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hat can women do in ministry in the local church?” This is a
familiar question that has been posed in many churches all across
the United States in the last forty years. The real issue embedded
in this question is “Can women teach adult men?” The corollary
to this question is “Can women be elders?” Over the last forty
years, there has been an avalanche of new literature arguing that
women should be allowed to teach men and to serve as pastors.
Over the last 2,000 years, the historic position of the church
has been that women cannot teach men nor can they serve as elders.
This was the biblical understanding of such men as Origen, Jerome,
Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley,
Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, to name a few. The biblical opinions
of such men are important to us since Francis Shaeffer has correctly
observed,
Tell me what the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years. It is our desire to steer our ship straight and true through the
constantly changing, shifting, tossing waves of cultural perspectives,
opinions and attitudes. Yet, we must be careful not to automatically
adopt a doctrinal position because the ancients have agreed as
Craig Keener has observed,
What is ultimately at issue for those who regard the apostolic tradition as normative is not what subsequent traditions teach, but what the writers of the Bible teach ( Keener, Craig S. Paul, Women & Wives, Hendrickson, Peabody, MA, 1992, p. 3.). Simply put, there is tension as we attempt to carefully interpret
the Word of God. It may be difficult to balance the opinions of
others from the past with those of the present. Our interpretation of scripture should not completely ignore the
historical voyage of past theologians nor should we ignore the
fact that our historic ship may be headed into dangerously shallow
waters.
The task before us is to evaluate three major New Testament
passages which deal with God’s view on the role of women in the
church. These passages are 1 Cor. 11:4-5,14-15; 1 Cor. 14:33-36
and 1 Timothy 2:12-15. There are some general observations that
can be made about these passages of scripture:
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