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Women's Issues: The Church
993 Plays4 years ago
What role can women play in the body of Christ? This is a topic of much debate in the church today. This episode breaks down some of the hard passages on women's authority, leadership and speaking. Also covered is the difference between OT and NT prophecy and how theology on spiritual gifts impacts female leadership in the church.
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back, friends.
Women's Roles in the Church: Past Discussions and Current Overview
00:00:31
Speaker
We are diving into essentially what is the second half of the marriage episode and talking about women in the church. So many of the passages that we discussed in the marriage episode have implications for women in the church.
00:00:46
Speaker
and the interpretations of scripture on that topic. And so if you haven't listened to that episode, I do recommend going back, listening to it, and using that as the foundation as we move into our discussion of what women can and can't do according to the Bible when it comes to the church.
Complementarian vs Egalitarian Views
00:01:06
Speaker
Now, as we talked about in that episode, there are two main camps or two main views on scripture regarding this topic. They are complementarian and egalitarian. And the complementarian view is that men and women are equal in value, but different in role. Whereas the egalitarian view is that men and women are equal in value and interchangeable
00:01:32
Speaker
in roles, so they can do all of the same things, roles, leading, pastoring, etc., that a man could do, whereas in most complementarian churches you are going to see a male pastor, either just a male head pastor with a variety of men and women in the
00:01:54
Speaker
Deacon and Elder roles or an assistant pastor roles or some churches, a more hardcore, complementarian church, it would be only men in all leadership roles and women would not be leading in any capacity.
Denominational Spectrum on Women's Roles
00:02:08
Speaker
So I do want to be sure to say as we start this out that there is a spectrum
00:02:13
Speaker
of views on this issue across many denominations. You would tend to see more of a complementarian stance in your Presbyterian or your PCA churches, your Southern Baptist churches, your Independent Fundamental Baptist churches.
00:02:32
Speaker
many Reformed churches, those would be leaning or hardcore complementarian. And then as far as egalitarian churches, you would often see this in some factions of Lutheranism, Episcopalianism, Anglicanism,
00:02:48
Speaker
Again, it depends. There are different sects of those denominations, also Wesleyan, Charismatic, or Pentecostal, and others. And so there, again, is a spectrum, and not all of these churches would adhere to one specific view. They might not even label themselves complementarian or egalitarian, but it helps a little bit to frame this understanding that this theology is underpinning
00:03:16
Speaker
why certain choices are made about leadership in these churches. So for clarity and ease of listening, I'm going to compile this topic into three assumptions about women in the church and the differing views on those assumptions, what scripture says. And then I'll let this be a jumping off point for your own further study, because no matter what I say in this episode, there will be people who disagree.
00:03:46
Speaker
And it just goes to show that this is, it can be a very divisive issue. And it's an issue that has many different perspectives on it argued from scripture. Is this a salvation issue? No, but it does play out in the choices we make when it comes to the churches we attend.
Challenging Assumptions: Can Women Hold Authority?
00:04:06
Speaker
It plays out in women and their understanding of their role in the body of Christ.
00:04:12
Speaker
It even plays out in marriages because there's a correlation made in scripture between what happens in the home and the marriage relationship and what happens in the church. And so it does have implications, but we want to try to be as true to the gospel as possible on this women's issue.
00:04:30
Speaker
and always be willing to listen and dig deeper and read. I've been reading and studying this issue now for almost five years, and while I have landed in a place that I'm pretty confident in and I believe is the most scripturally consistent, I also am always reading and exploring the issue to learn other thoughts and other views.
00:04:57
Speaker
So the three statements we're going to address are first, women can't hold authority. And we addressed this in the previous episode on marriage, but we're going to revisit that. The second is women can't lead in the body of Christ. And the third is that women can't speak. And so we're going to look at these three assumptions about women in the church and what scripture has to say, starting with women can't hold authority.
00:05:26
Speaker
So if you remember correctly from the marriage episode, we talked about the Greek word used in 1 Timothy 2, where Paul says, I do not permit women to teach or hold authority over a man. And this word, and I'm going to butcher it, I took Latin, not Greek, authentico.
00:05:46
Speaker
means to dominate, to absolutely master. It can mean murderer. It means to have full power to dishonor someone else or force someone against their will. And so his use of this word is the only time Paul uses this specific Greek word for authority
00:06:07
Speaker
even though he references authority elsewhere.
