Presubuteras: Silencing the Daughters of God - 1 Cor 14:34 & 35

(There's something wrong with this post, so I will be messing with it. There are no substantive changes.)

For your review, 1 Cor 14.

Let me start by fisking a little of John Gill. I did not pick him because he is exceptional in his opinions on this subject, nor is he harsh, and I actually like some of his stuff. I picked him because he's the best commentator on the standard interpretation of these verses on Crosswalk, and he's just verbose enough for me. :-) Mr. Gill is in italics, and phrases he quotes are in bold.

Let your women keep silence in the churches…
This is a restriction of, and an exception to one of the above rules, that all might prophesy; in which he would be understood of men only, and not of women; and is directed against a practice which seems to have prevailed in this church at Corinth, allowing women to preach and teach in it; and this being a disorderly practice, and what was not used in other churches, the apostle forbids and condemns, and not without reason:

Strong words, and completely unjustified by the text. Paul says it is "against the law" for women to preach, but he never says it is disorderly for them to do so. Paul also gives no example of harm done by women teaching, so why does Mr. Gill say that Paul's command is "not without reason?" (Mr. Gill's comment that women teaching was not allowed in the churches of Christ is a falacy of assuming the conclusion. For shame.)

for it is not permitted unto them to speak;
that is, in public assemblies, in the church of God, they might not speak with tongues, nor prophesy, or preach, or teach the word. All speaking is not prohibited; they might speak their experiences to the church, or give an account of the work of God upon their souls; they might speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; or speak as an evidence in any case at a church meeting; but not in such sort, as carried in it direction, instruction, government, and authority.
And now Mr. Gill invents distinctions that suit his fancy, rather than the text. He permits some speaking, simply because Paul's bald statement is obviously non-sensical, but not because anything in the text makes such an allowance. He is actually quite gracious in allowing a woman to testify in matters of law or to give their own spiritual history before the church, but is he textually consistent? I don't see it. If you believe Paul meant anything, there is no textual reason to believe he didn't mean everything.

It was not allowed by God that they should speak in any authoritative manner in the church; nor was it suffered in the churches of Christ; nor was it admitted of in the Jewish synagogue; there, we are told, the men came to teach, and the women (ewmvl) , "to hear": and one of their canons runs thus;

a woman may not read (that is, in the law), (rwbub) , "in the congregation", or church, because of the honour of the congregation;

for they thought it a dishonourable thing to a public assembly for a woman to read, though they even allowed a child to do it that was capable of it.

Ah. Mr. Gill strikes to the heart here, and just glosses it over. There is no law which requires a woman to be silent anywhere from Genesis 1 to Malachi 4. But there is a strong Jewish Oral Law which does exactly that. This Jewish law would allow a male child to read the law, but would shun a congregation as fouled if a mature woman read the same glorious truths to them with better understanding. (Again, Mr. Gill's comment that women teaching was not allowed in the churches of Christ is the falacy of assuming the conclusion.)


But they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
In (Genesis 3:16) , "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee". By this the apostle would signify, that the reason why women are not to speak in the church, or to preach and teach publicly, or be concerned in the ministerial function, is, because this is an act of power, and authority; of rule and government, and so contrary to that subjection which God in his law requires of women unto men.
Mr. Gill knows that there is no command in the law that requires a woman to be silent, so he begins fishing. He throws his baited hook into 39 books worth of law, history, poets and prophets and pulls up the curse spoken by God against Eve.

Fascinating.

Anyway. Gen 3:16 says nothing about women being silent anywhere, at any time. Mr. Gill is going to assert that Paul is merely implementing God's law on the basis of Gen 3:16? Ludicrous. He has to build a tie between speaking and authority that is arbitrary and foolish. Are there not men who are under authority? When those men speak, are they in rebellion against that authority? No.

He resorts to this over-worked, hackneyed argument because none other is available to him. And why is no other available to him? Well, first because it is not there. But second it is because he does not see the very clue that he pointed out just a paragraph ago.

The extraordinary instances of Deborah, Huldah, and Anna, must not be drawn into a rule or example in such cases.
OK. Now this is just a chuckle. He wants to just ignore God's record because those cases are special. It puts me in mind of an old joke about physicists, odd numbers and primes. I will settle for quoting two punch lines:

Various theorists offer various proofs that every odd number is prime:
Mathematician: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime. The result follows by induction."
Physicist: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime ..."

Golly, but life would be nice if you could just say, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," every time there was a difficult question in life.

---

Mr. Gill has attempted to defend a losing position for the noble reason that it is in scripture, and scripture is always right. "Paul was just wrong here," is not a defensible position, so Mr. Gill nobly soldiers off in defence of the indefensible. But, is there a possible way that the scripture is right, Paul is right, and that verse is just plain wrong? Of course there is. :-)

Let me drop back to 1 Cor 7:1 for a second.

1 Corinthians 7:1
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Someone from Corinth has written to Paul and said that men had best give up on sex - and, evidently, any other touching of women - if they are going to serve the Lord well. (Yet another area in which the sexes get unequal treatment, but let's not rabbit-trail on this one.) Paul is caught in a quandry by this one. He has a foot in both camps. He ends up talking clearly but guardedly as he makes it plain that it's all good, but maybe even better with abstinence.

The point is that when Paul makes this statement out of the blue about it being good not to touch a woman, it's not just out of the blue. Paul is answering a direct question from someone, and that someone was a Jewish member of the church in Corinth. This happens several times in the latter half of the book.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.....

1 Cor 14:34 & 35 were written for Paul (by three stenos, apparently) but they were not spoken by Paul. He is quoting these same Judaizers from way back in Chapter 7. It is these Jews who reference the Oral Law as if it were divinely ordained, not Paul. Again, with this little, and contextually supported, observation the entire passage becomes clear.

Verse by Verse

14:31
For ye may all prophesy one by one *, that all may learn, and all may be comforted.
All may learn and all may be comforted, and one must assume that "all" includes women. We have already examined and seen that women were told by Paul that they need never veil while prophecying (though they could if they wished.) So, it is a small step to realize that the "all" who may prophecy includes women.

14:32
And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
So prophets must be fallible in New Testament times? Hmmm. But that's a huge rabbit trail.

14:33
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
Paul is here confronting the abuse of gifts in Corinth, and he is saying that you don't need to silence anyone. You merely need to bring order to their offerings. The prophets should subject themselves to each other, and when the Spirit is working this work, He will work peace.

Note the word, "For." "For God is not the Author ..." Paul is now done with his argument. He even brings up his final point in every argument, "... as in the all the churches of the saints." That is a clean end to a subject.

14:34
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
Note now, the lack of an "and." Paul in no way joins this thought to the one before it. This makes perfect sense if he is starting a new subject with yet another quote from the Judaizing letter. It is peripherally related in that the Jews bring it up to stop women from prophecying, but it is a whole new tack on the subject.

Paul probably finished writing 1 Cor 11 about 20 minutes ago, give or take. Paul had three amatuer stenos trading seats so they could stay fresh and keep up with him, so he is moving fast. 20 minutes ago Paul told women that they could speak unveiled. The odds that 20 minutes later he is telling them never to speak again are just about nil. The odds that Paul is quoting a non-existent law as if were known to everyone are just about nil. The standard interpretation just does not fit.

