Recently, I listened to the back and forth between Aimee,
Todd, and Carl over at The Mortification of Spin, on the issue of women
teaching men. From my perspective, the conversation began at the wrong end of
the stick as so many issues do these days. The end of this particular stick is
the structure in which the teaching itself took place. This led the group to
spend most of its time focusing on women either teaching men in Sunday School
or outside the formal worship service. The purpose of this post is to try and
provide some clarity around how the Bible directs us to think regarding this
subject. And the best place to start, the right end of the stick that is, is
the Bible itself. So, to the Bible I shall turn.
One text that is often employed to support or justify women
teaching mixed audiences is located in Acts 18:26 where Pricilla and Aquila
pulled Apollos aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. The
problem with this text is that it is not very precise. One could say that Priscilla
and Aquila pulled Apollos aside and taught him but that actually what is likely
is that they both pulled him aside while it was Aquila who did the instructing.
In fact, it is very likely and extremely reasonable to think that this is
exactly what happened. At best, Acts 18:26 is an extremely weak example of
mixed teaching outside the formal worship setting. If one is going to advocate
for women teaching mixed audiences, this is not the text you would want to make
your case.
Another text that may seem to indicate that the Bible
teaches us that women can preach to mixed audiences is Acts 21:9. Phillip the
Evangelist had four virgin daughters who were prophetesses. The actual word
used in this case is the participle, and so it should read, “who prophesied.” Indeed,
use of the present participle prophēteuousai
in 21:9 suggests that an ongoing ministry rather than an office is in view here.
[Peterson] Bruce tells us, “The daughters lived to a great age, and were highly
esteemed as informants on persons and events belonging to the early years of
Judaean Christianity.” [Bruce, The Book of Acts] Calvin contends that
Luke called attention to this fact in order to point out the importance of
Phillip and surely he is correct. The prophesying virgins were important to
Luke for historical reasons. It is readily acknowledged that prophecy
accompanied the ushering in of the New Covenant and especially the New
Community, it is also admitted that this phenomenon was only temporal and
specifically for that end. In addition, to declare something is not the same as
teaching. Second, there is nothing here to suggest that Phillip’s daughters
were teaching men. Finally, the book of Acts reflects a period of transition
from the inception of the Church and moving toward the completion of divine
revelation. We should not read ourselves into the stories. It follows that if
the gift of prophecy was temporary as the revelation was coming to completion,
it is a moot point to attempt to use this situation to support women preaching
and/or teaching gender-mixed audiences. In conclusion we would say that Acts
21:9 does not seem to offer good support for the idea that women can teach
mixed audiences.
If Acts 18:26 and 21:9 do not support the argument for women
teaching men, then perhaps 1 Corinthians 11:5 provides what the other texts do
not. First of all, this text is not dealing with prophecy as its main subject.
The issue here concerned the cultural issue of women’s attire in the public
square and Roman law. The wearing of appropriate head covering (such as a hood)
denoted respect and respectability.
Within the semiotic clothing code of first-century Roman society (see above on
Roland Barthes) “a veil or hood
constituted a warning: it signified that the wearer was a respectable woman and
that no man dare approach her,” i.e., as one potentially or actually
sexually “available” (my italics). [Thiselton] It seems rather obvious that Paul
is not concerned with women prophesying to mixed audiences, but is instead
dealing with an issue specific to the Corinthian culture and to Roman law. The
context of 1 Corinthians 11:1-17 has nothing in its immediate context touching
on our question. This makes 1 Cor. 11:5 a very poor candidate in the argument
for women teachers of men.
Now, I wish to my original point that the MoS team focused
on the wrong end of the stick. In her follow post to this discussion, Aimee
Byrd jumps on the idea that women are only forbidden to teach men within the structure
of the formal worship service and that when it comes to Sunday School, all bets
are off. Is she right or is has she found a loophole? Is Aimee genuinely
seeking to understand Scripture from a neutral position or is she allowing her
own desires to drive how she handles the issue? Aimee asks the question, “While
I don’t think all Sunday schools in every church need to have the same set-up,
the way that we present it does matter. So that raises a lot of questions. Is a
Sunday school class equivalent to a worship service?” Well, before we
answer Aimee’s question, we should turn to Paul’s instructions and the text in
question to determine if Paul was a strict in his instructions as Aimee and
others seem to think he was.
Paul says that a woman must quietly receive instruction with
entire submissiveness. And in parallel to this, he says not only are the women
to learn with entire submissiveness, but they are also not permitted to rule or
to teach men. Nearly all scholars admit that this prohibition is confined to
the public square. Women are not to teach men in the gatherings. Anytime the
church is gathered together is what Paul has in mind. Admittedly, I was
appalled to hear some on the MoS team considering that if the church gathered
together “informally” on a day other than the first day of the week, then this
would provide the sort of support their argument needs to carry the day. Two
exceptions seem to surface on the MoS prodcast: A woman may be able to teach
men in a Sunday School class and a woman may be allowed to teach men in any
setting outside the formal, weekly, worship service. However, I would suggest
that Paul did not have in mind some formal, once-a-week gathering when he
issued his instructions. The fact that he referenced the creation account seems
to indicate as much. Paul would surely have considered his instructions to
apply to any sort of collection of the body under any circumstances. To argue
that it only applies to a formal, weekly worship service is somewhat
anachronistic from my perspective. While there is a difference between a
husband and a wife team, in the privacy of their own home, providing
instructions to Apollos, as the husband surely led in that teaching, and
worship gathering, there is little difference between a worship gathering on
Sunday morning and a worship gathering on Friday night. Additionally, a group
is a group is a group. The size of the group and the day of its meeting cannot
be counted as criteria for when a woman may be able to lead the teaching and
when she may not. There is simply no biblical precedent for such a position.
Women are instructed to teach, but it is the older women who
are instructed to teach the younger women. (Titus 2:3-4) And they were to teach
the younger women specifically, to love their husbands, their children, to be
sensible, pure, not lazy in managing the home, kind, and to be subject to their
husbands. All this was so that the Word of God would not be blasphemed. Now,
compare and contrast these instructions with what young women are being taught
in Western, American culture. I think we all have to ask the question just how
much of my thinking on this issue is infected with the disease of American
individualism.
It is my conclusion that the Mortification of Spin
podcast on this question very likely introduces more confusion than necessary.
It raises more questions than it answers. And the reason it does so is that it
grabs the wrong end of the stick. It begins with the presupposition that Paul
had in mind a 21st-century structure and arbitrarily imposes certain
principles that likely did not exist in Paul’s mind as he penned his letter to
young Timothy. It assumes that Paul would have made a distinction between the “weekly
gathering” and other gatherings. It assumes Paul may have even made a difference
between the “weekly gathering” and the number of people gathering, for example,
small groups. It assumes Paul would have looked at these differently. We must
understand the there is nothing special about a weekly gathering on a
particular day or a particular number. What makes the gathering special are the
i) participants, ii) the exhortation from Scripture, iii) the communion of those
saints in fellowship together in the name of Christ. And I would suggest that
every time we gather together, even the fewest of us, for the purpose of
exhortation and fellowship, that Paul’s instructions must govern the gathering.
In other words, sorry Aimee, Todd, and Carl: as much as I love your work and
agree with almost all that you say, I think to one degree or another, you got
it wrong on this one.
