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ask their husbands the
meaning of whatever was being taught. This disturbed the service. Paul was
simply saying during the service, "Women, keep your children quiet and you
be quiet, and if you have anything to ask your husbands, wait until you get
home." Because of the new equality that Christianity brought to women, it
could be that some of them were taking their freedom too far, to the point
of being obnoxious.
When Paul wrote to Timothy, he gave him a similar
directive. Again, it is important to understand the context in which the
letter was written. In 1 Timothy, a careful reader becomes aware that many
severe heresies and false teachings were being dealt with. We can draw a
conclusion here that many of the proponents and victims of the false
teachings were women. Timothy pastored in Ephesus, and it has been suggested
that goddess worship might have played a large part in Paul dealing so
severely with the women. Ephesus was a primary center of the worship of
Diana or Artemis. The heresies being taught might have suggested that women
were authoritative over men and had higher access to spiritual knowledge
than men did.
Regardless of the particulars, in both cases we
can see that Paul is dealing with specific churches for very particular
reasons.
We must understand that many of Paul's epistles
dealt with local problems and his commandments are not meant to be taken as
"commandments" across the board for all situations. Rather, we are to seek
the Lord for the basic principle that needs to be incorporated in our
churches. The early church took it as a matter of course that Jesus would
call and ordain anyone He chose - and that settled it! As a matter of fact,
the Bible mentions a prophetess who was the in the Temple when Jesus was
brought there as a baby. Her name was Anna (Luke 2:25-35), and she was one
of two people who recognized Jesus as the
Messiah because of her sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.
Paul's writings are sometimes misunderstood today
because we do not know all of the details that led him to write as he did.
We must rely on the Holy Spirit, and the rest of the testimony of Scripture,
to interpret how we are to apply these things to our everyday lives.
Scripture should always be compared with other Scripture and the context
taken into consideration. Even in Paul's day, there were those who tried to
twist the meaning of his words.
His
[Paul's] letters contain
some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people
distort, as they do other Scriptures, to their own destruction
(2 Peter 3:16).
It is a fair conclusion that the testimony of the
bulk of Scripture, church history and God's anointing upon them, all speak
plainly for women being able to fulfill all positions of the apostle,
prophet, pastor, evangelist and teacher.
Those that are dogmatic in excluding women from
the ministries of God usually are not walking in the Spirit. The Lord
clearly states in the Bible that in Jesus there is neither male nor female
as we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). |
