Mark

Cheryl,

First of all, i have no idea if the commentaries i quoted are complementarians. My point was to show that the rendering of this passage is not as clear as you say it is “Secondly it is very clear from the text that these women were on the “roll” for ministry in the church.”. Frankly i think it is absolutely ridiculous to emphasise this passage is about women widow elders and think i am the one who needs to justify my position. Kay says that the over 60 requirement is because it must be some ministry we don’t know about essentially or don’t do now. But how can we justify such an interpretation that is simply based on hypothesis or guess work.

All the indications point to an enrollment for some sort of support (whether you read that as food or not is up to you). For example…

“3 Honor widows ?who are truly widows.” So what is a true widow? Paul gives the answer in verse 5.

” She ?who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and ?continues in supplications and prayers night and day”. So we know what a ‘true’ widow is but what about an ‘untrue’ widow (verse 6)

“but ishe who is self-indulgent is ?dead even while she lives.”

Paul then qualifies the meaning of the passage several times.

Verse 8- “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for ?members of his household, he has ?denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Note the key word ‘provide’.

and again in verse 16 more clearly- “If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are really widows”.

So Paul instructs to care for widows, that the church is not ‘burdened’, so it can ‘care’ for those who are ‘really’ widows. And yet you say that the intended meaning of this passage is about eldership not caring for those ‘true’ widows in need.

Now to answer your supposed dilemma you say my view has. First your presupposition is that the enrollment is a ‘ministry’ thing. We both know this is not in the text so therefore i will try and understand the enrollment from the context of the text. A woman over 60 was unlikely to re-marry (60 then was alot older than 60 now is), whereas a younger women was more likely to marry, and in fact Paul says they ‘desire to marry’. Also a ‘true’ widow was one who devoted themselves to supplications and prayers (verse 5) ansd so made a committment to both be devoted to Christ and recieve help from the church. A younger woman driven by her ‘desires’ though would be prone to abandon that commitment to Christ and flee after earthly passions bringing condemnation. Therefore i see the ‘pledge’ as abandoning their committment to being on the ‘roll’ of widows needing help. To understand this in a ministerial sense abandons the context of the passage.

Now CHeryl answer some of my questions.
1. Do you agree with Kay about this obscure over 60’s club eldership?
2. If not, how to you reconcile that only widows over 60 can be ‘elders’.
3. If you believe this is about women elders, therefore can women elders only do this sort of ministry since verse 17 it supposed to switch to ‘male’ elders who therefore are the ones who preach and teach.
4. Why have you ignored all the obvious grammar about ‘caring’, younger/older correlations, not being burdened and dismissed this passage being about helping widows in need.

Anyway ive run outta time. Ill post more another time.