Cheryl Schatz

Mark,

I now think that I understand you. You said:

IF you meant pastor, then no, if you meant teach in prophecy then yes. It is only in your last post that you made it clear that you meant the spiritual gift of ‘teaching’ from i presume Eph 4. So i will now look at that.

If I am not mistaken, you do not believe that there is a spiritual gift called “teacher”. You believe that a person with the gift of prophesy can have an element of teaching but that there is no gift of teaching per se as teacher is connected to pastor. When the Bible says pastors AND teachers, you dismiss the “and” Greek “de” and take this as a combo – full meal deal. If I understand you correctly a teacher is just another name for pastor? Am I correct?

Now about Eph 4. Is it a gender restricting gift of ‘pastor-teacher’. Note the greek word ‘poimenas’ (translated pastor in Eph) is the only instance in the NT where it is translated this way. Every other translation is ‘shephard’ or ‘Shephard;

That is not a problem at all. You can easily say that Ephesians 4:11 shows that God has gifted the church with Shepherds. That is also an acceptable word.

So what I want to know is why do you take the gifting of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 4:11 and make it to be gender based when the fact is that no one can be spiritually gifted unless the Holy Spirit gifts them and He can do whatever He wants? Also why do you remove the “teacher” and attach it to “shepherd”? Why do you remove one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and make one less gift?

This kind of reminds me of the ten commandments and the Catholic Church. Years ago they removed the commandment against creating a graven image. But after removing the commandment they were only left with 9 commandments, so they fixed up one of the other commandments, split it in two to get back to ten commandments.

Mark, are you noodling with the Greek text to create one less spiritual gift? Please give us a reason for the belief that is in you and how you can change the inspired Greek to remove one of the gifts?

Also note that the “shepherd” in Eph. 4:11 is a noun not a verb. Why are you confusing the noun and the verb? Are you saying that one who is teaching (like what happens in those who prophesy) must also be a teacher? So that the noun = the verb? Please do explain.

My frustration in your position is that you never made it clear that you do not believe that there is a gift of teacher. Please do correct me if I am wrong, but I can see that you were skirting all the questions because you were not being upfront enough for us to understand that you only believe that there are pastors(/ teachers) a combined gift so that it is impossible in your mind for a women to be a teacher unless she is a pastor? Am I understanding you correctly now?

I do hope that you are in the same position as I am Mark, and that you too only want the truth. I look forward to your answers.