Mark

Pinklight,

Hi! The whole argument regarding deacons i think is generally irrelevant to the comp/egal debate. Pheobe could easily have been a deacon without disrupting the teaching of Paul in 1 Tim 2 (understood the traditional way).

So as much as egals may use Pheobe as a proof text, it is simply irrelevant in arguing against a comp since even if she was a deacon, that church office as shown in the NT was not responsible for public scriptual teaching.

Therefore if i understand Pheobe to be a deacon, by necessity and to be consistent i must understand 1 Tim 3:11 to be referring to women not simply wives of male deacons. However if i understanding Pheobe to be a ‘servant’ as per other NT references to people, then i can contextually and grammatically argue that 1 Tim 3:11 refers to wives and not women deacons. I don’t think we can conclusively know just from the grammar itself.

But like i said, it is irrelevant for the discussion unless one distorts the NT teaching of the function of a ‘deacon’ and gives it a public teaching function and spiritual oversight (which it never has).

Hope that clarifies my position! This is why appealing to Priscilla is irrelevant also, since her ‘teaching’ was again private with her husband, not the pastoral oversight and biblical teaching discussed in 1 Tim 2:9-15. Similar to the fact that we are to teach each other with ‘psalms, music and spiritual songs’. Again women and men both do this without contradicting 1 Tim. Prophesy is another same example.

Paul’s restriction in 1 Tim 2 is for the elders of the church who have the spiritual resposibility of preaching. Egalitarians confuse the comp position by combining all the different ‘teaching’ elements in the NT as if they are the same thing. Perhaps if comps weren’t so misunderstood (or deliberately mis-handled) egals might not think we are so patriarchal and suppressive 🙂