument; nor does Paul use it to challenge established social structures such as the relationships of authority entailed in the slave system and the patriarchal family. He is certainly aware of the fact that these relationships may make it more difficult to live out this new humanity (Eph.5:21-33; 6:5-9), but it seems to me that his argument is essentially: this is how you should behave as ‘sons’ of God, as inheritors of the promise, under these particular social conditions. It is important to note that Paul does not say ‘there is neither slave nor master’, but ‘there is neither slave nor free’: it is the status of each that is at issue, not the relationship between them. The same is true of patriarchy. "The Christian community can accommodate ‘structures of dominance’. What cannot be tolerated is any religiously or socially sanctioned behaviour that hinders a person’s access to grace and the fulness of the Spirit, that reimposes enslavement to the ‘elements of the world’, or that impairs fellowship in Christ" (Speaking of Women: Interpreting Paul).
Paul does not argue for an overturning of these structures: he accepts them, I suppose, as a necessary evil - or at least as a complication. His approach is to teach people (Jews, Greeks, masters, slaves, men, women) how to live within them. The question we face is: How do we respond when the given structures of society change? How do we best express our new humanity in Christ in a different world that offers different opportunities and imposes different constraints? How do we express authentic, mutually submissive community when we are living in, and to varying degrees subject to, a society that has in many ways inverted the old hierarchical structures, or at least replaced them with rules of politically correct behaviour that can be no less distorting?
Paul does not argue for an ov
Paul does not argue for an overturning of these structures: he accepts them, I suppose, as a necessary evil, or at least as a complication.
I’m not so certain that Paul wasn’t working out in his own mind how these “social structures” might be subverted by the Gospel. Certainly the book of Philemon seems to be a very personal argument against slavery, for example, on the basis of the gospel. I wonder if Paul was walking a fine line between being a witness to the culture and expressing the radical mutuality implied by the Gospel and the Kingdom.
At the very least, I’m curious. If a slave was her master’s elder while at church, what impact did that have on the relationship “at home?” That it did have a positive impact (ideally, at least) I take for granted because the Gospel is comprehensive—it eventually will transform both human personality and human social structures.
Two cents.
cyber-misogyny or textual fidelity?
However on target or off base Ivan Latham’s assesment of an emerging neo-gnosticism might seem to be, one must give him credit and something akin to OST’s version of the Purple Heart for his willingness to not just touch some of the “third rails” of theological/political discussion, but to absolutely reach out and grab them with both hands.
I am reminded of our Lord’s assesment of Nathaniel, the Israelite in whom there was no guile. (and respecting Ivan-no fear either)
Is women’s ordination such a forgone conclusion that discussion is essentially closed or taboo?
Because Ivan closely associated Nag Hammadi texts with a current neo-gnosticism and attributed the trend toward ordaining women to those texts it is fairly easly to miss the issue or perhaps even steer clear of it.
The issue, as I read Ivan’s post, is not about the contents of gnostic writings and the relative position women held in the times and places of those writings, but is about Ivan’s perception (and explicit comment) that the Church seems willing to trade the Scriptures, in particular the New Testament, for some other authority to which matters of theology, doctrine and practice may be submitted.
Having read some of his other posts and his personal testimony for context I am fairly confident he would include, in addition to the Scriptures, Church (for him, probably Roman Catholic) tradition. In this, Ivan and I would disagree a bit. Leave out specific denominational traditions for the purpose of this discussion and we are left with the Scriptures.
One writer in response to Ivan’s post referred to an evangelical egalitarianism based not on a radical feminist inclusion of a female component or principle into the Godhead, but on an understanding of the equality of men and women through the graceful working of the Holy Spirit and a pattern of servant leadership evidenced in the Church and embodied by our Lord. Galatians 3:28 is suggested, I am assuming, as a possible support for the ordination of women.
The particular application of this scripture text to this issue is perplexing. To do so seems to read more into Galatians 3:28 than is warranted by context. I do not think equality in Christ need go beyond the equality of sinners of all genders, ages, nations and conditions redeemed and justified by God’s grace and adopted by God as his children and heirs. This kind equality does not argue that there are no differences between the various members of Christ’s body, their gifts, their callings or that there are no differences respecting qualifications for ordained ministry.
It seems obvious that all of Scripture must be considered to do justice to Ivan’s concern over ordaining women. Alario
Women, Leadership and Scripture
It is rather unpopular in America these days to assert patriarchalism in any form, or to disallow women from positions of authority. Frankly, I’m surprised no one has tried to prosecute the Church for sexual discrimination — or maybe they have and I don’t know it. There is no question that this societal pressure, coming primarily from outside the Church, has been the primary impetus for the inclusion of women in church leadership.
Even so, I do not think this requires us to view the development as bad. There have been many times (ancient and modern) where God has used pagans to correct the errors of His people. Many good and faithful theologians have re-examined their views on this important question in response to our culture’s incessant pursuit of egalitariansim. Among those who have changed their position and now support women’s ordination, many have developed weighty scriptural arguments in support of their view.
I think this is definitely a topic for further discussion. It is not simply a matter of deciding whether to follow the Bible’s teachings, or man’s. I would enjoy hearing exegetical arguments supporting both sides.
Ordination?
What is “ordination” in the New Testament? Does the NT ever speak of gender in relation to “ordination”?
It seems to me that in mixing the old covenant (which had priests) with the new covenant (in which every Christian, male or female, is a priest), we have created a problem not considered in the NT.
Yes, there is a problem regarding gender “roles,” but that’s different. And here I agree that the New Testament is ambiguous—on the one hand, you have texts that say women should “remain silent in the church,” on the other hand, the narrative reveals women to be doing things that, if they were men, would cause us to understand them as apostles, teachers, and church leaders.
Biblical leadership - non gender-specific in all contexts
Paul (the apostle) gets a bad press on his attitude to women - but that’s a superficial view. References he makes in his letters to actual people show that women were alongside him in ministry and leading churches. This is also observable in Acts. I doubt if historically developed ideas of church hierarchy (systemically excluding women) would have meant much to him. We tend to zero in on texts which confirm our prior beliefs, rather than look at the whole picture.