Greek Terms and Scriptural Interpretations of Authority
00:06:10
Speaker
He uses the more common Greek word for authority, except here in 1 Timothy 2 where he uses a word that means unhealthy leadership, unhealthy domination, abusive authority, essentially. And so as we talked about in that last episode, when we look at that verse, we have to first look at everything that Paul has written about marriage, about
00:06:36
Speaker
relationships between men and women in the church and then keep in mind that he chose to use this particular word to this particular church. And so we're going to get to some other passages about authority and headship and you know man being the head and what all of that means for the church and marriage but I do want to go back to this point on women not having any authority
00:07:01
Speaker
because the verse that's often used is this 1 Timothy 2 verse, and it is unhealthy authority, authority that even a man would not be permitted to hold. We know that women in the church were imbued with some kind of authority, sanctioned authority, to teach, speak, and lead, as we'll see in a minute, and so it can't be that Paul was saying they can't
00:07:27
Speaker
have any authority at all, they can't lead in any capacity, they can't teach in any capacity because there is this specific word being used and we see women doing all of those things throughout the New Testament and the Old as well.
Paul's Scriptural Precedents on Gender Roles
00:07:43
Speaker
So what he's referring to here is this unhealthy, abusive, selfish, narcissistic authority, this quest to be in a position of power.
00:07:53
Speaker
The takeaway from last episode, which I think applies just as much today and in this one, is that there are no power struggles between men and women who are in Christ. There should be no power struggles in a Christian marriage, and there should be no power struggles in the church either. And if we are trying to get into positions of authority and influence in teaching,
00:08:15
Speaker
simply because we're women and because we have a uterus. That's not a good enough, nor is it a biblical reason, to want to be an authority. Because God is not saying, let's go with a complementarian stance here, that the leadership in the church is supposed to be male because of the precedent set in scripture that the man in the family
00:08:41
Speaker
is representative for the family before God and representative of the covenant.
00:08:47
Speaker
And so with him being in that position, the church leadership should be male. So let's follow that line of thought for a minute. Would it be all right for a man in this position to abuse authority? Absolutely not. Should a man be an authority simply because he's a man, he was born male? No. Paul gives specific requirements for what kinds of men can be in leadership in the church.
00:09:13
Speaker
And so when we look at these passages, it's important to note that Paul's not purposely trying to block women from serving, as again, we're going to discuss in a minute, but that there is some kind of precedent that he's operating from as a devout Jew, become Christian. There's a precedent he's operating from, from the Genesis narrative and throughout the Old Testament that is leading him to talk in terms of
00:09:42
Speaker
a husband being a head and men leading in the church. That is where that's coming from. It's not because men are men and they're born male or that, you know, if we take the egalitarian stance that a woman is a woman and therefore she deserves a place. That's not what this is about.
00:10:00
Speaker
We're not going into the realm of power struggles. We're not choosing to be in a position of power because specifically of our gender. There are requirements for integrity and behavior and family life for a person who's going to be leading in the church, and that would apply just as much to a woman as it would to a man.
Biblical Examples of Women Leaders
00:10:23
Speaker
When we look at that first assumption that women can't hold authority, we have to look at where it's coming from, the verses that it refers to, what did those mean, and what kind of authority are we talking about? Because when a woman teaches and speaks the scripture, there is an authority inherent to that. So let's talk about the second assumption that women cannot lead.
00:10:47
Speaker
We're going to look at a couple examples from scripture of women who were leading. A few that you might know off the top of your head are Lydia, Junia, who was named among the apostles, and this was accepted that Junia was a woman for most of early church history.
00:11:06
Speaker
Tabitha, Priscilla, Phoebe, Chloe, Eunice. This was Timothy's, I believe, grandmother, and she had a huge role to play in his salvation, and of course then him becoming a pastor.
00:11:23
Speaker
And these are just a few of the examples. We could also go back to the women who were disciples of Christ that Jesus appeared to. He appeared first to women. There were women at his crucifixion, women serving him, Mary and Martha, for example. We see women all throughout Scripture in this close capacity, this close affiliation with Christ and with the apostles. And Paul repeatedly thanks these women
00:11:48
Speaker
for being co-laborers with Him in Christ alongside men that He names. And so we know that they were serving, we know that they were actively hosting the church, even funding the church, and this somehow is downplayed as we talk about what women can and can't do today in the church.