14:35
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
This sentence needs to be relinquished to the dustbin of history forever. It was the cancerous cawing of a man who loved the law more than God. The man who wrote this to Paul wished to bring circumcision back, but knew he'd lost that battle for all time. The Judaizers could not win the battle of circumcision, because Paul had successfully upped the ante by equating circumcision to an offense against the death and resurrection of our Lord. They could still hold out in the backwoods and caves of misogyny, though, and they obviously did.

Find me a verse that says women should ask their husbands at home, or that it would be a shame for a woman to speak in the assembly of the redeemed. Caveat - that verse has to exist at the time of this writing. 1 Tim 2:11 was not written for several more years. In writing this verse, Paul either claimed Jewish tradition as fact, or he was quoting someone who did.

14:36
What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?
And here is the icing to the proof cake. Paul immediately and sternly rebukes the men who had the audacity to write those words. It is an act of pure sophistry to interpret this rebuke as somehow supporting the silencing of women. Paul says, in the clearest possible terms, that the word of God did not come out of, nor unto those men who were putting out their oral traditions as binding upon the daughters of the Lord.

14:37
If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.
Let that Judaizer acknowledge that ALL are allowed to prophecy as Paul has already said. Let him acknowledge that women need never veil the beauty of the Lord's work by silencing the praise welling up from their spirits, nor by veiling. Let him acknowledge that Paul's words are divinely inspired, and that the oral traditions to which they are binding their sisters are dung and refuse.

How many centuries?! How many centuries must we bind our women under these Jewish traditions built to break the heart?

14:38
But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant.
Paul's tone here is entirely insulting, and I praise the Lord for it.

14:39
Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.
And Paul circles back. He reminds them that they are brethren. Adelphos is the freer of the Greek words for mankind, and it definitely includes sisters in its scope. Let every member of the church covet to prophecy, and forbid no member to speak with tongues.

14:40
Let all things be done decently and in order.
Amen.

There's no magic in these interpretations. I'm not pulling up bizarre imaginations about how culture back then demanded that Corinthian women act differently than Ephesian women. I'm just bringing back to mind the story of the New Testament.

Judaizers plagued all the churches. If I seem to come down hard on the Judaizers, I yet don't believe all Jews were Judaizers. Those who placed their law before Christ, though, richly earned Paul's rebuke because they place unbearable burdens on the people of God.

Of the saints in Corinth, we can only guess how many were Jews who deeply loved the Lord. We can be sure, though, that there was a vocal minority who wrote a letter to Paul. These few criticized the children of the Lord for marrying, for eating, for allowing men not to wear the tallith, for allowing women to try to wear it, and for being ignorant of the law. They criticized Paul for working with Priscilla, for not accepting financial support for his ministry, and for being weak among other things. That they also criticized the church for letting women speak is the most natural interpretation of the passage in light of the historical situation.

Of course, I have not quite proven yet that women can speak freely in the church, because there is still 1 Tim 2:11 out there waiting to be properly understood. We'll get there.

Next I would like to look at the qualifications of elders and deacons.

Tagged: "One Book" Meme

Thanks for the tag, DK.

1. One book that changed your life:
How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Oh, I know - I should choose the bible or some such, but we are to be honest, right? When I was in my little home church, I was forced to read this book - twice. Literally. I was not allowed to do anything until I had read it through 2 times. Probably the nicest thing anyone has ever done to me. Probably the only thing I will never regret from my time there. I went through a serious time over the next 8 years of reading 7 Habits - type book. Completely changed the way I deal with the world, and made me a much happier person.

You would not be reading this blog if I had not read those books - I ga-ran-tee it.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Well, we'll pass on the obvious one from above.

Thomas Covenant, The Chronicles of the Unbeliever. Thomas, the "hero" of this book, finds a new way on every page to make you hate him. And I don't mean the kind of "wink-wink" hatred you have for Bruce Willis's characters, either. I mean, "Dude you really need to die and let these people work out their own problems without you," hatred. From the first page, I identified completely with Thomas, and I wept with every person he hurt along the way. If you loved The Lord of the Rings, go ahead and stay away from this one.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
Shipbuilding 101.

Yes, it sounds like a cheap, lame answer, but... Seriously, I read for information, not joy these days. I talk to people and blog for joy, so I would seriously doubt whether I could survive on a desert island. Let's just say Wilson would be working overtime to keep me level!

4. One book that made you laugh:
The fiv-ish books of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Douglas Adams was virulently atheistic, but the magic he works with words is unparalleled. You've not read anything until you have read him describe the world through a rhinocerous's eyes - or rather nose.

5. One book that made you cry [or feel really sad]:
Ender's Game

And I don't mean just cry either. I put down the book, walked away and wept for almost a half hour. Orson Scott Card liked to killed me, man. I don't honestly know whether anyone else reacted to that scene the way I did, but if you wonder which it was, you can email me. I won't spoil it for anyone who has not read it yet.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
The biography of the church. Not the history, but the biography. It would look like a biography of a vine tree, but it would be one story full of names of people who had placed her life before their own.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
The Victorious Christian Life, and all books about being a successful Christian. May their tribe be eternally banished from all publishing houses.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
An Absolute Sort of Certainty. The Holy Spirit and the Apologetics of Jonathon Edwards

I know, I know. It sounds dry, but only because it is. That's OK. It's a book written about a serious disbeliever in free will (One book of his that I have read is, "The Freedom of the Will: An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of the Freedom of the Will which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame." though I think that title has been shortened for modern American readers.) by someone that I am not sure agrees with him and that is refreshing. There are about 100 footnotes per chapter, and I don't know ANY of the references. It's pretty fun.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Religious Affections by Edwards.

10. Now tag five people:
It took me years to get up the courage to talk to a girl, and more years to get the courage to ask one out. Tagging people is similarly, bizarrely hard for me.

So I guess I'd best do it!

I think many of my regulars have already been tagged, so I will try to hit new folk.

Andreia, Ellen, Rich (we miss you dude :-(, DugALug, Oloryn

Tennis: My Season Ends - the Playoffs Await!

It was beautiful in sunny Ohio, and the season had to end today.

My season has been very difficult. There are 10 matches in the season, and I was on vacation for 2 of them. For the first half of the season, I was 1 and 3.

Ouch.

Ouch.

I have no excuses. I was some kind of grumpy, though. In my first match I was playing #1 court, and we were handily ahead, 6-2, 4-0. I was not playing particularly well, but we were able to keep the ball rolling. Then my partner blew his calf muscle. That was OK. He was able to sort of continue, but I fell apart. I mentally collapsed. It's a part of being Kevin Knox. I do that.

My second match was against a pair who had no business playing at our level. Our third match we should have won. Our fourth match was against a superior player (and a competent partner), but my game deteriorated yet again. Suddenly, I was 4 matches into the season and had only won one in which I could find no pride.

It was rough.

