The Silence of Women

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. [1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV).]

The Apostle Paul’s passage contradicts many people’s ideas of women’s rights and freedoms. To others, it accords with their beliefs; but I suspect that those beliefs originate in this passage and did not arise organically and independently.

Question for thought: "Paul – huh?"

1. An injected passage?

Some scholars think that this passage does not come from Paul. They think that it was injected later by someone else with a smaller soul.

Strong evidence exists that some parts of the Bible were added after-the-fact. For example, Robert Alter is an excellent translator of books of the Old Testament, and he is a professor of comparative literature. He marvels of the excellence of the Hebrew poetry in the Book of Job. Mostly. He is far less impressed with the poetry of the speech that is attributed to Elihu. Also, after Elihu’s speech, the other speakers are referred to, but Elihu is not. Alter concludes that Elihu’s speech was added by a later, lesser poet, and that the final editor of the Book of Job blundered by keeping it in.

Maybe the 1st Corinthians passage was injected after-the-fact, not by Paul. But that conclusion is not frictionless. For one thing, that passage accords with what Paul said elsewhere. So:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:11-15 (NIV).]

It’s easier to say that one passage was jammed in after-the-fact; two is harder. You would have to believe that two like-minded persons coincidentally wanted to add to Paul’s letters their ideas about the silence of women. Or you would have to believe that the passages were added by one person, but after the letters had been accumulated together. But the accumulation of the letters from disparate parts of the known world suggests a later stage in the canonization of the Bible. In that case, it seems likely that someone else would then have noticed these additions and would have raised a hue and cry against this gloss on the words of the esteemed apostle.

Also, some argue these passages must be authentic because the Old Testament supports this theology of women’s subjugation. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s cunning, God speaks to Eve. Eve is presumably a proxy for all women. He says: "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (NIV)

2. The happy disunity of scripture.

In another post, I have a very un-troubled discussion of the fact that the Bible un-self-consciously says one thing in one place and another thing in another place. This happens without a doubt. ("Wildness and the Word of God". http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/07/wildness-and-word-of-god.html )

There are several valid explanation for these variations. I won’t go over all of those explanations here. But I will highlight one: the Bible is pastoral, and a stated principle might not apply to all persons, at all times, in all places. The Bible says different things in different places to allow the earnest seeker of guidance to discern what principle applies to his or her specific circumstance. What is true for him might not be for someone else; the Bible speaks to them both.

This truth applies to these passages about the silence of women.

3. Women as prophets.

The 1st Corinthians passage quoted above comes in context of Paul’s discussion of the value to the church of prophecy – hearing from God and speaking for God. In context, this 1st Corinthians passage says that women should not prophesy.

But women in the Bible were prophets. For example, shortly after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took him into the temple in Jerusalem. There, they encountered the prophet Anna. She prophesied over Jesus (not keeping silent). The gospel of Luke says:

There was . . . a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to [Mary and Joseph and Jesus] at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. [Luke 2:36-38 (NIV).]

And Philip the evangelist had four daughters who prophesied. (Acts 21:8.)

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah called his wife "the prophetess". (Isaiah 8:3.)

Mirian, Aaron's sister, was a prophet. (Exodus 15.)

Huldah was a woman and a prophet. King Josiah sent a deputation to her to inquire of the Lord. That episode is described in 2 Kings 22.

4. Women as leaders.

The 1st Timothy passage says that women should have no authority over men. But in early times after the founding of Israel, Israel was ruled by "judges". One such judge was Deborah, who had more courage and brains than her male military commander. Her story is told in Judges 4-5. As Israel’s leader, she clearly had authority over men, Paul notwithstanding. She also was a prophet.

5. Women as teachers.

And even though Paul apparently did not want women to teach, a teacher he admired was a woman. Her name was Priscilla. She and her husband encountered a zealous but misinformed evangelist named Apollos. Priscilla and her husband took Apollos into their home and they both improved his understanding. (Acts 18.) Paul describes Priscilla and her husband as his "co-workers". (Romans 16:3.)

6. The first witness to the resurrection.

According to the tradition of the Gospels, the first witness to the empty tomb of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. She also was the first to see him, after he rose from the dead. Jesus instructed her to bear news of his resurrection to the others. (John 20:11-18.) This was a turning point in history, and Jesus gave the honor of being the herald of that turning point to a woman.

7. The apparent uniqueness of the silence of women.

So it is clear that the Bible is not single-minded in its counsel about the silence of women.

