Full Contact Christianity

Well, the discussion on 1 Corinthians 14 continues, but it appears that discussion is more narrowly focused on exactly how male and female differences affect the use of particular spiritual gifts in formal worship.  The question of whether to ordain women, and to what functions, is a larger issue, and even though it’s closely related to 1 Corinthians 14, I think for the present I can address it and steer around the not-yet-settled questions in that one chapter.

Back in Part Two of this series, we discussed how within North American church culture, we have created a monster through misconstruing (or just ignoring) what the Bible says a pastor is supposed to be.  Having failed to apprehend the biblical picture of a richly gifted team of leaders functioning in diverse ways in the church, we expect one pastor to fulfill all those roles.  By our lights, the lead pastor is supposed to cast the vision for the church, comfort the sick and afflicted, counsel the broken, resolve disputes, preach every Sunday, coach his staff, teach Sunday school, oversee the administration of the church, represent the church to the community, and much more.  He is, in short, supposed to have all the gifts at once, and use them all simultaneously.  This job description is not biblical, and it’s a recipe for disaster.  (This is not to say that nobody can live up to it.  In God’s providence, there are a few incredibly gifted and energetic folks who not only rise to this sort of challenge, but seem to thrive on it.  But they are few and far between — certainly not one for every church.)  Having created this Frankenstein paradigm of clerical ministry, we then use ordination as the vetting process for releasing someone into that ministry.

So if we’re going to return to a more biblical practice of church leadership (and I find encouraging signs that this is the case everywhere I look, these days), then it’s time to rethink ordination a bit.  At its core, ordination is the church recognizing the person’s calling, qualifications and character.  If we don’t think the person is called into the ministry to which we’re about to ordain him, then we won’t ordain him.  If we think he’s called, but he’s doesn’t yet have the skills he’ll need in the ministry, then we ask him to beef up his skill set before we ordain him.  If he’s got the calling and the skills, but is still struggling with immaturity or other character flaws that are going to significantly hamper his ministry, then again, we ask him to take some time and grow in the Lord before we ordain him.  To be ordained, he should have all three: calling, qualifications, and character.  He doesn’t have to be perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, so it’s always a judgment call.  But there comes a time when he’s ready to get out there and learn by doing, and the church’s job at that point is to appoint him to the ministry and send him out.

Stripped down to those basics, we actually see something similar to ordination in the New Testament.  The apostles laid hands on the seven (deacons?) appointed to the care of widows in the Jerusalem church (Acts 6:6).  The Antioch church laid hands on Paul and Barnabas to commission them for their missionary ministry (Acts 13:2-3).  The eldership laid hands on Timothy, apparently not only to consecrate him for ministry but to impart a gift to him (1 Tim. 4:14).  Paul did something similar for Timothy (2 Tim. 1:6).

What we see in New Testament practice, though, is specific.  A person is not ordained to “gospel ministry” in general.  When the church lays hands on someone, it is because God is separating that person to a specific ministry: care of widows, taking the gospel to the Gentiles, and so on.  Perhaps our practice of ordination should follow the same pattern.

Within the tribe that raised and trained me, we actually have an institution like this already: it’s called a “commissioning service,” although the only time we really did it was for missionaries that we were sending out from our own local congregation.  We would lay hands on them and consecrate them for their particular calling and mission.  However, in these cases, we didn’t do much in the way of due diligence, because we were outsourcing that to Pioneers, New Tribes, or whatever mission board that person was going with.  The mission board would have primary responsibility for the missionary once he was on the field, so we trusted them to examine the candidates thoroughly (and generally, they did, but notable lapses are not unheard of).

Within that tribe, ordination was taken to be entirely a church function, and so the church would delve quite a bit more intensively into the candidate’s life.  We would give notice to the congregation, several Sundays in a row, that John Doe was a candidate for ordination, and if anyone knew of reasons why he should not be ordained, that person should speak to the elders at once.  There would be interviews.  The candidate was often asked to prepare a doctrinal statement and/or philosophy of ministry statement, and then provide an oral defense for them.  The process would culminate in a grueling several-hour ordination exam, where the elders and other interested parties would grill the candidate on his calling, his Bible knowledge and practical wisdom, and his character and experience. If the candidate passed all tests, then a day would be appointed, and the whole church would come together to see the elders and pastors lay hands on the candidate and ordain him to the ministry.

What I propose for ordination is a blending of these two categories.  Let the examination of the candidate be as intensive as ordination exams have tended to be.  But let us not ordain someone to anything so general as “the gospel ministry.”  No single part of the Body is the whole Body, and so no single part should be ordained to do the whole Body’s ministry.  If we are going to the trouble to examine a candidate’s calling and qualifications in detail, then let us commission that candidate to the specific area of ministry for which which God has called and qualified him.  Or her.

