Women in Church (long)
Earth has had gender issues since the Creation.
Many people like to harp all over poor Eve for being deceived by the Devil. My only response to that is I invite every man who disparages her weakness to casually call Satan into his home for a face to face chat and see who comes out on top. Father of Lies? Prince of This World? Hello?
We should all praise our First Lady of Humanity for getting out of that fateful conversation with only one (admittedly major) error on her record. But let's not think I'm making light of Eve's error either. It was a grevious thing for her to distrust the Lord and prefer the words of the Serpent. In fact, this especially foolish choice on her part was the specific act that actually cost her equal authority in the family structure:
Gen: 3:16 To the woman he [God] said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
So...before the Fall, woman was a specially created help-mate for Adam, created from his rib, out of his side...to walk beside him. After her sin, she was relegated to a place beneath her husband.
----
Skipping ahead to the future, we see that the vast majority of pagan cults in the world were very much about putting women and goddesses over men. Ever find it a bit odd that a woman could be little more than the property of her husband in the very same culture where she'd be all but deified if she was a pagan priestess? It's chaotic because Satan likes Chaos. He wants things unbalanced and broken. So...be a woman and a godly wife, and expect men to abuse it and treat you like a slave. Be a priestess (and you couldn't be a priestess without being a temple prostitute in most pagan cultures) and you could have power and wealth...all you had to do was be willing to be "with" any man who came to the temple, and be "with" any ungodly spawn of evil worshipped there.
God didn't want that life for His children. He wanted the women of Israel to be unmolested, undemonically used, and pure. So He gave them two places women were forbidden to be: The temple and the battlefield.
---
Fast forward again:
We do a large disservice to Paul when we read his letters to specific churches as if he were Moses being handed new Laws for all mankind. We're supposed to be over needing justice to be as simple as a rulebook *sigh*.
eph 5:22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
col 3:18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
Both times Paul wrote this, he was being pretty specific. He was talking to Ephesian Wives, but the Greek allows for the understanding that the statement was made in general...all wives. They are told to submit. The fact that he says this to two different groups reinforces the idea that this is a general commandment. I'm sorry if that bothers any women out there but the simple fact is that since Genesis 3, we lost our leadership role in the household. No matriarchy allowed. No equal billing.
But the Greek is achingly specific and even the English reflects that fact. Wives, submit to your OWN husbands. This structure in the Greek does not allow for a generality. There is no sense of women being subject to men in general, there is no way to make the text give that message. One wife, one husband, one closed command structure per household.
No matter how much some men want it to be so, men have no authority over women in general, but a man has the authority of Christ over his own wife (and only over her). He has the authority of head of household/father over his daughters, but that is different. There are some things a father cannot command his daughters to do.
If you are a woman and a wife, there is one man on planet earth who has leadership authority over you. That man is your husband. Not your mother's husband (he loses his authority when you marry, assuming you honored him as the head of the house when you were a child). Not your friend's husband (he never had any authority). Not your male pastor (his authority is a more general authority, to teach and instruct, not to lay down personal commandments the way your husband is allowed to do).
So what about women teaching or preaching in church? The answer seems to be yes you can but maybe you shouldn't.
The first person God entrusted to preach the good news of His resurrection was Mary Magdalene, a woman. But did she *teach* by passing on that news? Did she *preach*? Note then that teaching and preaching are different things.
Women can preach. That prescident was set with Mary Magdelene. Anytime you quote the Word of God, you are preaching. Whether reading at a pulpit or yelling on the street, this is certainly open to women...but what preacher today stops at simply quoting?
---
Paul writes in 1 Tim 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
But Timothy was hanging out with Ephesians when he got this letter. Paul had to seriously school the Ephesians because of how messed up and matriarchical their culture was. Priestesses in specific and women in general in the temple of Ephesus had all *sorts* of authority.
The Greek structure is again very specific. We can translate it as "a" woman and "the" man..but it's "the woman" and "the man" to a point so specific that Paul could have possibly been addressing one singled out couple.
