Jeremy

Kristen,
I guess I’ll address your concerns first…you have a lot, so hopefully I’ll get them all. First, creation order is used as an analogy, not a reason, in 2 Cor 11:3. Second, in 1 Cor 11, the form is possibly not applicable today of head coverings, but the principle of submission to one’s husband still is. The problem in Corinth was not so much with the covering, but with the attitude.

‘Gar’ is used plenty of times for ‘because’. Even in the favorite verse of egalitarians, Galatians 3:28, it is used this way. I can give you plenty of examples if you need.

The word “authentein” is only used this one time in the NT, but there are more words for authority than just ‘exousia’ used in the NT. Context defines words. Women are forbidden in this verse to teach or to exercise authority, and are commanded to be silent and in submission. All these words leads one to believe that the word authority here is simply that. How would you explain that they can’t teach men?

I don’t see your point with the “I do not permit”. Is it that this is Paul’s opinion rather than a rule? Paul gives commands in the first person often. For example, in 1 Corinthians 10:20, he says, “but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons.” It still sounds like God’s word. Paul makes it clear when he gives commands that he has no word of from the Lord to give (1 Corinth. 7).

Paul doesn’t just give these commands for women to a couple churches. In 1 Corinthians 14:33-34, he writes, “as in all the churches of the saints. The women are to keep silent in the churches” So it is all the churches that practice these things.

I have to go. I’ll write more later.