I’m a soft egalitarian. “Soft” in that, unlike the “gender neutral” crowd, I think men are inherently different than women and, as such, have different strengths and different roles. “Egalitarian” in that I think women can fill just about any role a man can. I’m not too hip on female pastors, mainly for cultural reasons. Like it or not, the reach of a female pastor is quite limited in a patriarchal society. Either way, I have a lot of problems with some of the limitations placed on women in regards to teaching men in church.
Recently, Jen Wilkin posted a great piece: Why Pastors Need Women Teachers (and Vice-Versa). From what I can tell, Jen writes from a complementarian position. In addressing pastors, she offers these four reasons why pastors need to affirm, set apart, and listen to women teachers in their church.
- She is an example you cannot be.
- She brings a perspective you cannot bring.
- She holds an authority you cannot hold.
- She sees needs you do not see (and that your wife probably doesn’t see, either).
I agree with these points and really appreciate the spirit of this article. However, as I read through this, it struck me how applicable these points are to every male congregant. For instance, let’s flip this to read: Four reasons why men need to affirm, respect, and listen to women teachers in their church.
- She is an example [a man] cannot be.
- She brings a perspective [a man] cannot bring.
- She holds an authority [a man] cannot hold.
- She sees needs [a man] do[es] not see.
If God has indeed gifted a woman to teach, is her teaching only for ONE man — in this case, the pastor? Even if it is, then doesn’t this violate perceived biblical injunctions that forbid “a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man” (I Tim. 2:12)? Or is the pastor simply there to “use” her, affirm her gift and let her exercise it… for other women?
In my thinking, the reason a pastor needs a female teacher — to be an example he can’t be, bring a perspective he can’t bring, hold an authority he can’t hold, and see needs he doesn’t see — is the same reason ALL the men in the congregation need her.
I love how Jill Briscoe put it in Does the Bible Really Say I Can’t Teach Men?:
I believe I first have to answer to God for his gifts and calling on my life. I don’t want to get to heaven and hear him say, “Half-done, thou half-faithful servant.”
Frankly, I don’t want to be part of the other “half” who’s missing out on Jill Briscoe’s, or ANY teacher’s, “gift.”
Many people argue that women are more easily deceived, that they are less discerning and less able to judge. Observing the world around me, I would find that to be a difficult case to make. I also doubt science could back it up. I believe there is a more fundamental problem with women teaching in positions of authority, and that’s the difficulty both men and women have in respecting female authority figures. It’s partly biological: men are generally taller, stronger, and have deeper voices. A case could also be made that it’s post-fall, post-curse psychology. Both men and women expect that men will have authority over women because it was fundamentally wired into their minds after the fall. I don’t doubt that God will choose for himself whom he will choose. The history of Christianity tells me that, unless women have been disobeying God’s calling on their lives for hundreds of years, he doesn’t often choose women. And that’s just a peripheral look at the question. 🙂
I thought on this, and I agree with your point Mike. I am not sure if the original blog post I agree with. You are using her arguments to make a general claim which is true; the difference of women teachers is important for men and women because they bring to the table things men don’t.
The original article though raises the stakes, and to me seems to say that women teachers are important because men simply can’t teach women at all. Only a woman can be the kind of role model to inspire another woman, can speak their language, can convict them without being resented due to gender, and can detect things not only a man can’t, but a man’s wife can’t. It’s a harder position to take, and I’m not sure it where it would lead.
Post-modernism says we inhabit subjective bubbles that cannot be reached by anyone outside of our own kind. If this were so, Paul, a man, would have had a female associate writing companion letters to the churches, because he, being locked in his male perspective, cannot understand the women he is writing to. This view is fraught with difficulties.
I think the “women should not have authority over a man” has merit but not as to a woman being given the authority to teach men. I’m not high on the idea of women pastors, but occasionally God raises up an exceptional woman to step into that position. “Exceptional” in that she is qualified and accepted as a viable candidate because of what God has accomplished in her. And that same reasoning precludes a woman teaching men. She does bring a different perspective, but if she accompanies it with a haughty spirit, she rightfully alienates any men who otherwise might listen to her.
I’ve been blessed occasionally to teach mixed classes and, because the men in the classes knew I valued and respected them, they welcomed and respected what I had to bring and say. They knew I wanted and appreciated their perspectives, and it seemed to create a fresh desire in them to learn more about the female perspectives.
