In some parts of the Christian world, debates are flaring up about women’s roles in the church and what God’s will is concerning them. This is particularly true in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) at present, as a string of recent events has led to much conversation on the topic. There has been the decision to leave the SBC by the eminently popular Beth Moore, who has produced a lot of curriculum that Lifeway, the discipleship and Christian education arm of the SBC, and other distributors have sold. Dr. Beth Allison Barr is a professor of church history at Baylor who comes from a Baptist background. She published a book in April called The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, and it takes a look at the history behind what the church has said about women’s roles, and she documents some of her journey out of complementarian theology, further kicking the conversation wide open. (Full disclosure: I haven't read her book but have listened to her speak on a podcast). Top that with the recent ordination of three women at Saddleback Church in the greater Los Angeles area–home to pastor Rick Warren and currently the largest church in the SBC–and you can see why Christian Twitter has been abuzz on the issue.
J. D. Greear, the current president of the SBC and pastor of Summit Church in Durham, NC, wrote a blog post after Saddleback ordained the three women, calling the decision “disappointing” and linking to a position paper on gender roles utilized by his church, which you can see here. Al Mohler, the president of the largest seminary connected to the SBC, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, also wrote a piece that's critical of women in church leadership here. I'm not a Southern Baptist, but Zion Baptist Church in Woodland, AL, played an instrumental role in me becoming a Christian as a teenager. I am grateful for the SBC, and though I differ from them on a few things, they are my brothers and sisters in Christ and I will always cherish the grace God has given me through them. I pray that God would give grace and blessing to the SBC and to these two men I'm interacting with in this post.
I find Greear’s position paper much more charitable and willing to reason through things with kindness and Scripture at the center, while Mohler comes off as harsh and dismissive. Mohler’s piece doesn’t seem designed to persuade those who think differently from him, but rather serves to drum up those who are already in agreement with him. It also appears that Greear and Mohler disagree on some things themselves, with Greear being open to women preaching in certain settings, but not Mohler.
Two very common perspectives on gender roles in the church are clashing in these things, though there are lesser known intermediary positions too. The wider church has labeled these two perspectives as complementarian theology and egalitarian theology. Complementarians hold that God does not call women to be clergy and that women should submit to their husbands and have a more supportive role at home. Men are to lead at the church and in the home. Most complementarians would say 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Cor. 14:34-35 represent God’s ultimate will concerning gender in church leadership, while other passages around women taking leadership roles can be understood contextually or should be considered exceptions. When it comes to marriage, wives honoring/submitting to husbands is commanded in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; Ephesians 5:21-33; Colossians 4:18-19; Titus 2:5; and 1 Peter 3:1-7, and complementarians would say the husband “gets more of a vote,” so to speak, in decisions pertaining to the family. A good source of getting information and arguments from some of the thought leaders from this perspective is the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
Egalitarians hold that God calls women and men to be clergy and that leadership of the family is more determined by the gifts of the Spirit and someone's talents rather than biology. They would lift up other biblical passages where women are in positions of authority (we'll look at some of these below), the mutuality without hierarchy present in Genesis 2, and a close reading of the NT marriage passages in context to advocate for equal partnership as God’s ultimate will. They'd make the case that restrictive passages on women in church leadership like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 can be understood contextually. You can see proponents of this perspective in the group Christians for Biblical Equality.
What is God’s best on this issue? I don’t have perfect knowledge and I welcome correction if you see me going wrong, but I wanted to offer my perspective on the issue of women in church leadership and why I come to a different conclusion from Greear and Mohler on God calling women to be clergy. (Maybe we can look at the passages on marriage another day and in another post.) I land more in the egalitarian camp on this, though some egalitarian arguments and exegesis prove more convincing than others. I want to lift up some introductory considerations, engage primarily with The Summit's position paper, and then dive into interpreting some of the relevant passages of Scripture. I also will ask some questions of my complementarian brothers and sisters.
