Thank you very much.
They have not addressed Paul's comments re: Ephesus rather his at Corinth. They stated that Paul is not suggesting that women need to be quiet, submit or not have leadership or ministry roles in church but that it was contextual for the time and place Paul was instructing in Corinth.
Specifically, women in Corinth were leaders/owners of brothels and were used to positions of power within society and at home as they were the financial heads of the families. As a result, they were raucous at church which Paul felt was distracting and didn't allow for people to hear the message that was intended, hence, a set of societal rules laid out to assist a very specific situation.
They stated that Paul's words are misrepresented and misinterpreted because the verses are read out of context instead of read as a whole. I read the bible and didn't see where the information re: woman's job roles, financial status etc came from so was put into a position where I had to instruct the family to just 'trust' what was being taught at church. But, they are very educated and so this was not sufficient for them hence the quest for further information.
Regarding Pauls letter to Timothy re: Ephesus, I have not yet addressed this with my church given that we now see that Paul says the same about Ephesus and there is not an explanation regarding why the women, or exactly how the women, were behaving in whatever way initiated Pauls comments. I might possibly ask them but I have asked them so many things already and, much like this forum, I have to allow people to keep up with all the questions I fire off!
Many thanks!
The pattern in Paul's letters is that the trigger/reason to write about a certain subject may be a concerning situation in that specific church/fellowship, but the instructions for Christian conduct are universal, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
E.g. in 1 Corinthians 5 Paul discusses a serious case of immorality occurring in that church; how to deal with such a case and how to uphold standards of holiness is universal. In the TNK/OT God gave varying instructions to the Israelites on how to deal with the nations to Joshua, but how to behave once they conquered and inherited the land was universal.
So the reason why Paul addresses head-covering in 1st Corinthians is likely because an issue with that had arisen (possibly women removing their head-covering), yet the instruction on how to pray/prophesy would be expected to be universal. This pattern can be noticed in e.g. 1 Corinthians 14:34–35: the background/trigger is expected to be a local issue at that time, but Paul highlights the alignment of his instruction with Torah (=the Law) as universal guideline.
E.g. when some masters treated their slaves badly this could have been a reason to admonish the masters to the treat their slaves well, but it's nonsensical to suggest the instruction for proper conduct for a master or slave is ONLY for that local church with that issue.
Yet since the 1960's with the rise of Feminism and consequently the push for egalitarian theology (removing remnants of Patriarchy) we see exactly that. Unique exceptional alleged circumstances in the addressed churches are presented to argue that Paul's instructions on marriage, women in churches or even homosexuality are ONLY applicable to the local unique situation; basically neutralising their universal applicability. There are a few problems with this approach:
- Paul's text itself does not give any clues that the instructions for model behaviour are local-only
- it ignores the fact Paul gives general theological arguments that are time/culture independent (this includes the Torah reference, but also creation order, deception order, etc.)
- it doesn't work for 1 Peter as this is not addressed to a particular church - yet its message is identical to Paul's on the issue of marriage/women's role
- the very fact the entire Christian church throughout history had a fairly unanimous view, but all of a sudden under influence of (secular) Feminism since the 1960's the rising pressure for 're-interpretation' to make the Bible compatible with 20-21 st century Western values should be a red flag.
To make practised homosexuality acceptable in churches nowadays a similar argument is applied: in those days there were no committed loving relationships between men, so Paul's prohibitions (fully in line with Torah) of course ONLY would apply to non-committed casual relationships/hook-ups, so Paul certainly would approve of those committed loving homosexual relationships today. This approach conveniently makes an assumption not present in the text itself in a desperate effort to neutralise the principle already present in Torah.
Suffice to say I find these approaches highly speculative and dependent on conjecture - wishful thinking to suit a particular (new) agenda.
You mention 'women in Corinth were leaders/owners of brothels and were used to positions of power within society and at home as they were the financial heads of the families.' ... I would submit that is highly unlikely to be true for that church as a substantial part of the Corinthian church were Jews who practised their religion as such previously (you can find clues for that in the text of 1 Corinthians).
Yes, Yeshua was revolutionary in that he encourages women to follow Him, to listen to His teaching (Mary), to speak privately with a woman (the woman at the well in Samaria) - and Paul presumes women are praying and prophesying - the Holy Spirit is poured out on all; yet it's not a cultural conformist move by Yeshua to ONLY appoint males as the 12 - that's intentional.
E.g. great effort is made by egalitarians to try to argue that in 1 Timothy 2:12 Paul doesn't really mean women shouldn't have 'authority' over men, but only 'should not usurp/seize authority from men'. I.e. so supposedly when a bishop/elder gives that authority to a woman she is completely fine wielding authority over men. But this overlooks the very first part of that verse that also says a woman should not teach a man; and the verse before that were Paul instructs Timothy a woman should learn 'in subjection', and the verse after that (v 13) where a universal creation order argument is used, and the fact Timonthy's task was to set-up/organise several churches and v. 8 clearly has a universal nature ... Egalitarian reading makes a complete mess of this section.
The Bible in both TNK/OT and NT is Patriarchal, but divine love takes the sting and strive out of that - as it does for master/slave relationships or those between parents and children.
Be blessed sister - and welcome to correct me in case you detect an error in my thinking !
