Part 1: The Roles of Women in the Church
THE ROLES OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH
The first part of this book examines those passages in Paul that have been advanced to support women’s subordination in the church. The second part addresses the main passage used to argue for women’s subordination in the home.
The first passage we will examine is 1 Corinthians 11:1–16. This passage allows women to minister in the congregation, but calls them to cover their heads lest they detract from God’s glory by distracting men from the worship of God. Paul covers all his bases by marshalling several arguments that will appeal to various groups of readers; one of his arguments for women covering their heads is based on the creation order. The cultural issue addressed in this passage is probably that women of higher wealth and status were decking themselves out and distracting men by their artificial beauty. Paul sides with the lower-status, more conservative elements in the congregation for the sake of propriety and church unity.
The second passage we will examine is 1 Corinthians 14:34–35. This passage could be read as enjoining absolute silence on all women in all churches, but this interpretation would contradict the context and the earlier passage in 1 Corinthians 11, where women are praying and prophesying. More likely, this second passage addresses women who are asking misguided questions during the teaching period of the church service, thereby slowing everyone down, and Paul’s admonition refers only to this situation. The cultural situation is the inferior training of women, which Paul seeks to correct by urging husbands to take a more active interest in their wives’ spiritual and intellectual maturation.
The third passage we will examine is 1 Timothy 2:8–15. This is the only passage in the entire Bible explicitly forbidding or limiting women’s teaching role. This passage is therefore problematic, since Paul elsewhere commends fellow ministers who were women. Again, the cultural situation is in view; women were in general less trained than men, and Paul does not want people susceptible to false teaching to be in leadership positions when heresy is so rampant in the church. But here again he proposes a long-range solution for the Christian women in that congregation: they should be educated as the men had been.
He bases his argument against allowing these particular women to teach first of all on the creation order, the same basis for the requirement that women in Corinth wear head coverings. The second basis for his argument is the parallel between the deceivable women of Timothy’s congregation and deceivable Eve, similar to his earlier parallel between the deceivable Corinthian Christians of both genders and Eve. But, as in 1 Corinthians 11, he ends up qualifying his argument so that no one takes him too far; Eve’s curse is removed for those who persevere in Christ.
There is in the entirety of the New Testament no evidence for the subordination of women that is practiced in many of our churches today, and certainly not sufficient evidence for men to rule out the validity of women’s calls to minister the word of God. When men claim that God has called them, we do not question their call if their lives and ministry bear witness to that claim; when women claim that God has called them, we ought to evaluate their calls on the same terms. If we judge other people’s calls on the basis of a narrow and ill-considered interpretation of several texts, ignoring the clear examples of other texts, we may succeed only in silencing some of God’s servants needed for our generation. And if we do that, we invite God to pass judgment on our own call as interpreters of God’s word.