Interpretive Considerations
The first thing I’ll say is that this topic can get complex and multiple interpretive issues come into play. One of those issues is trying to make sense of what the whole sweep of Scripture says about a topic, not just a few passages. In preaching on women in ministry a few years ago, I encouraged people to think of making sense of a complex topic in Scripture as being like a bicycle that comes to you in a box and you need to assemble the parts. We need to look at all passages that are relevant to the topic and assemble them in a way that makes sense of all the parts. If you put it all together in such a way that some passages are discarded or left out, then you probably haven’t put it together correctly. It would be like making a unicycle out of the parts for a bicycle–you've made something from the parts, but you still have the frame and an extra wheel lying on the ground. Let's take what the Bible says about wealth and possessions as an example. If you highlight the passages about God giving people prosperity and material blessings while neglecting passages about generosity and simplicity, then you’ve left out some crucial pieces of God’s design for how we treat money and possessions. It's like riding a unicycle when God intends for us to ride a bicycle. Sure, we've have made something from the parts, perhaps even something that can propel us forward, but we're missing God's intended design, which is faster and more useful than a unicycle. (And yes, you guessed it: I actually had a unicycle and a bicycle that I used as props in that sermon. Lord, have mercy.)
We further can think on how much historical background should shape our interpretation. What was going on in the world in which a text was written? What was the situation in a church and city to which a particular letter was addressed? What was going on the broader culture? How might such knowledge help us better understand how the original hearers and readers would’ve interpreted a passage, or help us understand why a particular command was given?
A further interpretive issue concerns determining if something is a universal command to be obeyed in all times and places regardless of context versus determining when we shouldn't literally obey a command, but instead pull a principle from it that we apply a bit differently to our lives today. A common example my New Testament professor, Dr. Craig Keener, would use to illustrate this are Paul’s repeated commands around greeting one another with a holy kiss (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:26). I think most churches in the U.S. don’t obey this verse literally, because in our context kissing one another might imply something different and potentially negative to the culture around us compared to what it would've meant in Paul's original context. But we can pull the principle of greeting one another warmly and with hospitality from these commands and apply that in a way that best makes sense in our context to fulfill the spirit of the command.
I mention these interpretive issues first because they shape how people make sense of the Bible and help us see how people arrive at different interpretations of the Bible. You’ll see them coming into play below.
Women of Spiritual Authority in the Bible
Right off the bat, I want to list some passages of Scripture that showcase women in authoritative roles.
- Miriam—Prophetess & leader, Exodus 15:20-21; Micah 6:4
- Deborah—Judge over all Israel & prophetess, Judges 4:1-5:31
- Huldah—Prophetess, 2 Kings 22:14-20; 2 Chronicles 34:22-28
- Isaiah’s Wife—Prophetess, Isaiah 8:3
- Anna—Prophetess, Luke 2:36
- Daughters of Philip—Prophetesses, Acts 21:8-9
- Women in the Corinthian Church—Prophetesses, 1 Corinthians 11:5
- Priscilla—Evangelist and teacher with her husband Aquila. Taught a man, Apollos, in Acts 18:24-26.
- Phoebe—Deacon, Paul likely trusted her to be able to explain the letter of Romans as carrier of letter. Romans 16:1-2
- Junia—Apostle, most likely Andronicus and Junia were a husband and wife apostle team. (More on this below). Romans 16:7
- Euodia and Syntyche—Labored with Paul in spreading the Gospel. Philippians 4:2-3
Something else of note is that Paul ranks being an apostle and prophet/prophesying above pastoring/teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and Ephesians 4:11. Since you have the example of a woman apostle and several women prophets throughout Scripture, with some of this being present in Paul’s letters themselves, what does that mean for what the Bible says and what Paul believed about women having authority in the church? This is going to be important to wrestle with as we keep delving into the topic.
Now let’s turn to The Summit Church’s position paper.
The Summit Position Paper–Positives
I want to start off by saying I have a lot of respect for J. D. Greear. I find him to be a wise voice in the SBC, and he is someone who cares about evangelism and is open to pursuing racial reconciliation. I also appreciate his and his church's desire to be centered on Scripture, which is evident throughout The Summit’s document. I’m an egalitarian, but I fear some egalitarians make their case mostly by leaving the Bible behind and focusing primarily on experience and reason rather than Scripture. This is not a Protestant (or Methodist) way of doing theology. To the degree egalitarians have argued for women in ministry leadership by abandoning Scripture, we deserve critique and become guilty of not setting people up for a submissive view toward Scripture like Jesus, the apostles, and the early church had. I ultimately come to a different conclusion from Greear, but his biblical focus is good.
