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Women in Leadership: Right or Wrong?

Eric Reynolds
02/28/16 - Sun PM

Wright or Wrong
N.T. Wright on Women Preaching

I.  Introduction

Last Sunday in our auditorium class, we studied the little letter of Jude—the letter Jude did not intend to write, as it has been referred to.

Jude 1:3  Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Jude originally wanted to talk about salvation, but felt compelled to warn them about certain false teachers that had already infiltrated the church. The way to answer the threat posed by false teachers is simple:

Jude 1:20-21  But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

As we discussed this in class, Ms. Dot made a good point, that we need to be warned about various false doctrines that are going around. That came to mind this week, when I was sent an article by a friend through Facebook. The article is on Women in Ministry, and will be the subject of our lesson tonight.

First, a little information about the author of the article and the friend who sent it to me.

The author is N.T. Wright, and he is a leading scholar on the New Testament. He was formerly a bishop in the Anglican church and is now a Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in Scotland. He is also the author of many books. Christianity Today calls him the “most prolific biblical scholar in a generation.”

I suppose because of this, and because of the popularity of his works, he has caught the attention of those in our brotherhood. I first heard his name a few years ago, and I’ve seen several references to his work among other preachers who are better read than I am. But as you can imagine, as with any author, and especially someone who comes from such a different perspective, we have to take what he says and compare it with the Scriptures, because even scholars can get off track.

Which brings us to this article and my friend who shared it. It started out with a preacher friend sharing a different article on the subject of women in ministry, one that takes the view we normally expect. He shared it with me and a few others, one of whom replied with this article by N.T. Wright. The guy who shared it was educated at Lipscomb and preaches for a church of Christ in Arizona. You may recall that last year when the subject of a woman preacher came up in Franklin, TN, she had studied ministry at Lipscomb. So clearly there is a shift going on in the views of women preachers even within churches of Christ. So it is worth our time to explore this article to see what kind of arguments it makes.

In particular, I want to look at the way Wright reasons with the Scriptures on this topic. I also want to suggest some ways of evaluating his arguments. How do we know if it’s a good and valid argument or not? It shouldn’t be a matter of take my word against his. We should be able to let the Scriptures speak for themselves, and that’s what I hope to show tonight.

II.  Introduction

The paper is too long to go through in its entirety. I’m going to pick out a few key parts.

From the introduction, something interesting. Wright points out that the debate in churches in England has some different aspects compared to the debate in America.

And in my own church the main problem about finding ways towards male/female equality in ministry comes, not so much from within the Evangelical right (though there is of course a significant element there), but from within the traditional Anglo-Catholic movement for whom scripture has never been the central point of the argument, and indeed is often ignored altogether.

He’s admitting that within the church of England, also known as the Anglican church and here in America as the Episcopal church, what the Bible says about this is not really important. Those churches are more driven by tradition than Scripture. But what’s interesting is that Wright himself is a New Testament scholar, and his topic for this paper is “Women’s Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis.” So even though that doesn’t carry a lot of water with his church, it is what we are interested in.

There are two passages that restrict the role of women in the assembly, 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2. Before addressing those, he brings up some observations about the Gospels and Acts.

III.  Gospels and Acts

Basically, Wright supports a view called egalitarianism, which is just a fancy word for equal. His argument is that after the cross, women and men shared equally in ministry.

But even before the cross, he finds evidence that women were soon to be teachers in the story of Mary and Martha. Recall:

Luke 10:38-42  Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

What do you see there? Wright points out several things that you and I might not pick up on:

…far more obvious to any first-century reader, and to many readers in Turkey, the Middle East and many other parts of the world to this day would be the fact that Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet within the male part of the house rather than being kept in the back rooms with the other women. This, I am pretty sure, is what really bothered Martha; no doubt she was cross at being left to do all the work, but the real problem behind that was that Mary had cut clean across one of the most basic social conventions.

Ok, do you see that? He says it would have been obvious in their culture. That women were to be kept out of sight. Maybe so. But the text specifically says she was upset about being left to serve alone, yet he says the REAL reason was something else. Very often, knowing the culture can shed light on a scripture. But when the passage explains exactly what she was upset about, I’m not convinced that we should override that with an observation about the culture.

He continues:

She is ‘sitting at his feet’; a phrase which doesn’t mean what it would mean today, the adoring student gazing up in admiration and love at the wonderful teacher. As is clear from the use of the phrase elsewhere in the NT (for instance, Paul with Gamaliel), to sit at the teacher’s feet is a way of saying you are being a student, picking up the teacher’s wisdom and learning; and in that very practical world you wouldn’t do this just for the sake of informing your own mind and heart, but in order to be a teacher, a rabbi, yourself.

So he sees in this passage a picture of Jesus training Mary to be a rabbi, a teacher. So how can we evaluate this argument?

I would say, “show me where you find that in the text.” What clues from the passage or the context show that this is the correct interpretation? Because I see things in the text that say that is NOT what is going on, especially about why Martha was upset.

And as far as Mary training to be a teacher, what would let us know that is what we are supposed to see here? It would help if we had an example of Mary teaching after this. Then we could go back and say, “look this is perhaps where it all started.”

Also, remember that not one would claim that women did not learn and teach others. The question is how? Did they teach in the assembly in the same way as preachers and elders? It would be natural to assume that Mary would share what she learned from Jesus with others. But did she do so from the pulpit, so to speak? Was she put in a position of authority over men? You can’t get that from this.

And I think Wright would agree, but he points to this as evidence that women would be preachers in the kingdom. I think he’s seeing things that aren’t there. What do you think?