As regards 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 (women should keep silent etc), this text is at odds with 1 Corinthians 11:4 (and the context, where women are authorised to speak!). With the ‘women should keep silent’ text, I’m with Gordon Fee, who regards these verses as an interpolation - they are out of kilter with the flow and argument of the whole context (a view for which he brought the wrath of the fundamentalist firmament down on his head!).
I’m convinced that Jesus, Paul et al were bringing a radical inclusivity of women into religion - eg the female followers of Jesus in Luke 8:1-2, and just about everywhere in his interaction with women - which we have filtered out through our cultural lenses. It’s therefore ironic that ‘culture’ is now helping us to see just how inclusive the N.T. is of women (in teaching and leadership), and the O.T. contains considerable criticism of a patriarchal assumptions, if you look carefully.
Sorry, leadership is male
With respect but how can anyone say that Christian leadership is ‘non-gender specific’ if they are reading the same New Testament as the rest of us? Typically, scriptures are being isolated, quoted out of context etc. Here’s a straightforward, no bones about it one from Paul:
“Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” (1 Timothy 2:11-12)
This is Paul’s standard teaching on the matter, and one pursued again in 1 Cor.14. It should be noted by all that in v.37of this chapter, Paul makes it clear that this instruction is God’s and not his own based on a cultural norm of his day.
Isolated and quoted out of context
Two questions for you.
First, is this really how it is done at your church? Women learning in silence? Forbidden from asking questions or sharing personal stories? If not, why not?
Two, do you also follow these directions for worship from Paul from 1 Corinthians 11:
“And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head-it is just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head… If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice-nor do the churches of God.”
Some dismiss such teachings as old-fashioned and unenlightened. Some claim to take Paul at his word, yet dismiss certain of his teachings somewhat indiscriminately.
It deserves more thorough treatment, but in a nutshell, here’s how I can affirm women’s ordination with the same NT everyone else uses.
Point 1 Why does Paul bring women’s issues up so often? If we understand the culture of that day aright such things would have been assumed. It seems as if something about the gospel has created a groundswell of egalitarianism that Paul is forced to address. Curious, isn’t it, how it could elicit such a response…
Point 2 Why does Paul give somewhat contradictory advice, sometimes commanding silence, sometimes giving conditional permission to pray and prophesy? Why does he demand full submission, but then praise women for their leadership roles in the fledgling church (women hosted church meetings and yes, they did teach — Priscilla comes to mind). Lots of conflicting evidence. The only way I can make sense of it all is to assume he’s tailored his advice to the particular situation he is addressing.
The culture of his day was obviously patriarchal. This was the culture that Paul was trying to reach, and that he was trying to train his churches to reach. The equality of women would have been very offensive to many in this culture, and as such he asks women to be submissive for the sake of the gospel.
This fits very well with Paul’s attitude toward Christian freedom — all things are lawful, but not all are profitable, and I become all things to all men in order that I might save some. The good news ushered in an unprecedented movement of egalitarianism. However, Paul reminds Christians that the exercise of their freedom is hindering the spread and acceptance of the gospel. When people saw women contributing to the worship service, they would likely dismiss the whole movement as heretical, outlandish, disrespectful, renegade, etc.
Submission is absolutely the right thing for women to do in such circumstances — placing others’ concerns above their own. Only when I assume that Paul is speaking and acting through this ethic can I see a consistency in his words and actions.
It is interesting to ask, then, how to apply the same ethic today. In 21st century western culture, it is the PATRIARCHAL structure of our churches that now hinders people’s willingness to consider the core gospel message. In this situation I believe Paul would exhort churches to INCLUDE women in positions of leadership and authority so that we would not needlessly offend the sensibilities of our target audience. Clerical affirmative action, anyone?
You may not agree, but I hope that gives you some idea of how well-meaning, Bible-believing Christians could support women’s ordination.
In fact, I would argue that it is you who have isolated these verses and quoted them out of context.
Men discussing the place of women
erlenmeyer opens this up for discussion well. But it’s interesting that a group of men are discussing the role of women, isn’t it? As regards Ivan’s proof texting of 1 Timothy 2:11-12, there are, of course, as many problems with this verse as there are apparently clear solutions. Eg the injunction to silence - in contrast with 1 Corinthians 11, where women are authorised to prophesy. Also the phrase ‘have authority over’ translates a very unusual word, better described as ‘usurp’. It would be as wrong for a man to usurp authority from a man, as a woman from a man. Clearly there was a specific problem behind the text, which needs further understanding. Unfortunately, we can only make educated guesses. That’s why proof-texting doesn’t work: we need to look at the whole picture in the N.T., which with Paul, as with Jesus, points towards radical inclusion of women at all levels of authority in the church.
Men discussing women
I’m afraid that’s the way it has to be. A woman arguing for women’s ordination has the appearance of a “usurper.” A catch-22 for the females.
Usurper?
“I’m afraid that’s the way it has to be. A woman arguing for women’s ordination has the appearance of a “usurper.” A catch-22 for the females.”
erlenmeyer - was this meant to be humorous - or inflammatory (or both)?
Ironic, maybe
but not at all inflammatory. I have no problem with women joining into the discussion. The problem is, those they are trying to convince are morally obligated to dismiss their comments because they should not even be attempting to teach a man. That’s the catch-22 I’m referring to.
As the traditionally-accepted authority, males still in this day and age have a privileged position. It is our responsibility not to abuse that position but to use it to redistribute the authority to all who deserve it.
I’m not at all trying to silence women, I’m trying to encourage them to speak up. I am, however, acknowledging that they will encounter resistance if they seek leadership positions in the church. Men have a platform that women do not yet enjoy, and we should be using it on their behalf.
Is this still inflammatory? Maybe it is, and I’m totally ignorant. I’m trying to describe a servant-style use of power here.
Anti-leadership
1 Tim. 2:9-15
This is an attempt at a brief exegesis of the 1 Tim. 2:9-15 passage. I recognize that both sides in this issue have used terms such as “isolated” and “out of context.” I want to start by acknowledging that the plain meaning here is that Paul did not permit any woman to teach or have authority over men. This cannot just be simply “disappeared.”
However, in trying not to take this passage in isolation and out of context, I find plenty of contextual factors that give me pause. My thanks to my friend Bob Menzies for first raising these questions with me.