Then I figured my problem out. I was thinking about hitting the ball, and you cannot do that. That first match had destroyed my confidence, and I don't react well to that. I essentially sunk into a 4 week long choke. The essence of choking is that you worry about things that can only be done automatically. To hit a good backhand, you need to coordinate almost every muscle in your body such that the racket ends up in a specific place, speed and time. (My left hand is often sore after a match, because of the way it counter-swings while I am swinging with my right.) While you are coordinating all this stuff, you are also trying to pick, repick, adjust, and decide on the right target for your opponent and strategy.

If you start thinking about striking your backhand a little earlier, you're toast. I did more than that.

Anyway, on week 5 I quit trying to think about my motion, but just trust my body. We immediately fell behind 1-4 in the first set - and yes, it was my fault. I was netting returns and trying for shots my body could not deliver. It was ugly. And then we were about to lose one more game and I finally settled into it. Their best server was firing at us, and my partner started having a bad game (which always settles me down - anyone have any clues why that helps me so much?) The opponents have 5 straight game points directed at me. I hit 5 straight winning shots. My partner began believing in me, and suddenly it was 6-4, 6-1. We had taken 10 of the next 11 games.

I love that about tennis.

As quickly as you lose your mojo, you can find it again.

In the next three matches, our opponents won a total of 7 games to our 36.

Then there was today.

We started the first set behind, but leveled and broke for the lead. I served for the set at 5-4, and we took it cleanly.

In the second set, we immediately fell behind. I broke the strings in my second racket, so reached into my bag for the wooden racket. Yes, I still play with one. When I say I'm old school, I am not kidding. :-) My partner whipped out his backup for me, but it was too powerful. I cannot play with a powerful racket - I send balls out of the court. It's not pretty. Then one of our opponents offered up his rackets. He had one that was suitably soft, and we went back to play.

We were down 1-4.

We brought it back to 4-5, and it was my serve. In moments it was 15-40. 2 set points against us on my serve, with an unfamiliar racket. 3 aces and 1 service winner later, we were lining up at 5-5. THAT was a blast. I don't pull out my flat serve until things are tight, and I feel good because you never know what the flat serve is going to do. It did everything right.

2 games later, we were in the tiebreak and down 1-4. (No, I don't know what the pattern is - it just happened that way.) At that moment I played the best point of my season. Ran down 3 balls, and stuffed a winner down their forehand alley. It was a thing of beauty, and a well deserved shout of, "Now that was a tennis point!" (Yes, I am even verbose at a moment like that.) Steve's return left me with a put-away volley and we were at 3-4. That put the serve back on my racket. 1 ace and 1 winner. 5-4. Everyone's serve went to pattern, and it was 6-7 - them serving to me.

I love that moment.

Match on my racket - returning, which is much harder, and everyone knows he's going to test my backhand.

Bring it on.

The serve was good, but my return was firm and his forehand sailed.

From 1-3 to 5-3, and finishing on a triple come-from-behind match. What a great end to a season. I think I might keep playing this game.

Oh - and Nadal is out of the Toronto Masters event, leaving Federer a clear path to the top. Gonzalez is giving him a little trouble in the second set, but he should find a way to pull through. Hopefully without a 3rd straight 3-set match. Like I said, this is tennis. There's still plenty of time to lose or win.

Anyway, that was just a fun story to tell. I don't imagine anyone actually made it this far, but I am so relieved to have salvaged that season I just had to type about it for a while whilst Roger put on his show.

1 week off, and the playoffs. (Yes, btw, I knew all day that if I didn't deliver my match today, we would miss the playoffs. It's not pressure that gets me - it's fear. I can play under any pressure, if I can react correctly to the fear.)

Have a good night!


[PS: Another thing to love about tennis.

James Blake was just asked what was his perfect match.
A: Last year's quarter final against Andre Agassi - except for the last two points.

That won't mean much if you don't know tennis. Allow me to explain :-)

5 long, grueling, perfectly played sets between two players at their peak came down to a 5th set tiebreak. 4 hours of tennis came down to the first person who could win 2 points in a row. It was Andre.

I can't help but love this game. Great answer, James.]

Presbuteras: 1 Cor 11:1-16 - Veiling the Daughters of God

You might want to review 1 Cor 11, and I will quote it in full further down the page.

Tremendous thanks are due to Katherine Bushnell for her book, God's Word To Women. Much of the meat of this post and certainly its key point are a mere retelling of her analysis of 1 Cor 11.

1 Corinthians 11 is the sole chapter of the bible that discusses women and veils. 1 Sam 15:30 talks about David covering his head while ascending Mount Olive in a state of mourning. The Greek word for cover, as used here, appears three times in the New Testament - all in this chapter. The word covering, as used here, appears one other time in Hebrews and refers to the heavens that God will fold up and change. Nave's Topical Bible references wimples worn by wanton daughters of Zion, Rebekah wearing a veil when meeting Isaac (a custom of her homeland, not Isaac's), and Tamar imitating a harlot to gain a child by Judah who had betrayed her. Not a whisper about women veiling in prayer. There's nothing in the bible on this topic.

Well, there is 2 Cor 3:13-18. Paul, shortly after writing 1 Cor 11, wrote 2 Cor 3, which ends But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Paul carefully explains how the physical veil kept Israel from seeing the whole law on Moses' face, and how the spiritual veil kept them from understanding the truths they heard.

So, we are dealing with another scriptural island. We have no other scriptures that confirm the standard interpretation of 1 Cor 11.

And the standard interpretation of 1 Cor 11 has more than a couple of holes! Let me address one immediately out of sheer disgust.

11:10
For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.

The standard interpretation of this verse, that fetching women will tempt their angels, is offensive to all parties. It's offensive in it's ludicrousness most of all. Human women do not tempt neuter angels, and if they did, they would have plenty of opportunity to do so while doing other things than prophecying and praying. Would these interpreters have women fear to pray without a clothing check first? Should women fear their own ministering spirits? If there were any weight to this slur, it would collapse on its own. What, do women become invisible to angels when they have veils on? Or just unattractive?

Look, I know that someone is going to have to bring up the Nephilim, etc. Just know that the men who came up with the unbecoming theory about the "sons of God" in Genesis are the same men who say charming little things like, "I would sooner feed the scripture to my dog than let a woman read it." This verse as written contains no such implication of lust. Why add it?

Back to the subject.

1 Cor 11 is an island in the scripture, so we must use internal methods of interpreting it. It seems to say things that are opposite to the rest of scripture, namely that women should veil when praying. Paul himself says a short time later that we all come to God with open faces. Given these external conflicts, we might expect to see some internal contradictions. And we do.

Does nature teach you that long hair is a shame to a man? It doesn't teach me that. I played in an all spanish speaking soccer league, and there was nothing unmanly about some of the manes those men sported. Certainly not to the women who flocked to them. Does the lion teach us that long hair is a shame to the male? The peacock? The question makes no sense.

Paul seems to give us a straight hierarchy of headship in verse 3. Then he says that a man covering himself before his Head is a shame, and a woman uncovering herself before her head is a shame. What sense does that make?

Paul goes to a lot of bother to seemingly show that the woman is under the man in verses 2-9, then reverses himself in verses 11 and 12. I will grant you before you make the argument that you can finagle the verses to kind of mean something, but Paul is not known for contradicting himself this confusingly.

