I have found helpful this article by Kenneth Bailey, who lived and taught in the Near East for quite a few years. The language angle will always get my attention, as well as hearing from someone with the education and experience of Dr. Bailey.
All the points made in the Neo-Gnostic Church thread are worth thinking about. I would like to add a couple. First, I think we make more of an issue out of “leadership” than Paul does. We qualify it by putting “servant” or some other word in front of it to modify it, but what we’re really talking about is some kind of differential in power, or status (or whatever idea along those lines makes sense to you). I think Paul spent more ink writing about gifting than about gender, and gifting is where we can look for light to be shed on what is allowed or disallowed. Pride, lack of charity, favoritism, etc. are decried, but not simply the exercise of gifts by women, neither in the OT nor in the NT. I think that in general, God does not want a permanent differential in “power” between any groups of people. I think it’s meant to be a dance (perichoresis?!). Some gifts will be operating in some situations, others not. If a gift is operational somewhat permanently through a person, it does not necessarily mean that that person is more a “leader” than anyone else, or that the “power” differential is supposed to be permanent.
Second, the point about the priesthood of all believers is important, I think. If one believes that God wanted a specific order of priests in Christianity, then it makes sense to say that they probably should be male. My view is that the voice of holy writ is much louder on the side of God not wanting such an order. See point above on “ordination”.
Third, the “politically correct” scenario with respect to the genders in the US is really only manifestly concrete in the economic world (where, by the way, women still earn only 80% of what men earn for the same jobs/work). In that regard, there had to be LAWS enacted to forbid discrimination and to “level the playing field” in the job arena; the fair playing field did not simply “emerge”. As for the rest of society, one can get a pretty good idea of what the cultural norms really are by observing pop culture (music, television, etc.), and by that measurement, it’s clear that money is what is valued the most, and sex a close second. I believe it’s because they are both expressions of power over others, and we humans like to see ourselves getting what we think we deserve. We are drowning in a flood of pornography. The leading cause of death other than “natural causes” for women is murder by their (male) partners or husbands. The leading cause of injury for women other than from physiologic problems is domestic violence. Women do not feel that the streets are safe for them at night in most settings. Women are portrayed as subjugated, restrained, unclothed, etc. etc. in most music videos I’ve seen, not to mention how they’re described in some song lyrics. Statistically, domestic violence and child abuse are as common in Christian settings as in non-Christian settings. Leaving aside for the moment what is done to women in other “unenlightened” cultures (rape as a weapon of war, denial of education, etc.), please tell me how “political correctness” has really benefitted women in Western societies, particularly the US.
The idea that Gnosticism holds the supreme hope for women would be laughable if it were not so sad (see quote above from the Gospel of Thomas). Dear brothers, ordained or not, for women’s ordination or against (but especially those against), please tell me how Jesus would speak to me, a woman, on the points I have made above. I don’t believe Jesus and Paul would contradict one another, nor do I believe they actually do, when language, textual context and culture are examined. However, if there were a contradiction, it would seem to me that Jesus would always hold the trump card.
God bless you. Dana Ames
...and one more thing
Ivan, what if the phrase “as in all the congregations of God’s people” (1 cor 14:33b) was meant to be a part of the previous idea, as in: “You can all prophesy one by one, with the result that all will learn something and all will be encouraged. Also, the prophets’ spirits are under the prophets’ control; for God is not a God of unruliness, but of order, as is so in the congregations of all God’s people.” In other words, “This is the way we do worship as Christians”- what seems to me to be the topic of this whole section. My understanding is that lexically this is just as likely as the phrase being appended to the following verse, since punctuation was not used.
Dana Ames
Sorry, Dana, your comments do
Sorry, Dana, your comments do deserve a response, of course. Forgive me for not having acknowledged them sooner. Despite what many on OST might believe, I am not a misogynist!
I honestly don’t believe that what I see as the scriptural basis for male-only leadership construes any kind of disrespect towards women whatosoever. Christ had women in his retinue (if not as Apostles) and we cannot imagine him to have been anything other than congenial and respectful towards them. In this, all men should follow Christ’s example. Whatever Paul write about male authority, he certainly wrote nothing to justify the degradation to which women have been subjected throughout history, and to which they are subjected today in pornography, pop music and the media etc.
You are right that the lack of original punctuation means that the line ‘as in all the churches of the saints’ might just as easily be added to the end of the instructions on orderly worship (although all the commentators I have consulted to do not seem to think so). That said, even without this line, the tone of vv.34-36 still strongly suggests a universality of practise that the Corinthians are being called to adopt.