So the passages about the silence of women fit with the Biblical habit of saying one thing in one place and another thing in another place. But passages about the silence of women are also somehow different. This is true because Paul’s teaching about the silence of women seems, to the modern mind, singularly discriminatory. The discrimination is obvious. It is singular in the sense that, after the resurrection of Jesus, the grace of God exploded outward from the Jews to all peoples and nations in addition to the Jews. This is a great theme of the Book of Act and a preoccupation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The passages about the silence of women seem perversely contrary to this explosive spread of the grace of God.

8. The meaning of the silence of women.

Or are they?

I suggest that they are actually a token of freedom for women.

These passages must be considered in light of the other passages about women as prophets, women as leaders, women as teachers, women as heralds. These passages about the silence of women say what they say, but they can’t un-say the other passages that contradict them.

So a woman who is rudely shushed in church, literally or figuratively, can point to Deborah, can point to Miriam, can point to Isaiah's wife, can point to Huldah, can point to Anna, can point to Mary, can point to Priscilla, can point to the daughters of Phillip. And based on these she can shush back.

But here’s the thing: because of Paul’s passages, if she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to.

In my mid-teens, I absorbed from my career-driven mother a condescension toward stay-at-home moms. For a long time, I had a sense that women who did not work outside the home were old-fashioned. In my youthful mind, they were weaker and less valued than their liberated sisters. I think that many people today retain that condescension.

Paul corrects us. If a woman chooses to come under the protection and guidance and support of a man (who hopefully proves worthy of her trust), then Paul tells us that nobody may hold that against her. Nor is that woman compelled to hold that decision against herself.

Some women may prefer that psychologically restful role. I take this to be the implication of the unexpected popularity among women of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I haven’t read those books, and I don’t endorse them. I only hold them up as credible token of resistance to the Helen Gurley Brown measure of feminine success. If it’s a poor example, forgive me.

9. Scripture is hard.

Sometimes scripture is plain and easy. Sometimes it is hard. I think the subject of this essay is middling hard. I also think that this essay does not begin to exhaust the importance of these controversial passages from Paul. Infinite is the variety of the human condition. Therefore infinite are the possible applications of various parts of the Bible to the human condition. That includes these controversial passages.

10. Freedom in restraint.

But for now I choose to interpret these passages in tandem with clearly contrary passages in the same Bible. I choose to see them as permission to women to choose the old ways. I choose to see them as freedom of choice for women who might not find to their liking a driven, world-beating lifestyle.

In the sixties, women became liberated from dependence on men. But if a woman’s only real choice were that form of liberation, it would be only half-liberation. These passages, in tandem with contrary passages, make it clear that women’s freedom to choose is not partial but complete.

Wildness and the Word of God

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. [Proverbs 26:4 (NIV).]

Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. [Proverbs 26:5 (NIV).]

I accept that all of scripture is "God breathed." (2 Timothy 3:16.) So I wrestle with what it means that the Bible says one thing in one place, but another thing in another place.

1. Apology.

Let me be clear: I’m fine with anyone who takes the Bible as historically accurate in all its parts, and without contrast from one part to another. I respect that person. I crave that person’s prayers. I am not superior to that person; I know that, and God bless him or her. I know persons who know the Bible better than I do, and they accept it as literal, perfect history and completely consistent throughout. That’s fine.

Arguments over Biblical literalness and consistency might be like the "foolish controversies" condemned by Paul. (Titus 3:9.) I have no wish to press against anybody a "foolish controversy".

This is written for people who read the Bible, like me, and who find contrasts among its parts. This is for people who wonder: what does this mean?

2. Historical contradictions.

These are examples of what I’m talking about. History in the Bible varies from one part to another.

Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 differently describe the creation of the world. For example, in chapter 1, animals were created before man, and man was created to have dominion over them. In chapter 2, man was created first, and the animals were then created to be companions to him. Also, note that in chapter 1 God separated the light from the darkness twice.

David met Saul under two circumstances. A mighty warrior, he was called to sooth King Saul’s tormented spirit with music. (1 Samuel 16.) This is the first description of their meeting. But in 1 Samuel 17, David came to Saul because, as a lad, he slew Goliath.

In Matthew 27, Judas the betrayer hanged himself. In Acts 1, he pitched forward in a field, and his intestines spilled out.

3. Doctrinal differences.

Biblical doctrine also varies from one part to another.

a. Prayer.

Different Gospels say different things about prayer. This is Matthew chapter 6, which encourages short prayers:

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. [NIV.]

