Cheryl Schatz

Greg #29,

You said:

Dr. Grudem says “It’s a matter of obedience to the Bible.” (50),

It is a matter of obedience to the bible but we need to make sure that our obedience is to the intended meaning of the passage, not what we think an verse means isolated from its context.

and “The Bible has to say something only once for it to be true and God’s word for us” ( 362).

While it is true that the Bible only has to say something once for it to be true i.e. a historical fact may not be repeated for example the raising up of the dead bodies of the saints after Jesus died is only mentioned in the book of Matthew, it is a different story concerning a prohibition. A prohibition is in a different category as every judicial matter must have two or three witnesses. Jesus himself made a big deal about having to have a witness to the fact that he was the Son of God. If Jesus had to have a matter confirmed then how can we ignore the fact that every prohibition of God is confirmed by two or three witnesses as required by law but the “prohibition” of no women teaching men has no confirmation. We cannot just say that something in the bible can only be said once and then ignore Jesus’ words to the contrary. Judicial matters must have judicial witnesses and no one can be condemned without the required witnesses. If God broke his own law regarding witnesses for even one prohibition, then God has failed his own standard. I do not believe that God failed the test because applying the test to the supposed “law” shows that it is a misunderstanding of the context, not a valid God-ordained law for all women for all of time.
So in a nutshell, Grudem is completely wrong that there doesn’t need to be a second witness. I would challenge him to point out even one other universal prohibition that has no second witness. There is no such law. This makes the “prohibition” in 1 Timothy 2:12 not only suspect but impossible. The onus is on those who make it a “law” to explain why it is the only law even given by the mouth of God that fails the two or three witnesses. Let them try to explain. I have never yet heard a valid explanation and the opposition’s mouths have been stopped.

The good news is that through the efforts of free and open blogs such as yours, more and more Christians are not taking what they’ve been taught through tradition as some sort of Protestant Papal Encyclical on gender roles. We are succeeding, we are helping to free brothers and sisters from mind tyranny, one human being at a time.

Amen!