The document is much more nuanced and well-rounded than some other presentations I’ve seen from complementarians, showcasing the diversity of women in Scripture. I’m glad the Summit highlights the incidents where women did teach men and preached in mixed settings in the Bible. I also am grateful to see that Summit allows women to be deacons in section IV-D, which is what we see in Romans 16:1-2 and 1 Timothy 3:11 (more on this below). The words in III-B on the necessity of all Christians to submit to God, to each other mutually, to government in some things, and to church leadership in some things is healthy as well. I agree with them that the titles pastor, elder, and overseer refer to the same role in the NT (see their interchangeable use in Acts 20:17, 28), and they also correctly highlight that we have no examples in the New Testament of women as elders, overseers, or pastors. As shown above, however, there are passages that showcase women in more authoritative roles than that of pastor/overseer/elder in the Bible. You do have a few women who were considered elders in the early church (see the first footnote to the postscript in this article that gives some names of women who were considered clergy: https://margmowczko.com/women-elders-new-testament/), but it is quite true to say the large majority perspective in church history is against women in ministry leadership. While tradition is an important resource to consider theologically, for Protestants, it is not the ultimate authority. The Bible is our primary authority and represents the earliest traditions of the church, and later tradition can sometimes miss the mark.
The Summit’s Position Paper–Questions and Critique
I’m grateful that Greear sees Junia as a woman in Romans 16:7. For a time, Junia’s name was made into the masculine Junias because people assumed a woman couldn’t be an apostle, but the name Junias isn’t extant in any other Greek writings, while the feminine name Junia was relatively common. There are several early church interpreters who viewed Junia as a female apostle (Ambrosiaster, John Chrysostom, Origen, Theodoret, Jerome, John of Damascus, etc.). I’d like an explanation of why Greear prefers to interpret the Greek phrase in Romans 16:7 “episemoi en tois apostolois” as Junia being held in high esteem by the apostles instead of being considered outstanding among the apostles. Episemoi gets variously translated as “noteworthy,” “outstanding,” “reputable,” or “prominent,” and tois apostolois means “the apostles.” The argument centers around the sense given to the preposition en–does it mean “in/among” or “to/by"?
While “to” or “by” is lexically possible, this is not the most common sense of the preposition. BDAG, one of the most reputable Greek-English lexicons, lists "to" or "by" as the eighth possible meaning of en, and there are only a few passages in the New Testament where the authors think this sense is utilized. En usually locates someone or something within a group, condition, or time, and there are many more attestations of this sense of the word in the New Testament (see BDAG pp. 326-330). The most common usage of en would imply that Andronicus and Junia were apostles. Nate Sparks writes about this in a blog post, citing New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham’s book Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels.
…Bauckham asserts that Paul’s consideration of Junia as an apostle is ‘virtually certain’ (p. 172). Bauckham sees the lack of a qualifier for “apostolois" in Romans 16:7 – such as occurs with “apostle of the churches” in 2 Corinthians 8:23 or “your apostle” in Philippians 2:25 – to be an indicator that: Romans 16:7 must refer to the apostles of Christ, whom Paul generally refers to simply as “apostles,” meaning that Junia and Andronicus were apostles themselves, not that they were esteemed by other apostles. Bauckham readily notes that this usage is not as narrow as that used in the Gospels at the choosing of the “twelve apostles”, but points out that it is the sense in which Paul refers to his own inclusion as an apostle [see, for instance, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11]. (Source: https://natesparks130.com/2016/03/08/rhetorical-questions-kevin-deyoung/#_ftn6)
In reference to what is written in section II-B, egalitarianism doesn’t consider men and women to be “interchangeable,” as though there were no differences among them at all. I’m an egalitarian and I do not believe this. There are obvious biological differences between women and men, and we too see complementarity in God's design of the two sexes. We just don’t think biological sex determines the roles God might call a woman or man to in the church and in the home. Also, the language in this section about complementarian theology giving women more reasons to serve in the church is mystifying. How is egalitarianism giving less motivation for women to be involved in the life of the church when it asserts God can call women to more roles and offers them more opportunities than complementarianism? Further, it's not like egalitarians are going to criticize women if they serve in roles more traditionally expected of women in the church, like children and family ministry. The logic here eludes me.
