Unordered thoughts on women's ministry.

I picked up the following book from our church library a couple of months ago- Women in the Church’s Ministry: A test-case for biblical hermeneutics by R.T. France. Never heard of France but apparently he is Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

The book combines a series of lectures given by France that are primarily concerned with the debate amongst Evangelicals on the ordination of women and provides an exegesis and hermeneutic of 1 Corinthians 14:34-15 and 1 Timothy 2:8-15 that is in favour of female authority, particularly preaching, in the church.

The first reading slightly swayed me, but the second time round just confused me. I’m not convinced that women should be allowed to preach just yet, but I am convinced that hermeneutics certainly is a human and inexact science.

Why is it that, in 1 Timothy for example, we will hold so firmly to the command that women shall not teach, yet the other instructions i.e. men lifting hands up in prayer and women refraining from braiding their hair or wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes, do not seem so relevant to us? Also, how does this command square with 1 Corinthians 11:5 – And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head- it is just as though her head were shaved. Two things here:
1) Why isn’t the command to worship with our heads covered enforced?
2) This passage refers to women prophesying and does not condemn it. Is prophesying not a public act, exercised over a mixed congregation? Does it not involve teaching?

The exegesis of 1 Timothy further stresses the importance of recognising the situation of the church in Ephesus at the time of writing and that it was a unique one. Perhaps the command not to teach applies only to them. Here’s a quote from Gordon Fee: “It is hard to deny that this text prohibits women teaching men in the Ephesian church; but it is the unique text in the New Testament, and as we have seen, its reason for being is not to correct the rest of the New Testament, but to correct a very ad hoc problem in Ephesus.” Interesting.

France makes another interesting argument: Evangelicals have been consistently changing their minds and re-evaluating their biblical principles. Examples cited include the abolition of the slave trade (never condemned in the Bible yet an 18th century Christian might have been able to argue that the emancipation of slaves was a product of the secular liberal agenda which it was the duty of all faithful Christians to resist in the name of the biblical worldview), to the acceptance by the Jewish church that Gentiles have indeed been offered the gift of salvation, which at the time would have seemed an extremely liberal conclusion to arrive at and which might have been seen to fly in the face of Scripture. The point of this illustration: "...in the ongoing work of God it is sometimes permissible, indeed necessary, for his people to change their minds. What this example illustrates is also that when such a change of mind takes place, it is not necessarily a matter of abandoning the authoritative teaching of the bible in favour of a secular agenda, but more likely a matter of discovering that there is more in the Bible than we had realised, that those strands of biblical teaching and practice on which we have been accustomed to rely in relation to a given issue may not be the only aspects of biblical revelation which are relevant to it. We may be faced, as the Jerusalem Christians were faced, with the uncomfortable task of deciding which of apparently competing streams of biblical thought should take precedence in the new situation in which we find ourselves."

And here my conservatism shines. Seriously? If we took that approach, where would we draw the line? Anything could become permissible by that reasoning. I said the argument was interesting, not that it was good.

I do have one more thought, an example that relates to me. Our minister does not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over men in our church. But I think I may be able to come up with one example: my role as a member of our Parish Council. The Parish Council is an authoritative body, it makes executive decisions concerning all members of the Parish. Do I not, therefore, exercise authority over the men of our congregation? I really don’t see how you could explain away that one, Pete. Yes, I am a member of this council under your authority but if we follow the ‘plain meaning’ of 1 Timothy, my role contravenes your biblical position. Yet if you allow that to stand, how then can you disallow a woman to preach under your authority? What is the difference?

Looking forward to discussing this :p