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Day: October 2, 2008

Let her learn….or not?

Let her learn….or not?

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In our continuing discussion of 1 Corinthians 14:34-36, we come to the problematic area of learning.

1 Corinthians 14:35 And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home…

What can we pull out regarding “learning” in this verse?  We can see that if a woman has a desire to learn, she isn’t encouraged to do it in church.  Where is she supposed to learn?  Her learning is to be done under her husband’s permission and it is to be done at home.

The requirement that a woman is not to learn in public is not a Christian regulation but a part of the “law” of the Jews.  Women were not to be taught the scriptures according to the oral tradition of the Jews.  Why?  Because she was not allowed to touch the scriptures and so she didn’t need to be a rabbinical student and publicly learn.  She also would have no one to teach the scriptures to since the men were considered to be the ones who had the responsibility to handle and teach the Torah.  Women need not learn.  They were not qualified to learn.

In previous posts we have been listing the markers in 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35 that prove that Paul was quoting from the Corinthians and then refuting their claims in verse 36.  The wording about women learning at home (v. 35) instead of in the assembly once again ties these verses into man-made tradition.

But this isn’t Paul’s way nor is it God’s way.  Paul had just told us in verse 31:

1 Corinthians 14:31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted

Not only were all allowed to prophesy in the assembly, but the public prophesying was so that all may learn in that public assembly.  The learning was done by all just as the prophesying was done by all.  All may learn publicly.  Paul does not relegate women to learning at home.  He allows them to learn in the assembly since it is the body of Christ (not just a woman’s husband) who are responsible for helping her to learn. …

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Recovering from "feminism recovery"

Recovering from "feminism recovery"

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Wade Burleson has written an exceptionally thought-provoking post on the difference between one young woman’s journey through her pain (it appears to be a rejection of herself by a boyfriend) into the pathway of accepting a tradition that gives authoritarian license to males vs one young slave woman’s courage in standing up against authoritarian license.  I highly recommend you read Wade’s post found here especially for the account of the courageous stand of a slave girl that Wade copies at the end of his post.

Certainly one can have a “recovery” if that person is actually recovering from a bitterness towards men.  But depicting egalitarianism in the church as being based on hatred of male authority or a bitterness towards men is a false recovery.  Bitterness towards men is no different than bitterness towards women or bitterness towards another race.  When someone has hurt you and your self worth has been damaged, one will be tender and sensitive and often people go through many steps of recovery before they can get past the bitterness and intense hurt.  However identifying egalitarians (or as Courtney calls them feminists) as ones fighting against authority is a very serious mistake and one might question what she was really recovering from.  Bitterness is bitterness.  It is a sinful state of the heart that comes from our sin as a reaction to our hurt, not from our belief about the ability for men and women to serve God in the way that he has called them.

False recovery taints the recovery process.  It fails to identify where the problem lies.  Identifying a false source of the problem can replace one bondage for another.  It also can alienate another group of believers seeing them as the problem instead of identifying the heart attitude as the problem.