Cheryl

In the newest CBMW “rules” about what women can and cannot do, I find it amazing at the level of authority they believe they have to interpret God’s thoughts. On page 20 they say:

“While we believe men teaching and leading teenage boys would be the wises arrangement, we do not intend to make an absolute rule here.”

It appears that they believe they have authority to make absolute rules in some cases and then back off and make “suggestions” on how to apply the “law” in other cases. Apparently they believe God was not able to make himself clear on the “prohibition” in 1 Timothy 2:12 and so they are the ones who have to figure out whether doctrine is being taught by a woman or whether she is only “helping” a man and not providing direct doctrinal instruction. Yet all of this seems so out of place with how scripture views women. Did not Priscilla teach doctrine to Apollos? If she was correcting his doctrine and teaching him the truth from scripture, there isn’t any doubt at all that she was teaching doctrine to a man. If CBMW had existed back in Paul’s day, I can just hear it now….

“We believe a woman co-correcting the doctrine of a man, even with her husband, is problematic. Apollos may very well have understood such a “team-correcting” as promoting a woman as having authority over a man. This is a primary responsibility of an elder and should be prohibited by the woman Priscilla. Also we determine that such a co-correcting position would give the false impression that the church is promoting “mutual submission”. We strongly affirm only one-way submission and thus will not allow Aquilla to listen to Priscilla correcting Apollos.

We also advise that co-correcting sessions be limited to the attendance of women who need correcting. Women teachers need to be careful not to violate the men’s right to continue their false doctrine until a qualified man is available to correct them. This does not prohibit her in any way from smiling at him because we see no prohibition in scripture regarding a hearty smile.”