gengwall

What is even more telling is what the Genesis account DOES say about “roles”. The two roles given by God to mankind were to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Propogation and dominion are the ONLY two roles spoken of in Genesis 1-3 and they are distributed to the human race as a whole. No distinction or “weighting” is mentioned and so the assignment falls equally on the male and female. Now, I think there are persuasive arguments that males and females are designed to approach those two tasks in different ways. But that has nothing to do with roles.

In fact, I find not a single shred of biblical teaching that says that either the male or the female has a particular “role”, especially when it comes to activities of daily living. This is true even for some of the most contentious subjects like providing, protecting, nurturing, and home making. On the contrary, God makes it clear that both genders have a contribution to make in every aspect of family life. And although it may be true that one gender or the other may be generally better suited to particular tasks, that neither excludes nor excuses the other gender from contributing. Even then, every individual is unique, and God has graciously put little or no restriction on how each family distributes roles or even delegates authority! Only in our fallen state have we dreamed up this hierarchical world – just as God said we would in Genesis 3:16.

I beg to differ Paula. Brain scan studies are showing more and more convincingly that men and women do in fact think differently precisely because of our physiology – if “thinking” means how we gather, process, and react to information and stimuli. There is one simple fact you do not acknowledge – male and Female brains are constructed quite differently and it significantly impacts how we relate to other human beings. And, although alternate patterns of behavior, communication, and even data gathering can be learned, that does not negate the differences in our design, which is what the conversation is all about.

Both Peter and Paul recognize this in giveing starkly different instructions to men and women in dealing with their spouses. Men are to unconditionally agape love their wives and live with them “in an understanding way”. Women are to unconditionally respect their husbands and phileo love them. These instructions deal with our inherent, designed internal psychological and relational differences, and would have no value if we were all an androgynous bell curve humanity.

And don’t even get me started on hormonal differences, which strongly impact relational behaviors.

Now, as far as online conversations go, I agree that since all the “evidence” is not available about who you are talking to, it may be difficult to tell gender. After all, my wife won’t even have online conversations since she can’t be “face to face” with the other person and therefore can’t employ her uniquely female intuition.

BTW – I don’t want to take this too far off topic. Maybe the more detailed divorce conversation is better left to another time.

Don – don’t you worry about the implications of allowing “abuse” and “neglect” because of their subjectivity? That was the issue I had with the article’s argument, because without guidelines, virtually anything can be considered abuse or neglect, even a burnt meal.

In the October 5th, 2007 edition of Christianity Today, an article was published called What God Has Joined. In that article, author David Instone-Brewer rejects the idea of the Hillel school’s “any cause” divorce (great background info Don), but, in my opinion (and to his discredit), still leaves divorce an option for “almost any cause”. Some may find it interesting in light of this conversation.

Cheryl – I agree with Paula, the answer to all of your inquiries which, if true, would yield inequality, is quite obviously “no”. I do have one possible quibble. You acknowledge the physical differences in gender (who could miss them), but those physical differences go further than our outside shell and reproductive anatomy. There are certainly hormonal and other bio-chemical differences between men and women, as well as significant brain structure and operation differences. So, although I agree that we are equal spiritually, I suggest that we may pursue spirituality quite differently.

As it relates to your questions then, although the equality you suggest in the spiritual right or responsibility certainly exists and is well testified to in scripture, I am not so certain we (men and women)actually go about doing salvation, prayer, evangelism, discipleship, teaching, or any other spiritual endeavor in exactly the same way. In my mind, this is also very much intentioned in God’s design.

This post makes me chuckle a little. In football, we have this expression: “piling on”. You sure “pile on” in this one, Cheryl. I mean that in a fun sense. I am reminded of an exchange in My Cousin Vinnie. Vinnie, after receiving an extensive lecture from the judge on how to enter a plea, responds sarcastically, “I think I get the point.” The judge comes back with, “No, I don’t think you do” and slaps a contempt of court citation on him. I suspect that CBMW and their supporters would similarly want to say “I think I get the point”. I should hope so but I doubt they do. So keep “piling on” Cheryl. Eventually, the crush of the bodies (of logic and evidence) will bring submission (no cross gender pun intended).