00:12:10
Speaker
Another thing I think it's important to consider is when we have this conversation, we're imagining a 2020 church structure. So when we say, can a woman be a pastor, well, do you mean the senior pastor of a mega church?
Modern vs Early Church Structures
00:12:27
Speaker
That's not what the early church was looking like for the most part. It was house churches or synagogues that became the home of Christian churches.
00:12:37
Speaker
As our Western eyes try to understand these texts, we're imagining our modern structure for what a church is, often with a single executive pastor,
00:12:50
Speaker
and then maybe a pastoral board, and then maybe you have deacons, maybe you don't, servants in the church, then you have your children's director, your women's ministry director. What roles can women play and what can't they? One of the things I think is important to note too is that when a woman, for instance, is leading the children's ministry, she is shepherding and teaching those children the Bible. And so we call it children's director, but what are they really?
00:13:19
Speaker
Technically, they're a children's pastor, the same with the youth that's a female youth pastor or a worship pastor. So we change the terms in many churches to make it more palatable, to make it more
00:13:37
Speaker
acceptable to a congregation perhaps that is not going to be okay with the term pastor for a woman, but is the function exactly the same? It's something that we have to think about and we have to consider.
00:13:53
Speaker
Now I want to read you an excerpt from the book Worthy. This is a book about celebrating the value of women. It was written by Elise Fitzpatrick and Eric Shoemaker. I had the privilege of being on their podcast a few months ago and Elise is one of those phenomenal women of God. She's celebrating her 70th birthday this year and just a beautiful legacy of what she's done for the body of Christ. This book is also endorsed by J.D. Greer
00:14:20
Speaker
and some other amazing people, Nancy Grethenry, Russell Moore, and my favorites, The Risen Motherhood Ladies, Emily Jensen and Laura Wiffler. So if you've never heard of Worthy, it's an
Women's Theological Contributions in 'Worthy'
00:14:30
Speaker
excellent book. I can't recommend it enough. And this comes from more of a complementarian viewpoint, but listen to what they're saying.
00:14:38
Speaker
The second person in Rome that Paul commended was Prisca, or Priscilla, a woman who along with her husband Paul referred to as his fellow workers in Christ Jesus. This couple faced danger with him and hosted a church in their house. We know that Priscilla herself was strong in theology because she, along with her husband, taught Apollos the way of God more accurately, Acts 18.26. Apparently, she had a more prominent ministry role than her husband because nearly every time their names are listed, her name comes first.
00:15:07
Speaker
She didn't have any problem with correcting someone as gifted as Apollos, and neither her husband nor the Apostle Paul had any problem with it either. My brothers, how do you feel about a woman who is strong in theology? How do you feel about one who is stronger in theology and faith than you or her husband? Do you think that she is more likely to usurp your role or that of her husband? Do you believe that women should keep their theology to themselves, or not even study it, as we have heard?
00:15:32
Speaker
thereby creating a leadership vacuum in the home that their husband will hopefully fill? Do you believe that God may have gifted women in your congregation with an understanding and wisdom that you could learn from? Or do you think that women don't have anything to teach you? Sadly, some seminaries, the places where most pastors are trained, do not employ female teachers at all.
00:15:52
Speaker
And so young men enter the pastorate thinking that women have nothing to teach them. That's sad not only for the women who are shut out of ministry opportunities for which they've been gifted by Christ, but also for the men who could learn from them. They go on to talk more about the women in the church and what Paul meant when he said,
00:16:11
Speaker
should you know women should keep silent in the church giving us examples of women who weren't anything but silent who were giving spirit empowered speech and living out their calling of disciple making remember the great commission in matthew 28 go therefore and make disciples of all nations it was issued to men and women
00:16:30
Speaker
we know that Jesus' disciples contained both, and he gave that commission to both. And so in this book, this book is conservative theologians who are writing this book and endorsing this book, and this is where they're landing.
00:16:46
Speaker
Because this is what scripture teaches. It does not teach that women have no biblical authority in any capacity ever. It does not teach that women cannot lead. And Paul, of all people, was so grateful for the women who were in his life and who were working alongside him in the ministry of the gospel.
