Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
Under question #5 I asked,

5. Homosexuality is a “thou shalt not” command. Where does God ever say to women “thou shalt not” teach the truths of God’s word?

You completely ignored my questions and answered this way:

5. No i don’t think single men are excluded from the pastoral office. If this is your strongest argument to support women pastors it is weak. The majority of men were married in Paul’s day, so it isn’t a surprise to see him addressing the majority situation. We know it is not a sin more a single man, because we have the example of Paul himself.

So while not answering my question, you dealt with single men here, let me ask how you can ignore the “must be the husband of one wife” and force that to mean that women are not allowed to do the work of an overseer, while single men are? If you are going to take the “must be” as a quality of character then you cannot use it to disallow a woman because that is prejudice. It is not a weak argument at all. It is an argument showing the prejudice of men. Now if you would just as strongly disallow single men as doing the work of an overseer, then at least you would not be prejudiced against women in favor of males. Unfortunately it is your argument that is weak as an argument that has women being in sin for doing the work of an overseer.

Paul isn’t addressing the “majority” of men because he said “must”. The fact is that Paul is stating a moral characteristic which fits both men and women. The moral characteristic is faithfulness.

So I would like to ask a question regarding the “majority” of men as married. What is it in the passage that would allow for men to be free to do the work of an overseer without being married? What language in the text do you use for that exception?