And he finishes the whole passage by saying that his churches have no such custom. Why not just accept at face value that Paul is saying Corinth is the only place on earth that is trying to veil their women. That's the plain meaning of the verse, but the standard interpretation will have none of that. What then do they say Paul means? That the churches have no custom of being contentious? That's a falsehood on the surface. ;-) But, even if we try to make that meaning work, it doesn't. Who would say that his church didn't have a custom of being contentious?

Somebody is working really, really hard to make this chapter say what he thinks it says.

The Chief Clue to Clearing up 1 Corinthians 11

11:4
Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.

It is all very simple if the problem is exactly what is stated in verse 4. Men are covering their heads. Women are imitating the men. Paul does not consider either the actions of the men or the women to be right, but neither is he willing to declare them anathema.

Verse by Verse

1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also [am] of Christ.
This verse belongs at the end of chapter 10, not at the beginning of 11. I wonder how mistakes like this get propagated over the centuries? Note that even the translators place a paragraph mark at the second verse.

2 ¶ Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered [them] to you.
Paul does not begin with a rebuke, but praise.

3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman [is] the man; and the head of Christ [is] God.
"Head" in Greek can as easily mean "fountainhead" as "hierarchical head." For reasons found below, I will accept the fountainhead meaning. Either way, the verse does not remove Christ from the woman. The man is another fountainhead for the woman, but Christ will always be her Head.

4 Every man praying or prophesying, having [his] head covered, dishonoureth his head.
Jewish men wear a covering called a Tallith in prayer. This covering is not a veil, but it conforms to the meaning of the Greek word for "covering" admirably. When a Jewish man dons the Tallith today, wikipedia reports that he speaks the following blessing.

Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us regarding the commandment of fringes

May it be the will before you, Lord, my God and the God of my forefathers, that it should be considered the commandment of fringes before You as if I had fulfilled it in all its aspects, its details and its intentions, as well as the 613 commandments that are dependent on it. So be it, [consider what we have said].

So, the tallith is a testimony to a dead law. Well might Paul say that when a man dons the covering, he dishonours his Head - Jesus Christ - Who took away that law that was set against us. That man binds back to himself those dead ordinances Christ died to loose.

5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with [her] head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.
We will search in vain to find anywhere in scripture that urges a woman be shorn. We find her head being uncovered by the priest in Numbers, during the administration of the water of jealousy, but it would be a stretch to assume this to be Paul's point of reference for verse 6. Paul is here referencing an Oral Law of the Jews. The commentaries pretty uniformly either accept or at least do not reject this view.

Given that point, Paul is here explaining that the shame that the woman brings upon her head is shame brought upon her husband. If a Jewish wife appears in public uncovered, Jews outside the church might call for her husband to divorce her. This would be a shame upon her husband.

6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.
Paul here quotes the oral law, then makes a concession to it. The word, "but," here carries the sense of "therefore." This law exists, therefore if you are a Jewish man, and since Jewish oral law would require you to acknowledge your wife as disgraced if she went unveiled, then I permit her to be covered.

Paul tells the man he must not shame Christ with a covering, but the woman he permits to be covered even before her God for the sake of a disgrace she might bring on her husband before men.

7 For a man indeed ought not to cover [his] head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.
Do you see how the contradictions of the standard interpretation melt away? A man should not cover his head because he steals from the glory of the Lord Who bought him with a great price. The woman, however, might shame her Jewish husband should she break this oral law of the Jews. The woman is the image and glory of God as much as is the man - namely in as far as she is in Christ, Who is the only true Image of God. But the woman is also the glory of her husband.

8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.
Therefore, a wife is allowed to support her husband in this matter. Paul makes it a matter of liberty for her.

9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
So Paul concludes his arguments freeing the woman to cover if it is deemed necessary. He flatly forbids men to cover, but women operate in freedom if not covering would shame their husbands.

10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on [her] head because of the angels.
But whose decision will it be? Will the man or the woman decide whether she should cover herself? Paul gives the woman power to make the decision for herself. He reasons that if her ministering spirits can appear before God uncovered, then surely she who is bought by her Head, and free to boldly approach the throne of Grace, and with open face to behold the glory of God, can make this decision herself.

This is Paul's conclusion in the matter. The rest of his words will clarify his preference in it. Much of what Paul just said by way of allowance, he will now contradict by way of preference. Paul will make concessions to Jewish husbands and wives, but in Christ we have access to better things. You will note that this is a common method of argument for Paul, and so it is a natural fit in understanding this passage.

11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.
Paul doesn't want to make rules that are different for men and women, because they are not ever without each other. Everything before this verse has been "in the Jewish world." Now we begin to talk about, "in the Lord." In the Lord, the man and woman are together in everything.

12 For as the woman [is] of the man, even so [is] the man also by the woman; but all things of God.
Yes, Paul says. The woman came from the man, but even though I just said the man is not of the woman, that's only true in the Jewish world. In the Lord, the man is also by the woman. This is true because both are entirely of the Lord.

13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?
Judge what amongst yourselves? Not whether long hair is shameful, but whether the man is of the woman. Are the sisters you love merely second generation photocopies of the image of God? Or are they co-equal with us lofty and exalted men as the Jewish oral tradition would have you believe?

That leaves us with Paul's statement that it is comely that a woman pray to God uncovered. As Oloryn pointed out, the original manuscripts contain no punctuation, and no word reversals to indicate when a sentence is a statement and when it is a question. In English we say, "Are you coming" or "You are coming" so that we can tell which is a question and which is a statement, even without the convenience of the "?." There are no such clues in the Greek, so the translator is bound to determine from context whether a sentence is question or statement.

When Paul clearly states in 2 Cor 3:18 that we all with open face behold the glory of the Lord, we have to assume that Paul here is saying that it is comely for a woman to pray uncovered. To assume that he is directly contradicting himself is without justification.

14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?
Again. Drop the question mark. Nature does not teach you that if a man has long hair it is a shame to him.

15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for [her] hair is given her for a covering.
Continued from 14. Nature also does not teach you that long hair is a glory to a woman. Nor does anything teach us that hair is for women a covering. When only one verse in scripture says a thing, and the Greek is open to two exactly opposite interpretations, it is not wise to choose the one that flies against everything else we know.

16 But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.
And finally, Paul closes the argument. If there is a man amongst you who searches the scripture, and for some reason continues to believe that everyone should be covered in prayer, be aware that no other church covers in prayer at all.

---

This reading of 1 Cor 11:1-16 is completely literal, and far more consistent with the entire revelation than the standard interpretation. This is consistent with Paul's usual way of arguing. It is consistent with the chapter preceeding it, in which Paul is talking about Christian liberty. It is consistent in glorifying Christ as Head over all.

This passage does not yet say that women should ever take authority over men, but it does say that the man is not the head of the woman with relation to Christ. Christ is the Head of both the man and the woman together. In the case of Jewish marriages, Paul makes allowances, but he revokes them as soon as possible. Paul does not here say anything about headship within marriage, but only headship in prayer and worship, so I will not jump ahead to the Eph 5 discussion. As a matter of fact, I doubt that I will address headship within marriage at all in this series. I want to confine the discussion to leadership in the church.