Of course, “or her.”  Because once we agree that the commission should be to something specific, and not to some Frankensteinian polyglot called “the gospel ministry” (which necessarily includes teaching and exercising authority over men, along with practically all the other gifts and functions), then we immediately see a number of biblically sanctioned roles to which a woman can be called without violating even the strictest readings of 1 Timothy 2:12 or 1 Corinthians 14:34.  Deaconess and prophetess head the list of New Testament categories here, but it goes further than that.  1 Timothy 5 implies an office of “church widow” — a widow over 60, with no relatives to support her, who devotes herself to service to the church, and in turn is supported by the church.  There may be more biblically attested categories.

In addition to the “big box” categories, there are more specific callings.  Just as Paul and Barnabas were commissioned to a specific mission work, and not simply to a general calling of “evangelist” or “apostle”, so other believers also have specific callings.  For example, I have a friend whose calling in this season of her life is to devote herself to encouraging and mentoring women.  I dare say that if she were pursuing this ministry among brown people in Jakarta or Nairobi — or even white folks in Zagreb or Madrid — few churches would have difficulty laying hands on her and commissioning her for the work.  But instead, God has called her to Denver.  What difference does it make if the women she’s mentoring speak ‘Merican?  Should we not commission her to the work all the same?

This post has taken rather a long time to write.  I apologize for the delay; I’ve been sick and had to pare down my responsibilities to the bare minimum for a while in order to make sufficient time for rest and recovery.  Thank you for your patience, Gentle Reader, and my thanks also to those of you who have been praying for me; it’s much appreciated.

We left off with two options to explore in 1 Corinthians 14.  How were the Corinthians to understand “let your women keep silent in the churches”?  We had two views to consider, each with problems and advantages.  Let’s take them each in turn.

Option A is that 14:34 is an absolute prohibition on female speaking in the church service.  When the church gathers, a number of people speak to share a prayer, a psalm, a prophecy, a tongue (if interpreted), a teaching, or what have you — all of them men.  Women are not to speak out in the church meeting, period.

Option B is that 14:34 is speaking about the judging of prophets.  When one prophet speaks, Paul says, the others are to judge.  Within this context, the women are to keep silent in the churches, and the men are to judge the word of the prophet.  In this narrower reading, Paul is not prohibiting a woman from sharing a psalm, prayer, prophecy, or what have you; he is prohibiting a woman from entering the discussion following a prophecy, in which a verdict will be rendered as to whether the prophecy was of God.

Neither of these readings sit well in our egalitarian era.  Allowing men to do anything and barring that same thing to women is a big no-no these days.  But we have to face the facts: Paul is certainly prohibiting the women from doing something.  How that prohibition might apply in our own place and time is a fascinating question, but it’s a question that will have to wait until we’ve figured out what Paul was asking of the Corinthians.  If we can’t work out what he was asking them to do, how are we supposed to apply the instruction to us?  So let’s consider the options here.

Option A: Total Ban on Women Speaking in Church

One of the first and most obvious advantages of this view is that it’s got immediate “curb appeal,” just based on its sheer simplicity(for folks from my fightin’ fundie roots, anyhow).  The verse says “let your women keep silent in the churches,” so they weren’t to let women speak in church.  Simple.

On this view, I’ve heard two different ways of handling chapter 11.  The first is that Paul’s just “handling one problem at a time.”  First he gets the prophetesses to cover their heads, thus ending the indecency, then three chapters later he tells them not to speak at all.  A more plausible approach is that ch. 11 is not talking about conduct in the church meeting, but Christian conduct generally.  Women certainly ought to pray, and prophetesses certainly ought to prophesy, and when they do, they ought to cover their heads.  However, within the church meeting, women are not to speak; the praying and prophesying takes place elsewhere.

As we come into chapter 14, obviously the speakers are all to be male, so “you may all prophesy” doesn’t really mean all, it means all the men.  (Women can prophesy too, of course, but somewhere else.)

A problem arises with the explanation that follows the prohibition, though.  “And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home….”  If what Paul has in view is preventing the Corinthian women from sharing a psalm, a prayer, or a prophecy in the church meeting —  this is not wanting to learn something, but wanting to share something so that others may learn.  I’ve not yet heard a plausible explanation for how v.35 fits in with this interpretation.  One possible answer involves a re-reading of v.31.  “For you may all prophesy one by one, so that all [of you prophets] may learn [how to exercise your gift of prophecy] and be encouraged [in the use of your gift for the benefit of the Body].”  If this is a proper understanding of v. 31, then exercising the gift in the church is a learning experience for the prophet, and we may read v.35 thus: “And if they want to learn something [through exercising their gift of prophecy], let them ask their husbands at home….”  It’s not clear to me why Paul would describe a woman exercising her prophetic gift at home as asking a question, though, so I’m not convinced on this one.

