Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You said:

Also i never said that men have a higher gift than women. This is a very wrong assumption you continue to make.

I am the one saying that men have a “higher” gift if they are the only ones allowed to teach in the church. If women are restricted and one gift is withheld from them because they do not have male “parts” and if teaching and preaching are the gifts used in the congregation for the learning time, then I rest my case.

Please tell me how women “prophesy” in your congregation? What is your average service like? How many women are allowed to “prophesy” in church? How do they do this? How is the entire congregation edification by the women of your church prophesying?

Like i said above, prophecy is a higher gift, the very gift Paul expects women to have.

It is not a higher gift. It is only higher than speaking in tongues UNLESS the tongues speaker has an interpretation. Then they are equal. Please support your view that prophesying is always higher than teaching.

If you realised this you would not be saying that i am making men more important than women.

I can’t realize that prophesying is a higher gift since it is not. What I do see is that you have relegated some gifts to men alone. If men are privileged in having the Holy Spirit see them as special and deserving of some gifts set aside especially for them, then how is it that men are not more special than women? Please do explain.

This is an issue i think you need to deal with within yourself.

Why? I don’t need to worry about what gifts I do or don’t have since I am very content to allow the Holy Spirit to decide. When He gives me His gifts I am responsible for using these gifts. Should I be too concerned if men want to restrict my gifts? As long as God opens a door for me to minister, I will go through that door. I desire earnestly to be faithful to God as to obey God is better than to obey men.

Anyhow i have tried to give you an answer to your question. We have gone far and wide to try an answer it extensively so i hope you feel i am trying to explain my views to you. I will begin to look at question 2 in more detail and post a response soon.

I do feel that you are trying to explain your views to me. You just have been doing it by not answering the questions I have given you. You have consistently brought in issues that are irrelevant to the issue of gifted women. If we are talking about God’s gifts, then if your view is valid and can be documented by God’s restrictions on gifts, then we can all have a look. I do not see that a valid point of view should ever have to resort to logical fallacies for support. This is an extremely weak way to argue.

Do you remember that I gave you the very first opportunity ever to present an article on my blog that came solely from the complementarian viewpoint? Why would I do this? It is because I have a high view of Scripture and I believe that a solid Biblical view with a solid defense and a weak unsupported view can both be tested by mature Christians. By testing each view, I believe that we can grow and become more mature. We have nothing to fear in having our Biblical view tested. We should also not fear in testing other people’s views by the Scripture. If we seek first to understand and then use the Bible to measure the view, this correction can be used to teach people.

I look forward to hearing your answers to question #2. I think we can all learn from it. You can learn and I can learn and all my blog readers can learn.