10-2-9 Women Teaching Men

Chairman

Thank you. One question I have noticed that has come up on two or three of the question papers for you Duncan is:

“If it is wrong for women to teach in the church, how do we reconcile that with women acting as Sunday School teachers, and therefore teaching both infants and young people up to the age perhaps when they are going to make a decision about becoming members of the church?”

Mr Duncan Heaster

Well, that is again related, I think, to what I said in my second speech, that it’s quite clear in the New Testament church that women were in positions of teaching, but not in positions of teaching other male believers.

So in the same way as Jacquie’s rightly said, there is almost a command that women as well as men should be witnesses to the resurrection of Christ and should teach that gospel, therefore it is appropriate that they should teach, but not those who are male believers.

There is ample Old Testament precedent for this. The faithful women of Israel taught the children, and you’ve also got that hinted in the New Testament. So I would say that these principles regarding male and female in Christ, which I have been talking about, I am not trying to say that those principles are true between male and female in the world generally, the idea of the man being the head of the woman I would submit is only true within the church, within the body of Christ; and those who are not baptised, we would submit, are not in the body of Christ. Therefore, these principles concerning the relationship between male and female, which we have been presenting tonight, are not valid outside the body of Christ. Therefore women are indeed encouraged to teach young people the gospel.

Chairman

Thank you. This question strives to understand the extent of Duncan's position on women teaching men:

“Would you allow a woman teacher to teach mathematics to men? Would you allow a woman to teach your men about the traumas of postnatal depression? is there anything a woman can teach a man?”

Mr Duncan Heaster

What shall I say? Obviously there are plenty of things a woman can teach a man. When the Bible says a woman must not ‘teach,’ the Greek word there is ‘didasko’ , which is the word that’s elsewhere translated ‘doctrine.’

So if you wanted to literally translate the Greek text there in Corinthians and Timothy where it says a woman must not ‘teach,’ it would be a woman must not ‘doctrinise.’ in other words, this teaching, which is being forbidden, is specifically a teaching of doctrine. That word ‘teaching’ as I say and the word ‘doctrine’ are the same in the Greek.

Now there’s also the issue of when a woman teaches, and in the context in Corinthians he certainly seems to be talking about when all the members of a church come together in a formal sort of setting, that that is when a woman should not teach a man, because in that formal setting of the body of Christ, when it is all gathered together, the man is representing Christ and the woman is representing the church. In the same way as the church does not teach Christ, then in that context the woman shouldn’t teach the man.

So yes, we are not saying that our men know it all and our women know absolutely nothing, but what we are saying is that in terms of doctrine (which is what this word ‘teach' actually is in the Greek), that is what is forbidden in the New Testament.