I fear in section III the ideas get confusing in trying to delineate when women can and can’t preach and teach. They can preach and have authority over a group as long as they’re not doing it in a way that explicitly states they’re an elder or implies that they’re teaching like an elder. But that begs the question: what does it mean to teach and preach like an elder? Do elders have a particular way they preach and teach? I know several elders, and they all have different styles and gifts when it comes to preaching and teaching. Further, in III-E, I don't think the division of teaching into “general” and “special” categories is a biblical one. Colossians 3:16 and 1 Peter 4:11 are cited in support of this claim, but how these verses establish that there’s “general” teaching that everyone can do and “special” teaching that only male elders can do is not apparent. Further, how would you know if a sermon was a “general” one or verged into “special” teaching territory? Can you consistently say that women are sometimes allowed to teach and preach in mixed settings, but also say in III-E that “for most churches, particularly in North America, the sermon acts as the most obvious example of ‘special’ teaching at the local church level,” so therefore women shouldn’t preach sermons at church, though they can offer "admonitions" and "scriptural insights" during the worship service? The distinctions are fuzzy and some of the argumentation folds in on itself. I fear it will leave people confused. Further, Deborah and Miriam had more authority in the life of God’s people than an elder would've had in the NT. Would they fit into this schema?
As we continue, I want to offer an interpretation of two key biblical passages where Paul restricts women's ministry. Let’s start with 1 Timothy 2:8-15
1 Timothy 2:8-15
Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (NIV)
Paul's letter of 1 Timothy is addressed to Timothy as his delegate over the churches in the city of Ephesus. This passage is getting at disruptions and distractions in the gatherings of the congregations in Ephesus, presumably at worship, since in 2:1 Paul is telling Timothy to instruct the people on how to pray and we return to the theme of prayer in 2:8. The first disruption centers on angry men who were getting into arguments–probably not the most fun experience if you visited the church in Ephesus back in the day and some men were raucously arguing with each other. The next two disruptions center around women, with verses 9-10 being devoted to modesty and 11-15 to women being barred from teaching. In context, Paul’s commands on modesty probably were intended to minimize conflicts centered around opulence and social elitism as well as connotations of sexual immorality connected with some of the specific adornment Paul mentions (see Philip Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus: NICNT, 208-209). Paul moves on to give further instruction for the women in Timothy’s churches, calling for them to learn in quietness and submission, saying that he does not permit a woman to have authority and teach over a man, making an appeal to creation to further his argument, and then giving the promise that women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, holiness, and propriety.
First off, Paul wants women to learn. “While this may seem unsurprising to us at this juncture in history, the degree of education appropriate for women was very much a subject for debate in the Greco-Roman world, with some suggesting it was inappropriate altogether. There is even a notorious Jewish saying, ‘better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman’ (J. T. Sot. 3.19a, 3). Here in our text women are not merely encouraged to learn, they are required to do so. They are to do it in quietness and in all submission/subordination” (Ben Witherington III, The Problem with Evangelical Theology, 99). Most likely here Paul is telling the women to be submissive to the teacher/instructor in the gathered group, not to their husbands or to men in general.
The fact that Paul bars women from teaching in verse 12 brings with it the assumption that some women had been teaching in the Ephesian church. The verb that the NIV translates as “assume authority over” is authentein in Greek, and it only occurs here in the NT. There is some discussion over whether in means simply “to have authority over” or, more negatively, “to domineer.” Scholars are divided and both senses are possible. Whichever sense we go with probably isn’t crucial for our overall interpretation. The main question is: Why does Paul stop these women from teaching and having authority?
The traditional complementarian interpretation is Paul in verses 13-14 anchors his argumentation back to creation, which therefore makes his prohibition of women teaching and assuming authority over men a universal prohibition, rooting male leadership and teaching authority back to God’s created design. Egalitarian interpretation often maintains that Paul is making the prohibition here for reasons specific to this church context, and Paul appeals to the creation story as an illustration of the present problem in this church, but not as a transcultural forbiddance.
If you'll permit a brief digression, one place you see most people consider an appeal to creation to be a culturally bound argument that isn't applicable in the same way today is in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. In this passage, part of Paul’s argument for women wearing head coverings involves an appeal back to creation in verses 8-12. Most Christians consider the head coverings command in 1 Corinthians 11 to be a contextually bound command from which we might pull principles around honoring spouses, but not literally apply them in the same way today by requiring all married women to wear head coverings in church. Most women/wives don’t wear a head covering in worship in Christian congregations in many parts of the world today. Perhaps those who argue for women not teaching or preaching over men should also advocate that women/wives should wear head coverings in church if they want to be consistent in their interpretive method.