For me, it’s not about intellect and knowledge, it’s about the humility of experience in the spiritual realm, of knowing and demonstrating God’s love, kindness, and respect for mankind, and being able to transmit His words to His people whether it be in a bible study, a specific sermon, a class, or a chat in the hall.
Well said, Nicole. Some of the best Sunday School teachers I’ve had were women. I never felt they talked down to me or had any other goal beyond encouraging the class to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
That’s really well said, Nicole.
It does seem God generally chooses men for this position, but he also chooses women at times. I interpret the New Testament through Torah, so I’ve had a problem with the idea because Torah never forbids a woman speaker or a judge, and that’s what a pastors, elders, and deacons kind of are. However, if Paul’s understood in the context of not letting a woman “usurp”, as you say come in haughtily, that is consistent because even before the fall, man was made first and given the first job. She was the counterpart to him in his God given work. The direction and mission vision seems to belong to him, but he can’t accomplish it without her and her part is as great as his.
So it looks to me like, keep the “general” pattern, but keep an eye out (as men) and recognize and affirm and position the female teachers because God has gifted them.
[Jill Briscoe said] I believe I first have to answer to God for his gifts and calling on my life. I don’t want to get to heaven and hear him say, “Half-done, thou half-faithful servant.”
I have a problem with the idea that any of us, men or women, have a right to declare our gifts or our perceived “calling” as being higher and more important than the teaching of Scripture itself when it comes to the roles we are each to play in the church. Do we actually believe that God needs any of us to do anything, and that us having a desire — or even an apparent gift — to be involved in a particular kind of ministry is sufficient to prove that it’s His will for us to serve in that way?
What if we don’t fit the qualifications given for a particular role in Scripture — for instance, we feel we are called and gifted to be an elder, but our children are unruly and disobedient? That seems awfully unfair that God wouldn’t allow us to use our gifts just because of something our children did. Maybe we should just ignore that or explain it away as cultural instead. Paul was probably just saying that because he didn’t have kids, just like he said women shouldn’t teach or exercise authority over men because he was sexist. (Really, it’s a pity God allowed such a bigoted, old-fashioned fuddy-duddy to write so much of the New Testament.) The gift is all that matters! We must use our gift or God will be disappointed in us!
Seriously, though it seems to me that many of us have fallen into the trap of believing that preaching to men in a congregational setting is the highest, most prestigious and worthwhile form of ministry, and that ministering to women and children is second-best — just some kind of wimpy consolation prize for not being able to play with the Big Boys. What does that say about our attitude to women and women’s ministry? Doesn’t that hint that deep down, we don’t believe that women are equal to men in worth, dignity and spiritual position in the sight of God, that we don’t really believe that the interests, activities, and sphere of ministry given to women could be just as essential to a healthy church life as the activities and ministry of the men, and that it is a high and noble calling for any woman to do the things the New Testament clearly teaches women ought to do?
Maybe if we took women’s ministry more seriously and realized what a powerful influence women can wield as evangelists, teachers, counsellors and encouragers of their fellow women (and just how desperately this kind of support and guidance is needed, given that many women go to a male pastor for counselling on their marriages, home life and ministry and come away feeling misunderstood and undervalued, if not downright patronized) then there would be less argumentation about how women will never REALLY be equal until they’re invited to teach men.
But as long as we’re still believing and inadvertently promoting the lie that the pulpit is the highest place in the church and the only place where real, important teaching goes on, and that preaching to men is better than “only” preaching to women, it’s no wonder women feel discontented and like they’re not really using their gifts unless they’re teaching the whole congregation.
Anyway, women can be involved in teaching men, in a non-church setting.* Priscilla and Aquila invited Apollos to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. That appears to have had a powerful and positive effect on his ministry. But that was a conversation between the three of them, not a public oratory — and it appears that Priscilla and Aquila worked together as a team, rather than one or the other doing all the teaching.
tl;dr is that as Sarah Jane Smith once said, there’s nothing “only” about being a girl — or teaching girls either. And I don’t think we ever have to disobey or disregard or get around Scripture in order to prove our faithfulness to God.
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* Such as this blog, for instance.
Also well said. I do take a cultural view on Paul, not that he was sexist, but rather that he was addressing a specific problem at a specific place (Otherwise it seems odd that Moses didn’t mention this restriction, nor did Yeshua/Jesus). The Torah allowed for women teachers, but they weren’t the norm, Paul would have known this.
