Women forced to keep silence in Church

[Waggles]

1 hour ago, Paul James said:

Now, who do you think is doubting God's Word here?  The person who has doubts about two verses of 1 Corinthians 14 that might have been inserted by a misogynist editor intending to guide the church into Roman social norms, or the person who teaches that those who exercise the spiritual gifts, according to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, especially tongues, are of the devil?

How about comparing apples with apples and not oranges with pears?

Your two examples are not equitable.

Most denominations (if not all) deny the voice gifts of the Holy Spirit and therefore do not practice such. But as to doctrines on women "keeping silence" in church meetings that is a completely different issue of concern.

In The Revival Fellowship women do operate the voice gifts of the Holy Spirit - diversity of tongues, interpretation and prophecy. A friend, Dianne has been known to operate all three, but mostly she prophesies.

As to women being pastors or house leaders and teaching doctrine, we do not permit this in accordance with many scriptures, such as the God given hierarchy of husbands, wives and children in marriage and the family (and also the church of God). How can a woman as wife be subservient to her husband if she has spiritual authority over her husband?

1Cor 11:3  But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

1 hour ago, Paul James said:

the person who has doubts about two verses of 1 Corinthians 14 that might have been inserted by a misogynist editor intending to guide the church into Roman social norms,

You have still not proved that this is true. 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Waggles

[David1701]

1 hour ago, Paul James said:

Scholars who don't have any religious or theological bias are better at Bible criticism because they can be more objective and are able to give a criticism of the text that seeks to determine what the original might have been, rather than a critic who skews his criticism according to his theological bias.

Who are these "scholars", who allegedly have no religious or theological bias?

How do you know that they have no religious or theological bias?

No more "just so" stories please.

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Man church histories concerning the early church have had the supernatural and miraculous filtered out by historians who didn't believe in the supernatural, and so the histories are skewed by their Cessationist notions.  The most accurate account of the history was "Christianizing the Roman Empire" by Ramsey MacMullen, who is not a Christian and therefore included all the miraculous events, not being influenced by Cessationist attitudes.

I'm not a Cessationist.

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The only ones who don't like textual criticism are those wanting to preserve their sacred cow belief in the inerrancy of the KJV.

This is nonsense, in several ways.

1) KJO people (I'm not one of them) often do like textual criticism; but, they approach it in a very different way from Critical Text supporters.

2) Nobody mentioned not liking textual criticism (I'm interested in it and have several books on the subject).

3) Many people don't like textual criticism, because they are not interested in it.

[David1701]

1 hour ago, Paul James said:

Seeing that I am the OP of the thread, I can introduce thoughts that may not be strictly on topic.

I know of churches that are very strict on women keeping silence in churches, and yet teach that those who hold to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 being applicable to the modern church and practice prophecy and tongues, as being of the devil, and if anyone prophesied or spoke in tongues in their churches, they would be instantly escorted out of the church and thrown out on the road.

Now, who do you think is doubting God's Word here?  The person who has doubts about two verses of 1 Corinthians 14 that might have been inserted by a misogynist editor intending to guide the church into Roman social norms, or the person who teaches that those who exercise the spiritual gifts, according to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, especially tongues, are of the devil?

This is a classic false dichotomy.  The answer is that both sets of people are doubting parts of God's word.

[Paul James]

1 hour ago, Michael37 said:

Up to a point, Paul. As you know, if threads lose their coherency they tend to get locked.

Although I am pretty tolerant about changes of topic, I am strict about personal attacks and contentious posts and I will report them without hesitation.

[Paul James]

1 hour ago, Waggles said:

How about comparing apples with apples and not oranges with pears?

Your two examples are not equitable.

Most denominations (if not all) deny the voice gifts of the Holy Spirit and therefore do not practice such. But as to doctrines on women "keeping silence" in church meetings that is a completely different issue of concern.

In The Revival Fellowship women do operate the voice gifts of the Holy Spirit - diversity of tongues, interpretation and prophecy. A friend, Dianne has been known to operate all three, but mostly she prophesies.