1 Cor 11 is frequently used to assert that the woman cannot lead the man, because the man is over her in authority as Christ is over the man. That interpretation is measured and found wanting.

Next, we move up a little further in 1 Corinthians.

Presbuteras: The Image of God

The image of God is both male and female.

That's really an odd sentence, and it's horribly confusing if you stop and actually think about it. The key is that it is not God Who is both male and female, but God's image - us. God is neither. Male and female are attributes of physical beings, while God is Spirit.

So, if we step back in light of that distinction, and look at the image of God again we must be looking at men and women. It takes (unfallen) men and women together to represent God in the way He intended. When God was deciding how to form a physical image of His Spiritual perfection, He settled on creating mankind male and female. God, as Spirit, is and does things He centered in males. He also is and does things that he centered in females. Why? I don't know, but it's a beautiful picture that He has created.

I would love to jump into applications of this fact, except that Paul says:
1 Cor 11:7
A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.

Paul has made what sounds like a solid declaration that the woman bears the image of the man, and not of God - that she is an image of the image of God.

Crushing.

I cannot say that I know anyone who truly believes that the image of God is not borne by women. Maybe by this time tomorrow, that will have changed, but I am starting here as a possible point of common ground. Hopefully, we all will see this in a reasonably similar way. My objectives are two-fold. One, I hope that we will all agree that the image of God cannot be properly represented by males alone. Two, I hope that we will all agree that Paul's statements are not always clear.

If I am going to take a look at the image of God, and see how it is borne, I am going to look at two things, the first mention of His image, and what we know about Him.

The First Mention of the Image of God
Gen 1:26&27
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

(That's pretty cool - when I cut/paste from Crosswalk, the lexicon entries still work.)

Gen 5:1&2
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

Check this out. Click "man" in the 7th word of the first passage. You will go to a page that tells you about ~da, which is Adam. If you then refresh this page, you will note that "Adam", the 8th word from the end of the second passage is purple (or whatever color displays for visited links.) This is because the word for "man" and the word for "Adam" in Hebrew are exactly the same word, so when you visited the word for "man," you also visited the word for "Adam."

So, when God created Adam, He created man. This word also means, "mankind." So, the writer of Genesis has gone out of his way to tell us that mankind was created in the image of God as male and female.

Score one for the image of God being properly represented by a plurality of people including both male and female.

What We Know About God
If we know God to be and do things that we would understand as male and female attributes, then we can logically conclude that His attributes could not be completely represented by only male or female. We all accept that God does things typically interpreted as masculine. Is God and does God do things typically interpreted as feminine?

Yes.

1) El Shaddai is often interpreted as God Almighty. It is readily accepted by many, though, that this could better be interpreted as God our Nurture/Supply. This is because shad, in the Hebrew, is breast. If God the Nurturing Breast is a reasonable interpretation of El Shaddai, then we have a solid reference to a feminine attribute of God.

2) The Spirit was a Mother Bird over all the earth.
Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown
[This the text from Crosswalk.com]
the Spirit of God moved--literally, continued brooding over it, as a fowl does, when hatching eggs.
[This is the text from the bound version of the same commentary]
moved on -- Our English version does not give the meaning correctly; for this word does not convey the idea of progressive motion, but that of brooding over -- cherishing -- the act of incubation which a fowl performs when hatching its eggs.
[Fascinating how different the two texts are. I wonder who made the changes?]

Matthew Henry
as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and hovers over them, to warm and cherish them, Mt. 23:37,—as the eagle stirs up her nest, and flutters over her young (it is the same world that is here used), Deu. 32:11. Learn hence, That God is not only the author of all being, but the fountain of life and spring of motion.

[Baker's Evangelical Dictionary lists this verse as a reference on sexual immorality. That's a kick.]

I'm reasonably sure we could find lots of references for the Spirit's brooding over the face of the deep as a feminine act.

3) Let me quote a number of verses all neatly aggregated for us by Christians for Biblical Equality at their page, What Language Shall We Use? There is a lot on this link that I have not quoted here for those who are interested.
Deuteronomy 32:18: “You deserted the Rock, who bore you. You forgot the God who gave you birth.”
Hosea 13:8: “Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open.”
Isaiah 46:3–4: “[Y]ou whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
Isaiah 66:13: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.”
Job 38:29: “From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens... ?”
Psalm 90:2: “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world . . .”
Hosea 11:3–4: “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.”

Also from this page, let me quote:
Holy Spirit (in Hebrew is feminine, ruah...)

4) The Lord does "women's work" for us.
Gen 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

The word "meet" in that verse, as in "help meet", is "ezer" in Hebrew (as you will see if you click on the link.) It appears 21 times in scripture according to Crosswalk's count, and the overwhelming majority of times it appears describing what God is to us. Here it describes what the woman is to be to the man. I'm cool with either seeing this as elevating the role of the wife to be like that of God toward us, or simply describing the work of God as the same as the work of a wife. Either the woman is doing something distinctly unfeminine here, or God is doing something feminine in the Psalms.

Ps 20:2
Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion;
Ps 33:20
Our soul waiteth for the LORD: he is our help and our shield.
Ps 70:5
But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.
Ps 89:19
Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people.
Ps 115:9
O Israel, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
Ps 115:10
O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
Ps 115:11
Ye that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
Ps 121:1
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
Ps 121:2
My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
Ps 124:8
Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
Ps 146:5
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God:

Paul and the Image of God
On the human side, we have seen that from the beginning, God made all of mankind the bearer of His image, and that this mankind includes male and female. On the heavenly side, we have seen that God is not ashamed to ascribe to Himself feminine attributes and actions. The obvious conclusion is that the masculine and feminine sides of mankind both show forth (glorify) crucial portions of the Godhead.

So, what is Paul's take on all this? It seems pretty negative so far!

Paul uses the Greek word for, "image," 7 other times according to Crosswalk.com.

Ro 1:23
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Ro 8:29
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
1Co 15:49
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
2Co 3:18
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
2Co 4:4
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Col 1:15
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
Col 3:10
And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

Of those 7 other times, Paul refers to idols 1 time, all of us being made like Christ 4 times, and Christ Himself bearing/being the Image of God 2 times. When Paul refers to us being made like Christ, it is clear that he is refering equally to men and women, but he is not refering to the likeness of God that we bear. Neither is he refering to this likeness when he talks about idols.

That leaves us with 2 verses that say Christ is the Image of God, and one verse seeming to say that all males are the image of God. Paul has left us with precious few guideposts to interpreting his statement about males being the image of God. We have even fewer guideposts regarding women being the image of men.

This verse is an island in the scripture. It speaks truth, but we only have negative clues so far as to its meaning. That declared, I am content to say that the negative evidence is overwhelming. Whatever Paul meant, it was not that only men bear the image of God. When Paul speaks of the Image of God, he is going to capitalize the noun, and be speaking of Christ. That is not the case here, so it must mean something else.

---

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I hope that everyone agrees with this analysis. (Who'm I kidding - I hope that everyone agrees with all my analyses. ;-P] Do you agree with the basic idea of looking at a verse in this way? If you find its common interpretation to be out of step with the rest of scripture, do you agree that looking for some stronger interpretation makes sense?