Given that bit of information, most likely, this couple was the man in charge of the Ephesian church, and his wife. The guy was getting it wrong and Paul was writing to Timothy saying "tell them to fix this, she has her husband all screwed up with her wacky Ephesian ideas!" But there *is* room in the text for it to be taken more generally than that, just not enough room to make it a sweeping generalization. Either way, the Greek structure refers here to a closed couple or group (maybe the leadership couples in that church). It just doesn't easily translate to a more general case. You can *do* it, but it makes some pretty heavy demands of the text and context.
There was no way these Ephesian women were going to be easily converted to Christianity, where their husbands would be their Heads. Oh... they'd "convert" but then they'd try to bend things to the old status quo. So Paul had to just shut them up. They were always speaking out of turn, trying to warp the Gospel to match their pagan-feminist ideas of how things should be done. Better they be slient because they were wholly unqualified to teach. These women, specifically, needed to learn first.
There's no lack of women today, in and outside the Church that fit into this mold. They shouldn't be teaching either.
Paul had similar troubles in Corinth...the women there were used to rediculous authority as "maidens" (cough cough) of Baccus. As such, Paul had to drive home the point that they were not supposed to be acting like grand high priestesses over the men (and that sleeping with your stepmom was a sin!) These early churches were all sorts of confused.
---
By contrast, Paul says in phil 4:3 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.
Ephesian women were all screwed up, but here were some women who could spread the Word without a problem. So they were possibly preachers....but were they also teachers?
---
In writing to another congregation, The Colossians, –- who were not as New Age flaky as the Corinthians -- Paul said, “In Christ, there is no male or female.” Because of the relative maturity of their existing Gentile culture, these people didn't need the warnings or restructurings that the Ephesians and Corinthians did. Their women could probably teach rings around the women in Ephesus.
There does need to be a balance for women no matter what Paul meant. Joyce Meyer (a famous female televangelist) summed it up best by saying: "I am a preacher, but I am not my husband's preacher. I still must submit to him."
---
Earth has had gender issues since the Creation.
Many people like to harp all over poor Eve for being deceived by the Devil. My only response to that is I invite every man who disparages her weakness to casually call Satan into his home for a face to face chat and see who comes out on top. Father of Lies? Prince of This World? Hello?
We should all praise our First Lady of Humanity for getting out of that fateful conversation with only one (admittedly major) error on her record. But let's not think I'm making light of Eve's error either. It was a grevious thing for her to distrust the Lord and prefer the words of the Serpent. In fact, this especially foolish choice on her part was the specific act that actually cost her equal authority in the family structure:
Gen: 3:16 To the woman he [God] said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
So...before the Fall, woman was a specially created help-mate for Adam, created from his rib, out of his side...to walk beside him. After her sin, she was relegated to a place beneath her husband.
----
Skipping ahead to the future, we see that the vast majority of pagan cults in the world were very much about putting women and goddesses over men. Ever find it a bit odd that a woman could be little more than the property of her husband in the very same culture where she'd be all but deified if she was a pagan priestess? It's chaotic because Satan likes Chaos. He wants things unbalanced and broken. So...be a woman and a godly wife, and expect men to abuse it and treat you like a slave. Be a priestess (and you couldn't be a priestess without being a temple prostitute in most pagan cultures) and you could have power and wealth...all you had to do was be willing to be "with" any man who came to the temple, and be "with" any ungodly spawn of evil worshipped there.
God didn't want that life for His children. He wanted the women of Israel to be unmolested, undemonically used, and pure. So He gave them two places women were forbidden to be: The temple and the battlefield.
---
Fast forward again:
We do a large disservice to Paul when we read his letters to specific churches as if he were Moses being handed new Laws for all mankind. We're supposed to be over needing justice to be as simple as a rulebook *sigh*.
eph 5:22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
col 3:18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
Both times Paul wrote this, he was being pretty specific. He was talking to Ephesian Wives, but the Greek allows for the understanding that the statement was made in general...all wives. They are told to submit. The fact that he says this to two different groups reinforces the idea that this is a general commandment. I'm sorry if that bothers any women out there but the simple fact is that since Genesis 3, we lost our leadership role in the household. No matriarchy allowed. No equal billing.