As to women being pastors or house leaders and teaching doctrine, we do not permit this in accordance with many scriptures, such as the God given hierarchy of husbands, wives and children in marriage and the family (and also the church of God). How can a woman as wife be subservient to her husband if she has spiritual authority over her husband?

1Cor 11:3  But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

You have still not proved that this is true. 

Firstly, my point was that some churches are strict about complying with some parts of the New Testament, but don't with others.  I see that as inconsistency.  If people are going to say that they are basing their faith on God's Word, then they need to base it on the whole of God's Word, and not just cherry pick the bits that fit into their biased theology.   I am not saying that your church is doing this, but there are churches that do.

I think I have provided two excellently researched M.A. theses that examine the verses quite comprehensively and fairly.  You may not agree with the conclusions at the end of these dissertations, but upon reading them you will see that the authors have treated the issue fairly and professionally, considering all the different areas of thought and belief about the verses.

[Paul James]

1 hour ago, David1701 said:

This is a classic false dichotomy.  The answer is that both sets of people are doubting parts of God's word.

It would be helpful for you to say exactly you think it is a false dichotomy.  If you read the M.A. theses I provided in the links, you will see that the authors present a reasonable doubt that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is actually God's Word.  Philip's thesis expresses more doubt than the second one.  Aua accepts that the verses are authentic, but either misplaced, or interpreted wrongly to suggest that it is a blanket prohibition on women having verbal ministry in the church, and puts forward the proposition that the instruction is directed to specific married women in the Corinthian church who were disrupting the services by questioning and discussing prophecies while they are being said, in the same way that people questioning parts of a pastor's sermon while he is in the progress of preaching it.   In other words, Paul is saying that if these women have questions and objections to the prophecies they should hold off until they get home and then ask their husbands.

[David1701]

6 minutes ago, Paul James said:

It would be helpful for you to say exactly you think it is a false dichotomy. 

Oh boy, this is frustrating.  Here is the dichotomy you posted.

"Now, who do you think is doubting God's Word here?  The person who has doubts about two verses of 1 Corinthians 14 that might have been inserted by a misogynist editor intending to guide the church into Roman social norms, or the person who teaches that those who exercise the spiritual gifts, according to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, especially tongues, are of the devil?"

You gave an either/or choice between someone who doubts two verses in 1 Cor. 14 or someone who teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are of the devil.  You asked me to choose which of these was doubting God's word.

This is a false dichotomy, because BOTH are doubting God's word, so your either/or construct is a fallacy.

Why did I have to explain this?

 

Quote

If you read the M.A. theses I provided in the links, you will see that the authors present a reasonable doubt that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is actually God's Word.  Philip's thesis expresses more doubt than the second one.  Aua accepts that the verses are authentic, but either misplaced, or interpreted wrongly to suggest that it is a blanket prohibition on women having verbal ministry in the church, and puts forward the proposition that the instruction is directed to specific married women in the Corinthian church who were disrupting the services by questioning and discussing prophecies while they are being said, in the same way that people questioning parts of a pastor's sermon while he is in the progress of preaching it.   In other words, Paul is saying that if these women have questions and objections to the prophecies they should hold off until they get home and then ask their husbands.

<sigh>

I'm well aware that there are various interpretations of 1 Cor. 14:34,35.  What I objected to was doubting that these verses are genuine.  There is simply no manuscript evidence for this view, since all Greek manuscripts containing 1 Cor. 14 have these verses (a very small number put them after verse 40, which is clearly a scribal error).

[Paul James]

3 minutes ago, David1701 said:

Oh boy, this is frustrating.  Here is the dichotomy you posted.

"Now, who do you think is doubting God's Word here?  The person who has doubts about two verses of 1 Corinthians 14 that might have been inserted by a misogynist editor intending to guide the church into Roman social norms, or the person who teaches that those who exercise the spiritual gifts, according to 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, especially tongues, are of the devil?"