Have any of you seen “The Truth Project” series of lectures? The premise put forward there is that God has ordained a number of structures in our world – marriage, family, church, business, government – and that the rules for one can’t be superimposed on any other. In that “world view”, it would be perfectly acceptable for Gov. Palin to be VIce President but still be kept silent in church (I don’t mean to suggest that TTP takes that position, only that they allow for separate rules in each institution), and be under the leadership of her husband in the home (which I am not necessarily sure isn’t the arrangement in the Palin home.) I’m not going anywhere with this – I Just thought it an interesting perspective.

Well, let’s say for the moment that it is true that women are too emotional. If we are going to play to stereotypes, then one would also have to agree they are far more intuitive and observant than men. Their senses are far better than men’s and they also are more nurturing. These are all traits that are very beneficial in teaching, while emotions, as far as I can tell, would not impact a teacher one way or the other in terms of their work in teaching. So, the one argument that this pastor seems to have is that women have a trait that does not impact ability to teach in any way but also have a number of design strengths that are very beneficial to teaching. Why, if we were going to go down this road, I would say that women should do all the teaching.

Now, on the accusation itself, there is some biological evidence that supports the idea that women process their emotions differently than men. Even with that, though, my observation is that it depends on the emotion. Men seem to handle anger far worse than women do, for example.

At any rate, even if men can compartmentalize emotions better in crisis situations, (which I think is demonstrably true), I haven’t know any biblical teaching scenarios that I would consider a “crisis”.

As you’ve discussed, one can read almost anything into the text that one wants to if they simply ignore the greek, context, and other scripture. The arguments from domestic discipline advocates are even more off base and yet they believe them just as much.

I found the book where I had first been exposed to this concept of Paul quoting the Corinthians. The book is 10 Lies the Church Tells Women by J. Lee Grady. In a section titled “The Secret to Interpreting 1 Corinthians 14”, he says:

“There are several reasons scholars believe that verses 34 and 35 of this passage are quotes from the letter Paul is answering. The most important clue is that the Greek symbol “n” (with a grave accent) is used at the beginning of verse 36 to signal to the reader that the preceding statement is quoted.”

Just what you have said all along Cheryl!
For reference, his references to research from which he draws that conclusion are: Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., “Shared Leadership,” Christianity Today, October 3, 1986, 124; Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Baker Book House Co., Broadman Press, 1977), 275.
The reference for my quote above is: J. Lee Grady, 10 Lies the Church Tells Women (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, A Strang Company, 2006), 71.

Oops – my bad. p123 has fragments of 1Cor 14:31-34 (what a coincidence) but were all in caps, although images show that the words are separated….never mind.

trio – the oldest uncials are from 400ad. The very oldest manuscripts are papyrus fragments and they are not in the format of uncials as they were meant for reading in the assemblies. They have punctuaion, and sometimes accents and breath marks. Many of the minuscules that were used by the Nestle-Aland editors contained many details including accents, punctuation, and capitalization, so the editors didn’t make educated guesses on much. That isn’t to say they never filled in the blanks, but they did have a lot of ancient documents to guide them.

One of the papyri, p123, has the complete text of 1 Cor 14 and dates around 350. I am trying to find an image of it to see if it was punctuated.

I did some further digging and the accented online text is based on NA-26 which does have accents, other punctuation, and upper and lower case. I do not believe the editors of these texts inserted such details at their own discretion. In other words, what textual basis we do have for punctuation, accents, breath marks, and capitalization  (the minuscules), even though it is more recent, is frankly, all we have.

The question is – do we discard this wealth of detail simply because it is of more recent origin or do we trust God has preserved this detail for us so that we can further study and understand His word beyond what a uncial manuscript is able to provide for us? Or conversely, do we contend that the whole of the majority text is some ploy of the enemy to make us less reliant on “the true” uncial text (also not autographs, also prone to error and influence)? Certainly none of the Nestle-Aland editors believe in such a dismissal, or they would have simply compilled their Greek addition as another uncial resource. So, I am inclined to at least show some deference to the use of details in our Greek standards and am quite happy that we don’t have to rely exclusively on the cryptic and difficult uncial variant of manuscript to discern God’s word.