Next, we have to go to the positive meaning of 1 Cor 11:7. What *is* the truth Paul is speaking here? For that we need to go to the internal context of 1 Corinthians, and I fear I have already gone on long enough with this post. So, until some time later this week...

Sidebar: Candida and Pygmallion by George Bernard Shaw

Anyone have any thoughts on these two plays?

I read them both at the start of my vacation, and they were very thought provoking. These have nothing to do with the Presbuteras series, but are thrown out there for conversation for its own sake.

*** Spoilers follow. If you don't want to know how they end, move to another post :-) ***

The staged Pygmallion ends with the protagonists separating on somewhat icy terms, but with no real reason not to believe they eventually marry. All well and good. The written play, though, continues with a long note by Mr. Shaw stating that everyone who thinks that is how the story really ends is just enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories.

He spends a number of pages informing us that a strong person must always marry a weak person or not marry at all. An especially strong man raised by a good mother, who gives him all the refining things of life, and teaches him to entertain himself, need never marry at all. The vulgarity of the marriage relationship will not even appeal to him. In any case, he asserts, two strong people can never marry. The strong man with a strong mother, for example:

If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. ... when we look around and see that hardly anyone is too ugly or disagreeable to find a wife or a husband if he or she wants one, whilst many old maids and bachelors are above average in quality and culture, we cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or aided by parental fascination.

Shaw "afterwards" the story by telling us that Eliza marries the spineless male of the story, Freddy, who truly loves her, rather than marry the male protagonist who will never really need her. Freddy is agreeably weak, and dotes on her happily. Higgins, the male protagonist, would never be happy with anyone between himself and his passions. So, in marrying Freddy, she makes all three of the characters happier in the end.

Who agrees?

In Candida, Mr. Shaw does something different, but reaches the same conclusion. He gives us a presentable and personable priest who is diligent in his work and loved by all. This priest is married to Candida, who is in all respects perfect in his eyes. Introduced into the mix is an 18 year old poet who is passionately entranced with Candida.

The passionate poet and the pedestrian priest slowly escalate a private confrontation over the heart of Candida until, in the last act, Candida catches wind of what's going on. She confronts them both in the only way that the brutish men will understand - directly and together.

Candida recalls for the poet that her priest has won many trophies in his life, and that he has no idea how he won them. He won them because his mother and sisters spoiled him from the cradle and made countless sacrifices to enable him to concentrate on winning them.

Candida: Ask James's mother and his three sisters what it cost to save James the trouble of doing anything but be strong and clever and happy. Ask me what it costs to be James's mother and three sisters and wife and mother to his children all in one. Ask the [hired help] how troublesome the house is even when we have no visitors to help us slice the onions. Ask the tradesmen who want to worry James and spoil his beautiful sermons who it is that puts them off. When there is money to give, he gives it: when there is money to refuse, I refuse it. I build a castle of comfort and indulgence and love for him, and stand sentinel always to keep little vulgar cares out. I make him master here, though he does not know it, and could not tell you a moment ago how it came to be so. ...

She then turns to the poet and asks.

Am I your mother and sisters to you?

To the poet, she is only a siren, and he storms off into the night, allowing the story its "happy" ending.

Like I said. It made me think. If it does you too, I'd be curious what are your thoughts.

Tennis: Beware the Tennis of Death

[Am I the only one who has ever edited a post past all recognition? Somehow, I managed to delete 2 half-paragraphs without noticing. What a moroooon.]

In the latter days, men will become lovers of thrills more than lovers of sanity.

When I saw the pictures here [I killed the link after ZoneAlarm saved me from some spyware from this site. I jacked their pictures, and you will find them at the bottom of this post if I can get them to upload. So far, no dice.] [OK. I cannot upload the pictures. What a drag. Here's the link again - here. I didn't have any trouble visiting this link. My problem came when I tried to go to their home page, so I recommend you don't do that. The pictures are really, really cool.]

Anyway, as I was saying so very long ago. When I saw the pictures at that site, I actually blanched. I shied back away from my screen, and I'm sure my face went pale.

---

Now, I have to address Anonymous directly. (I don't think this was Anon in 6C, but it doesn't matter. Such vulgarity MUST be addressed!) Anonymous come here on this site commenting favorably about Rafael Nadal with links identifying him as the King of Clay! Something has to be said. Just wait 'til next year, tennis buff! Federer's got the stuff! So what if it took him 6 or so tries to finally figure the muscle-bound Majorcan out? Things are gonna change now. :-D

I'll be watching for you during next year's French ....


{For those of you who did not go to the picture site out of caution, it is a collection of pictures of a tennis court in Dubai dangling in mid-air over the edge of a skyscraper. Federer and Agassi are playing a little match with nothing between themselves and death but a horizontal 6 foot net and good sense. Given that I totally lack good sense (I cannot resist chasing down good a lob) I don't think I would live long up there. I'm not afraid of heights, but this thing terrified me.}

Presbuteras: What difference could it make?

How would the church be different, for better and worse, if women shared in leadership?

I will not pretend to know, but the question is important, so I am going to take some guesses at it. I hope that ya'll will too!

If my last post was emotional, this one will be abrasive to some because I am going to engage in stereotyping. It's not intentional, but I have to assume there will be some difference in the church if women start taking over key roles, and that the differences are predictable. If I cannot hope for improvement from the change I am recommending, then I should not recommend it.

In my experience in the workplace, I have found women to be different types of leaders than men. The women for whom I have worked have tended to be better at follow-through, more detail focused, and more people focused. The men I have worked for have tended to initiate more changes, have a bigger-picture focus and to value overtime more.

Yes, my personal experience agrees with many stereotypes. I find that reassuring, because stereotypes are usually true. I believe it is wise to assume that boys and girls are different, and that when they exercise God-given gifts and authority in the church they will do it differently.

(Do you know what happens when you assume? You save time, and usually LOTS of it! People with whom I am competing, and who break up ass/u/me into "you", "me", and ~donkey~ make me very happy. I will finish any task while they are still re-verifying that wheels are round. The trick is to assume as much as possible, and no more.)

So, can I assume that all women will be better at follow-through, focus closely on detail, and care more about people than men in the same role? Of course not. There are exceptions to every rule. Don't bet on the exceptions, though. The race is not always to the swift, but bookies make a pretty good living by handicapping like it will be.

Given that things will change when women are in charge, that stereotypes are permissible, and that exceptions can be overlooked in this little exercise, what do I guess will change?
- There will be more hugging, remembering of little pains, and visiting
- More little things will be done more completely
- Classes will be better attended, because there will be more cookies and fun chat
- Classes will be more focused on real problems than on doctrinal preparations
- Studies will consider more counter-examples. When a doctrinal point may have knotty consequences, they will be discussed more completely as opposed to the truth merely being stated.
- Food will be a part of more church functions
- Brothers and sisters will know more about each other
- Since we will know more about each other, we will do more to care for each other
- More followup will happen. When someone has a need, it will more often be met in the long term, not just once
- Sin will be less feared, and therefore more directly addressed. Women tend to be more realistic about human weaknesses than men, so they can accept sinners more readily.
- Confession one to another just may become part of the church's common experience.