In particular, consider 1 Tim. 1:3-4, 4:3, 5:11-15, and 2 Tim. 3:6-7. From these verses, I think it is fair to say that:
(a) Time-wise, the context is about the time Timothy was in Ephesus and Paul was headed to Macedonia (and, according to Acts, eventually to Corinth—or even possibly coming from Corinth again, on his 3rd journey).
(b) Some people in Ephesus were teaching doctrine different than what Paul taught, leading to speculation.
(c) The teaching may have included celibacy and abstinance from certain foods.
(d) Paul would have younger widows re-marry rather than pledging celibacy only to break that pledge, engage in gossip, say what they should not, etc. In fact, some already had “strayed after Satan.”
(e) Bad men had made their way into some households and deceived “weak women.”
This can lead to the very plausible interpretation that in Ephesus trouble was being stirred up by false teachers deceiving some of the young widows, causing them to take vows of celibacy and engage in false teaching themselves. Paul wanted these widows to stop their foolishness and get married and have babies.
My conclusion is that taking the 1 Timothy 2 passage in context weakens the case that a subordinate role for women is super-cultural. This is not conclusive, but is nevertheless good reason to suspect that Paul’s urging that women not teach or have authority is situational. To the extent that this situation may have been in Paul’s mind as he wrote to the Corinthians, that passage is also weakened by being placed in this context.
But—it is often pointed out that Paul grounds his argument in the much broader context of creation—as though women should not have authority over men because of the natural order. Again, I don’t want to just gloss over this; this seems to be Paul’s plain meaning when he says “Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived.” It is difficult, then, to reconcile this with Romans 5:12ff, where Paul makes an argument based on the fact that Adam (not Eve) brought death. This raises the question of whether Paul may not have appealed to the “natural order” in different ways in different…contexts.
Here are some hermeneutical questions Bob raised with me:
(a) Does the New Testament have a uniform witness regarding the role of women? (I have to answer, “No.” We see approved precedent for women teaching and prophesying, and we see women being told not to speak in church. So perhaps context is important. Culture is part of context.)
(b) Can one distinguish between universal principle and specific application? (One can, but one probably won’t agree with his neighbor on where that distinction lies.)
(c) What cultural options were open to Paul? (Would he be condemned for being patriarchal and chauvenistic?)
(d) What differences exist between the first century and ours? (Hmm. Do our modern preoccupation with gender roles or our history of sexual discrimination have anything to do with anything?)
Personally, I can’t claim to have an authoritative answer to the question. Sometimes I have disappointed people by not supporting those who are calling for women to be silent; other times I have disappointed people by not supporting those who are calling for women to be ordained. At most I can say (in a very post-modern way, perhaps, appealing to my own experience), that I have seen situations where it was either female church leadership or no church leadership.
just a quickie . . .
Chris - thanks for your comment, which is very interesting. I just pause over your first paragraph: I don’t think the ‘plain meaning’ of the text can be as you suggest. The phrase ‘have authority over’ is not an adequate translation. ‘Usurp authority’ would be better. This does not automatically mean that when a woman takes leadership, she is ‘usurping’ authority. There are legitimate and illegitimate means of having authority. So the implication is that a woman, just as a man, should exercise authority in a legitimate way - not cease to have authority altogether.
Also, if we take ‘the plain meaning’ of the entire text, we run into contradictions with the ‘plain meaning’ of other texts and examples of women exercising authority. A generalised application of the plain meaning of this text to all circumstances and all times simply falls apart.
There was a complaint in an earlier comment on a different thread that this was a misogynistic site dominated by men. Whoever you were: you’d better come back and give us some advice on this subject!
Authority over a man?
The word authentein in 1 Tim.2:12 certainly does not mean to ‘have authority over’. In my view (the evidence is reviewed extensively in Speaking of Women - sorry to mention this again but it seems silly not to) the word conveys the idea of instigation, perpetration (frequently of a crime), prevailing upon someone to do something - in brief, it has to do with authorship rather than with authority. To ‘usurp’ is not quite right on either lexicological or exegetical grounds - and I don’t really see how it helps the egalitarian argument, because surely it implies that the man indeed has a natural right to authority to which the woman is not entitled (Ivan spotted this). What I think Paul does with the word is anticipate the (malign) influence that Eve had over Adam through her ‘teaching’ - she prevailed upon him to do accept a false teaching.
I’ve no doubt that under certain circumstances this would have translated into a formal restriction on the teaching of women in churches, but it helps us to see that there is an underlying practical objective at work, which Chris has brought out rather well: Paul does not want a repeat of the catastrophic scenario in the garden. Eve was susceptible to the blandishments of the serpent partly because she was formed later (which I suggest Paul uses as a figure for the educational ‘inferiority’ of women in the churches), but also because the creation of the woman has introduced sexual temptation into the equation. Of course, women are not uniquely susceptible to sexual temptation, and the educational imbalance has by and large been corrected, at least in the Western church. Again we need to ask ourselves the practical questions: What actual pressures, temptations, etc., currently distort our proclamation and embodiment of the grace of God in Christ? And what steps do we need to take in order to correct and prevent these distortions?
woman or wife
Just a brief foray into this discussion…
I’ve understood that the Greek word for woman is indistinguishable in these texts from the word for wife and concommitantly that Paul is arguing that a wife is not to be given a place of authority within the church setting, which would place her over the husband; this would principally be done in order to preserve the household ‘order,’ or at least, to not reverse it. Ie. a wife is not to be made responsible for discipling her husband, in the congregational setting. This would be consistent with the inclusion within the Timothy passages of the Adam / Eve comparison, they being husband / wife, as much as typical man / woman.
Ditto, in those passages speaking about women being silent in churches: the injunction is more probably about wives being silent in churches. Early congregations may well have been split on male female lines, partic. if following the synagogue model. The injunction was to remind impatient female congregants - wives - to be submissive to those issues within the congregation that they wanted to question / understand more deeply and to “learn at home,” from / with their husbands.
In such a context, Pauls’ teaching was actually a subversive / counter-cultural injunction: previously women were not expected to learn at all; now here is Paul saying, “No, women can and should learn, but don’t do it in the congregational setting by asking questions (particularly when your husband is several metres away!), wait ‘til you get home.” The implication behind the text is that some wives were shouting across (or whispering loudly) to their husbands and it was they who needed to be asked to be “silent” in the congregation. Not absolutely, but in the context of a meeting-in-progress, to not interupt as they found new things they wanted to learn about / question / understand about the congregational meeting and its constituent processes.