00:17:06
Speaker
Okay, now we're going to move to the last assumption, and we're gonna revisit Worthy in a minute because it talks about this one too. Women cannot speak. And so when Paul says women should be silent in the churches, what does he mean? Does he mean that women should literally never speak up, never sing, never have anything to say in the church? Well, I think we can safely say no, and we're gonna look at a couple passages that prove this point. This is Romans 16.
00:17:35
Speaker
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church. So you should welcome her in the Lord, in a manner worthy of the saints, and assist her in whatever matter she may require your help. For indeed she has been a benefactor of many, and of me also. Give my greetings to Prisca and Aquila, our co-workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life.
Early Church Demographics and Women's Roles
00:17:57
Speaker
Not only do I thank them, but so do all the Gentile churches. Greet also the church that meets in their home.
00:18:04
Speaker
Greet Mary, who has worked very hard for you. Greet Adronicus and Junia, my fellow countrymen and fellow prisoners. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were also in Christ before me." And he goes on to read more people that he's thinking. But I want to go back up to Phoebe. He says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church. Servant here is the exact same word translated Deacon in other passages.
00:18:30
Speaker
So Phoebe was a deaconess in the church. That's something that we can tend to miss. She was a servant of the church alongside the men who were also deacons serving in the church. So we're going to look at another passage. This one is in Colossians. Colossians 4.15, which says, again, this is Paul talking, give my greetings to the brothers in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house.
00:18:56
Speaker
So here we have another house church being led by a woman. And something that might be unfamiliar to you all if you haven't studied the early church is that there actually was a predominantly female congregation in the early church. There are a lot of reasons for this. Some argue that it's possible the wives of many of the senators and the influential people at that time
00:19:24
Speaker
were more likely to become Christians because they did not lose their position in society and their husbands would, and so there were many wives who would convert to Christ while living with unbelieving husbands. Then you also had the fact that it was a society
00:19:40
Speaker
Greek and Roman society looked down on women and exalted sons and because of that many female babies would be abandoned and left to die and the early church would go and find these babies and take them in and so most of those babies were girls and you would have these girls growing up in the church and it became predominantly female and
00:20:01
Speaker
So it's interesting that we're having this argument today when in actuality the church itself may have been mostly female and women would have been taking many of these positions within the church.
Contextual Understanding of Scriptures on Women
00:20:15
Speaker
Another example is in 2 John 1.1, where John writes, the elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth. And not only I, but also all who have come to know the truth because of the truth that remains in us and will be with us forever. So this letter is written to this elect lady who is in the church, perhaps again hosting a church in her house. We're going to look at one more passage and this is in Acts 16.
00:20:46
Speaker
This is the story of Lydia's conversion.
00:20:49
Speaker
So on the Sabbath day, we, so this would be Paul and the apostles, we went outside the city gate by the river where we thought there was a place for prayer. We sat down and spoke to the women gathered there. A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who worshipped God, was listening. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was spoken by Paul. After she and her household were baptized, she urged us, if you consider me a believer in the Lord, come,
00:21:19
Speaker
and stay at my house, and she persuaded us." And this is the same Lydia who's referenced later as a house church leader.
00:21:28
Speaker
So do you see how these women are co-laboring with Paul? And he is not threatened by this. This is not something that he sees as a bad thing. He sees it as something praiseworthy. And so when we look at these other commands regarding women in the church, we have to keep this in mind instead of plucking those out of context, out of fear.
Fear of Secular Feminism vs Holy Spirit Guidance
00:21:49
Speaker
And I mention fear because I do think that many of the conversations surrounding this topic are out of a fear
00:21:58
Speaker
of a secular feminist influence.
00:22:02
Speaker
that if anything changes, if these passages are more nuanced than we think, if there's more freedom in what women can do in the church, then we're on a slippery slope down into secular feminism. But do you know what the guard against secular feminism is? It's not legalism. It's the Holy Spirit. And when you have women walking by the Spirit of God who love the gospel and are dedicated to its truth, there is absolutely no danger of secular feminism.
00:22:32
Speaker
So let's look at what Elise and Eric had to say in this second passage of Worthy on Women in the Church.
00:22:42
Speaker
You'll remember that there were numerous prophetesses named in the Old Testament. There are in the New as well. In fact, the gifting of women to speak words of upbuilding and encouragement and consolation, 1 Corinthians 14.3, is assumed by Paul, who said that a woman who prays or prophesies publicly must be careful to demonstrate by her attire that she is under godly authority. This is the head covering passage in 1 Corinthians 11.