But, I think you’re dead on about the importance of ministering to women and children. If that was seen as equally important, then I do think there would be less strife and more unity both in the church and the home.
Yes, I find it odd, too. Why didn’t Moses or Jesus mention it? I’ve never thought of Paul as a giver of new law.
Agreed. I find the idea problematic. If Paul was giver of new law, then who gave him that authority? Why doesn’t the local pastor have this ability? And if Paul had been, why didn’t it go back to Jerusalem to be distributed as authoritative instead of sent in letters to one or two particular churches without any commentary by the church government in Jerusalem.
1 Cor 14:34 “Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law also says.”
One could certainly debate exactly which part of the Law Paul was referring to, because there is no verse in the Law of Moses that explicitly says “women must be silent during the meetings of the Tabernacle” or any such obvious statement. But Paul not only believed that this pattern was modelled and taught in the Torah, he seemed to take it as given that his readers would recognize and agree with that argument as well.
His argument in 1 Corinthians 11 for the headship of men in the church and for women to cover their heads is based on similar logic — he goes right back to the Genesis account of creation (which is also in the Books of Moses, and therefore, by extension, part of the Law) for his rationale, and teaches as though this particular order of things is common knowledge — indeed common sense — established from the beginning, rather than appealing to his own apostolic authority or presenting some newfangled doctrine.
So the argument that Paul was merely addressing a specific cultural situation at a specific place doesn’t hold water for me. Firstly because he goes all the way back to Genesis as the basis for his argument, and claims this pattern is taught in the Law itself; secondly because he says at the end of 1 Cor. 11 that “If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice, nor do the churches of God.” I know there’s some debate about exactly what Paul means there — whether he’s saying that the churches of God have no other practice than for the women to be silent and covered, or whether the word “other” should be translated as “such” and he’s saying that the churches of God have no tradition of people being contentious and argumentative about doctrine. But either way, he’s implying that there is a general unanimity on the subject among the churches of God, not that this is a teaching unique to Corinth.
I’m familiar with those references, but since there is no specific Torah precept stating either of those things, I think understanding will have to dig deeper.
Where does the Torah mention these ideas? I think the key is understanding that Torah points us back to Eden. So what was it like in Eden? Was woman silent there? No. Was she “under” man as we might think of it in more complementarian circles? No. When God introduces her, it is as “help-meet” literally, something pushing against you. As if you walk into another person. Is Paul or Peter thinking of the curse, where God predicts that man will rule over woman? I don’t think so because that’s a result of sin and falling, not redemption. The goal would have to be the pre-fall order.
Is there submission in the pre-fall order? Yes. Man is created first; man is given the mission. It is this God-given mission that provides the context of a HELP-meet. She is an opposing force to accomplish the mission given to him.
So Paul can easily be saying, “In this context of the cultural surrounding, your women speaking or teaching could bring the wrong idea on what the mission is, therefore to accomplish the mission given to the man, the women ought to be silent.”
Another possibility is that he is referencing oral law (which I doubt, since he spent so much time opposing it), because again there is no place in Torah that says a woman can’t speak or teach, only the clear teaching that she be in submission to the God-given mission.
If it were no so, then you have to ask why Moses tolerated Miriam speaking in the congregation. Sure that went bad at one point, but it was the “wresting” of authority that got her in trouble (which Paul echoes with the word “usurp”). Moses never says anything about her speaking. Furthermore, God chose Deborah, a woman to be a judge over Israel. That would be hard to do if she had to keep silent and not teach. Hannah speaks in the tabernacle and in Yeshua’s time a woman prophecies in the temple (in front of men including the just Joseph). The women were the first to see Yeshua alive and tell others. Part of Proverbs is written by a woman, teaching generations of men. Song of Solomon, if not penned by a woman, is told in large part from the perspective of a woman.
If Paul means the face value of what he’s taken to mean (without even having a passage that he had in mind), then there have been a whole lot of biblical exceptions to the rule. And if there could be then, why not now? I think he is making an argument based on Torah, but it’s not hinging upon the need for a woman to be silent or not teach or be covered, specifically, but upon the need for biblical submission. But in the place of sub-mission, the woman is free to teach or speak or what have you, because it serves the mission.
