Graham Cole has written a keen and insightful essay entitled “WOMEN TEACHING MEN THE BIBLE: WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?”. In it he sketches out 7 considerations why women can teach men the Bible. Those considerations are:
Consideration 1: Authority comes from God and his Word
Consideration 2: 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Trinitarian Taxis (Order)
Consideration 3: Women Teaching Men and Good Church Order
Consideration 4: The Invention of the Printing Press
Consideration 5: 1 Timothy 2:12 not a Barrier
Consideration 6: The Problem of Primitivism
I found the 7th reason significant on many levels.
Consideration 7: The Matter of Dogmatic Rank
Let me raise a question about perspective—how theologically important is this issue? (Pastorally it can be very, very important indeed. But that’s not my question.) Classically, Anglicans distinguish matters of faith and morals (what the gospel is and the moral life that arises from it) from matters of order (how we organize our corporate life). The question of women preaching to mixed audiences is a matter of order not of faith. What a person thinks about the issue is not a condition of Christian fellowship. Otherwise we invent a gospel plus. (Jesus plus a particular view of women’s ministry as the condition of Christian fellowship.) Contrast our present issue with how hard it is to have Christian fellowship with someone who denies that Christ is the Son of God and was incarnate (1 Jn 4:1-3). So then Evangelical Complementarians and Evangelical Egalitarians are having an in-house debate. I have great respect for Evangelical Complementarians who seek to live by Scripture. They have an equally high view of Scripture to my own. We are both committed to responsible exegesis. Formally speaking, we are agreed on the authority of the text but materially speaking, disagree as to its meaning in places and its present day significance for women’s ministry.Also since in my view the question is one of order and not faith and morals to raise the further question about whether to allow women to teach men is a slippery slope which will allow practicing gays to minister in the church is a red herring. For example, there is no debate that women in the NT ministered and exercised gifts. The issue is the scope of that ministry. However, there are no positive texts in Scripture concerning same sex sexual activity, quite the opposite.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for this post.
I read the linked essay and had trouble understanding the penultimate paragraph:
“As for women preachers, who do preach to us from the Scriptures, as against those like
one of Francis Bacon’s spiders who spin ideas out of one’s own head as it were. That way like
the Bereans we in the pew can check out whether what you say is a message from God,
grounded in the revelation from God. Come to think of it there are more than a few male
preachers who need to do the same.”
Is there something missing from the first sentence?
Greetings and thanks for visiting/reading. I noticed the first sentence was truncated and the thought incomplete. I presume it’s simply an error in transcription and there is indeed something missing. Thankfully it does not detract from the otherwise fine essay.
I agree. The error does not detract. I was hoping that you might be able to fill in the missing word(s).
Sorry and wish that I could, but I’ve no ideas. Perhaps this is what he had in mind:
“Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.” here.