00:23:05
Speaker
He addresses the sisters and brothers in Corinth. When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Paul is assuming that the Holy Spirit will continue his empowering work in the lives of the men and women there in the church at Corinth.
00:23:21
Speaker
Women and men are each presumed to have important truth and wisdom that would edify and encourage and comfort the Church, and they were expected to share that truth for the mutual upbuilding of the whole body. It's impossible to think that the Spirit who fell on both women and men on Pentecost, and has continued to empower us ever since, would refrain from gifting women in their calling of disciple-making through Spirit-empowered speech.
Prophecy and Spiritual Gifts: Women's Roles
00:23:45
Speaker
So I want to do a little segue here. We're gonna do a little mini podcast episode within a podcast episode, bonus content. This is about prophecy. I get this question often and I could do and probably will do an entire episode on it, but I want to talk about it because this view of prophecy plays a huge role in what
00:24:12
Speaker
women can do in the church. So there are two views on spiritual gifts, two primary views on spiritual gifts. So this would be the list that Paul has, I believe, in Romans 12, also in 1 Corinthians 14. He talks about the spiritual gifts and lists things like teaching and shepherding and tongues and evangelism and prophecy and healing as spiritual gifts that are practiced in the church.
00:24:42
Speaker
And one of the camps in this regarding spiritual gifts is called cessationism. Cessationists believe that the apostolic gifts, so healing, prophecy, and tongues, have ceased.
00:24:59
Speaker
and they base this off of 1 Corinthians 13 and 14 where it says that when the perfect comes we will no longer need tongues in prophecy they will cease and they see the perfect reference in that passage as the close of the New Testament canon so when the New Testament was written then there was no more need for prophecy and no more need for tongues or miraculous healings there's different
00:25:28
Speaker
camps regarding healing, but for the most part tongues and prophecy are the big ones, and so those no longer are practiced in the church today. That's the cessationist view. The continuationist view is that all of the spiritual gifts continue to be available to believers today.
00:25:44
Speaker
The biblical continuationism, I would argue, is that gifts are individual to different people, so not all people will exhibit the same gifts. So not everybody is going to speak in tongues. Not everybody is going to prophesy. It will be certain people who have certain gifts, or the Holy Spirit comes in power to equip them with that gift at a specific time, and then they no longer have it.
00:26:09
Speaker
So continuationists believe that when we talk about these different gifts, that prophecy still exists in the church today. Why does that matter when you're talking about complementarianism and egalitarianism? Here's why. Most of the passages regarding women speaking in the church have to do with prophecy.
00:26:32
Speaker
In fact, I would say almost all of them or all of them have to do with women prophesying in the church. So if you believe that prophecy no longer exists, it's no longer permissible in the church, your women technically have no place.
00:26:47
Speaker
this is the stance of John MacArthur and it fits very well with his responses to people like Beth Moore and other female teachers because he does not believe that women can speak in any capacity or teach in any capacity and this is based on I've read his book on women so I'm speaking from what he's actually said there then it makes sense given his theology of spiritual gifts and his theology of a more extreme complementarianism.
00:27:18
Speaker
So, when we are looking at prophecy, what are some things to know? So, a couple passages that talk about it, 1 Corinthians 14, as mentioned, also 1 Corinthians 11, which Elise and Eric mentioned in their passage that we read.
00:27:33
Speaker
passage it said if a woman is to pray or prophesy she needs to have a mark of authority on her head. Basically a married woman needs to have her head veiled while she speaks because that was a sign of submission to her husband's authority and their their unity.
00:27:51
Speaker
But what is a prophetess? What does that even mean? And where do we see it in Scripture? Well, we see quite a few women in the Old Testament who were prophetesses. We see this in Miriam, Exodus 15, I believe. In Judges, we see Deborah. In Kings, we see Hoda. In Isaiah, we see Isaiah calling his wife the prophetess. In Luke, we see Anna, who is a prophetess.
00:28:17
Speaker
in Acts 21, Philip's four daughters prophesy. So this is not an uncommon theme. This is something that goes from the Old Testament through the New Testament.
00:28:27
Speaker
And as these women are prophesying, what we have to ask ourselves is, is the prophecy of the Old Testament the same as the prophecy in the New? Because a cessationist believes that they are. And the reason that a cessationist would oppose prophecy in the church from a woman or a man is because they believe it would be adding on to the existing revelation of the Bible. Our Bible is a closed canon.