And yet, Luke chapter 18 has the parable of the persistent widow. An unjust judge gave her justice because she gave him no rest from her petitions. Jesus compared her to believers who come before God with prayer:

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. [NIV]

b. God’s treatment of the righteous and the wicked.

The speeches of Job’s accusers aren’t wrong. Scripture does say that God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous. Compare Psalm 34 to Job 36 (speech of Elihu). Compare Psalm 112 to Job 8 (speech of Bildad the Shuhite). Compare Proverbs 12:21 to Job 22 (speech of Elipaz the Temanite). Yet Job was righteous, and Job was afflicted. This was true despite these scriptures and the words of Job's accusers. That’s the point of the Book of Job.

c. The Laws of Moses.

Then there is the controversy over what parts of the Law of Moses survive in the New Testament era. Here’s Matthew chapter 5, where the Law is preserved intact and in its entirety:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[NIV.]

Contrast the letter of the Apostles and Elders to believers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, about whether those believers should accept circumcision and follow the Law of Moses (from Acts 15). This is a pocket-ready version of the Law:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. [NIV.]

d. Faith or faith and works?

And then there is the question: is salvation by faith, or by faith and works? Romans 3:28 says:"For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law." (NASB.) James 2:24 says: "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." (NASB).

Martin Luther believed that these passages could not be reconciled; he wondered if James belonged in the Bible. Attempts to reconcile James and Romans spew like sparks from a fountain-style firework. (Go ahead, Google it.)

As to faith and works and James and Romans, I don’t know if this part of Matthew ties the twain, or if it makes a middle ground:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. [Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV).]

But reconciliation might not be needed.

4. Plausible explanations?

There are plausible explanations for these differences.

a. Scope to the writers.

All scripture is God-breathed. (2 Timothy 3:16.) But that doesn’t mean scripture is God-dictated. God gave scope to the writers for their own personalities and opinions and traditions to enter into what they wrote. And because their personalities and opinions and traditions differed, the writings differed.

b. The Bible is pastoral.

Also, the Bible is pastoral; it leads people to God and salvation. Contrasts could be explained in that vein.

So differences among writers in the Bible might reflect differences among believers or circumstances. It might be important for some believers to pray persistently and at length, like the widow who sought justice from the unjust judge. But God might want to assure other believers that he will not neglect their prayers only because their prayers are brief.

Smug believers might need to hear that God will judge them by what they do or by what they don’t do. Struggling believers who labor and strive and become disheartened by their perpetual failure might need to hear the word of grace.

c. Tethering to the Holy Spirit.

God might not want us to be solely tethered to a book, even the Bible.

The Bible is very, very important to a believer. A believer who doesn't travel deeply into the Bible neglects a resource that can draw him upward to God.

But God might not intend for us to rely upon the Bible to the neglect of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. The mysteries of scripture bring us to God in prayer, and certainly it is a mystery why the Bible says one thing in one place and another thing in another. When we come to God in prayer, that invites the Helper to guide us. And that help might be so important that anything that brings us to it is a boon and not a detriment as some see it.

5. The vitality of the word.

Here’s a thought: maybe the whole issue of consistency and inconsistency needs to be hissed at.

The Bible is a book apart. The Word of God has a unique brilliance. In its brilliance there is something wild and unmanageable.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis said of his Christ-figure, the lion Aslan, that he was "not a tame lion." Maybe if we worry about contrasts in the Word of God, we err by trying to impose on it a buttoned-down quality, a tameness.

So in judging the Word of God like we might judge a witness in a theft trial or a mere philosophical essay, we fail to see its wildness and its vitality. This is a vitality that no mortal mind can contain. It stops us from judging the Bible as we might judge lesser literature.

6. The writers weren’t troubled.

The holy persons who wrote scripture fully knew of the contrasts among its parts. The two proverbs at the beginning of this piece, about answering a fool, appear literally side-by-side. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are sequential chapters. The two ways that David met Saul are only one chapter apart.

If making the Bible less mysterious were the first goal of the writers of scripture, the solution would have been easy. They simply could have deleted one version or the other.

But that wasn’t done. And that tells me that the writers of the Bible were not unduly troubled by what might trouble a modern believer or by what might excite an unbeliever looking for a reason to un-believe.

The writers of the Bible saw and believed. Believers today can read and likewise believe.

7. The final word is God’s.

Perhaps it’s right to think of the Bible, at times, as a debate about God and about God and history. In a way, this debate is like the debate among Job and Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu. None of them were per se wrong. But the winning word, as in the book of Job, will be God’s.