That’s all very well and I quite agree about the unusual (for the time) degree of respect accorded to women’s ministry in both the Old and New Testaments. But we’re still stuck with the undeniable fact that Paul explicitly told the early church that women were not to teach or exercise authority over men in meetings of the church, but were to be silent. If he merely meant that only certain ill-behaved or uneducated women ought to be silent and the others were free to speak, why didn’t he say so? And if he meant that all women are free to speak provided that they do it with a view to the overall mission of the church and with a right attitude toward their brothers in Christ, again, why didn’t he say so? Why say that women are not permitted to speak in the church, if they are in fact permitted to speak in the church?
For the record, and in case anybody’s forgotten, I am a woman, so this subject is of immediate personal concern to me. It would be easier and more pleasant, especially in this modern age, to agree with those who say that women are free to teach, pray and ask questions in the meetings of the church, and that any verses which indicate they are not have been mistranslated or misunderstood. But I can’t, in all good conscience, subscribe to that view. No matter how unpopular or unpalatable or old-fashioned a doctrine may seem, and no matter how tempting (or even plausible) it may be to explain it away instead of taking it at face value, I would rather err on the side of caution and be silent (and cover my head) when I might not have to do so, than to go ahead and take liberties which may turn out to be presumptuous.
I believe that God has the right to ask me, as a woman, to submit to His order in the church even if it seems to make no sense to modern human reasoning. According to Paul in 1 Cor. 11, the angels themselves are watching — the same angels who were once challenged by Satan himself to defy God’s order and refuse to submit to Him — and my covered head and silence in the meetings of the church is a testimony, perhaps even an encouragement, to them in some way. That’s good enough for me. Anyway, there are plenty of other venues where I am free to exercise my gift as a teacher — particularly among my fellow women, who are every bit as worthy of ministry and service as men are. Why do I need to grasp at a position, or an opportunity, that may not be rightfully mine to claim?
I respect the difficulty of your position and the way in which you conduct yourself. That is a testimony. I would not want to discourage you from keeping your conscience.
But, I still find the interpretation lacking. Why didn’t Paul mention these caveats? Well, why didn’t he tell us what passage he is thinking of that inspires this guidance? You’ve already admitted there seems to have been some wider context that remains unseen. For the same reason he could be telling them to keep silent, knowing that the recipient knows the ins and outs and that Paul is simply speaking a decisive verdict on an issue already discussed. We have to remember these are letters to specific churches. Reading through Corinthians 1 & 2 its clear that there are issues that he and the congregation are aware of (like sexual sin) that he never addresses in detail, only renders a judgment on. We also know from the epistles that there were more epistles written that aren’t in the bible, what was in those? We don’t know, but it could have added clarity to what’s in these. There’s just not enough context to connect Paul’s most stringent proclamations to anything in Torah which is meant to provide the framework of understanding. And where is James? Why doesn’t this show up in Acts when the church is rapidly expanding and bringing in gentiles who would have had no knowledge of Torah and the God of Israel? All they would have is the example of other Jews, a context in which having the women keep silence would make sense because of its testimony to Jews. It would make them more accepted, but that wouldn’t mean that it was a general absolute either.
Also, if you have this as a general rule, instead of a specific case judgment (which may have been rescinded in a later epistle), then what do you do when it falls into conflict with another teaching? If a woman cannot teach, can she rebuke a man? Don’t the apostles say to always be ready to rebuke? What if the woman is a witness?
For example, I’ve had a real situation in a church where an allegation of various sins was made, but when I dug into it with other men, I realized that the men present hadn’t actually witnessed the offense, but their wives had. The charges were being relayed second hand, when there is clear biblical teaching that the witnesses are to be heard, not second hand filters. This would necessitate that a woman speak in the congregation.
How is a woman supposed to teach another woman in church if she is supposed to be silent? This brings conflict between Peter and Paul.
What if a woman has a great understanding on a subject and her husband or the church leadership determines this woman should speak whatever word she has, would it be right for her to disregard submission to her husband and the church leadership in order to keep silence?
I don’t want to trip up your conscience, do what you feel God calls you to do. But I do see a lot of conflicts with taking this as a general rule instead of a specific one.
Why didn’t Paul mention these caveats? Well, why didn’t he tell us what passage he is thinking of that inspires this guidance?
So let me get this straight – we are not required to follow any instructions that Paul gave to the churches, even when they appear in more than one epistle (like the injunction to women to be silent in meetings of the church), unless he tells us exactly where in the Law of Moses he gets that idea from? That’s going to eliminate an awful lot of the apostolic teachings, I’m afraid.
