When it comes to differing views in theology I feel that sometimes people can revert back to childish methods of arguing—one attacks and then the other comes back with a comment that aims to stop the argument but doesn’t make much sense—like the “Full stop! No returns!” policy.
So, whenever the topic of women’s roles in church comes up, I brace myself for the predictable response that, sadly, a lot of Christians give. Usually it is, “that verse is just contextual. It doesn’t apply today” (referring to the verse in 1 Timothy chapter 2 where Paul admonishes the women in the church not to lead, but to learn in silence). The “no returns” part is usually delivered as, “Otherwise, if you take everything literally, women should wear veils in church too” (referring to the verse in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 where Paul admonishes the women in the church to cover their heads in worship). I have heard this conversation so many times and often it is said quite smugly, as if the person is delivering a childish, “So there!”
Perhaps that’s not always the heart behind the claim, but regardless of the motives, I have never felt sure about the argument. It’s too easy for us (Christians) to explain away the wisdom of the bible as “contextual” or “figurative” or “symbolic”—sometimes to a fault.
So as to not sound like a hypocrite, I will admit that I have used the argument myself in the past. It can seem like a lifeline response that takes away all guilt of disobedience. It’s safe to think that the reproach was just for the early Christians, “They needed that rule because they were so unruly, but we’ve got it together now so it doesn’t apply to us.” The arrogance makes me cringe—especially knowing that I spouted things like that myself not too many years ago. I resisted the submissive, gentle and quiet spirit that my own mother portrayed in my family and instead, celebrated the empowering of women, like the feminists before me. I rejoiced when my mother rebelled against my father’s wishes and was amused when she was sneaky. I did not respect her deference towards my father; I wanted power for my sex and I was prideful enough to think that we were better equipped than most men.
It was easy for me to continue in this indulgent, sinful attitude because I never read my bible completely and I allowed those arguments (mentioned above) to convince me I was in the right. I never had to confront it at church because I grew up going to more contemporary churches, which were coloured with very strong women anyway. Then something changed in me. You could call it ‘a change of heart,’ but the bible calls it ‘repentance,’ where once you thought one way, you have completely turned around to see things in a new light. It really does feel like rebirth! It began when my faith was put to the test and just like what happened to Peter, I believe God gave me over to it so that I could return stronger. As a result, I stopped reading little pieces of the bible and started devouring the whole thing. One by one, different ideas I had formed, that might not have been completely biblical, dropped off of me, to my chagrin. It was very humbling and at times I felt frightened and alone by the knowledge. Mostly, I worried that I would not be supported if I was to voice these seemingly controversial truths (at least they would seem so to the people I was surrounded by at the time), but then I remembered Jesus was boldly controversial.
The hardest false belief to let go of was that women can (or should) run the church. Then I remembered what the bible said about Eve—the fact that she led man into transgression and for that reason God gave the leadership to the man, saying that she would always have her desires achieved through him (Genesis 3:16). That was not the only place in the bible I was challenged about it, or I might have been tempted to argue, “But, surely, Jesus broke that curse and now women can be restored as the equal helper God intended them to be?”
In the letters of the apostles, in the New Testament, the men are charged to be the head of their home. This was no longer because of a curse. This was to reflect something significant that had occurred, a fulfillment of prophecy: the reigning Messiah. Jesus, who is equal with God—in fact, the exact likeness of God—submitted to the Father’s will through love. In the same way, the bible puts forward, women should submit to their husbands. It’s not a foreshadow of women during the 1950s, or even further back to ancient societies, where women were treated as slaves and could not defend or speak for themselves. It’s a reflection of the almighty God, Jesus the Christ! Women, or more specifically wives, were instructed to be like Jesus in that way. Jesus agonized over dying for the sins of mankind, but He trusted the Father enough to do what He asked of Him. This is what the bible expects of wives, to trust their husbands enough to lead even when it’s difficult. Again, that is not the only place I was challenged in the bible, or I might have been tempted to say, “That is specific to wives submitting to one man, not all men and says nothing of single women in the church.”
So that’s when I revisited the passage in 1 Timothy where Paul is explicit to Timothy, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, revealing what God expects of women (all women) in church. Now, I needed to approach this passage with care. It had a stink on it, put there by the abuse of men in my life who liked to berate women about their inferiority. However, I was also aware that it was scripture and therefore could not be ignored. I very much approached it with a sense of caution.
First of all, the passage begins with an urge for prayer in the church, which was exactly what I needed to do in order to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to me the truth in the scriptures. The urging was for prayers to be made for world leaders and then generally for all people. This is followed by a reminder of the gospel message that everything should come back to. Paul returns to the subject of prayer, in verse 8, to qualify how men should pray and then strangely jumps to a fashion lesson for women, or at least that’s how I took it at first. Upon closer inspection, reading carefully to try and understand how it connects to what has already been said, I realized that it was an instruction for women to worry more about their character than their clothing. It’s less about “what not to wear” and more about what you should do instead. In verse 10 it states, “But with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.”
That command is not there to impede women from praying, either, in case some people were wondering. I love how theologian Barnes puts it, “The nature of woman seems to be adapted to the performance of all deeds demanding kindness, tenderness, and gentleness of feeling… God seems to have formed her mind for just such things.”
That quote, for me, paints a picture of the greatest strength of women, making it clear how important it is for them to maintain that role in the church. Women are needed for their unique character traits and they have something to offer that perhaps men don’t.