Faith that Trips

The pastor's sermon was very good.  It was about the apostles. Among the apostles, he talked about Judas, the betrayer. His teaching about Judas was sensitive and thoughtful. But it was, in part, false.

Maybe he thought his hearers would lose faith if he spoke the truth. Maybe he feared they would lose their loyalty to him if he spoke factually.

Or maybe he could not choose between truths. Maybe he could not choose between saying the Bible is true and saying what the Bible says. So he tried to finesse the point, but failed.

1. Different reports of Judas’s death.

Because the pastor said, "We all know how Judas died." Er, no. Based on the Bible, we don’t know how Judas died. Because the Bible gives two different reports of Judas’s death. In Matthew chapter 27, Judas regrets delivering up Jesus. He takes his blood money back to the temple, he throws it into the temple, and the he leaves and hangs himself. The priests collect the blood money and buy a field. The field becomes known as the Field of Blood.

But Acts chapter 1 gives a different report. With the silver he earned by delivering up Jesus, Judas buys the field himself. Then he pitches forward in that field, and he bursts open, and his intestines spill out. Acts agrees with Matthew that the field became known as the Field of Blood.

Here’s the point. We don’t know how Judas died. If we believe Acts, we can’t believe Matthew. If we believe Matthew, we can’t believe Acts. The pastor did not choose between Acts and Matthew, nor did he state both reports. He made as if there were no differences about the death of Judas in different books of the Bible.

2. Different versions of creation.

 The Bible seems unworried about telling different stories. The Bible’s first differing stories come early, in its first two chapters.

You can ask yourself: which came first, animals or persons? If you say persons, you disagree with Genesis chapter 1. There, both are created on the sixth day, but animals first. But if you say animals came first, you disagree with Genesis chapter 2. Because there, God creates man first, then livestock, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air. These turn out to be not-good-enough helpers for man, so God creates woman.

3. Different versions of how David met King Saul.

If you still think that the Bible is seamless, read 1 Samuel 16:14-23. Then read 1 Samuel 17. These are different reports about how David met King Saul. 1Samual 16 says that David was a grown man, a good fighter, and he came to Saul to play his harp to sooth Saul’s demon-provoked spirit. 1 Samuel 17 has David too young to accompany his older brothers to war. But when he brings food to his brothers, he kills Goliath. This brings him to Saul’s attention.

4. The Bible’s makers intended to record these different stories.

What do these different stories mean? Were the makers of the Bible unaware of these differences? Certainly not. I am unshakably sure that scripture’s makers knew exactly what was in it.

They could have made the Bible seamless. They could have kept out Genesis chapter 1 or 2; 1 Samuel chapter 16 or 17; and parts of Matthew chapter 27 or parts of Acts chapter 1. But they chose to keep everything in.

I even think that they were content to have in the first two chapters of Genesis two stories that did not mesh. It sent a signal. It made clear at the beginning that the reader should not take every Biblical word literally. It made less likely that readers would impose upon scripture a literalism that its makers did not share.

As to the David stories, it is interesting that the makers of the Bible put the version with David as a man and a fighter before the version with David as a youth. It’s as if the makers wanted to make clear that they included two distinct traditions about the first meeting between David and Saul. The Bible's makers could have first told the story of David the youth, and then the story of David the man; then, it would be easier to read one as a continuation of the other. But the Bible’s makers did not do that.

5. A blessing that the makers could not have foreseen.

There is no reason to treat these different versions like a spouse’s petty-theft conviction that we don’t want anybody to know about. The differences among parts of the Bible are an aid to faith. The conflicts in Genesis and in other books have become important in ways that the Bible’s makers could not have known about in the times that the books of the Bible were made.

Theirs was an age without science as we know it. The Hebrew Bible was written thousands of years before scientists could peer billions of years back in time and trillions of miles into space. It was written thousands of years before geologists studied Earth’s strata to learn how ancient is our world. It was written long before palaeontologists studied fossils.

The Hebrew Bible was written long before our forebears knew that the earth was round and suspended in a void, against the Genesis description of earth separating the waters above and the waters below. It was written long before Galileo discovered that Earth circled the Sun, against the witness of Psalms, Chronicles, and Ecclesiastes.

But Genesis makes the Bible’s lack of accord with science alright. We don’t have to choose between science and the Bible. Because in its first two chapters, the Bible itself makes it clear that it is not a literal description of creation. It does this with unworried contradiction. Before there was science, the authors of Genesis, 1 Samuel, and Matthew/Acts wrote as if to sooth the mind troubled by knowing science and reading scripture.