Returning back to 1 Timothy 2, there is evidence in 1 and 2 Timothy that indicates multiple problems with women at the church in Ephesus under Timothy’s charge. In 2 Timothy 3:6-7, Paul talks about false teachers who sway gullible women, work their way into their homes, and spread false doctrine. Since women weren’t as educated as men back at the time, they probably would have been more vulnerable to false teachers. Ben Witherington sees this as standing behind the appeal to creation in 2:13-14.
I suggest that the reason for the mention that Adam was formed first, before speaking of Eve, is to remind the audience of the context of the story in Genesis 2. That story is quite clear that Adam alone was formed and was present for the original instructions about what was prohibited. Eve was not there for proper divine instruction, hence she was more susceptible to deception. Nothing is said here about the woman being more susceptible by nature to deception, unlike what we find for instance in Philo (Witherington III, Problem, 101).
Paul also gets on to some widows in 1 Tim 5:6 and 11-15 for living for pleasure, breaking their pledges, saying things they shouldn’t say, going from house to house as gossips, and some of them even rejecting the faith altogether to follow Satan. Paul’s overall message concerning widows in 5:3-16 seeks to encourage families to care for their elderly, put strictures around which widows the church supported financially, and counsel younger widows against the example of other younger widows who were behaving badly. One gets the picture that some of the troublesome widows that Paul upbraids in 5:11-15 had been put on the list to receive financial support from the church while they were going about causing problems for the church. This would not have been good for the reputation of the church or for the quality of the fellowship. Combine that with the modesty issues Paul has just mentioned in 2:9-10, and it seems plausible that local problems with women stood behind why Paul pumped the brakes on women teaching and having authority over men in Ephesus.
There also are some more positive examples of women in Paul's correspondence with Timothy. Paul sees the Christian faith as being passed down to Timothy from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice in 2 Timothy 1:5. Priscilla, along with her husband Aquila, are mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:19. In Acts 18:24-26, Priscilla and Aquila taught a man, Apollos, the way of God more fully, and they did it in Ephesus, the same city where this letter is directed to Timothy. Further, there's what Paul says about women deacons in 1 Timothy 3:8-13.
Deacon comes from the Greek word diakonos, which is used to describe an office of church leadership in 3:8-13. It means "servant" or "minister." It clearly refers to a leadership office in the church in at least two cases: in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 and in Philippians 1:1. It also can have a more generic sense of being a servant without any official ecclesiastical position implied. Jesus calls all Christians to be servants–see, for instance, Mark 10:43-45 and its parallels. Paul applies the word to himself and others multiple times to talk about serving or ministering in some way. There are some instances where it’s not clear if he is referring to someone who serves exceptionally well or to someone who held the office of deacon. You can see different examples of him using the word in Greek in Rom. 16:1 (Phoebe); 1 Cor. 3:5; 2 Cor. 3:6; 6:4; 11:23; Eph. 3:7; 6:21 (Tychicus); Col. 1:7 (Epaphras), 23, 25; 4:7 (again, Tychicus). It is quite probable that Paul refers to Tychicus, Phoebe (a woman), and Epaphras as people who held the office of deacon based on the location of where they are brought up in these letters (either toward the beginning or end), and especially in light of Tychicus being called a deacon twice in different letters.
1 Timothy 3:11 is the verse relevant for our discussion. It reads in the NIV, “In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything." Some translate "the women" as "the wives" of the male deacons, an interpretation that implies women didn't hold the office of deacon. The Greek word in question in this verse is gunaikes, a plural form of gunē, the word for woman. Gunē, along with the Greek word for man–anēr or arsēn–can also mean wife and husband in Greek. There isn’t a different word for wife and husband in Greek like there is in English. You have to infer from the grammar (often through the inclusion of a possessive pronoun or the definite article) and context if a biblical author is referring to wives and husbands. For instance, in Greek, my wife Laura would be “my woman" and I would be “her man.”
