Mar
01
Q & A: “Women speaking and teaching in Church”
I recently began an e-mail correspondence with a pastor in the Philippines who discovered our website. He is doing a great ministry in a rural area and has led many to the Lord. Many of his e-mails contain great questions from people in his church. I took some time writing my response. This series of blogs contain those questions and answers.
Question: What do you think of the passage that says women shouldn’t speak in church (1 Corinthians 14:34)?
Answer: Here in America Christians differ on how to interpret the passages that talk about women both speaking and teaching in church. Some take words at face value and forbid women from speaking or teaching in a church no matter how wise or gifted they might be.
Our denomination interprets these passages by considering the historical and cultural context that they were written in. In the time of the early church, women were not educated like men. Neither, were they allowed training in religion. Education was only given to men. Jesus and the early Christian movement changed a lot of that. Although Jesus twelve disciples were all men many of his followers and supporters were women (Luke 8:1-3). In the first churches women were allowed to sit under the teaching of the apostles and (later their pastors) along with the men. This was unprecedented in Jewish and Greek society. But because many women lacked the basic education of the men they tended to have many questions in their church gatherings. Paul’s instructions didn’t forbid them from asking questions, but instead to instructed them where and when to ask their questions. They were to wait until they got home and then ask their husband to help them understand. This was a radical concept in that society because Paul was saying that women should learn about God just like the men. I think Paul’s instructions were an attempt to keep order and allow everyone a chance to learn.
Maybe you have been teaching a group of believers where you have some that are knowledgeable and some who are brand new to the faith. You want to teach a more complex truth about God. It is hard to do that if the new Christians are asking lots of basic questions. What I typically do is say to that person, “I know you have lots of question and some of what I am teaching hard for you to understand. See me after class and I would be happy to answer all your questions.”
I believe that is what Paul is trying to say. With all these (uneducated) women in the church with so many basic questions it was creating “disorder”. Paul wants them to learn. But to create order, he asks the women to not talk or ask their questions in the service but to go home and ask their husbands these basic questions. Their husbands would then have the opportunity to help them understand. And it put pressure on the husbands to make sure they were learning because they would have to explain it later.
I believe the principle is still valid. When we come together in our churches or classes we will have those who are new to faith (both men and women). Their questions are important but we don’t necessarily want to take up our time going over the basics of the faith again. It is good to have them hold their questions for after church or class and then address them specifically so that more mature believers can receive the deeper truths of scripture.
Paul wasn’t biased against women. In his day “women” and “uneducated” were synonymous. Today that is not the case, so we find his statements puzzling when we don’t understand the historical and cultural context.
By the way, I think the historical context helps us understand 1 Timothy 2:11-14 as well. Paul seems to indicate that woman cannot teach in a church (or be a pastor). But understanding the historical context, I think that Paul is saying that a person that lacks education, (women in his time), should not teach or be in a position of authority over others because their lack of maturity in the faith could lead them to be easily deceived and then deceive others. That is what happened with Adam and Eve. God told Adam directly not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Eve got the teaching second hand but didn’t quite understand it (She thought you couldn’t even touch the fruit.) And her lack of maturity in the instructions of God led her to be deceived and then Adam as well.
The Bible teaches an equality of people and genders (Galatians 3:26-28). It is also clear that the gifts of the spirit are given to all without bias towards men (1 Corinthians 12:12-29). If a women has been given the gift of teaching, preaching, or leadership by the Holy Spirit, who are we to stand in the way of the gift being used? We just want to make sure that they are mature in their faith before we put them into a position of influence or authority (1 Timothy 3:1-13).
I hope that my answer is not too long and that it is clear. I hate to see women held back from participating in the church with all the gifts that God has given them because of a misunderstanding of what Paul was trying to teach the churches of his day.