In any case, I can think of at least two things off the top of my head that may have been on Paul’s mind, one from Genesis and one from Exodus: the first is Adam being created first and later given Eve as a helpmeet (as Paul refers to himself), and the other is the existence of the “court of the women” in the Tabernacle, beyond which women were not allowed to go – both examples which would have been well known to anyone with a Jewish background or acquainted with Judaism.
I don’t believe that God somehow forgot to inform us of additional, extra-Biblical teachings that would materially affect or change the meaning of what Paul says in the passages about women’s ministry in the church. The example you give from 1 and 2 Corinthians of the man caught in sexual sin is very easy to deduce from the context – we don’t need more details to get the point. And it’s not at all the same thing as the verses about women’s silence, which occur in more than one epistle and are addressed to different churches in different places at different times.
As for the verses and examples you use to prove that women are supposed to speak in church on certain occasions:
1. A woman giving testimony as an eyewitness is not teaching, praying, prophesying or usurping authority over a man, but I don’t see why this would need to be done in front of the entire church body. Even if the sinner has refused to repent after being approached by those he has sinned against, the next step would be to bring it to the elders in a semi-private setting — that is where the testimony would be given, not a meeting of the entire church. If he still refused to repent then the church would need to be informed of course, but this could be done by the elders on the basis of the eyewitness testimony they’ve already heard in private, and would not necessarily require the woman giving her testimony all over again. (Though even if it did, again, she’s not teaching, and it’s certainly not usurping authority if the elders have requested her to testify.)
2. There is nothing in Peter’s epistles to indicate that a woman is to teach other women *in church*. He merely says that the older women are to teach the younger. This kind of teaching would be far more effectively done in a home, one-on-one setting or gathering of women apart from the church meeting than it could ever be done during the regular meetings of the church, and indeed that is how it is usually done in my experience.
3. That would be up to the individual conscience of the woman. Some women might consider the request of the elders and/or her husband to take priority. Others might consider it an act of faithfulness to God to politely decline to speak in public even if asked. This is a hypothetical situation that doesn’t seem likely to arise very frequently, however, so it seems a little odd to bring it up as though it’s a telling point against an otherwise plain teaching by Paul.
However, it’s evident that we have different convictions on this subject and perhaps even a different view of the authority of Scripture itself, which may be the real root of the disagreement.
I won’t press this further, but I do want to affirm–because you and I are brother and sister–that I accept the authority of all scripture including Paul. But I believe it is built in layers. Building upon what is given first.
For example, if I ask most Christians why they aren’t Mormon or Muslim, its because they see both as in conflict with what came before. Likewise, we know Messiah was coming because it was foretold before he got here. This is consistent with all of scripture, what comes first provides the framework for what comes later. Isaiah even told us that God revealed the end in the beginning. The gospels constantly have the phrase “so it was fulfilled what written.”
So understanding Paul does not begin with Paul, but before Paul. If we go back to Moses we find that God seems to have said that he pretty much gave the whole thing. There wasn’t a part of truth needed for living left untouched. In fact, Moses foretold of the Messiah as a prophet who would be like him, and I can look at pretty much all of Yeshua’s teachings and find the root of them back in the Torah.
Likewise the apostles. For example, Paul’s description of how to select a elder or deacon is consistent with Moses’ instructions on selecting judges. I believe that everything in the New Testament flows out of the understanding in the Tanach, not standing as a completely new thing. Thusly, there should not be anything completely alien. Any doctrine that I cannot find the root of, I am suspicious of.
Not suspicious of the writer, but the interpretation. I take Paul with authority, but I can’t accept this teaching until I can find it in the Torah, and why? Because God said directly, not to add to or diminish what he had already given. The amount of authority given to people was limited. A new, inspired teacher cannot simply negate a previous one. So for the same reason that I don’t think the Pope could simply create new commandments, I don’t accept that Paul could either, no matter how many times he might have insisted on a particular item.
But I don’t think he was, I think he was giving a teaching that makes sense in its proper context and fits with what came before.
I hate to get into the middle of this conversation, but this is not what the passage says. “If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no SUCH practice, nor do the churches of God.” That’s what my Bible says. That’s also what the transliteration says. This is, in part, why I can’t be black and white about some of Paul’s confusing teaching in his letters–as well as the fact that he refers back to a law that doesn’t exist in the Torah. And, no, just because the beginning of Genesis is a book of Moses, doesn’t make it law. That’s kind of a strange assertion. I’ve never heard that before.