Personally, I have found that a satisfying explanation. I wonder whether others are familiar with these ideas and can confirm the ‘accuracy’ of them? Do others find them convincing? Interesting, as I did?
'outing' myself . . .
Nothing to do with www.ecwr.org (see other post), and nothing directly to do with the outline of John’s comment - which I have also heard of, and find partly convincing, but I’m increasingly convinced by Gordon D. Fee’s view that 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 is an interpolation.
The main thing here is that when we had a female senior leader in our church, some time before these things were particularly acceptable in evangelical-charismatic circles, there was much examining of the scriptures. Strangely though, it was other women, rather than men, who had problems (if any) with the idea of a female church leader. Some time later, we did a ‘church plant’ with a female leader. For five years, under this leadership, it did very well, and I worked well with the said lady, and the leadership team functioned very well. (It did less well when I took over the leadership - but that’s another story).
So I have two different sets of experiences of working with ladies as senior leaders. We have had ladies on our leadership team for many years, and without ladies at all levels of leadership, which would include leading men, we would not have got half the things done that we set out to do. I have observed women leading Christian groups (which included men) of all kinds, in the U.K. and abroad. The main thing men have to do who aren’t used to this is to get over their sense of indignity at having a woman lead them. Usually this evaporates when women turn out to have leadership gifts, which often amount to a better ability to get things done than many men.
I am in a leadership team in the church, but also am part of two other teams which have a woman leader. I am glad to be part of their teams, and understand enough about leadership to know the kind of help they appreciate in leading the team from their team members.
The church needs to recognise, as the rest of the world is slowly doing, that leadership is by gift and not by gender. I have found the comments on this thread instructive, and helpful to me in looking more carefully at the issue.
1 Cor 14
I think Fee makes a good argument as well, but I’m not sure that the discussion is over at that point. There are still other texts equally as puzzling as 1 Cor 14.
I am with you on the leadership experiences. Based on my own experiences, I would much rather have a female overseer — whether it be at church, at work, wherever — than a male. Their interpersonal skills are much more highly developed, as a rule.
Is 1 Cor.14:33-35 an interpolation?
Just for the record, a lot more work has been done on this since Fee’s commentary came out, and on the whole it does not support his position. The biggest problem is that there is no manuscript evidence for an omission of these verses, so if any change was made, it must have been extremely early - at least before the writing of 1 Tim.2:11-13. See A.C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1148-1150.
Thiselton
I don’t own nor have I access to this commentary. What does he say?
Fee admits that the verses exist in every extant manuscript, but they are dislocated in some. That, and the difficulty of harmonization with chapter 11, are Fee’s two main arguments as I recall. How does Thiselton respond?
Thiselton's response
Yup, some manuscripts place these verses after v.40. The arguments surrounding this are complex and in the end the reasons why they should have been moved (or inserted in two different places) are probably unfathomable. Thiselton adopts the view that the injunction to silence here addresses a rather different situation to that envisaged in chapter 11:
Witherington
I have Witherington’s commentary. I think that fits nicely with my best guess, that this is Paul’s accommodation to the culture in order that the gospel would be unhindered by a disregard for local customs.
Even in modern missions, it is common practice to adopt the customs of the people you are trying to reach. If that means that women take a subservient role then that’s the sacrifice you make in order to win an audience with that culture.
I see absolutely no need for such a practice in the 21st century western world, rather a great need to abolish it.
Fee
I don’t have any of the commentaries to hand, but my recollection was that Fee’s third reason (see erlenmeyer’s comment immediately above) for suggesting an interpolation of 1 Cor 14:33-35 was that the passage interrupted the flow of the argument in the passage. Thiselton suggests a way of shoe-horning it back in again - but am I alone in thinking this requires a huge amount of conjecture (attractive as it may be)? Or do he/Witherington have access to other records of how prophecy was weighed in a congregation? I have to say that I’m attracted to their version as a less radical form of surgery than amputation. Thanks Andrew for digging this up. (Could I browse round your library sometime?)
I find this explanation attractive
But I’ve been less than impressed with attempts to demonstrate that the early church was modeled on the synagogue in terms of “seating arrangements.” Some of your points are applicable in any case, about women being encouraged to learn, and not to be disruptive.
I can certainly imagine the women being zealous for this knowledge, and yet very unfamiliar with it (since they had not been included before) so they would be doing a lot of “whispering” to their husbands — like my wife does when we’re watching a movie I’ve seen before but she hasn’t. Since Paul here is trying to establish a decent, orderly form of corporate worship this sounds plausible as well.
Could Paul’s prohibition against women teaching be based primarily on the fact that he thought they hadn’t been fully trained yet?
None so blind
So the consensus seems to be that because 1 Cor.11 speaks of women praying and prophesying etc., this is the norm and the rest of Paul’s scriptures on the matter need to be reinterpreted accordingly. Surely it is the other way around. Paul’s instructions for a male leadership far outnumber ‘ambiguous’ texts such as this.
Not that it is ambiguous. It is obvious that, if male leadership is the divinely-ordained ideal that this qualifies what Paul tells us in 1 Cor.11 about women praying and prophesying. I Cor.14 sys that women must acknowledge male headship ‘as in all the churches of the saints’, so it was obviously universal practice. Hence we need to understand 1 Cor.11 in the light of this.
That women might pray or prophesy, therefore, is on the condition that this does not involve ususrping male authority within the whole assembly, where their submission is required. This tallies with Paul’s other exhortation for women to teach other women, and children, where their ministry is not prohibited. Seems pretty clear. Only 21st century political correctness prevents accpetance of this Pauline tenet
. . . as those that will not see
… which I think completes your subject header, Ivan. Who is doing the ‘not seeing’ here? You have a position, which can either be subjected to cross-questioning or not. You don’t seem to be inviting it. For myself, of course I have a position - but got there by scrutiny and willingness to look at the evidence. (I used to believe that ‘leadership is male’). The places to look for Paul’s position on female/male leadership, as well as the passages under discussion, are the references to his co-workers. Then you could also take a look at how radically Jesus and the gospels include women. This is in the context of the religious and social culture of the time, of course.
