“Women must be silent”: Is it that clear and plain?
Recently, one of my favorite pastors, John Piper, ignited a small storm of controversy when he took the position that not only can women not biblically be pastors, but women can’t be seminary professors either. His reasoning was that it doesn’t make sense for women to be mentoring and training up men for an office that they themselves cannot hold; it is “inconsistent,” he said. Naturally, a lot of people got fired up about that, because if you want to make a lot of people angry in 2018, just say anything about sexuality or gender. No matter what it is, you’ll make somebody angry.
Now, I am not sure if I even consider myself qualified to publicly (even if it’s to 20 readers) disagree with someone I consider a theological giant like John Piper. He has written many books that have helped me greatly (Desiring God being among the best). He will probably go down as one of the greatest Christian writers and pastors of the late 20th/early 21st century. But on this issue, I think the word he uses is very apt: there’s a lot that either seems, or is, “inconsistent.”
Start with the verse that is typically cited to make the case that women should not be pastors or teachers in the church, 2 Timothy 2:12. In it, Paul says, “I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she must be silent.” Coupled with Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 14:34 that “women must be silent in the churches,” it seems pretty clear.
A lot of conservative, complementarian Christians will say that attempts to cite cultural factors when interpreting these verses are just bending over backwards to satisfy modern feminists. The plain meaning of that verse is pretty clear, isn’t it? Women should not be speaking up or teaching or holding positions of authority in the church. On top of that, men are presented as the spiritual leaders of households and congregations in most cases. Paul, while presenting men and women as equal in inherent dignity and worth, tells wives to submit to their husbands, and when he lays out the requirements for the office of an elder or overseer, he says that these church leaders must be men. It seems extremely clear, and for centuries, most of the church has taught exactly that.
But when we read Scripture, we have a responsibility to read it for what it really means, not just what a surface-level reading makes it appear to mean. That means we have to read it in its proper cultural context, and in the wider context of the whole inspired word of God.
And when we read the whole inspired word of God, we find some things that ought to make us question whether that plain interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12 is “inconsistent” with Scripture as a whole. We see that Paul himself worked with women, at least two of whom he said “contended at [his] side in the cause of the gospel.” Contending (which in the Greek is synathleō, indicating two people struggling together against an obstacle or opponent, like teammates on a sports team) is not something one does meekly, silently, and submissively. We also see several female prophetesses in both the Old and New Testaments — women specially ordained by God to speak authoritatively direct words from God. The prophetess Huldah was the one chosen to deliver the fateful message of Judah’s destruction to Judah’s last godly king, Josiah. In Acts 21, we read about four daughters of Philip the evangelist, who were prophetesses. In Acts 18, we see Aquila and Priscilla, a husband and wife, both assuming teaching roles as they instructed Apollos about the gospel.
In Luke 2:36-38, we even see Anna the prophetess, prophesying about the baby Jesus in the temple, in God’s own house of worship. It seems strange, then, that if God allowed women to authoritatively speak his words in his house under the Old Testament law, he would impose a blanket prohibition on it in the New Testament. The NT is all about abolishing many of the rigid regulations of the past, not adding more. So an interpretation that adds new regulations that were not present before does seem a little “inconsistent.”
Furthermore, almost every modern church is “inconsistent” in how it applies this verse. Most churches who restrict the role of lead pastor or teaching pastor to men have no problem putting women in charge of the children’s ministry, the homeless ministry, the hospitality ministry, the visitation ministry, the worship team, or teaching children’s Sunday school. But if a woman is not allowed to have authority over a man, then a woman in charge of the homeless ministry cannot have any men working under her direction. If a woman is teaching Sunday school and has a man fill in for her one week, she can’t instruct him on how to follow the curriculum she’s designed. But I’ve never heard of a church that operates this way, nor do I think a church should operate this way. Yet, it seems to me that that’s what’s necessary to fulfill, to the letter, 1 Timothy 2:12.
I don’t have a definitive pronouncement on what I think we should do about this. And I’m sure John Piper has thought of these points before and would have a response. It’s not as if we can completely ignore those verses because it was a different culture and a different time. But we owe it to God to give the Scripture thorough and considerable thought before we choose the plain meaning out of one verse and nuance others that sit in tension with it. And if we’re going to adhere to an interpretation of a verse, we ought to adhere to it consistently.