How does the Church relate to an ever changing society? The more I think about it, the more I see the Church as ostensibly existing outside time and secular influence. Jesus instructed us to be as salt, light and yeast, thereby affecting the world around us for His sake. Sadly, the many issues with which the Church wrestles today are indicative of a body of believers all too ready to conform to the spirit of the age rather than have their minds conformed to the mind of Christ.
Dana
I did revisit your post Dana. I didn’t realise you were asking any questions - can you help me? Also I couldn’t download the article - what programme do I need for this?
I like the idea of leadership being a dance though: and here my cyber fantasies kick in with a vengeance. What kinds of dance would be appropriate to different kinds of churches? And what kinds of dance do we imagine different contributors to this website performing? Ballroom dancing? Jive? The dinky two-step?
Tua De
Dana
Perhaps you should not be so fast to remove the phrase “as in all the congregations of God’s people” from the discussion of women in church. Paul was telling the church in Corinth they should be more like the church at Cenchreae, where sister Phoebe was the minister, or the Caesarea where Philip’s four daughters had a thriving prophetic ministry, or congregations where Priscilla or the apostle Junia worked.
We cannot use 1 Cor 14:33 to say women kept quiet in all the congregations in the 1st century church. It is pretty clear they didn’t, nor were they expected to either.
Instead of 1 Cor 14:33 extending Pauline ‘misogyny’ to the rest of the NT, it actually limits the more extreme interpretations we make of his teaching. Paul tells us we are now allowed to go beyond what was common practice in the NT church, women deacons, teachers, prophets, apostles, (and even elders if Ken Bailey is right).
Peter: The article by Kenneth Bailey is a pdf file so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. Or do a google search for the strings: “Women in the New Testament” “Kenneth E. Bailey” The pdf is available on the theologymatters site, the third one down. Get Google to open it by clicking ‘View as HTML’ Or To get Google to do it automatically It’s worth the effort.
Deacon
A great catalogue
of the relevant passages — thanks for the article. I thought his exegesis toward the end was reaching a little bit, but that seems to be the best we can do on either side of this fence. There’s no clear, indisputed interpretation and the cultural forces at work are mostly lost to us.
I saved the article and I will reference it the next time I have an opportunity to discuss this issue.
Kenneth Bailey - a 'must read'
In a previous comment on the Neo-Gnostic thread, I (over)reacted to a response from Chris on formative influences on Christianity in N.T. times, then corrected myself when I realised we were at cross-purposes. The Kenneth Bailey article referred to by Dana above is dropping into very fertile soil in this respect, and provides all sorts of gems: an argument for women elders/overseers from 1 Timothy; but especially a grid against which we can get better understanding of 1 Corinthians 14:33-36 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15.
In 1 Timothy, a conjectured background to the injunctions on women to silence, submission, not to teach, not to have authority over a man, and the significance of being formed after Adam, deceived in the line of Eve, kept safe through childbirth, are interpreted with skill and understanding by Bailey in the light of Artemis worship in Ephesus, and the infiltration of attitudes and activities by women in view of this malign formative influence.
To me, this helps to confirm the ‘cultural’ context of the commands, and helps to rescue them from a wooden, timeless restriction on women’s roles - which seems so at odds with what we read of Paul elsewhere, and especially at odds with what we read of Jesus himself.
The comments on 1 Corinthians 14, and the ‘lingua franca’ Greek of Corinth are also interesting.
The comments on 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 by Thiselton and Witherington, quoted on the Neo-Gnostic Church? thread are also underlined through this historical background by Bailey - and would confirm John’s comments on the same thread.
In fact the comments by Chris could have been written in the light of this article, or something very similar.
I commend the article to Ivan and Alario (without expecting that you will change your position) and to everyone with a serious interest in the integrity of scripture on these matters. I hope it will help to show that historical research is an essential component of biblical interpretation, and if in some sense always an exploratory affair, can shine striking new light on well known parts of scripture.
thanks all
I appreciate the responses. My questions were not always followed by question marks…
erlenmeyer, even if it is a reach, that just shows me that there’s more yet to be dug up about the cultural component. We’re not done yet.
deacon, I do see your point.
Peter, glad it was helpful. I think it’s interesting that the topic of leadership is so frequently discussed these days. Perhaps we are gaining some new understanding about relating to one another in ways that honor God and one another more honestly. As to the dance, I think it could be any kind of dance the Muse-ic calls for :) Have you ever seen Balkan/Greek line dancing? The dance proceeds counterclockwise. There are usually several people who are able to lead. They take turns, because it’s impolite for one person to hog the front of the line. Farther down the line are the competent dancers who could possibly lead, but would rather not have to think about it, would rather converse with their neighbors, watch the surroundings while they dance, etc. There will be a few who follow along behind the leaders at the front, not actually in the line yet because they are still learning the steps. The best way to do this is to copy those good dancers from behind, so they don’t disrupt the steps of the ones in the line. When they are reasonably satisfied they won’t mess anyone else up, they join the line, but they’re just as much a part of the dance as the others who are already there- perhaps more so, because they’re determined to learn.