On the question of the phrase ‘usurp authority’, the way you read this depends on the assumptions you bring. For yourself, any kind of female leadership is ‘usurping’ authority from a male. For myself, and I strongly suspect, Paul, the ‘usurping’ is to do with the manner in which leadership is taken, not the gender issue. Women (in 1 Timothy 2) may have been ‘usurping’ leadership, by wrongly, perhaps manipulatively, putting themselves into leadership positions. The issue, as I see it, is that they might learn to take on leadership in a way that is healthy and legitimate - not that they should not take on leadership at all.
In the end, the contortions you have to undergo to make sense of your position, seem to me to be much greater and crudely insensitive to Paul and the texts than this account.
It is instructive
to consider that, in the Corinthian context, there seems to be a lot of bickering and quarreling between certain women in the congregation. Certainly that should inform Paul’s comments as well.
Clarification of "prophecy"
You will have to explain to me how prophesying can be done without any teaching or exercise of authority over those who are listening.
My mite's worth.
It is difficult to look at this issue without emotions, feelings, agendas and posturing getting in the way. That goes for anything I write as well.
I think this whole discussion is thrown off balance by a swirling tornado of terms-servant-leadership, ordained ministry, gifts, imbalance of power, usurpation-and so forth.
Dana Ames has tried to put it back on track with her contrasting of a priestly order with the priesthood of all believers. I for one can’t tell you exactly, precisely what is meant by the priesthood of all believers nor do I embrace the levels of ordained ministry within my denomination as handed down from on high by God. I believe they are a permissable and workable structure within the boundries of scripture.
It is this structure of overseer(s) that I believe is at the heart of the discussion. It is very difficult for even the hardest of the hard core male only priesthood crowd to argue against the fact that the Holy Ghost dispenses gifts to the body of Christ as he sees fit to both women and men. There is some blurring within some of the texts considered so far which are worth serious discussion. I think one of the most interesting is the whole head-covering topic which Paul claimed applied to all the churches.
As far as delegated authority from Jesus is concerned, it appears it was given to his disciples and those men passed it on to men. The new testament when it speaks on the qualifications of overseers speaks of men.
It is difficult to envision Jesus not explicitly including women within the twelve if he intended to do so. It is equally difficult to believe he forgot to tell his apostles to include women in their ranks or for the Holy Spirit to fail to give a woman or two a Damascus road experience if he had decided to do so. If St. Paul had wanted to correct the defects of these previous oversights he could have told Titus and Timothy that an overseer had to be the husband or wife of one spouse. It just did not happen that way.
And I am not sure we can look to the surrounding culture or history to make the case that there was no place for women in ministry seeing the pagan religions were quite congenial to the idea.
Is it possible that the office of overseer is male only because that’s the way God wants it?
Alario
All things are possible; some are not very probable
Alario - the formative background to Christianity was not paganism but Judaism - in which women were passive observers (with some outstanding exceptions). The remarkable thing about Jesus - everywhere - is not that there were no women amongst the twelve (think through the implications of including women in an itinerant rabbinical group in his immediate culture) but that women were affirmed and included and allowed to minister to him in all kinds of settings.
As regards St Paul’s practice - I think you also have to ask the question: what was the church in his day? What was its cultural form and setting? As often as not this was the extended household system, which was basic to the economic and social system of the time. (As was slavery). Heads of household were the leaders of the church, and generally no educated guess is needed as to their gender. But Lydia does not conform to this pattern, and neither do Priscilla and Aquila - where the order of their names indicates precedence of (teaching) ministry. In fact in the Roman world, women played a large part in household affairs. Pursuing this line of thought, Junias (a female form of the word) was considered ‘outstanding amongst the apostles’. And who do you think Euodia and Syntyche were? They certainly weren’t flower arrangers, or organisers of the creche rota or the women’s happy hour, but ‘these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel’. They were Paul’s ‘fellow workers’ along with Clement and many others referred to but not named. I doubt if anyone would have imagined that you could be Paul’s fellow-worker on the one hand, but be excluded from a narrow understanding of church leadership on the other.
Whichever way you look at it, a quiet revolution was taking place, which took a big step backwards when the post-Constantinian church barred women from leadership.
The true background to all this is, of course, not in Constantine’s heirs, or Paul, or Judaism, but locked up in Genesis 3:16 (‘Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’). This is a curse over women, not God’s plan for their lives, and which has spread to all aspects of society and gender relationships ever since - in the sense of a covert (or not so covert) struggle for control and dominance, subjugation and subjection. Read the frequently not so much God’s plan for gender relationships in the O.T.
Roman Catholicism, and other branches of the church, do not have a long enough memory. My observation is that in our local setting, in the Roman Catholic church, some of the most able leaders are women, not the priests. They just don’t have the title or status, or recognition.
During the Welsh revival (1904), women were empowered and gifted by the Holy Spirit as evangelists and leaders, filling the churches with crowds of new converts. As the revival waned, those churches excluded the very women who had been instrumental in their numerical growth. The women were quietly air-brushed out of history - as they have been throughout church history, and as current discussion of their place in scripture also often seeks to do.
There are big issues at stake in this discussion - not just for the sake of contemporary interest in equal opportunities, but for getting the job done which Jesus has given us - using the full range of gifts available, including leadership gifts, across the genders - and expressing the version of the church Jesus had in mind when Paul sketched it out in Galatians 3:28.
Both Judaism and paganism
“The formative background to Christianity was not paganism but Judaism”
I think it is a mistake to take an either-or approach to Christian origins. Judaism was certainly formative to Christianity; so was paganism. Just look at the churches Paul addressed his letters to—Corinth, Rome, Thessalonika, Ephesus, etc.; people in such places (whether interested in Judaism or not) would be surrounded by paganism and could not help interpreting the gospel in terms of their own culture.
Jesus himself was a Galilean—not a Judean—and would pass many pagan temples (e.g. in Sepphoris, quite close to Nazareth) on his way to Jerusalem. Conservative Jews in Galilee may have lived in a different social world than their pagan neighbors, but their Judaism would have have had to have some self-conscious way of identifying themselves in distinction from “liberal” Jews and pagans.
