a hermeneutic on gender and ministry [#ICSEX]

Few things bother me as much as misinterpreted and misapplied scripture. And (I believe) one of the worst examples of this is around the issue of women’s role in ministry in the church.

There are many that disagree with women being active in ministry, and others that would go so far as to say that they should be silent participants in church. Not only do I feel that this is based on a misinterpretation of the intent of the Scriptures, but it also creates a situation that forces society to question the validity and relevance of the Word in our world today.

First let’s look at the passages used to support this idea:

The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.

– 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

– 1 Timothy 2:11-12

Seems pretty clear, right? I mean, Paul doesn’t even stutter when he lays outs this direction.

But responsible Bible interpretation isn’t as easy as just looking at these passages at face value and saying that God is trying to tell us that women should never talk in church. After all, when Paul wrote this he was writing specifically to a first century audience dealing with very specific first century issues.

This means that there are cultural and sociological differences that we need to consider for us to fully understand what’s happening here. We must also take these passages in their literary context by understanding how they fit into the entire writings to which they belong. So here are a couple of questions that we need to consider before we can apply these ideas to the church today.

Who is Paul writing to and about?

The simple answer is that he’s giving instruction to a first century church and church leader. Because these passages are about women, we should understand what first century women were like. More often than not, women in the first century would have been very uneducated. They may be very skilled in the ways of keeping the home and raising the children, but most would not have been very educated at all, but especially in the Scriptures. Many may not even know how to read, but due to the lack of availability of literature they probably wouldn’t have needed to read in the first place.

Therefore, it would have been very common for women to have questions when listening to a great intellectual like Paul. It would have been the modern equivalent of a fifth-grader trying to listen to an Albert Einstein lecture. So they would have had questions about what Paul was teaching… LOTS of questions. And who would they turn to? The passage in 1 Corinthians answers that one pretty clearly.

Why would Paul be addressing this issue?

Considering that these curious women would’ve had lots of questions, and would’ve been asking things like, “Hey honey, what does he mean by we are ‘saved by grace’?” The women’s inability to understand complex intellectual and religious concepts would’ve created quite a disturbing chatter for someone who was trying to teach (probably in pretty tight quarters). These uneducated women were interfering with Paul’s teaching! I can imagine Paul thinking, “How rude! I wish these women would just be quite for a minute! They can ask their husbands what I meant later!” Oh… he did say that…

So what’s Paul’s intent?

Especially considering the surrounding text for the passage in 1 Corinthians, I believe that Paul is trying to talk about respecting the service than he is trying to prove male dominance in the church. Even the passage in 1 Timothy can be interpreted as being more about order, structure, and respect, than it is about keeping women quiet.

How does this translate for today?

Well, first of all, women are much more educated today than they were back then. And this level of knowledge/wisdom means that chattering, confused women are not interrupting the church services today like they would have back then. And if we look closely at Paul’s intent and the state of the church today, then Paul’s word might actually apply to many men as well.

And with other writings (like the Book of Acts) clearly pointing out that women often had a prominent role in ministry, it makes it hard for me to believe that Paul (and God) intended for women in today’s church to remain silent and miss out opportunities to minister to others.

What factors do you consider?

What else do you consider when interpreting passages like these? How do you reconcile these passages with others that clearly show women as active parts of ministry? What role do you feel women play (or don’t play) in church today? Why?

This post is for The Idea Camp blogging series during #ICSEX Gender Week.

seven major christian leaders [bible college papers]

Note: This essay is part of a series that I am doing for a class on church history. This part of the series is a summary of some of the great leaders of the early Christian church.

Throughout the time of the Early and Medieval Church there were many great leaders who had to deal with these heresies. These men left their mark by not only recognizing the false teachings as they arose, but also by using true Biblical doctrine to refute the heresies. Listed here are seven major Christian leaders who left a lasting impact on the church.

The impact of Ignatius is unquestionable. He was driven by a desire for both holy living and holy dying. Living during a time of great persecution by the Roman government, he was proud to die as a martyr for the faith. He was arrested for being a Christian, and some of his greatest work came while being transported to Rome for execution. Along the way he wrote letters to churches and people which give us a great picture of the types of things that the early church dealt with. His writings contributed to early church organization by identifying three levels of ministry: bishop, presbyter (elder), and deacon. Tradition states that Ignatius died by being eaten by lions in the Colosseum.

Polycarp was one of the recipients of a letter from Ignatius, and is also known for a letter that he wrote to the church in Philippi. But one of the most significant facts about Polycarp was that he was a disciple of the Apostle John. Well before any of the New Testament writings were canonized, Polycarp quoted New Testament writings about sixty times in his letter to the Philippians including more than thirty references to Paul’s writings. Polycarp urged early church leadership to take the position of a servant.

Trained as a professional philosopher, Justin Martyr eventually became the leading apologist of his day. As a pagan philosopher he was impressed by the lives and deaths of early Christians. After his own conversion he applied his skills by attempting to explain the superiority of Christianity. In doing so, he described some of the secret (due to persecution) practices of Christians. As a result, we have an idea of what the gatherings of the early church were like. Justin Martyr died during the persecution of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Tertullian was another great apologist. In his work he specifically argued against the combining of elements of Christianity with other beliefs, particularly Gnosticism and Docetism. His greatest accomplishment is in developing the doctrine of the trinity in response to the heresies that denied the divinity of Christ. He also spoke out strongly against the growing worldliness in the church, and called for a strict moral life and following the leading of the Holy Spirit. This eventually led him into the heresy of Montanism.