00:28:54
Speaker
This is all the books that have been written. We don't add to it, right? And if you don't know what that means or you don't know what the canon is, go back and listen to the canon series. It talks about how the Bible was compiled, why the books that are in it are in it. It was such a fun series and I would love for you to listen to that.
Headship and Authority in Scripture
00:29:11
Speaker
But what we're talking about here is that the Bible is not going to have any more books added to it. And so when a cessationist hears prophecy and thinks about a woman prophesying in the church, they're thinking in terms of
00:29:27
Speaker
new revelation, revelation from God that doesn't already exist in Scripture. And of course, they think, oh gosh, that should not be happening. We should not be adding on to Scripture. Absolutely not. I totally agree. But that's not what New Testament prophecy served to do. Old Testament prophecy was very specifically a role for Israel. It was a message passed on from God, and it was very often predictive or foretelling.
00:29:57
Speaker
But in the New Testament, prophecy takes on a new form. It is for the whole church, the entire church, not just for Israel. It's for encouragement, guidance, and comfort according to Paul. And it confirms what the Holy Spirit is trying to do in the church. It's confirming what the Lord is teaching the church. Another way you could say it is it's the Holy Spirit given to one person for the sake of others.
00:30:24
Speaker
So when someone encourages you and says, you know, I've been praying for you and I've just sensed that what God's been teaching you in this area, it's really going to come to fruition and it's going to look like this. That's an example of prophecy, encouragement, comfort, guidance, using wisdom and applying it from scripture to the body of Christ. I think this misunderstanding of prophecy makes a lot of people cessationists who otherwise would not be.
00:30:53
Speaker
And when we understand prophecy rightly and we look at it through the biblical lens, the continuationist lens, it makes sense why women can continue to speak in the church. Women can encourage, give guidance, give comfort. They can speak what the Holy Spirit is laying on their heart to another person.
00:31:16
Speaker
And that's an incredibly powerful thing and a necessary thing, something that Paul encouraged and wanted happening in the church. He said, seek it, seek prophecy. This is something good. We want you to be practicing this. And when we understand that framework on the spiritual gifts, I think it makes a lot more sense of what women can do in the church.
00:31:39
Speaker
One of my primary missions with the Verity podcast is to supply theology in an approachable and understandable way for the new believer or the long-time disciple of Christ. I know that theology can be overwhelming, and sometimes it feels like you don't know what book to pick up or where to even start. And that is why I wrote Theology Basics.
00:32:01
Speaker
Theology Basics is not a systematic theology. It's not a book that is going to weigh as much as a dictionary. It's just a simple e-book that introduces the concepts and basic fundamental principles of theology on the nature of God, the nature of man, authority of scripture, and salvation.
00:32:21
Speaker
So if you're starting out and you don't know where to begin, this would be a great resource for you. Theology Basics is only $10 on my website in our shop and it's available all the time. So if you head to FeliciaMasonHeimer.com, you can click on shop and you'll find Theology Basics as well as my other eBooks.
00:32:41
Speaker
all available right there. I hope that Theology Basics opens a door to your excitement and curiosity about what it means to be a Christian and how to truly understand what it is that we believe.
00:32:56
Speaker
Alright, now we're going to move to our final portion here and this one is regarding 1 Corinthians 11. I'm going to read you a portion of this. This is one of the most complicated passages. I would recommend reading a couple different commentaries on it just for clarity. And it's talking about head coverings and man being the head of woman.
00:33:16
Speaker
He says, now I praise you because you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. Paul is being sarcastic here. But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of the woman and God is the head of Christ. Now I want to pause here. The egalitarian view of this verse is that head means source.
00:33:38
Speaker
it does not mean authority it means source or origin so woman is originated with man just as christ originated with god um that is you know one view personally i disagree with it because this word for head is very rarely used in
00:33:57
Speaker
extra-biblical Greek literature as source. It's always used as head in the sense of authority and so because of that I do disagree with that egalitarian interpretation but it is one of the interpretations.
00:34:12
Speaker
He goes on to say, every man who prays or prophesies with something on his head dishonors his head, but every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head. He goes on later to say that this is why a woman, a woman being man's glory and man did not come from woman, but woman came from man. This is why a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. Okay, getting weird here. How do we understand this?