Since much of this discussion is whether Paul’s prohibitions regarding women in church leadership were cultural (stemming from the particular people and context of the time) or “gospel” (timeless and absolute, regardless of any particular situation), then it is quite legitimate to consider the culture—in the cases of Ephesus (1 & 2 Timothy) and Corinth, pagan culture.
However, one can’t conclude anything simply because many pagan cults (especially mystery religions) engaged women as leaders; I would want to see more of an argument one way or another. At any rate, many other cults refused leadership to women. Where would the church “fit” in a pagan taxonomy?
(And incidentally, I can’t think of a single pagan image or sculpture of any respectable woman from the time period in question in which her head was not covered.)
formative background
Chris - I used the phrase ‘formative background’ - and I’m sticking to it. I don’t see any evidence that pagan cults were formative of any practice or belief in Christianity in the N.T. Also, I can’t think of any image or sculpture of a woman in the time frame which has a head-covering - but I can think of many whose heads are uncovered. (That wasn’t an invitation for an iconography!) But I do think your comments were something of a side-track from the points being made.
on the other hand . . .
…it’s also possible Chris that the scenario you sketched out in a previous comment concerning the background to Paul’s prohibitions could have roots into the surrounding paganism. (Paul’s prohibitions could have to do with so many considerations). We’re still in cultural territory here. My overriding point really is a conviction (looking at the whole N.T. picture) that Paul would be turning in his grave (if he were not in an intermediate state) at some of the misogynistic views ascribed to him by the later church. Also, we are wide of the mark by importing our later concepts of church into the N.T. church - which we have acquired through the accumulations of the centuries. The same goes with church leadership - I suspect that Paul would be falling out of his non-intermediate state, clutching his sides with laughter (if it weren’t so tragic) at the schlerotic, hierarchical, structure-bound, institutional, fragmented, thing we have made of the church (and which Jesus still uses) in comparison with the flexible, mobile, informal, multi-faceted church of his day (which also had its problems). And by the way Ivan, I still like you, even though I do so profoundly disagree with some of your views.
A clarification and observation.
I don’t think I suggested paganism was the formative background to Christianity but that St. Paul was not encumbered by a cultural background inherently inimical to female religious authority.
As far as including a woman in an itinerate band of men, I get your point. I am not sure that doing so would have enraged Jesus’ enemies any more than, say, letting a prostitute touch him or holding a profound, even intimate convesation with a Samaritain woman did. As it was women were among Jesus’ closest friends and, as you suggest, were affirmed, loved and given a place of honor previously unavailable to them. Nevertheless, in my mind, this loving affirmation is not the clear case for female overseers that many want to make it be.
In discussing the women you mention I think you stretch your point beyond what is necessary. That is you make some assumptions regarding their roles or functions that may not be warranted. Are you suggesting Lydia was an overseer of the sort described by the apostle to Timothy and Titus? I am not clear on your point on the name order of Priscilla and Aquila as evidence of a precedence of their teaching ministry. I can see only that they took Appollos into their house. It is indefinite whether he, she or they instructed him. Like the Roman world, I guess the women of Israel also played a large part in household affairs-consider the Proverbs 31 woman.
Euodia and Syntyche. Who do I think they were? From the context and the information given in the scriptures I cannot say with certainty. I am not certain that the reference to the women who served side by side with Paul and Clement refers to Euodia and Syntyche. It might refer to others. In any event it does not suggest what that service entailed. Were any of them overseers? Were they deacons? I don’t know.
But you seem confident of what they were not. They were not “Flower arrangers, organizers of the creche rota or the women’s Happy Hour”. Let me, for purposes of discussion, classify your examples as “Not Ordained Ministry”. There are many gifts, ministries, talents and leadership roles which fall into this category. It is distressing that because these ministeries are not “overseers” their relative worth seems diminished almost with a sneer. It seems to me that there are many, many places where women may serve in the church but are encouraged to desire (covet?) only the one position which is being debated on this thread and which may not be legitimately available to them in the Kingdom of God. Whatever value and purpose any other ministeries may have, they apparently pale in comparison to being an overseer. Is this the message that is being sent to women, be a presbyter or be second class? I hope not but I fear it is so.
Alario
cyber stuff and nonsense
This morning, I made a resolution not to flick to the website - this afternoon, I’m obviously in need of therapy. Anyway, just to correct any misconception: my point made to Alario was not to denigrate any task, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem amongst God’s people. I cannot see anywhere where I or anyone have encouraged women or anyone else to desire the ‘one position that is being debated on this thread’. On the contrary, I am encouraging anyone to question whether any position, including the flower arranging, creche rota or happy hour, is ‘off-limits’ for them. That goes for male or female - but since female leadership seems to be the primary area that is ‘off limits’ for some, it naturally attracts enquiry.
Your responses to my comments were somewhat selective Alario, and either there is some hidden quirk of Greek grammar that the translators have failed to convey - or Euodia & Syntyche were those who not simply served, but contended alongside Paul for the gospel. I suggest that these ladies were very significant people indeed in the Philippian set up.
But maybe website conversation is really a game - to see whether we can pick holes in each other’s arguments, rather than say what we really think. Maybe I’m imagining that there are people out there to whom these things really matter. Maybe this is just another example of the Truman show after all.
BTW - ordination: why only to ‘leadership’? Why not to the creche rota and flower arranging - and the happy hour membership?
Unfortunate.
It is unfortunate that I, like you, Peter, fairly often gird myself not to take a peek at OST yet find myself, like you, doing so despite my best intentions. Sad, isn’t it?
For the record, I am by nature rather shy and quite reticent about sharing what I believe unless I think something “really matters”.
Also for the record, however obscure I have apparently been on these matters, it should not be very difficult to tell that I do not believe there is a scriptural warrant for ordaining women as overseers.
I have tried to bring this term into the discussion for the simple reason that when Ivan Latham initiated this thread, because of his self-professed Roman Catholic leanings, it was clear he was writing about women priests. Whether called priests, bishops, presbyters or pastors-this is the office or authority or leadership position I believe Ivan was writing about. All of the other terms which have been tossed about are not to the point, not about this office.