Eusebius is known as the “father of church history” because of the comprehensive historical works that he developed. He recorded a history of missions and persecutions, bishops, writings, martyrdoms, heresies, and much more. Most notably, some of the quotations that he captured are the only known surviving copies of important works that are long lost. His other major contribution came during the Council of Nicaea when he presented a creed that clarified the deity of Christ by stating that He was “begotten, not made, being of one essence with the Father.”

Because one of the major issues that led to heresy in the church was allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures, there was a need to define a proper method of explaining the meaning of the text. Theodore of Mopsuestia dealt with this issue by developing the grammatical-historical method of interpretation. This required the reader to consider the grammar and historical context of the Scriptures in order to determine their true meaning and application.

Much later during the Late Medieval Church, Gregory VII helped the office of pope achieve new levels of respect. First, before he became the pope himself, he helped create the method of selecting popes so that they were elected by the College of Cardinals rather than by secular rulers. Second, he further established theocratic rule of the church in his book Dictatus Papae, which clearly stated his position that the church is subject to God and not other human government leaders or establishments. Finally, he excommunicated Emperor Henry IV over a disagreement related to laymen appointing people to clergy positions. While his actions were not without backlash, he clearly established the authority of the church as not being subject to any other authority.

Many of the issues that the church is dealing with today are not new, and there is much that can be learned from how these early leaders dealt with the problems of their day. As Alister McGrath points out, “Anyone who thinks about the great questions of Christian theology soon discovers that many of them have already been addressed.” He continues, “There is always an element of looking over one’s shoulder to see how things were done in the past, and what answers were given.” McGrath also shares a great quote from Karl Barth about our position as it relates to learning from these early church leaders:

“With regard to theology, we cannot be in the in the church without taking responsibility as much for the theology of the past as for the theology of our own present day. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher and all the others are not dead but living. They still speak and demand a hearing as living voices, as surely as we know that they and we belong together in the church.”

are we in control of our decisions?

Do you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture or a post-tribulation one? Do you believe in pre-destination or in free will? Where do you stand on issues like the death penalty, or even more ‘minor’ ones like drinking alcohol?

Would it surprise you if I told you that your position on things like this may not be based on actual decisions that you’ve made on your own?

I caught this great TED Talks video recently featuring Dan Ariely (a faculty member at MIT) in which he talks about how people make decisions. It’s really a very interesting video! Check it out… 

YouTube Video :: Video :: Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our decisions?

The ideas that Ariely discusses here make me think about the implications for the church. What this research suggests is that your theology depends less on what you have actually figured out and more on what other influences you have around you.

Wait, what?

Yup, chances are you and I have actually come to very few real decisions on our own regarding what we believe.

Think about it… is your position on a pre-trib or post-trib rapture based on an actual study of the Scriptures that you’ve done? I would even go so far as to suggest that the number of people who believe in a pre-trib rapture increased substantially when the Left Behind series came out (which I loved by the way).

In fact, I also question whether most Christians have even read the entire Bible. Some research indicates that less than 10% of Christians have read the Bible from cover-to-cover.

And this, my friends, is one of the BIG reasons that the church lacks credibility in most Western societies these days. It is also one of the top reasons that many Christians ‘loose’ their faith.

Does anyone else see a problem here?

Not only does this mean that as Christians we should actually read our Bibles, but it also means that we should be students of it.

One initiative that will be starting soon in the BibleDude.net Facebook Group is a chapter-by-chapter study of the Word. But whether you join these studies with us or not, I encourage you to get into some sort of systematic study of the Scriptures. Find ways to dissect the Word of God for yourself.

I might also go so far as to say that the future of The Faith depends on it!

bible interpretation: epistle study essays

The Epistles of Bible are an amazing genre of literature! They are letters from Paul, Peter, John, and Jude to the churches. Particularly in Paul’s case, the letters are not to strangers, but to people with whom he was intimately familiar. Paul planted these churches and mentored these people. So he knew them well.

Therefore, when reading these letters, one should read them just as they were intended. One should hear Paul’s (and the other authors’) heart cry out to these people. Just as if you were reading a letter from a friend, you should also try to hear the message the way the original audience would have heard it.

In my recent Bible Interpretation class with Sarasota Bible College, my students were asked to do a short essay on their interpretation of a passage of their choice from an epistle. Here are the ones that wanted to share online…

• Galatians 5:16-26 (Anita G.)
• Galatians 5:13-18 (Justin G.)
• Philippians 1:1-2 (Nancy K.)
• 2 Corinthians 9:6-8 (Tonya S.)

When studying the epistles, it is important to have a good commentary that will help you with things like historical and literary context. I have added a section to the BibleDude Store that will help you find a good commentary for the various epistles. There are two sections in the store that you may find useful…

• Commentaries for Genreal Reading: Epistles
• Commentaries for Advanced Study: Epistles

I would love to hear about studies that you are doing in the epistles! Please let me know if you are doing something or if you would like to study something together with the BibleDude Community!

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