Ivan, thanks. I don’t think you’re a mysogenist. I think you say the things you do because you care about God. I have some thoughts for you, but right now I to take my dog to the vet and pick up my daughters from school. I shall get back to you later today. Dana Ames
for Ivan
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I tried posting last night, but it didn’t work. I’ll try to reconstruct what I wrote.
You did not mention if you read the article. I hope you have. I would be interested in hearing what you think of it.
I understand that there are good-hearted people who believe in male-only leadership and would not in any way want to be disrespectful to women. I am approaching the concept of ministry from a “priesthood of all believers” reading of the Bible. [I understand all the arguments for an ecclesiastical priesthood -I was raised RC- and have rejected them on what I believe are Biblical grounds. Though as someone in the original string -Alario?- commented, I can live with there being priests, even if it’s not the ideal situation.] As formal education became more available, educated people gained status in the Renaissance and Reformation, and respect for educated people continued into the Enlightenment and beyond. There is nothing wrong with this sort of respect- and I think we have turned it into something connected with our ideas of “leadership” that the NT writers might not recognize, elevating certain ministries that are not clearly elevated to the same degree in Scripture. I think one of the reasons the concept of “leadership” is a hot topic right now is that people are thinking, perhaps we have been on the wrong track for 1800 years. Perhaps there is a different way to approach “leadership”, one that was barely able to be tried before our greed and manipulative tendencies mucked it up. Yes, there is such a thing as “leadership” in the NT, and I think it is meant to be shared, and encouraged, according to gifting. So then, if a woman is endowed with “leadership” gifts, but it is true that a woman may not lead, then two things are being said to women. One: “You are second-class Christians/humans, merely because you have an X chromosome instead of a Y chromosome” (in every cell of our bodies, by the way). Differentiation between function and ontology cannot logically be maintained- it is simply not ok to be a woman. No matter how well-meaning you are, this is a message of disrespect of the highest order. Two: “God is arbitrary and cruel”, because he gave these gifts to women but has restricted women from using them- but he has created them as women!
Can you see this?
A universality is indeed not necessarily suggested from the Corinthian passage, in light of allowing women public exercise of their gifts in other passages, even in the same letter. These are difficult passages, and because they are not necessarily clear we need to keep on wrestling with them. How I wish we could ring Paul up and ask him to sort this out for us! The problem is not God, or the Bible, or even Paul. The “problem” lies in our interpretation of the text. Our interpretation of the text is not the same thing as the text itself. We need the best hermeneutical tools to help us. I think the Baily article is one of those good tools.
I also commend to you Miroslav Volf’s “Exclusion and Embrace”. It’s a terrific book, and chapter 4 on Gender Identity is outstanding.
I am so glad you see that society devalues women. I agree it’s disheartening that it seems the Kingdom of God is making little headway in so many areas. How I love God for not abandoning humanity! God so loved the world that he gave… Who would have thought he would wade right into all the messiness and dirt, would actually become incarnated… One of the most convincing things for me when I began to seriously study the possibility of “equal opportunity ministry” for women is that if it is so, it is so very countercultural. It was in Paul’s day, and it still is in ours.
We can continue the discussion publicly, or you can e-mail me if you wish. I won’t be on line much the next couple of weeks, as I will be busy up to Easter with church, my son will be home from college on spring break, and my family is hosting a Japanese exchange student until then.
God bless you. Dana Ames
on X and Y
One and a half years too late, but being new at OST, one of the joys is to dig through the mass of material on this site!
A fascinating discussion, and I thought that the issue had been dealt with many years ago! Shows how out of touch I am.
Just one quick comment in the light of “You are second-class Christians/humans, merely because you have an X chromosome instead of a Y chromosome”.
From a purely biological standpoint, in the light of Genesis, Two Xs make a completely symetrical picture. I just wonder whether the ‘rib’ that came out of Adam may not have been one part of the original X that he must have had? In this reading the original Adam was both male and female and God then genetically ‘reengineered’ Eve from Adam. As far as my knowledge of male anatomy goes, I am not aware of any present day rib asymetry but there certainly does exist an XY asymetry…
Live to serve : Serve to live