Philip Towner gives several reasons for why he finds women deacons to be the best sense of 3:11. One of them is that while this word can mean wives, typically when wives are referred to in Greek in the NT, they either have a possessive pronoun attached to them or the definite article (see 1 Cor. 7:2, 3; Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18, 24; 1 Pet. 3:1). The Greek here does not have a possessive pronoun or the definite article. Also, “The omission of a parallel instruction to wives of overseers [in 3:1-7] makes it still less likely that ‘wives of deacons’ would be singled out. Further, the reference in Rom. 16:1 to ‘Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae’ […] demonstrates both the existence of women deacons and the use of the masculine term [in Greek] to refer to a female deacon” (Towner, 266). There are a couple other nerdy Greek things Towner lists that he believes further supports this conclusion. Luke Timothy Johnson in his commentary on 1 and 2 Timothy mentions some different interpreters throughout history who came to the conclusion that Paul was referring to women deacons–Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428), Theodore of Cyr (393-466), Oecumenius of Tricca, (tenth century), Theophylact (eleventh century), and Hervé de Bourg–Dieu (twelfth century) (Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy: Anchor Yale Bible, 27-37).
In 3:9, Paul says that deacons “must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.” Keeping hold of the deep truths of the faith implies that deacons teach. Why else would Paul make this a requirement unless deacons were responsible for communicating these truths in some way? So if Paul allowed women to be deacons in 1 Timothy 3, the presumption would be these women also would be teaching the "deep truths of the faith." And wouldn’t “deep truths of the faith” probably fall into the category of what The Summit labels as “special teaching” that they think women shouldn’t approach?
Returning back to 2:11-15, here's Witherington again:
Of what relevance is all this to the discussion of women learning rather than teaching? Eve is an example of someone who could be deceived by a false teacher (in this case a snake), [perhaps] because she had not been properly instructed in the first place. This speaks directly to the problem in Ephesus where we have some high-status, well-to-do women, likely with some education, who are trying to assume the mantle of teaching before they have learned the apostolic message properly, and in all likelihood after they have already been misled by the false teachers (Witherington III, Problem, 102).
Seeing some of these aforementioned problems with women indicated in Paul’s correspondence to Timothy, Paul affirming women in leadership in other parts of his writings, Paul greeting warmly a woman who taught Apollos in Ephesus in 2 Tim. 4:19, and Paul affirming women as deacons in 1 Timothy 3 all lead me to think the best way to interpret 2:11-15 is as a contextual prohibition against women rather than a universal one, though it is one from which we still can pull principles to apply to our context today. The principles at play here would be that the unlearned shouldn’t teach, but rather should spend time learning in submission to Scripture and the church. Depending on authentein’s definition, there also can be a lesson in not trying to domineer and wrench authority away from others, particularly if you think you deserve it as a high-status person. There is also the principle of self-control, which applies throughout all of 2:8-15. Self-control can require that we limit some of our Christ-given freedom for the sake of effectively engaging with a fallen culture (see also Paul’s words on the weak and the strong in Romans 14-15 and eating food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8). This would have proved relevant for Christian women trying to reach a broken and patriarchal culture.
2:15 implies that God is capable of providing help and delivering women through the dangers of childbirth, which is part of the pain given as a curse in response to Eve and Adam’s sin in Genesis 3:16. There is a potential implication that Christ is able to heal and undo elements of the curse to those who hold on to him in faith and love and holiness. Part of the curse on Eve and women was also patriarchy and male domination in 3:16. Maybe that is a curse that God wants to heal us from today as well as we go on in faith, love, holiness, and propriety?
I want to ask a few questions of complementarians around 1 Timothy 2:8-15: If you believe the appeal to creation indicates a transcultural prohibition of women teaching and having authority over men, then wouldn’t Paul’s argumentation from the creation story also be transcultural? In essence, wouldn’t that mean that women are inherently more gullible and less discerning than men? This implies an intellectual and/or moral deficiency in women in comparison with men. Can the prohibition against women teaching and leading be universal and the argumentation used to support the prohibition not be?
If you believe women are inferior to men intellectually and/or morally, what does that mean for your thoughts on women's ministry in complementarian churches? Should women, who are prone to deception, all get together to teach each other so they can push each other further into muddled thinking about God?