You gave an either/or choice between someone who doubts two verses in 1 Cor. 14 or someone who teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are of the devil.  You asked me to choose which of these was doubting God's word.

This is a false dichotomy, because BOTH are doubting God's word, so your either/or construct is a fallacy.

Why did I have to explain this?

 

<sigh>

I'm well aware that there are various interpretations of 1 Cor. 14:34,35.  What I objected to was doubting that these verses are genuine.  There is simply no manuscript evidence for this view, since all Greek manuscripts containing 1 Cor. 14 have these verses (a very small number put them after verse 40, which is clearly a scribal error).

Take the time to read the two theses, and then tell me what you think of them.

[Paul James]

Here is a link to another dissertation about women's ministry in the church:

http://www.personal-communication.org.nz/Women_in_Church_Ministry_Addressing_the.pdf

In this article, the author not only concurs with the other authors as to Paul's intent on writing 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, but effectively deals with the Timothy reference in view of the issues that were existing in the Ephesian church at the time.  This dissertation is worth a read to get a better understanding of why Paul gave Timothy instructions about the role of women in the church.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Paul James

[Starise]

On 2/5/2021 at 3:26 PM, Paul James said:

My wife won't drive our car on the urban motorway.  She says that she prefers that I drive.  Her reason is, "Why bark if I have a dog to bark for me?"

In this context, as far as scholarly work in theology and divinity is concerned, I don't have to re-invent the wheel by doing my own scholarly thesis when other very capable scholars have written excellent Mastorate and Doctoral theses on the same topics.   They are the ones who have done the years of research which has been approved by their professors, who mainly are the foremost authorities, otherwise these professors wouldn't be employed to evaluate the work of those they supervise.

It would be like wanting to learn to fly a Boeing 737 and going to the trouble of writing my own 1000 page instruction manual, when comprehensive manuals have already been written.   In the same way, we have people ignoring the excellent work of godly scholars and authors, and wasting their time going over the same ground as these authors, albeit not as disciplined or accurate as those who have done the required research.  To complete a doctorate thesis on a theological topic, the author has had to have studied very single book and article on the topic without exception, so gaining a total understanding of what he is to write about.  And, he has to choose a premise that has not been approached by any other author.   If he repeats what has already been researched and written, then his thesis is downgraded to a Mastorate thesis, because the topic has already been submitted in thesis or book form by someone else.

I have said all this to give an understanding of what it takes to write a theological thesis - that it is not something scribbled off in a weekend.  My M.A. English Literature thesis took 15 months to complete and nearly killed me, and then I got just a B+ so it wasn't as perfect as it should have been.   For my M.Div I did a 50 page research paper on the Scriptural and historical background, and current practice, with a survey of selected literature in the divine healing ministry.  I got a much getter grade for that one because I made sure that it was well-researched.   So, if someone wanted to know more about the Scriptural, historical and practice in the healing ministry, all they need to do is to read my research paper, and not have to do their own research and write a paper themselves.

It's like when I needed a pile of trash removed from my driveway.   I could have spent money on hiring a trailer, getting someone with a towbar on their car, loaded the trailer myself, driven to the dump, paid the dump fee, and disposed of it.   Instead, I telephoned "The Junk Man" and two guys turned up with a large truck and had the trash removed within 5 minutes, and the cost was less than what I would have spent on doing it myself.   At my age (73) there are many things, like putting a new sheet on iron on my garage roof to replace the one with holes in it, which I could have done myself 20 years ago, but cannot do now, so I got a "roofer" to do it at the cost of $200!   

So, instead of having to "bark" myself, I can get a dog to bark for me, in the form of a well-researched thesis or book on the theological topic I need to acquaint myself with, along with all the Scripture references that support it.

I respect anyone who studies the Bible, looks at all ancient texts and references. Yet I STILL want to lay my eyes on what it was they did if I have a question. This is the only way to be sure. I will often look at the studies of others but always with a wary eye. God tells each of us to study to show ourselves approved.

If I trust an investor with all of my savings, you can bet I'm going to look into the credentials of that investor.