Regarding Women in The Church (pt 3 of 5)

I want to share a few other passages that make it clear that Paul expected women to speak in the church. If not, why would he have given the following instructions? There would be no reason for him to give directions for women who were speaking in the church, if they were never allowed to do speak.

"Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved." (I Corinthians 11:5)

If Paul believed no women should ever teach or speak in church, why does he commend many women who did just that?

So what do we do with the troubling verses that command women to be silent in the churches? Well, we have to interpret those verses in light of what we have already covered--that there were women in leadership positions of the church. Obviously, Paul was not writing to them. He was addressing another issue entirely--the women who were loud and unruly during the service, causing disorder and confusion..

When he wrote to the church in Corinth, he was dealing with a church that was very disorderly in their services. He spent most of the letter correcting excesses and abuses. Some of these pertained to women in particular and some were to the entire church. Paul was not being prejudiced against women when he told the Corinthian women to keep silent. In the early church, the seating arrangement was quite different from our modern day churches. Men were seated on one side of the church while the women and children were seated on the opposite side. In fact, this is still practiced in many cultures today.

The women of Christ's day were generally uneducated and usually only men were educated. When the church met the women were tempted to shout across the room and ask their husbands the meaning of whatever was being taught. As you can imagine, this disrupted the service. Paul was simply saying during the service, "Women, keep your children quiet and you be quiet, and if you have anything to ask your husbands, wait until you get home." Because of the new equality that Christianity brought to women, it could be that some of them were taking their freedom too far, to the point of being obnoxious. (I am sure that you probably know some men that are like that, today).

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he gave him similar instructions. Once again, we have to understand the context of the letter. In I Timothy, a careful reader should see that Paul was concerned about many severe heresies and false teachings. As a matter of fact, many of the proponents and victims of the false teachings, were women. Timothy pastored in Ephesus, and goddess worship might have played a large part in Paul dealing so severely with the women. Ephesus was a primary center of the worship of Diana or Artemis. The heresies taught might have suggested that women were authoritative over men and had higher access to spiritual knowledge than men did. Some of that still exists in the Church, today.

Regardless of the particulars, in both cases Paul was dealing with specific incidents in specific churches for very particular reasons.

Nickolas

(I send out messages like each morning. If you are interested, let me know. However, you can also find these messages at: Thought For The Day)

Comment by John Brown on June 14, 2012 at 9:46am: Nicolas,

Your topic is well covered in a book, "What's With Paul And Women?" by Jon Zens, 2010. He presents a lot of cultural background on this topic.

Comment by Nickolas Hiemstra on June 14, 2012 at 6:15pm: Interesting. I have never heard of that book. Thank you.

Comment by Sandy McCoy- Foust on June 14, 2012 at 6:44pm: I totally agree with this Nickolas..I have heard this preached very similar......and I am sure Jon Zens book is GREAT!.. Hes an Awesome Author!

Thanks Again for sharing! :)

Comment by John Brown on June 14, 2012 at 7:04pm: In doing biblical studies for many years, I've come to the conclusion that one should look for the cultural context first before attempting to interpret the meaning. That is, learn WHO is the sender of the document, then learn WHO is the recipient and also learn the contextual reason for the document. All that starts with culture ... a culture which is alien to us, an ocean away, a language difference and 20 centuries later. Looking at those things, it would be surprising if we got the message right the first time.

Comment by Nickolas Hiemstra on June 14, 2012 at 9:08pm: Absolutely . . . then again, no. lol. What I mean is that it is important to know the culture in which the text was written. I have always advocated this when we study the Old Testament. Too many have no understanding of the Hebrew culture, especially during all of the changes in the thousands of years that the Hebrew nation grew.

However, many of the things taught in the Scriptures pertain to every culture and era. They are universal principles. I think we need to examine all of it--sometimes at the same time!

Comment by John Brown on June 14, 2012 at 9:31pm: You might want to add this URL to your studies http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/ The presentation of Hebrew language and culture is at the right level for us non-academics.

Comment by Nickolas Hiemstra on June 14, 2012 at 10:15pm: lol. Thank you. I already use it often. I appreciate you telling me about it. It's great to know others used it.

Comment by John Brown on June 15, 2012 at 12:41pm: I just got some of Benner's books this week, a dictionary, a lexicon and one on Genesis, Zen and Quantum physics. That last one is a bit over my head.

Regarding Women in The Church (pt 3 of 5)

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