You need to read you own post again. You asked me who did I think Euodia and Syntyche were? “They certainly weren’t” flower arrangers, creche rota or happy hour arrangers? The implication is that they were something much more than those things. In context and tone, flower arrangers came off second fiddle. The diminishing of them may not have been your intent but I am sure you can see how it can come across that way. And it is in this handling of ministry other than the office of overseer, where oveseer is the prize ring in the bull’s nose and everything else is something less, that can encourage people, men and women, to dissatisfaction with who and what they are in the body of Christ.
In short, I was selective with my response to your points because I wanted to try again to introduce overseer as the real point of discusson here (as I see it).
In what might be termed the worlwide Anglican communion there are deacons, priests and bishops. Respecting the offices of priest and bishop, elements within the communion draw the line at women and some draw the line at active homosexuals while others draw neither line. I believe this is the discussion we are having on this thread particularly with respect to women priests. It is in this context that this debate impacts me and my family. I believe Ivan understands this debate in the context of Roman Catholicism and I am sure others understand it in the context of their denominations or fellowship structures. In all of these contexts the terms for the office vary but the office itself does not and it is this office which I believe is the proper sphere of this discussion. Alario
Fortune favours the . . .
Thanks Alario. I never expected debate to centre on flower arrangers, creche rotas and happy hours - or for anyone seriously to assume I was denigrating them, and making adverse comparison with other forms of leadership. In fact it was a rather facetious attempt at a rhetorical flourish - employing what I assumed would be taken as gender stereotypes. If that has caused offence, please accept my apologies.
My main question remains unanswered, as far as you are concerned, as to who these ladies in Philippi were or what they represented. My other points also go unanswered, or unaddressed, as to just why Paul so freely associated with so many kinds of female ministry, including the apostolic, which by your perspective, are excluded from the rather narrower field, of congregational leadership authority. I just stumble over the inconsistency.
Of course, a substantial proportion of the church today holds a similar view to yourself. I didn’t expect this to be an issue on this website. The church can never be anything other than it is by some process of tradition - which in my perspective on the subject, is where many of the issues you mention come from, rather than from the biblical text itself. Our problem is that on some matters we cannot get back to the precise circumstances of what the text itself is describing. I would like to think we could discuss this though, in as open a way as possible. Meanwhile, some will have to wait outside the party until a more favourable verdict is given towards them.
In practice, I am rubbing shoulders all the time with a wide spectrum of belief concerning how church is organised and governed. I suspect we all look at each other and feel there is something slightly lunatic about the way each other goes about doing church. But in the end our friendship with each other makes these issues of very minor importance in our dealings with each other. Somehow, the Spirit does not seem to attach great weight in practice to the way we have each staked out our territory, and perhaps this is because we sense that the gospel of Jesus is of greater importance - and also that it’s good to have friends who face similar pressures and situations, because the people we are dealing with have similar needs and react in similar ways.
Again I offer apologies for causing offence - which, I can assure you, was not at all my intention. But the internet is a medium in which, in the absence of other visual and auditory clues, one must be so careful to communicate in as affirming a way as possible.
Penance.
Upon reflection, I seem to have been more influenced by my misreading of your comments and your rhetorical flourish than I was aware. Offended may be a little too strong, but whatever term is appropriate, it evidently carried over to my post and came through in a manner less than charitable. Though for my part an apology to me was unnecessary it was, nevertheless, extremely gracious of you and most gratefully accepted. Please forgive the “heat” or overzeleaous passion in my postings. As you say, absent verbal and visual clues, we must exercise care.
For penance, Alario will tell a joke. Readers may insert the gender of their choice into the story. For context, I hail originally from the city of New Orleans, Louisiana which is, given its location in the American Deep South, quite diverse and the characters in the story are all recognzable. They often live within several houses of each other in the same neighborhoods. As a disclaimer, growing up, all my best friends and neighbors were Roman Catholic, I was, as we used to say, “raised” Southern Baptist and I am now, by choice, an Episcopalian of the Evangelical sort. I intend no offense except to point a finger at myself and my best friends and hope others can have a laugh at our expense.
Three churchgoers, a Roman Catholic, a Southern Baptist and an Episcopalian died and found themselves not, as they had hoped or expected on the way up to Heaven, but rather down in a fast express elevator to the Infernal Regions.
During the brief opportunity for chat, their conversation turned to their present circumstances and the respective reasons for their surprise destination.
The Roman Catholic pondered for a very short while and said with the voice of conviction. ” I knew it, after the sixth child, the spouse and I couldn’t handle it any longer and we started using birth control.”
The Southern Baptist was rather glum, and pointed out that, “I’ve got a pretty good idea what did me in, on our 25th wedding anniversary, we went out for dinner and ended up in a dance hall, drinking beer and dancing until almost midnight.”
The Episcopalian stood ramrod straight and stated with grim determination, ” No doubt in my mind either, last year at the Bishop’s luncheon, I ate the entire meal with my salad fork.”
That was obviously a joke with a point for another topic, another thread and another day.
I will respond to some of the other issues and posts on the new women/ordination thread Andrew set up when I have a little more time.
Alario
What about Matthias?
Well put, Alario. To support your line of thought, I’ve a couple of points to make.
Firstly, what about the choice of Matthias to replace Judas in Acts 1? Would not Mary Magdalene have made a suitable candidate for the position of Apostle considering her privaye audience with the newly resurrected Jesus? Yet we do not read that even one women was considered for the job. Probably because Peter explicitly states that the selection must be from among ‘one of these MEN’.
As far as the ‘woman or wife’ translation debate goes, surely this only helps the case for male-only leadership based on the Scriptures. After all, if a wife was not permitted to usurp her husband in the assembly, is it really probable that a woman other than a man’s wife would be allowed that privilege?! We read plainly in 1 Cor.11 (no textual gymnastics required) that ‘the head of every man is Christ, and the husband (or man) is the head of his wife (or woman)’ v.3.
Is it insulting to Paul to take him at his word? Many of his epistles carry warnings for their readers should they dare do otherwise! Add to these Scriptures the injunction by St Peter in Ch.3 of 1 Peter for wives to submit to their husbands’ authority.
The bottom line is, do Paul, Peter et al speak for themselves, or is this the Word of God? If the latter, then case closed.
