Wrestling With Paul

Galatians 3:23-29; 1 Cor. 14: 1-5; 26-40

We’ve been working through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians since January, and I’ll bet the section I just read causes the most controversy and makes people squirm the most.  What a text for Mother’s Day!  There’s no question that this text is difficult and problematic.  This is precisely the type of passage that has made the Apostle Paul unpopular with some Christians.  What in the world do we do with a text like this, which seems so disturbingly clear on the place of women in the church?

One response is to say: Because the Bible is the inspired Word of God, we will obey every last part of it literally, without question no matter what it says.  After all, Paul’s words here are very clear and precise – there should be no problem interpreting his meaning.  We will therefore follow to the letter the guidelines laid out here in this passage and make sure that women are indeed silent in our churches and prevent them from serving in leadership positions.

Another response is to say: Paul was a fallible human being who was conditioned by his time and his culture.  He made a terrible mistake here, because it’s obvious that many women can be gifted preachers and leaders in the church.  Besides, say some, I don’t like his attitude, it’s so patriarchal and out of date.  I see no reason to even read this passage anymore since it clearly doesn’t apply to our lives.

Two extreme views.  Both of these positions are equally problematic.  The first position takes the word of God very seriously.  It reminds us that we need to deal with difficult passages in the Bible and not simply disregard the parts we don’t like or are uncomfortable with.  However, it completely ignores the historical and cultural circumstances in which Paul wrote.  Furthermore, it does not acknowledge the dangers of reading biblical texts in isolation and out of context.

The second position recognizes that while the Bible is indeed the inspired word of God, it was written by imperfect people, conditioned by historical and cultural factors, as all of us are.  But it errs on the side of neglecting or omitting passages that we feel may be out of date.  After all, these passages still made it into our Bibles.  And so they should be read and studied in our churches.

Fortunately, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has taken a more moderate stance in interpreting this and other difficult texts.  We’ve chosen neither to take his reading out of context nor to ignore Paul here, but instead to wrestle with what Paul says. 

When we interpret biblical passages, it’s a good idea to follow a couple of basic guidelines.  First of all, never take a passage in isolation, out of context, and then build an elaborate system of rules on that one single passage.  We need to let scripture interpret scripture, always making sure that we take a smaller part and submit it to the larger whole.  In this case, we need to balance 1Cor. 14 against the many positive passages concerning women found in other parts of the Bible, including sections written by Paul himself earlier in this very letter.  In 11:5, Paul reports that women had a role in worship at Corinth, praying and prophesying.  In Ch. 12, Paul talks about the whole church being members of the body of Christ, not just the males.  In his letter to the Galatians, which was read today, Paul exclaims that in Christ, there is no male or female.  Taken together, these other passages remind us at the very least that Paul could not have intended his words about women’s silence in this particular passage to prevent women from holding leadership positions in the body of Christ.

Nor should we overlook the broader context of Paul’s words.  In the Old Testament, there were a number of women prophets who helped lead the people of Israel, including Deborah and Miriam.  Peter in his Pentecost sermon quotes from the text in Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” 

In other words, from Old Testament times until now, women have always been prophets.  It’s the Israelite priests who were exclusively male.  [We may disagree with that, but we can’t blame that particular one on Paul]  And remember, while the Israelite priesthood was for males only, with the coming of Christ our high priest, we have moved on from the priestly tradition to the prophetic tradition, a tradition which has always included both men and women.  That’s why the Presbyterian Church and other Reformed churches ordain women into leadership positions.  We believe that God has and does pour out God’s Spirit on all flesh.  We believe that our sons and our daughters are called to prophesy, that is, to proclaim the word of the Lord.

So first, always read a passage in its larger context.  Then, make sure that you acknowledge that there are historical and cultural factors which have influenced these texts as well.  A former professor of mine at Princeton Seminary, Dr. J. Christiaan Beker, coined two terms to explain this second guideline: contingency and coherence.  There are some passages in the Bible that are clearly contingent on historical and cultural factors and should not be blindly applied to our lives here in the 21^st century.  However, there are other passages that transcend time and culture and are just as true and powerful today as they were in biblical times.  We call those passages coherent.  Let me give you an example of each.

First, contingency.  How many of you love seafood?  Not just our local salmon, but crab, lobster, shrimp, and clams?  I’ve got bad news for you folks.  We’re in direct violation of a biblical commandment every time we crack open a crab claw or help ourselves to a shrimp cocktail.  Leviticus 11 makes it clear that we are not to eat shellfish.  Fortunately for those of us who read these passages in light of the New Testament, this passage is a good example of contingency.  That is, it need not transcend time and be applied directly to our lives as Christians.  Peter’s vision in Acts 10 makes it clear that God has made all foods clean.

Of course, there are other texts that are coherent, that are as true and relevant for us today as they were thousands of years ago.  One that comes to mind is: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength, and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Paul reaffirms this in 1Cor. 13: faith, hope, and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.  The resurrection is another coherent theme.  Its relevance is not restricted to one particular historical period or culture, but it’s an event which continues to transform countless lives.

When we return to our original text for this morning, we see that when Paul says women should be silent in churches, those words should be seen as contingent and not coherent.  In other words, because of the broader witness of the Bible affirming women as prophets, and because we know the historical and cultural context of that time period was patriarchal, and because we don’t know all the specifics of the situation at Corinth, we should read this particular text as contingent and not as an unchanging rule for all time.

So I would encourage us to continue to wrestle with Paul; let’s continue to struggle with difficult and problematic passages throughout the Bible.  But let’s do so together in the firm knowledge of the coherent, transcendent truth that God is for us, God is with us, and God loves us,  Amen.