Let's also look at 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (NIV)
Some scholars (Gordon Fee being one, with Richard Hays following him) make the case on text critical grounds that these verses were an interpolation added at an early stage of copying the manuscripts of 1 Corinthians and aren’t original to the letter, and therefore we shouldn't consider them as Scripture. Several of the oldest manuscripts place these verses at the end of chapter 14, others put it where it presently is in our Bibles, and another ancient manuscript contains markings that imply the scribe considered these verses to be an addition inserted into the text. As some other scholars have noted in response to this view, while this passage may have been moved around to different places in the ancient copies, it is always there. There is no extant ancient manuscript where verses 34-35 are omitted, so it is likely original. So how are we to interpret it as Scripture?
Like 1 Timothy 2, the wider context of 1 Corinthians 14 pertains to the Christian gathering, specifically the worship service. Paul is concerned about the Corinthians worshipping in a way that is orderly, intelligible, and beneficial for those who gather. Paul highlights things that are disrupting orderliness in the Corinthian worship services, particularly a lot of people loudly speaking in tongues all at once with no interpretation. This was causing disorder in the gathering and turning visiting non-Christians away from Christianity. In light of this wider context about proper order in church worship, we can presume that some women were disrupting orderly worship gatherings as well.
It’s very hard to argue from this passage that women should never, ever speak in church, since Paul clearly assumed they were praying and prophesying in the Christian gathering earlier in this same letter in 1 Cor 11:5. “…[T]he only kind of speech he directly addresses in 14:34-36 is wives asking questions” (Craig Keener, Women in Ministry). So what is Paul getting at? As mentioned above, women were much less likely to be educated than men, both in the Bible and in philosophy. It seems likely that the women would have had more elementary questions for whoever was trying to exposit and preach from the Scriptures at the Corinthian house churches, and Paul is giving a short-term restriction—let the women keep silent so as not to slow down the learning of the whole group—followed by a long term solution to catch the women up to speed—let them learn the basics at home from their husbands, who were more likely to know the Bible. What does Paul mean when he says they should be in submission, as the law says? Again, it seems that they should be in submission to the teacher and the group at the worship gathering, similar to what is said in 1 Timothy 2:11 on women learning in quietness and full submission. All of us should submit to instruction in God’s law and not disrupt it. I can see a lot of application of this in youth groups...
To sum up, Paul seems to be dealing with uneducated women who were disrupting the order of the teaching portion of the Christian gathering with their questions. He wants them to be quiet during this time as to not slow down the others, but also to learn at home from their husbands so they can be caught up to speed. Paul did not think women should be silent all the time during worship gatherings.
For complementarians, how do you make sense of what Paul says earlier in 1 Corinthians 11:5 around women praying and prophesying in the Christian worship gathering, especially since prophecy is considered by Paul to be more beneficial than teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:28?
Does Paul contradict himself concerning women? What do you do with the passages in which Paul and others showcase women in roles more authoritative than pastoring and teaching in the New Testament? Can you put all these passages together in a way that makes sense of the whole Bible, not just parts?
Conclusion
There’s certainly more to be said on the topic. We haven’t touched the marriage and submission passages. One of my favorite books on this topic that delves rather deeply into this exegetically and engages with several complementarian scholars is Craig Keener's Paul, Women, and Wives: Marriage and Women's Ministry in the Letters of Paul.
I've posted this to make the case that Mohler's demurral on women clergy and the position paper Greear posted are open to scrutiny exegetically. Despite Mohler’s dismissal of someone like myself as being on the slippery slope down to unfaithful compromise, rushing headlong to get the Bible out of the way, it seems to me that he himself could be ignoring the Bible in some places. I think there are biblical reasons for affirming women in ministry leadership, and I find the egalitarian position makes sense of all the data better than the complementarian position. I could be wrong and am open to correction here, but I’d like to see how my complementarian brothers and sisters would respond to some of my questions and observations.
To return to the example of a unicycle and a bicycle, what if complementarians have been riding a unicycle and discarding passages of Scripture that don’t fit their theology, when God calls the church to go further and faster by riding a bicycle, utilizing all of God’s people, women and men, to the fullest extent in the mission of making disciples of Jesus? What if God is calling you as a woman into serving and leading in the church, not as a political statement, but as an act of faithfulness to the God who called Miriam, Deborah, Phoebe, Junia, and Priscilla? Let's follow the lead of Jesus in our lives. Let's follow the whole Bible in utilizing the whole body of Christ to its fullest extent in doing the work of the kingdom, for the glory of God.