5. True but not literal.

None of this make scripture less true.

As to Genesis, putting science at the beginning of the Bible would serve neither God nor us. Because an account of the Big Bang theory and natural selection would tell us nothing of the truth that the first chapters of Genesis really are about. This is the truth they tell: that God was immediate to, intimate with, and in control of the creation of the universe and everything in it.

It would not lead to salvation to know that the universe began with a colossal explosion. Nor that genetic mutations over time produced more advanced creatures. Nor that the earth is round instead of flat with waters above and waters below it. Nor that the Earth circles the Sun. These do not help a person get to heaven (but they do not hinder, either). So there was no reason to put these in a book that is really all about God, persons, and salvation.

But to know that God is the beginning of all that there is is useful for salvation. This is especially true if that knowledge is joined with awe.

So Genesis is true, even if it is not literal. And the Bible’s makers had no problem with making clear that it was not literal. This does not take away from its truth.

The truth beneath the two David stories or the two Judas’s-death stories is unclear to me. But that’s the Bible for you. Its basic message is so simple that a young child can grasp it. But you can plumb the Bible from youth to old age, and you will never find the bottom of it.

6. The comfort of literalism is certainty.

Now, to get back to the pastor. He is a man I respect. His sermons make me think. He knows more than I do.

But he encourages his hearers to read the Bible literally, and they encourage him. His hearers applaud when he says things like, "We are not Calvinists; we are Biblicists." His hearers approve when he says, "I don’t want to know what John Calvin says. I want to know what the Bible says." (Note to pastor: John Calvin interpreted the Bible.)

And, of course, his literalism caused him to slip around the fact that Judas dies differently in Matthew than in Acts.

Literalism is attractive because literalism is certain. I have argued before that certainty is valued in America in our time. The security of our lives cocoons many of us, leading to a sense of certainty about the world, and, by extension, about other things. (See below, "Certainty and Uncertainty.") So, in a way, certainty is not a choice we make but a choice that our culture has made for us.

People won’t shake off certainty for no reason. Nobody wants to shake off certainty until it discomforts more than it comforts. I believe that people find so much comfort in certainty that, to hold onto it, they will tightly clasp what they must know is impossible. The church I go to really does believe in the Bible, and I have no doubt that many members read it carefully and often. Many of them have read the passages that I talked about here. But their looking is colored by certainty, so they do not see obvious contradictions.

7. The problem with literalism.

If literalism is a path to salvation, I should not argue against it.

But I do. For one thing, even though I take it less literally than many, I think the Bible is fundamental to guiding people to salvation. And the better people know it, the better it guides them. Literalism is wrong, so it may lead people off-path. If you read something in a way that it was not meant to be read, you might miss something that you might learn if you read it right.

If we read Genesis as a natural history of creation, we might miss its message of God’s immediacy to, intimacy with, and control over creation; not to mention unnumbered other truths that the first two chapters of Genesis hold.

If we think the Bible is always simple and always literal, we don’t understand how deep and rich the Bible is. Then we might to approach it solely by the power of our minds. We are less likely to approach it humbly, prayerfully, and dependently. We need to depend upon God, prayer, and humility, not only the power of our minds, to plumb the Bible.

Also, literalism can harm the weak-in-faith. Based on literal reading of scripture, early missionaries to China calculated for Chinese rulers the date of the creation of the Earth. They were not believable, because Chinese dynastic records predated the supposed date of creation. Likewise, when we tout Biblical literalism, we become a rock of stumbling for people who believe in science.

It can harm the weak-in-faith in other ways. We want believers to read scripture. But their faith might be harmed if they read Genesis, Samuel, Chronicles, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Matthew/Acts and nobody can explain the differences between the passages, or the differences between the Word and the known world.

Biblical literalism should have been officially buried in 1992, when the Catholic Church apologized to Galileo. I regret that it lives on, because it harms.

8. Shedding certainty.

The Bible was not beaten, scourged, and nailed to a cross to die for all and to rise. The Bible points to God, but it is not God.

We should not read into it a literalism that its makers did not share. Instead, we should see it for what it is: simple but rich, straight but complex, all true but not necessarily all literal. We should be ready to read it for a lifetime, but also ready to know that, at the end of our lives, it still will have mysteries. The mystery should provoke us to make more earnest study and to hope in immortal joy with the one who can make clear all that now we see through a glass darkly.