I think I found the clue in 1st Cor 14:33. First, some background. This from http://www.mythfolklore.net/bibgreek/alphabet/tips_punctuation.htm

“About quotations. In the absence of quotation marks, there are some editorial conventions that can help you to recognize a quotation. First, a quotation inside a sentence may begin with a capital letter, just like in English. Notice also that there is an acute accent, instead of a grave accent, on the word immediately preceding the beginning of the quotation.”1

With that in mind, we need to look at verse 33 to see the beginning of the quotation. At the end of verse 33 we have this clause:

“as in all the churches of the saints” (NASB)

Most translations have that as a clause ending the sentence in verse 33. But if we looked at a fully accented text, which you can do here, you will see that the omega in hos (“as”) is capitalized2.  The quote actually begins with this phrase and continues through verse 35. So, the entire quote from the Corinthians is:

“As in all the churches of the saints, the women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.”

And of course, Paul’s refutation of that nonsense follows.

So to reiterate, I think we need more grammatical clues than the occurance of “but” to identify where Paul is quoting and where he is himself speaking.
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1. Biblical Greek Online. Laura Gibbs, Ph.D.
2. A caveat: the accented Greek text I reference does not state its source. I am assuming they are using a published standard Greek text but can not state that for a fact. Still, there is no evidence that they have an agenda regarding 1 Corinthians 14:33 so I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the capitalization I note.

Although I agree with your take on Corinthains (well, I’m, not so sure about Chapter 7), I don’t think using “but” to universally claim that a quote has just been made is really gramatically sound. My understanding is that there are other gramatical clues to identify a quote and those should be considered first and foremost. Those clues do exist, from what I’ve read, in 1 Cor 11 and 14. I do not know if anyone has explored them outside of those two passages.

I would begin by having them demonstrate anywhere in the New Testament where Paul said anything like “a new commandment I give to you”. I don’t recall Paul ever claiming that level of authority. What Paul did do is make clear (especially in 1 Cor) what things he was saying that came directly from the Lord (the only One with the authority to add or take away from the law in the first place) and those that were his opinion.

Great point Don, and illustrated clearly in vs. 21 of the same chapter.

Paula – I have recently read the same. 1 Corinthians is a response to inquiries made by the church (see 1 Cor 7:1). Apparently, at the beginning of 1 Cor 14:34-35, the greek has a particular accent on the first word that indicates what follows is a quote. The presumption is Paul is quoting the Corinthians themselves, probably from their inquiry to him. Vs. 36 then begins a REBUKE of such narrow and ungodly thinking.

(Similar possibilites exist in other parts of 1 Cor, especially our favorite section in chap 11. It is very possible that many of the supposed Pauline contradictions are actually Paul’s quoting of others in order to initiate a rebuke of false teaching and unChristian thinking.)

Submit does not mean obey; Head does not mean boss. Simple concepts supported by the text as long as people desire to understand the whole picture and use Paul to interpret Paul. He does mention Head and Body more than in authoritarian proof verses and with greater depth than authoritarians chose to recognize. This is a very concise article that really just points out the obvious truth. If we pay attention as much to what Paul didn’t say as to what he did say, lo and behold we actually get a more complete picture, especially when it comes to comparing different relationships (husband/wife, parent/child, master/salve, ruler/citizen)

Two additional flaws in Matt Slick’s commentary on naming:

He goes through a great list of male namings and asserts that such namings were expressions of aurthority AND that they are a male act only. Of significance, he notes Seth’s naming of Enosh, yet he conveniently ignores the fact that it was Eve who named Seth (she also named Cain). If his premise about naming is correct, then Eve not only broke the “rule” that males are the only namers but she then took sole authority over Seth.

His rebuttal to the objection of Matthew 1:21 is also incorrect (as is the objection itself, which may have been misrepresented). In reality, the paralle with God and Adam is somewhat striking. Just as God instructed Adam to name the animals, the angel, as representative of God, instructed Mary to name Jesus. It was in fact MARY who named Jesus. Does God break his own rules? I hardly think so.

The second flaw is in the premise itself – that naming de facto grants authority. Adam (and Eve) did not achieve dominion over the animals by the act of naming them and would not have had less authority over the animals had God chosen to name them Himself. Nowhere in the bible, outside of cultural norms, is it stated that naming grants authority. The fact is that naming has no effect on authority. You either have dominon or you do not. Naming is a task which neither adds to or detracts from dominion. Mr. Slick should be careful what he presupposes. According to his logic in the many verses he quotes, no one, including God in His relationship with His named creation, had any authority until after they did the naming.