Let me drill into those last two a little bit. Men care about pecking order while women care about groupings. Men want to know whom they are above and below, while women want to know by whom they are being rejected.

If you will let me make that casual (and I honestly hope not offensive) assumption, then what does that mean to the church? Men and women live by different fears. Men fear falling beneath someone whom they do not respect. Women fear falling out with people whom they enjoy. Men will tend to let relationships slide to maintain respect, while women will tend to struggle for relationships when they should be released. Exceptions exist on both sides of the line, but I think the tendencies are pretty solidly established.

I hope it is obvious that I believe that these two sets of weaknesses and strengths are complementary to each other. In no way do I believe that women are better or worse than men, but I do believe that women are different. I believe that difference needs to be used to our advantage!

The fears of men are not worse than those of women, but have been played out on the public stage over the centuries. Take Luther and Zwingli as a famous example. These two strong brothers agreed on 13.5 of 14 points, then divided their churches from each other over that half-point. Could they have been helped through that half-point? Could they have found another way to look at the problem? Of course they could have. There is only one Lord's Supper, and they could have found a way to agree on what it is. They needed a help-meet to look at it differently with them.

This little drama has been played out by men for century upon century. You don't get 10,000 denominations by struggling to maintain relationships! If we balance out our leadership, we might just stop that bleeding.

So, I believe that we will see improvements in the church at both the person-person level and at the doctrinal/hierarchical level.

Thoughts?

Presbuteras: to Weekend Fisher

It feels odd to reply at length to a comment with which I agree, but when a comment is tough it's tough. Be sure to give it a good read under, "to Codepoke." I will be pulling some quotes from her post, and they will make more sense in context.

You will see that Weekend Fisher's post cleared up how women address abuse, delved deeply into motive and direction in bringing abuse into a doctrinal discussion, and asked some seriously probing questions. I answered them at my usual length ;-), so I guess I should return her courtesy and turn my answers into a post. If etiquette dictates otherwise, I will gladly not make this mistake again.

---

Mostly, thanks for saying that the first post was a good place to start the discussion! That's encouraging. Your points on outrage and how it is wrongly and rightly expressed were all excellent. I also agree that the topic of abuse needs to be addressed with discretion. My next post moves beyond it, and when we get to the scripture my focus will be on the organization of the church along scriptural guidelines. I would have done all this in the comment thread, but if this is cool with everyone, it's cool with me.

Whether egalitarians or complementarians have the scripture right, the problem of abuse in the church must be addressed. I don't hear my complementarian brothers addressing it, but I do hear them telling my sisters that they cannot. That is very disconcerting to me. I assert that complementarianism fails to address the problem of abuse because complementarianism is not scriptural. Note that I do not assert the reverse. Failing to address this problem does not prove their position non-scriptural, but it does beg examination.

I've been in on a good number of those talks ... I've never heard any of us say "boys will be boys".

That's good news.

At the moment I wrote that, I was thinking of a mother I know who was given this explanation to comfort her daughter, and of another case with an abused wife. I could have been clearer about that. Hopefully you are right, and my sample is not representative.

We're a sisterhood.

I love those words. Praise the Lord for that bond.

I'm very suspicious of the topic of sexual abuse being used for political ends or to score points in an argument.

I understand.

Does it help that I am responding to real events, not doctrinal predispositions? People I dearly love have been hurt by popular complementarian arguments used explicitly to shut their mouths. These men didn't just say, "boys will be boys," and leave it at that. They quoted verses about wives asking their questions of their husbands at home, and about not being allowed to question the anointed of the Lord. They accused these women of rebellion which is worse than witchcraft. They reminded them that Eve was "first in the offense," and that their judgement was not to be trusted because Eve was deceived. When those arguments are used to sweep abuse under the rug, they become part of the discussion.

I get that maybe all my friends have encountered bad apples, but these bad apples are using scripture inappropriately. Nobody on either side of this discussion wants to see innocents abused, but it's happening nonetheless, and complementarian interpretations of scripture enable the process. As long as those passages are interpreted wrongly, they will be available for other bad apples. My intent is to take an amateur crack at fixing those verses, but not without first looking at the damage their misuse has caused.

Does sexual abuse really and legitimately flow from a complementarian viewpoint? Nope.

Nope. I absolutely agree, in the same way that laziness does not really and legitimately flow from a communist economy. Laziness comes from evil human hearts, but communism gives laziness a warm place to nest. The ideas behind communism are appealing, but they rely too much on the selflessness of mankind. Bad idea.

Empowering women seems to provide the same kind of natural corrective to the abuse of women that capitalism supplies to communism. I recognize that as the greed engine behind capitalism introduces its own flaws, so will egalitarianism not be a panacea. If egalitarianism is not scriptural, then it will not fix the problem at all! I assert that it is scriptural, and that the problems it introduces will be less than the ones it fixes.

The issue needs to be addressed by both sides, in either case.

If law and order ever collapse again in our lifetimes, I think the "oppressive" statutes of the past will make a whole lot of sense. It's still a fair question what makes sense here and now.

Let me be clear that I am talking about abuse in the church, between members, and policed by leaders in the church. I'm talking about fathers and brothers abusing their own sisters in the Lord and those sisters watching the abuse swept under the rug by the "clear scriptures" that say men can do that. These things are done by bad apples, but I ask what the complementarian plan is to stop those bad apples. The current plan is not working, and I don't see a new one on the horizon. I assert that they cannot come up with a strong plan, because their interpretation of scripture is flawed. That discussion is still to come.

As far as oppressive societal rules go, they are a red herring to me. I still leave elevators after every lady, and open doors when given the opportunity. I'm old fashioned and see no reason to change that. I would jump at the chance to carry out my part in any rule that said women should be escorted in public at all times - as long as women had their part in making that rule. When the oppressive rules extend into the church, though, and start telling women that they have less voice in the body of Christ than scripture affords, then I get all wrapped around an axle.

Thanks for your openness, WF.

Visitors: If I met you on a plane ...

... and you wanted to email me, you can find my email address in my "complete profile" linked on the right.

And to the couple with the pictures:

I loved taking them. Thanks! (If you emailed me a couple, I would post them out here, just for the fun of it.) I am curious what happened to ya'll on the second flight, though. I thought we were both on the same flight from Chicago to Columbus, but the seats you were supposed to be in were filled (by a remarkably unchatty person.) I assume that you were on a different flight after all.

If that was the case, boy were you glad! Our 5:38 flight left at 7:45. Yours would have been smack on time, I'm sure.

Glad to have met you all.

Presbuteras: Before I Start

There are several reasons I continue to push for unpopular things. The biggest is probably just that I am a born pain in the butt. Such is life.

Right behind that is that the church must attain to the lofty goal the Lord has ordained for it. You should never change a winning strategy, but you should always change a losing one, and right now we are losing. Today's church is falling short of the goals the scripture has laid before it. We need to change strategies badly.

And sometimes I espouse an idea just because I cannot bear to look those in the eye who are hurt when I do not.

All of those reasons apply as I approach the subject of women taking leadership in the church.