I already addressed that, Jill, when I said “I know there’s some debate about what Paul means there,” and went on to give a couple of variant interpretations. Some translations say “we have no other practice [i.e. than women covering their heads in worship]”, others says “we have no such practice [i.e. of being contentious]”.
But either way I think it clear that what Paul CANNOT mean is, “But if anybody wants to argue with what I’m saying about the head covering and the woman’s role, I’ll just deny that the churches have any such practice and we can all forget about it.” That would be nonsensical in light of the care Paul has taken to expound his argument.
Re Genesis, it is and always has been part of the Torah, the five books of Moses. I suggested that in light of this, Paul might have been referring to Genesis when he spoke of “the law”, as it was commonly understood in Judaism.
But really, if I accept your arguments, I’m left with no other conclusion than that Paul was a liar and making up things that weren’t actually in the Law at all to justify some petty, sexist view of what kind of role was appropriate for women in the church. I’m not comfortable with that view myself, particularly since Paul as a trained Pharisee was a great deal more familiar with the Torah and the Jewish understanding of the Law than I am, and also because I believe the New Testament is just as much inspired as the Old. If Paul was that far wrong and that unreliable, we might as well throw out all the rest of his writings too.
Thusly, there should not be anything completely alien. Any doctrine that I cannot find the root of, I am suspicious of.
I would be too, but as I said I believe Paul’s teaching on the role of women DOES go back to the Torah and is based in the teachings there, both in Genesis and in the order given for the women’s role in Tabernacle worship. I’m not sure why this is not sufficient to underpin his teaching in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians, especially since he himself maintains that his arguments are “as the Law says”.
To go back to the counter-examples you (or at least I think it was you) mentioned before, Miriam was not leading the men in her song of praise, but the women — and she did not do so as part of the Tabernacle service, but after a great military victory. Deborah was appointed as a judge at a time when the men of Israel were so corrupt and idolatrous that having a woman judge was a rebuke to them (likewise Deborah’s remark when Barak refused to go to the battlefield without her that because of his lack of faith God would give the victory to a woman — also a rebuke and not a normative pattern). Huldah and Anna and Philip’s daughters are identified as prophetesses, but their prophecies are not recorded for us in Scripture nor are we told in exactly what context they prophesied (it may only have been to fellow women that they prophesied; and there is no evidence that their prophesying was a part of regular Tabernacle, synagogue or church service). And when God had a prophetic message for Paul which was to be recorded in the book of Acts, he brought the male prophet Agabus from a considerable distance to deliver it to him.
I’m not supporting the idea of Paul introducing some newfangled idea of his own any more than you are. (Though I believe the apostolic writings are as much inspired by God as anything in the Tanakh, and that God did reveal in the NT some things that were only hinted at or not even mentioned in the Old — such as the church, which is not “the new Israel” and is therefore not under the Law of Moses.)
Rather, I’m taking Paul at his word when he says that his teachings about the silence and submission of women in meetings of the gathered church are “as the law says”. Whereas your arguments seem focused on proving that the law says just the opposite of what Paul claims, or else that it says nothing on the subject at all.
Hmm, you have some interesting things to consider there. I don’t find Paul saying “it’s in the law” as sufficient, because we’ve both seen the is no explicit commandment to keep silence or not to teach, therefore I’d need to see a definite context.
And while I can’t find a command for the women’s court (only a traditional practice). God did only appoint the men to serve as priests and so in like pattern, there may be some merit in that. However, because of Miriam and Deborah, I think it would have to be taken that that prohibition is strictly prohibited to a specific type of gathering. Especially since one would have to question whether women are even permitted to sing in church (a real question in orthodox circles).
I’ll consider it some more. Thank you.
I agree that the prohibition against women leading or teaching is specifically focused on the meetings of the gathered church as a whole, and does not refer to women’s activities outside those meetings (i.e. in an evangelistic context, a social context or a home context). So I think we’re in accord there.
Re singing, Paul never mentions singing as inappropriate for women — he only speaks of praying, prophesying or exercising authority, and admonishes women not to ask questions publicly in the church meetings. Since singing with a congregation does not put any individual woman in a position of teaching, authority, or speaking out in a potentially disruptive way, I don’t see any basis for concern on that point. Paul exhorted the believers in Ephesus to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; he doesn’t say or even suggest that this applies only to the men.
Anyway, it’s been an interesting discussion, and I appreciate you getting me thinking some more about this topic. Thanks also.