And so the chapter continues…
The next warning is that women should learn in church in a quiet, submissive way. The call for the historical context of this passage does not in any way hinder the meaning of the passage; in fact, it assists it. It does not, however, excuse 21st century women because they are in some way different. I have heard it said that the women in the church of Ephesus were babbling, talking out of turn and disrupting the service and this was why they were instructed to be silent. Not because they weren’t allowed to participate, but because they weren’t showing a respectable conduct. This is not the reason Paul gives for their silence though. He explains further in verse 12 that he “does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet.” He qualifies this by returning to the passage in Genesis. Paul did not only address the church in Ephesus, he also made it explicit to the women in Corinth. The women in Corinth were asked to be respectful toward church leadership (1 Corinthians 14:33-35). According to R.C. Sproul, this application of a similar principle in separate settings (Ephesus and Corinth) points to its universality.
I have often felt that most of the difficulties people have accepting this instruction come from the differing views as to how church should be structured. I recently had a conversation with someone who couldn’t understand the harm in having a woman speak in church. To which I said, “Because God calls men to lead.”
The response was enlightening: “I understand that men should lead in the home, but I don’t understand why women can’t at least speak in church?” In this modern day, church has become less about instruction and more about freedom of expression. There definitely should be room for freedom of expression, especially since the Holy Spirit gifts people in different ways, but speaking in church, according to the bible, is an important office. Perhaps we reduce it by saying “speaking” and should call it “teaching” for that is what the “speaker” is supposed to do. Paul says to Timothy “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). James also warns “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Reading the New Testament, it becomes clear that teaching is a huge responsibility that needs to be handled delicately. The teacher is not the person with all the power, as sometimes can occur in churches, but they serve the members with their gift. The purpose of teaching? The very popular verse in 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Then it gives closure on this in verse 17 where it says that the teaching “equips [the man of God] for every good work.”
It’s clear to me, that God requires men to teach in church, since to teach is to lead, but what does that mean for me as a woman? What am I meant to do? I am thoroughly convinced that I can learn more from the previous verses about the importance of my character, but I also know that there needs to be some clear picture of what this looks like practically. Whenever I have heard mention of Christian women in the bible, it is always in some form of service or other, they are certainly not idle or irrelevant. Paul says to the Roman church “Greet Mary who has worked hard for you” (Romans 16:6). He also makes mention of women who act as missionaries alongside their husbands (Romans 16:3,7,15) and, even at the time of Jesus when women were usually uneducated, women were entitled to learn like rabbinic students at the feet of a teacher. Paul also assumes women will prophesy (1 Corinthians 11:4-5) and speak during worship through singing or offering praise (Exodus 12:20-21; Colossians 3:16). Even though Jesus broke the mould of the involvement of women in the church, He didn’t choose women to be His apostles. Mark Driscoll said of this, that even though the Old Testament was comprised of male priests and Jesus chose twelve men as his apostles he “befriended, loved, taught, honoured, healed, and included women in his ministry—but never in a senior position of leadership.” John Piper states that it obviously wasn’t because Jesus was enslaved to His times, it was because He believed that it would be healthy for the church and the family if men “assumed the role of Christ-like, humble, caring, servant-leaders, and if the women came in alongside with their respective gifts to help carry his leadership through according to those gifts.”
Society balks at that because they try to convince people that there are no differences between men and women. I even had a University lecturer go so far as to say we cannot even claim biological differences between men and women anymore, because there are many people born with both reproductive organs, or hormones that are not usually ascribed to their sex. That is what I call a distorted perspective.
There is something compromised when women take leadership over men. This is not purely observational, although I can claim it as such. I have been regretful to sit in many churches where there are larger percentages of women in attendance and larger percentages of women in ministry. Why? I don’t have a definitive answer, but I believe it has something to do with why men can often be lazy at home (maybe they are being too ‘mothered’?). Aside from that, whenever we see women taking leadership, whether out of necessity or stubbornness, men do not. I cannot help thinking about the Israelite soldier Barak who would not go to war unless Deborah the prophetess came with them (Judges 4:9). For whatever reason, or need, Deborah was forced into a leadership capacity and it resulted in strong women but dependent men. I am not claiming that Barak was a coward, because he was indeed very fierce, but there was something wrong about his appeal; otherwise, he would have been credited with the killing of Sesera the General of the enemy’s camp instead of the woman Jael.
The final question remaining is why women would be excluded from these offices if God has gifted them for it? Paul addresses the issue of gender roles within an instruction of church structures and church offices. He doesn’t say, “I will not allow women to be ordained.” R.C. Sproul makes the point that there are different forms of authority: influential and governing. Women, by all means, can have authority in the church in the sense that they can be gifted and respected. They are just prohibited from carrying out any office that governs over the men in the church. All of us have been blessed by mothers, women missionaries and Sunday school teachers, and other females who have taught us the Word without being elders. Paul did not instruct women to be silent so that they would be inactive, he just wanted them to stop striving for power and to first learn to respect the male leaders whom God appointed to instruct them (Driscoll, 2011).
I once read in a fiction book “Paul hates women.” I was so surprised that I was almost amused. It really is important to begin to read verses about gender roles within the guidelines of how God defines them and not how society defines them. For if we believe, as society does, that there are no differences between men and women and there should be no distinction of roles, then reading those passages (that I mentioned above) are going to make people a bit squeamish. It doesn’t need to though. My first reaction upon learning about what God expects of women and men was relief. I felt relieved that it wasn’t all on my shoulders and that I could trust men to do part of the work—it was probably the first time in my life I ever trusted the male species. So I hope, if anyone reads this, they do not feel discouraged. I hope that you are able to have a similar reaction to me and can let out a sigh and trust in the good order that God set up for us.
REFERENCES
Driscoll, Mark (2011). ‘Women and Ministry.’
Driscoll, Mark (2011). ‘Women and Ministry.’
Piper, John (2008). ‘Should Women Become Pastors?’ Desiring God Foundation.
Sproul, R.C. (N.d.) ‘Female Authority.’ Ligonier Ministries.
