Kerryn

Greg,

Thanks for your thoughts – very insightful.

I am often amazed as i read about the Jerusalem council in Acts 15…how simply huge it was for the apostles and elders to agree to overturn what had been understood as the absolutely non-negotiable ‘need’ (command by God – Gen 17) for physical circumcision that had been part of their religious culture since Abraham. I mean this was a big call, was it not, to ‘let go’ the whole covenant sign thing that had been in play for nearly two millennia?! Paul goes into bat saying that circumcision should not considered part of the Christian faith… He ‘wins’ the argument and the Council agrees to no longer demand the practice -then what does Paul do a “few verses” later in Acts 16:2…? Paul circumcises Timothy! (Poor Timothy is all I can think!) Why? Paul is (and i believe we are also meant to be) all about seeing the message of the gospel not being hindered by ‘unnecessary’ social/cultural offence. Sure there are the ‘non-negotiables’… we can’t ‘not’ preach the cross and Christ crucified… or salvation by grace. But it seems to me as I read Paul’s/Peter’s (God’s) words we are told consistently to try and live ‘quiet’ lives and be at peace with those around us so as the message of the Gospel can be furthered – not hindered. This will mean that we as Christians need to be willing at times to give up some of our ‘privileges’ in Christ – ie we don’t ‘demand’ to live out all the freedoms we have the ‘right’ to in Christ (that is, to choose what we eat/drink/wear hats or not etc – eg 1 Cor 10/11). I know we can only ‘suppose’ – but what advice would Paul give to the churches in our 21stC western society today regarding women being allowed to speak/preach/teach/ share equal rights and leadership in marriage? Whatever the ‘church’ looks like – it must remain at it’s very heart ‘missional’ in nature…

I think, as Cheryl often asks, it is critical to work out “is it a sin for a woman to preach good doctrine to a man”? Is this issue ‘critical’ to salvation? What does the bible say? I would certainly agree with her, NO it’s not a core doctrine (though some do amazingly make this a doctrine of salvation)…If not, then I believe Paul would advise the church to practice what forwards the work of the gospel in the culture – this surely is not (at least in contemporary western culture) to have women sitting on the sidelines unable to use their God-given talents because of their gender alone? (However, if one was working in a Moslem culture it would be absolute stupidity to have a woman get up unveiled in public and preach the gospel to the masses – right? The hearts of the people would be shut – not opened to the gospel by such culturally offensive behaviour). Yet some choose to ignore this clear, strategic, repeated, scriptural approach for mission and “church” in the NT and give superior “weight” to a tiny handful of individual verses (1 Tim 2:12-15; Eph 5:21-24; 1 Cor 11:2-16; 1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:6; 2:4) that arguably contain serious lingual (grammatical or metaphorical) and cultural-context challenges.

Just my rambling thoughts … any comments?

Kerryn