But the Greek is achingly specific and even the English reflects that fact. Wives, submit to your OWN husbands. This structure in the Greek does not allow for a generality. There is no sense of women being subject to men in general, there is no way to make the text give that message. One wife, one husband, one closed command structure per household.
No matter how much some men want it to be so, men have no authority over women in general, but a man has the authority of Christ over his own wife (and only over her). He has the authority of head of household/father over his daughters, but that is different. There are some things a father cannot command his daughters to do.
If you are a woman and a wife, there is one man on planet earth who has leadership authority over you. That man is your husband. Not your mother's husband (he loses his authority when you marry, assuming you honored him as the head of the house when you were a child). Not your friend's husband (he never had any authority). Not your male pastor (his authority is a more general authority, to teach and instruct, not to lay down personal commandments the way your husband is allowed to do).
So what about women teaching or preaching in church? The answer seems to be yes you can but maybe you shouldn't.
The first person God entrusted to preach the good news of His resurrection was Mary Magdalene, a woman. But did she *teach* by passing on that news? Did she *preach*? Note then that teaching and preaching are different things.
Women can preach. That prescident was set with Mary Magdelene. Anytime you quote the Word of God, you are preaching. Whether reading at a pulpit or yelling on the street, this is certainly open to women...but what preacher today stops at simply quoting?
---
Paul writes in 1 Tim 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
But Timothy was hanging out with Ephesians when he got this letter. Paul had to seriously school the Ephesians because of how messed up and matriarchical their culture was. Priestesses in specific and women in general in the temple of Ephesus had all *sorts* of authority.
The Greek structure is again very specific. We can translate it as "a" woman and "the" man..but it's "the woman" and "the man" to a point so specific that Paul could have possibly been addressing one singled out couple.
Given that bit of information, most likely, this couple was the man in charge of the Ephesian church, and his wife. The guy was getting it wrong and Paul was writing to Timothy saying "tell them to fix this, she has her husband all screwed up with her wacky Ephesian ideas!" But there *is* room in the text for it to be taken more generally than that, just not enough room to make it a sweeping generalization. Either way, the Greek structure refers here to a closed couple or group (maybe the leadership couples in that church). It just doesn't easily translate to a more general case. You can *do* it, but it makes some pretty heavy demands of the text and context.
There was no way these Ephesian women were going to be easily converted to Christianity, where their husbands would be their Heads. Oh... they'd "convert" but then they'd try to bend things to the old status quo. So Paul had to just shut them up. They were always speaking out of turn, trying to warp the Gospel to match their pagan-feminist ideas of how things should be done. Better they be slient because they were wholly unqualified to teach. These women, specifically, needed to learn first.
There's no lack of women today, in and outside the Church that fit into this mold. They shouldn't be teaching either.
Paul had similar troubles in Corinth...the women there were used to rediculous authority as "maidens" (cough cough) of Baccus. As such, Paul had to drive home the point that they were not supposed to be acting like grand high priestesses over the men (and that sleeping with your stepmom was a sin!) These early churches were all sorts of confused.
---
By contrast, Paul says in phil 4:3 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.
Ephesian women were all screwed up, but here were some women who could spread the Word without a problem. So they were possibly preachers....but were they also teachers?
---
In writing to another congregation, The Colossians, –- who were not as New Age flaky as the Corinthians -- Paul said, “In Christ, there is no male or female.” Because of the relative maturity of their existing Gentile culture, these people didn't need the warnings or restructurings that the Ephesians and Corinthians did. Their women could probably teach rings around the women in Ephesus.
There does need to be a balance for women no matter what Paul meant. Joyce Meyer (a famous female televangelist) summed it up best by saying: "I am a preacher, but I am not my husband's preacher. I still must submit to him."
---