This subject is dear to my heart because I owe my life to elder women, and because these elder women have been abused by their churches. I would have shipwrecked or suicided, except for two women who gave freely of all they had. These two women should have been called to positions from which they could bless their churches decades ago. Of course, the opposite happened. Since knowing them, I have met many, many more women whose stories should shame men everywhere into action. That has not happened, either.

This discussion always devolves to haggling over a couple of verses on which neither side will budge because, "the scriptures clearly say...." That is tragic. I promise I will get to those scriptures, but before that we need a good hard look at reality so we know what it is we are looking for. The church has rejected half of the blessings God has allowed her, and it shows. I wish I could change that, but even if I change nothing, I have to speak.

Silence is not golden.

I cannot start a series like this without addressing its emotional aspect. This post will be inflammatory to some. Anything less would be unjust. The rest of the series will probably have an inflammatory tinge to it as well, but I think this one will be my worst. I have too many sisters whom I love too much not to be angry, and I cannot be this angry without stating the reason why.

Let me start with an example.

Recently, the Catholic Church was sent into a tailspin, and the whole world rallied against it. A pattern of abuse of young boys by men in authority was revealed, and the world refused to accept it. Praise the Lord, exposure of these abuses and the resultant demands for change are making a difference.

But where is the outrage for the abused girls?

I am overwhelmed by the universality of abuse of women in our culture. Over and over again, as I get to know women, I eventually find out that each of them was attacked in some terrible way. Most of these women have observed an unspoken code of silence for years. Too often the ones who spoke out received no meaningful support for having done so.

There has never been a universal outrage against the abuse of women.

The outrage those abused boys witnessed validated their pain. By its outrage, society told those boys it was wrong for men in power to take from powerless boys all the things they took. It is hard for a child to be sure that things done by authority figures are really wrong. When the world stood beside them, and declared that the Catholic Church needed to punish and prevent such crimes, those boys could know for all time that they had a right to be angry.

Can you imagine being a young woman, and knowing that there was no outrage? In many cases, the elders know everything that happened, and they sweep it under a rug. The men know, and nothing is done. A child is informed that her protectors have talked to the offender, and he has promised to quit. What must that young woman think? Powerful men know her most intimate pain, and nothing happens. She just knows that she has been commanded to keep silent.

Men must not want it to stop. Good Men must not want it to stop. Good Men in Authority who could rally in her defence must not want it to stop. Good Men placed by God in Authority must not want it to stop. God must not want it to stop.

So damaged women tell damaged women that, "boys will be boys," and their pain is not validated. America the beautiful has a culture of abuse against women. Mothers have to send their daughters into this proud American culture of freedom and equality, knowing that they cannot protect them. A boyfriend, relative, church leader or stranger will probably hurt them some day, and when it's happened that mother might be able to say nothing more meaningful than, "boys will be boys."

It is against the matrix of this culture that the discussion must take place. It is not good enough to isolate the discussion to sterile exegesis. If you believe that women are equal in essence to men, but not in role and responsibility, you must deal with the fruit of your beliefs. Christianity has not addressed, much less cured, this problem. The simple fact that the male leadership has failed to meaningfully address this problem should be enough to push the subject, but of course it is not. History says that something must be done.

As conservative Christians, we have failed women time and again. Historically, we resisted giving women a voice in government and a voice in the workplace. We resisted giving women leadership roles in business. We even resisted giving women equal pay for equal work. These were failures, and we have not taken ownership of them, much less become suitably ashamed of them. The same conservatives who now prevent women from leading in the church would have blockaded them from the workplace 50 years ago. These same conservatives claim to be glad women are finally treated equally by society. What's more, these same men claim that the scriptures advocate all these things that their fathers claimed it prohibited. This is not honest. If, in 2006, you prohibit a woman from teaching in the church, admit that in 1956 you would have prohibited her leaving her home to work and in 1906 you would have prohibited a woman to vote. The scriptures were clearly against these things then.

Past failure is an indicator of future peformance.

I do not believe that the conservatives of our age are right any more than they believe the conservatives of that age were.

Today, we conservative Christians openly and happily advocate sufferage, equal opportunity, equal pay and smart women at the top of fortune 500 companies. If we are reminded of our track record, we merely tut-tut the leaders of the past for their short-sightedness, and praise our own 20-20 vision. Forgetting our history, we repeat the mantra, "The scriptures are clear. Women are not allowed to ....."

That blank has always been filled, the only question is with what.

A woman leaves her husband's bed and sleeps on the couch. The pastor quotes Corinthians to her - her body is not her own. Why does he not look for the reason she abandons her bed? Because the scriptures are clear. How many people have been devastated by clear scriptures? How many more must be before we doubt our vision? How many more good women must be called witches, rebellious and lesbians for protecting their children?

Am I being sensational? I can give you names and dates on those accusations. These women are attacked virulently, not by a pastor, or even by a board, but by an entire church. Because the scriptures are clear.

The scriptures are not clear.

The Pharisees pulled their donkeys out of pits on the sabbath, but we allow half the members of His church to suffer in silence. Instead of rescuing those being damaged, we explain that the scriptures are clear; she must not deny her husband access to her body. It is the scriptures that demand women suffer abusive marriages and abusive churches in silence. Hogwash.

This emotional argument is no proof, but it is real. Finding a woman who has not been abused is as hard as finding a pastor who has addressed the subject from the pulpit. Christian abusers are enabled from the pulpit about headship and submission in marriage, and we say nothing.

With this series, I officially leave the "we."

The New Testament shows women should have authority in the church. Yes, I know conservative Christianity's verses. 25 years ago, I used to quote them and passionately defended the "equal worth but unequal roles" position. I was wrong.

The church needs feminine insight given with authority. Nothing less will address some of our needs. The culture of abuse that women endure is one example, but there are other equally important examples. Worship, fellowship, teaching and organization can all be transformed by building them in the full image of God (which is both male and female.) The church is weakened by the absence of the feminine from her practices.

Let's change our losing strategy.

Trip: Home

I'm here. It's midnight, so there will be no posts right now, but I will sleep in my own bed tonight. Work beckons tomorrow, so who knows what will happen. I will probably post the first one during lunch after a final proof. Figure on egalitarianism. I'll let the regeneration post age a little longer.

On the first leg home, I got to sit with another neat couple. I had the window, so I got to take all their in-flight pictures for their son. Really cool. You may see that couple visit the ol' blog. The second leg was delayed 2 full hours. I've never had a flight delayed before, but this trip I was 3 for 4 on the delays. Amusing, on the whole.

Amusing mostly because (and I had not thought of it this way until just now) every flight on which I was delayed I was accompanied by Charles.

Yes.

For no apparent reason other than providence, Charles and I chose the same flight home. Really cool. We got to talk for the whole 2 hour delay. We were in different seats, so he got to chat with someone else whilst we were in the air, but I'll let that slide. ;-) My neighbor was not chatty in the extreme on this flight, so I typed. Charles did me the honor of giving me a ride to my car, for which I was very grateful.

(Charles, BTW, is not COC. It was Anonymous in seat 6C who was ICOC. Charles is pretty straightforwardly Dallas Theological on everything.)

Manana!