Posted on 06/17/2003 5:27:26 PM PDT by HatSteel
It says they aren't supposed to teach men and are to remain silent in church..
PS: If you want to get mad at God, that's fine.. go right ahead, because it's his book.
You shouldn't take it out on the church though, they are just reading and obeying it.
Have a nice day!
Once again, if that is the case, where have you seen Scriptural evidence to the contrary? I hate to be repetitive but I have seen no evidence presented that would lead to any other conclusion. All I can tell is that people don't like the verse because it is unpopular. Have you done the digging?
Pardon the 'strawman' conclusion, but what other conclusion can one draw? If people through the centuries have allowed women to speak in church, and it is opposed to what Scripture says, then they are in sin.
If thy eye causes thee to sin, pluck it out. Better to lose an eye than a soul.
I think there is a need for clarification. Mother Bear believes it is wrong for all women, whether they feel so called or not, to become pastors in church because it is against God's preceptive will, which is God's revealed law or commandments.
OhioWfan takes personal offense at Mother Bear's claim, because OhioWfan thinks Mother Bear is speaking of God's secret Sovereign decretive will, the will by which God brings to pass whatsoever he decrees in our lives. We don't know what this is until it happens.
But Mother Bear does have a right to speak about the former kind of will as applied to other people because God does not contradict himself. He never calls people to sin. So he never calls individual women to be pastors or elders in his church after telling all woman to "be silent" in church, that they can't "teach or have authority over" men.
This is Mother Bear's point and it is well taken. It is a direct application of Scripture and not an assumption.
BTW, more information on the different meanings of the will of God may be found on pp. 67-69 of RC Sproul's Essential Truths of the Christian Faith.
And this is the way it should be. A man is not to lord it over his wife, and, as you say, a woman should have no trouble submitting to a man who is submitting to the Lord, and also, she should not have trouble submitting to a man who loves the ground she walks on.
My point is that, unless you understand the meaning of Scripture, by delving into the culture, the words in the original tonge, and a host of other things, the words themselves can be misinterpreted.
Read Amos 4:4. It says, "Go to Bethel and transgress." I went to one of the Bethel colleges in this country, and we all laughed at the literal interpretation of that verse.
All I am saying, Appy, is what I have said all along. Be careful of how you look at people......Christians, who have studied God's Word......who have drawn other conclusions than you have.
As to other Scriptures that show the cultural side of that passage in Corinthians, all one has to do is look in the book of Acts, at all the women who were active and speaking in other churches.
That's all I have to say. Thanks for your respectful replies Appy.
Women may speak in church buildings. They may even teach in them. But women may not teach men or have authority over them. And they have not, before the modern feminist era. That's the historic record.
The Bible is also consistent on this point. If you read the two passages I quoted above together, you can see that the principle of silence applies to women teaching men in worship services, Sunday School, etc. not to making no sound at all in church buildings.
Here is another Scripture on point: Titus 2:3-5:
Older women...are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderous or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, homemakers, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Men's business includes leading the church. Women are called to other things, as this passage in Titus makes abundantly clear. In fact, as this passage says, one reason that the word of God is not respected today is that women have left their homes and their duties therein to dispute with men and do the work of men. We must repent and return to our God-ordained labors that his word will no longer be reviled.
I'm also not one bit offended by Motherbear's Scriptural position. I have members of my family who strongly agree with her.
I am bothered by her (repeated) assumption that those who disagree with her are ignorant of Scripture, and merely imaginining that God is leading in their lives.
Please go back and reread the thread, both of you. You might be surprised by the erroneous conclusions you've drawn.
I didn't really want to get into this, since the purpose of the thread was supposed to be about ordaining gays.....and now I will take my leave.......
Let me ask this. What if you were to remain silent in church. What if you were to refuse to teach men. And refused to be ordained. My mother-in-law followed this religiously (yuk) and she was a member of a PCUSA church. She taught 4th grade Sunday School. She seemed pretty happy with it.
It's been nice talking with you.
And yet Jesus didn't worry about shaking up other cutural norms of the day. Why would he be worried about maintaining this "norm" unless it was his plan?
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I'll just use Scripture, prayer and the Holy Spirit's guidance to lead me on this subject.
I know that there are profound differences of opinion on what the troublesome passages on women actually mean (i.e. interpretations) by loving students of God's Word, but I prefer not to be insulted and accused of not knowing Scripture when I do, or of having some self-serving motivation for distorting Scripture when I don't.
You can think of me what you wish. I am a mature Christian woman, submissive wife, (stay at home) mother of four grown children who are living for the Lord, have been involved in evangelical churches since birth, believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, have been in music ministry for many years, never rebelled against God, am NOT influenced by feminism, have a solid sense of my worth through the blood of Jesus Christ, yet know that I am unworthy because of my sin. And I have come to another conclusion about how God will use women in these last days than you, and some of the other (less pleasant) folks on this thread.
I prefer to discuss these things with people who are open to growth, to the possibility that they don't already have all the answers and know Scripture better than anyone else in the world, and belittle others who don't interpret every word exactly as they do.
You ask a legitimate question in your post, and I'd love to discuss it with you, somewhere else, assuming you could do it politely. (I'm not going back on this thread to see if you're one of the 'I have all the answers, and you're stupid' types).
So, excuse me if I don't reply specifically to your question. I have what I consider a valid interpretation of it different from yours, but I'm not sure you're interested, and I definitely don't want to risk more insults from others.
If you truly believe that studying Scripture by finding out the meaning of words in the original language and understanding the cultural context......that is finding out what it really means....... is a 'slippery slope,' it would be wise for you to reevaluate what you've been told.
The only way we can grow in Christ is to seriously study God's word, to dig deep.......and sometimes that means realizing it means something other than what you might THINK it means just by looking at the surface.
We are admonished to STUDY the Word, appy......not just look at it and guess what it means.
In short, we have a clear piece of Scripture that is so compelling, we must deem it ambiguous to save ourselves.
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