It's a provocative headline, the one in the media today that explains that a Baptist minister in New York (thank God, it's not a Southern minister this time) has "fired" a longtime Sunday School teacher because she is a woman, and he believes he is following the directive of Paul in 1 Corinthians that a woman should not speak in worship or in other ways be involved in the leadership of the church.
Horse hockey.
Just for the sake of argument, let me explain. I am not a Catholic. I'm not a Latin student. If I had attended a Catholic service back in the days when the entire proceeding was in Latin, two things might happen. I would either fall asleep, or I'd be nudging the person next to me constantly, if I were truly interested (which I certainly would have been). The nudge would be followed with a whisper, "What does THAT mean?"
So, let's walk back into a church in Corinth, to a time and place where worship as defined by this new faith was all unfamiliar. Corinth was a trade crossroad, and it's not hard to imagine that there were men and women from many different places attending these meetings. Essentially, these meetings were all talk, no distraction -- no flashy organ preludes, no stirring anthem, no anything but some fella talking and reading and exhorting.
Now, which language would he have used? Take your pick -- he'd be speaking in Greek, perhaps, or in Hebrew, and he might be tossing some Aramaic in there just for good measure. But the thing to remember here most accutely is that unless you knew these languages, you'd have a hard time following the program.
And then let's remember that women weren't formally educated, so if the speaker wasn't exhorting in their native tongue, they just weren't likely to be catching many of the drifts, if you get mine. Men, on the other hand, were they Jewish, would have learned Torah, and if they were involved in what counted as international trade, you can believe they would have picked up some other languages in order to conduct business, at least enough to understand a bit of what was coming at them from the pulpit.
Heck, there wasn't even a printed Sunday bulletin on which someone could play tic tac toe, not that I have ever done such a thing during Sunday worship.
So -- you have these women -- conversant only in the language of their family, who really do want to be there but cannot understand a single word being said. Is it any stretch to imagine that they would be nudging the guy sitting next to them, saying, "What did that MEAN?"
Multiply this by the dozens of women similarly perplexed and put yourself in a cramped place with no sound system, and it doesn't stretch credulity much to imagine that nobody would be able to hear a word for all the pew murmering.
Paul gets a mighty bad rap, until you realize that the church of Corinth had written HIM, asking for advice on this noise thing (as well as other church matters). Having a response from Paul, whom the church at Corinth respected, to please be quiet might reasonably carry more weight than the head guy at Corinth First Baptist spouting off, mightn't it?
I may be off the mark here theologically, but Paul so often lifts up women in his letters with such tremendous respect -- overlooked because we read him through contemporary filters -- it is beyond silly to believe he would have expected them to sit down and shut up.
More than anyone else at the time, Paul recognized that all gifts were needed to continue the ministry in which he fervently believed.
There was a time I could not imagine myself defending Paul, but there ya go.
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6 comments:
I find it hard to read that scripture (I Timothy 2:12) any other way, as his statement not only precluded women from teaching (not talking) or otherwise having authority over men, but was followed with a declaration of the woman's fault for Adam's sin, and that she can only be saved through childbirth.
Where can I find the background on the Thessalonians description of their problem?
I am of the school that Paul did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus, at all, Marla.
There are just too many instances of Paul addressing women as leaders in the movement, and his belief that in Christ there is no longer male or female (nor Jew or Greek; nor slave or master) -- and the Timothy letters adopt a view of women that is in stark contrast to these other writings.
And I agree that he possibly didn't write it--if that's the case, it lets Paul off the hook, but not the Bible. I haven't seen any articles yet where they were citing 'the teachings of Paul' specifically as a reason for their decision (I could have missed it somewhere). All they cared about was that it was 'scriptural.'
Then it turns out their real problem with this woman is political, and they were just using the scripture as a More Christian excuse for getting her out of their hair. So out of stupidity, they have added ammunition to the bias against Biblical teaching.
I'm at the point where I'm not sure it matters who Paul really was or what he believed, because outside of scholastics, truth can often be trumped with a really good rumor and 30 seconds on the 10:00 News. (!)
My bottom line is always this -- all those folks who wrote those letters were inspired and influenced by their own culture and time and place, and, I believe, by God. That they could have been inserting their own opinion based on those things isn't terribly troubling to me. "Inspired" means something completely different than "literal dictation."
I can live with contradictions, because it's not the rules set down by those books and epistles that I BELIEVE in. It's the Author, whom I believe deeply to be less than completely interested in matters of church policy.
Others might argue that they wish our Scripture were more CLEAR -- I actually prefer that it not be, because that leaves room for a relationship.
Heck -- two people can read an article in the New York Times and find differences in what the article was suggesting!
And we're pretty much in line on that understanding, although I can't put Inspiration and Author in the same category, for those very same reasons of opinion and culture. (I've negotiated too many publishing agreements, lol!)
But as much as I would like to be satisfied with personal interpretation and relationship, I can't get past the fact that these texts are seen by many readers and leaders as the rules, and therefore impact the way they govern and treat others--including me.
I have to quit hijacking your blog now and go sort this out somewhere else. :)
El, this makes sense to me. I never could see where Paul got off downgrading women, when the example of Christ was to lift them up and give them unprecedented status in His ministry.
K :)
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