00:34:40
Speaker
So just like in 1 Timothy 2, Paul goes back to Genesis as the basis for this command regarding the symbol of authority on a woman's head. In 1 Timothy 2, he says, For Adam was created first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. For information on that verse, you can listen to the marriage episode.
00:35:04
Speaker
So he is referring back to Genesis and what this tells us is that his command here was not just a cultural thing. It was rooted in a view of scripture that was founded at the very beginning. He saw what he was commanding for the church in this regard as rooted in Genesis.
00:35:30
Speaker
There are some people who argue that Paul was just wrong. He was just wrong. It was his own personal bias on this. But the more time I've spent looking at the Jewish perspective or the Messianic Jewish perspective on passages like this, the more convinced I personally am that Paul was not biased. This is consistent. This idea is consistent across scripture of the man
00:35:58
Speaker
having a particular role before God that is different than the woman.
00:36:07
Speaker
And people don't like this. It's uncomfortable. We immediately think if there's a difference, then we're inferior. I don't think that's what scripture is teaching here. I think it's teaching a complete and utter equality and an ability for both men and women to lead within the church, lead and speak.
Holy Spirit and Scripture-Aligned Understanding
00:36:26
Speaker
However, there is an undeniable theme throughout scripture of
00:36:33
Speaker
the man being the head as Christ is the head of the church. Head does not mean control. It does not mean domination. It does not mean any of those negative authority terms that we talked about earlier in this episode. I believe personally that this headship, which the word is not in scripture but the concept is taken from passages like this,
00:37:00
Speaker
is more between man and God than it is even between man and woman.
00:37:06
Speaker
but that there is a necessary authoritative covering as seen as 1 Corinthians 11 that women need to have when they are teaching and prophesying in the church. So what does that look like? Well, I think it could be a physical head covering like our Mennonite sisters observe, but I also think it can be a spirit of authoritative covering and that authority is being a member of a church in which you are in submission to
00:37:35
Speaker
the leadership in what you are teaching and saying. I am a member of a local church. The staff know who I am, they know what I teach, and I know that if I were to say something that was wrong that they would come to me and they would confront me about that.
00:37:52
Speaker
I am also at peace with my husband. I don't think that it would be wise for me to be speaking from a place of dissension with my husband, a lack of deferment, a lack of submission as we talked about in the last episode.
00:38:08
Speaker
And so this authoritative covering, again, is not control. It's not domination. It's not that all women in the church submit to all men, but that when we are speaking and leading within the church, we are under the covering of that church leadership and, if we're married, of our husbands.
00:38:29
Speaker
Now obviously that is a complementarian approach. It's more of a soft complementarian approach and I'm comfortable stating that that's my stance. I believe that women can hold pretty much any position in a church as long as they're under that covering and that they are teaching consistent with scripture and what it says as well as the leading of the Holy Spirit which will never contradict scripture.
00:38:54
Speaker
And so with this freedom, like anything in scripture, freedom is within a boundary.
Further Readings and Personal Research
00:39:04
Speaker
Biblical freedom is not, I do whatever I want, whenever I want. It's a freedom to do what is good and pure and holy and furthers the kingdom of God. And, you know, when we start to get wiggly about this stuff and we get uncomfortable with it, I do think we have to ask ourselves, what narrative am I
00:39:24
Speaker
believing, or what are the influences on my ideology, what lens am I looking at scripture through, what am I afraid will happen, whether you're afraid from a complementarian view, oh we might all become secular feminists, or if you're afraid from an egalitarian view, oh well, if there's any kind of authority then it's going to be abused.
00:39:47
Speaker
I think we need to look at this with a Holy Spirit-led view, which is that when the Holy Spirit is leading, there is no danger of a secular feminist viewpoint integrating into the church, and there is no danger of abuse. The abuse is never led by the Holy Spirit, and neither is something that flies in the face of Scripture's teaching.
00:40:13
Speaker
So my encouragement to you would be don't take my word for it. Go research it yourself. The book Worthy, which I mentioned, is a good read on this. There are other books that I love. Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James. Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Amy Bird is an interesting read. Is the Bible Good for Women by Wendy Alsup? I will link these in this episode. They're also in the show notes on the marriage episode. And all show notes can be found on my blog, feliciamasonheimer.com.
00:40:43
Speaker
I will see you next week with an episode on feminism.