He also points to evidence in the book of Acts that women were leaders in the church. Want to see it?

Acts 9:1-2  But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Wright argues that women were normally not seen as a threat, which is why the ladies were able to be at the foot of the cross without being harassed. Women were ignored by the authorities. Yet here is Saul, arresting men and women. Wright quotes from another scholar who says, “this only makes sense if the women, too, are seen as leaders, influential figures within the community.”

But the Law of Moses specifically said that men and women were to be punished if they went after a false religion.

Deut. 13:6  “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known,

Such a person was to be stoned with stones. So would it be surprising that a person as zealous as Saul would arrest both men and women for worshipping Jesus? Does that prove that the women must have been leaders in the church?

And if this is the kind of evidence you’ve got, doesn’t it say something about the strength of your case?

On to the two most relevant passages:

IV.  1 Cor. 14

If you’ve been surprised by these scholarly arguments so far, just wait for this one.

First, the passage in question:

1 Cor. 14:34-35  the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

There are some difficult things about this passage. But the overall point seems clear to me. “It is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” We might not like that, but it’s not hard to understand.

Here’s Wright’s analysis:

I have always been attracted, ever since I heard it, to the explanation offered once more by Ken Bailey. In the Middle East, he says, it was taken for granted that men and women would sit apart in church, as still happens today in some circles. Equally important, the service would be held (in Lebanon, say, or Syria, or Egypt), in formal or classical Arabic, which the men would all know but which many of the women would not, since the women would only speak a local dialect or patois. …the result would be that during the sermon in particular, the women, not understanding what was going on, would begin to get bored and talk among themselves. As Bailey describes the scene in such a church, the level of talking from the women’s side would steadily rise in volume, until the minister would have to say loudly, ‘Will the women please be quiet!’, whereupon the talking would die down, but only for a few minutes. Then, at some point, the minister would again have to ask the women to be quiet; and he would often add that if they wanted to know what was being said, they should ask their husbands to explain it to them when they got home. I know there are other explanations sometimes offered for this passage, some of them quite plausible; this is the one that has struck me for many years as having the strongest claim to provide a context for understanding what Paul is saying. After all, his central concern in 1 Corinthians 14 is for order and decency in the church’s worship. This would fit extremely well.

Ok, so how do we assess this argument? First, is there anything from the text that lets us know this is what Paul intended? How about the notion that the women could not understand the language? Actually, Paul does address that idea in general when he speaks about tongues:

1 Cor. 14:9-11  So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. 10 There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, 11 but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.

Therefore if no interpreter was present, the tongue-speaker was to be silent. The point is obvious: don’t speak in a language that people can’t understand. Yet that is exactly what Wright says was going on with the women. The men all spoke a language they couldn’t understand. And Paul’s instruction, apparently, was not “hey, speak where the ladies can understand” but instead “ladies, quit talking and find out later what was said.” No way.

But regardless, he goes on to say:

What the passage cannot possibly mean is that women had no part in leading public worship, speaking out loud of course as they did so. This is the positive point that is proved at once by the other relevant Corinthian passage, 1 Corinthians 11.2–11, since there Paul is giving instructions for how women are to be dressed while engaging in such activities, instructions which obviously wouldn’t be necessary if they had been silent in church all the time.

Well, of course, if 1 Cor. 11 says that women were leading in the assembly, that would prove the point. Let’s look and see.

1 Cor. 11:4-5  Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, 5 but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven.

Where is this praying and prophesying taking place? Wright says it’s obviously in the assembly, therefore 14 can’t mean what it seems to mean. Of course, the other way of looking at it is that since 14 says women are not to speak, any leading of prayers or prophesying must have been done outside the assembly. How can we know?

Flipping through the previous context, we see that it was not dealing with things in the assembly. Chapter 6 is about lawsuits and sexual immorality. 7 is about marriage. 8-10 is about food offered to idols.

Then, in chapter 11 we have our passage, followed by:

11:17  But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.

And from there through chapter 14, it is on issues regarding the assembly. So does the first part of 11 apply to the assembly or not? I would say that to be consistent, it looks like the women would not have been prophesying in the assembly.

If we only had these two passages, we might be left a little puzzled as to how to solve this question. But we have one more that seals it.

V.  1 Tim. 2

1 Tim. 2:11-12  Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

Pretty easy to understand. Wright points out that Timothy was likely working in Ephesus, where there was a large temple of Diana, which was run by women. He suggests some of these women may have tried to bulldoze into the church and take over. And this passage is saying they need to learn first:

Paul is saying, like Jesus in Luke 10, that women must have the space and leisure to study and learn in their own way, not in order that they may muscle in and take over the leadership as in the Artemis-cult, but so that men and women alike can develop whatever gifts of learning, teaching and leadership God is giving them.

Ah, see. We go back to Mary and Martha. Jesus and Paul are both saying let the women learn, then they can teach.

What’s the problem with this? It’s just not what the verse says. The verse says they are to learn quietly and not teach or exercise authority over a man. Wright and others change it to say they are not to teach or exercise authority until they have learned quietly.

You can read it for yourselves. It’s very clear.

The problem is, it doesn’t fit with their view.

VI.  Conclusion

Errors that we can identify: beginning with a conclusion in mind.

Taking any possible evidence, no matter how shaky, as long as it fits your view.

Changing the meaning or finding new hidden meanings from cultural arguments—that just happen to fit your view.

Ignoring the actual text and context.

What’s surprising to me is that someone of Wrights’ stature would use this approach. Let’s be careful not to fall into any of these ourselves.

INVITATION