This interpretation also does not explicitly give a venue for the Corinthian women to use their gifts in prayer and prophecy for the benefit of the Body.  This seems problematic: if they were not to speak in church, then when, where and how were the prophetesses to use their gifts for the benefit of the Body?  However, this issue may arise only through the imposition of contemporary church paradigms (in which we only see our “church friends” at church once a week) on the text.  By contrast to our contemporary practice, if the Corinthian church functioned like the Jerusalem church (Acts 2:46-47), then the formal gathering of the church for worship was a tiny percentage of overall church life, and there would be many other opportunities outside the formal worship service.

Option B: Ban on Women Exercising Authority over Prophets

According to this understanding, Paul is not banning women speaking in the church meeting overall; he’s speaking to a more narrow circumstance defined in the immediate context.

On this understanding, the first half of chapter 11 could well be speaking about conduct in the church meeting, although it may also have reference beyond it.  This seems to fit the overall context better in any case.   Chapter 11 is an organic whole (note the pairing of “I praise you” in 11:1 and “I do not praise you” in 11:17).  Since the rest of the chapter (vv.17-34) is certainly speaking about the church meeting, it makes sense that the first half would be as well.

As we come into 14:26, “each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation…” means exactly that — everyone brings something to share.  But there are some protocols to follow. First, two or at most three tongues-speakers may speak, each one in turn (i.e., not all at once), and they must be interpreted.  If there is no interpreter for the utterance, the person should still speak — but only to himself and to God, not to the Body.  Second, two or three prophets may also speak, but their words should not be taken immediately as from God.  The others (in context, it seems to mean “other prophets”) are to judge what they are hearing.  As they are hearing the prophet speak, if something is revealed to another who sits by listening and judging, the first prophet must yield the floor to the second.  Subject to the judgment of the church and the limitations of two or three per meeting, “You may all prophesy” in 14:31 means exactly that — each of the people so gifted, male and female, may speak, so that all may learn and be encouraged.  Dodging the protocols can’t be excused on the grounds that “God took control of my mouth and made me speak,” because the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.  The prophets are each responsible for their own behavior, because God does not generate confusion, but peace, as He does in all the churches of the saints.  Lastly, with respect to this matter of judging the prophets, women are not part of the discussion; rather than taking on the mantle of authority they are to be submissive, as the Law also requires.  Women also may not participate in the discussion under the guise of “just asking a question” or “just trying to learn something.”  If a woman wants to understand why the judgment is rendered the way it is, she may ask her husband at home; it is shameful for a woman to speak in this fashion in church.

On this understanding, the reading of v. 34 meshes well with 1 Timothy 2:12.  The act of judging the prophets is an exercise of authority (often over a male prophet), and so Paul does not permit a woman to take that role.

The major problem with this reading is the underlined phrase above.  It is not immediately clear that vv.34-35 are specifically about judging the prophets.  It’s a relatively plausible reading, given the need to harmonize 14:34-35 with 14:31 and 11:1-16. But I’m certainly not satisfied that it’s the right reading.

How Did the Corinthians Read Chapter 14?

Paul closes the discussion of church protocols with a challenge: did the word of God come originally from Corinth?  Did it reach only Corinth?  Of course not; Corinth is one church among many, and it should conform with the practice of its sister churches.  Anyone in Corinth who thinks himself a prophet — or even just a spiritual believer — should acknowledge that Paul’s writing here is God’s commandment, but if someone insists on being ignorant, very well.  The Corinthians should abandon him to his ignorance.

Chapter 14 seems cryptic to us in part because Paul did not need to explain in detail what other churches did.  The charter members of the Corinthian church certainly knew what Paul’s worship services would look like; he would have led them in the beginning.  Also, Corinth was a port city; some of the members of the church would be well-traveled, and would have observed the worship at churches in other places. The Corinthian church would have been well aware of the mainstream worship practices of the New Testament church, and the ways in which their worship service was unique.  Paul is calling them to abandon (at least some of) that uniqueness and fall back into the mainstream practice of all the churches.  That part is clear enough.  Exactly what that practice was seems less clear.

I’d like very much to launch a discussion here.  In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that when I started writing this post 3 weeks ago, I was strongly disposed toward option B.  The more time I’ve spent with the text, the more skeptical of that I’ve become.  However, I continue to see serious problems with option A as well.  If I can’t resolve it, I’ll just have to “steer around” it for the time being, and rely on other passages to fill in the gaps.  It’s an imperfect solution, to be sure, but for the moment I’m stumped.