Peter on male leadership
Ivan said:
But I wonder how much of what is recorded that Peter did is actually what we are to imitate. The record seems to indicate that Peter et al. were quite slow to catch on to some things, like inclusion of the Gentiles or what Jesus’ messiahship and real authority/power look like. He/they, especially in the early days, seem not to be the best ‘authority’ on the subject of authority. At least not in practice.
Why Matthias rather than Mary
We also need to ask whether the selection of a 12th apostle constitutes an appropriate paradigm for the selection of church leaders.
1) A first qualification for this person was that he should have accompanied Jesus from his baptism to the resurrection (Acts 1:22), which presumably ruled out most of the women anyway.
2) Matthias was chosen not to exercise authority but to witness to the resurrection. A woman’s testimony would have been regarded as highly unreliable.
3) We are still within the framework of second temple Judaism: the twelve represent a renewed Israel and must have represented in people’s minds a new set of 12 patriarchs. This unmistakable symbolic function would have been obscured if a woman had been chosen to replace Judas.
4) To have appointed a woman as an apostle within this thoroughly Jewish context would have been culturally and religiously inappropriate. As a corollary to this, we must surely think carefully before taking a thoroughly Jewish cultural/religious model as a precedent for leadership in the church today.
What if Mary
Sometimes it is instructive to ask what it would take to be convinced of a position one disagrees with.
If Mary Magdalene HAD been selected as Judas’ replacement, would that convince anyone that women should be eligible for positions of authority in the NT church? Or would we hear arguments that she was not one of the ORIGINAL 12, and she occupies the seat of the scoundrel Judas, and she was “chosen not to exercise authority but to witness to the resurrection,” etc.
In other words, I (like Peter) am asking if we are all simply setting up our defenses to withstand the attacks from the opposition, or if we are, through dialogue, truly identifying the salient points of this disagreement. Surely we are not all going to be of one mind when this thread dies down, but let’s make sure we are not engaging in any smokescreens or defensive tactics. Let’s keep trying to get to the heart of the matter.
I guess I’m wondering how those in favor of “men only” explain some of Paul’s remarkable variance from their own advice. I’ve read one attempt to explain away Priscilla, Eudoia, Syntyche, and Lydia as “we don’t know for certain that they were leaders and teachers.” True. In fact, we don’t have any evidence that ANY of the apostles, with the exception of Peter and Paul, and maybe John, held any “positions of leadership” in the church. That doesn’t imply, even a little bit, that they didn’t. I can make a better case for any of the women listed above than I can for Thomas, or Philip, or Andrew…
It’s VERY hard to understand why Paul would break with convention and list the wife before the husband unless she had some sort of priority in the matter at hand. Even today, in our “enlightened” culture, I very rarely address a couple as [wife] and [husband] purely out of habit and convention. It seems it would almost have to be a conscious and intentional inversion, as if he really didn’t want anyone to think that Apollos got his training primarly from Aquila.
abiding or forbidding by Holy Writ
We begin in Acts 10 and the story rises and rises to the summit in Acts 15… (anyone with me yet?)… but the key verses I want to point to are nestled in chapter 11. This is the ‘eureka’ moment - the church council and it’s admonitions follow later, v. 15ff, Peter speaking:
This is the argument that Peter posited in order to convince the other apostles that God really, really did intend for all the (ughh, Gentile??!) families of the earth (‘ethnos’ / “ethnic nations”) to receive the blessing of Abraham: the Spirit. Ahem. All the families, women and children included, to receive the blessing of Abraham, through the Messiah, so that they could then go on to be a blessing themselves to other families of the earth. Women and children included.
And the evidence that this really, really was what God wanted? A vision and an outpouring of the Spirit. Excuse me, Peter, you might want to introduce a couple of ‘midrashes’ (researched scriptural message), maybe quote a respected rabbi or two, oh and obviously you’ll want to include some proof texts to seal the thing?
Nope. A vision and an outpouring. In case we want to write that off as the excited ranting of Peter as events unfold, fast forward to the apostolic council meeting in chapter fifteen. Peter uses a pretty similar argument:
There we are. What does that have to do with women’s ministry?
Go back and put ‘women’ (in leadership) into the texts in place of ‘nations.’ In other words, it’s a scriptural principle to look for the evidence of an outpouring of the Spirit upon women as evidence that God intends them to share in the blessing of Abraham: the Spirit of God, to lead others towards the Messiah and to the blessing of all families.
From that point of view, it doesn’t seem too complicated an issue. Women, on receiving the Spirit are conclusively to be involved in being a blessing to the nations. If they receive the Spirit in such a way that Jesus-style servant-leadership gifiting is operating in them, it’s an open and shut case: God wants it that way!
Yes, they must submit to the same checks and balances that all leaders are required to submit to: teachers (and I think leaders fit in this category) will be judged more harshly etc. etc. - and, yep, women leaders will certainly be judged more harshly! And, Yes, pretty scary stuff: judging God’s action within the heart of people (in this case women) on the basis of evidence of the Spirit in their lives…
Anyone convinced? (I can already hear the spluttering of some who won’t be…)
many points- where's the line?
I linked an article, made some points and asked some questions. I was not being rhetorical when I asked those questions- I really want a response. Ivan, did you read the article? Did you hear my questions? I’d like to have a discussion with you, and I sense I’m being ignored.
I think john’s point about the Holy Spirit is very weighty, esp. when taken with Acts 1:13-14 and 2:1-16. What is God doing? Do you think God wants humanity to stay in the (insert preferred ordinal number here) century? If not, where does he- (I have no problem using the masculine pronoun for God; if you want to know why I’ll tell you.) -want us to go?
I shall check back again later today, Tuesday. I’ll be off line Wednesday (I’m 8 hours earlier than England).
Hoping for respectful responses-
Dana Ames
OST organization
I’ve moved Dana’s comments about Bailey and women generally to a new thread. This one is getting seriously overloaded. The contributions have been excellent, but could I suggest that if you think your post is likely to set people off running in a rather different direction, you start a new thread in the same forum category, preferably with a link back to the original discussion?
I’m wondering, too, whether it wouldn’t be helpful to separate out the general discussion from the exegetical material. There is a framework for a ‘commentary’ already on this site but I’m not sure it’s the best way to handle it. I’ve also set up an experimental wiki commentary, which you’re welcome to have a look at. Any comments or suggestions on the matter will be most welcome.