10-2-14 Is Corinthians Applicable To Women Today?

Chairman

Thank you. Jacquie, there are several questions here making exactly the same point, and asking you please, if you would, explain your position on the 1st letter to the Corinthians chapter 14, verses 34 and 35. I know these have been touched on.

I’ve just looked it up in my Bible. I will read this for the benefit of everybody here:

“Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”

The point that’s being made by several of these papers here is:

“Is that the word of God? And is that applicable to women today?”

How would you answer that? If you answer that, you are actually answering, I think, about six or seven questions here.

Rev. Jacqueline Henry

Well I started to answer the question when I explained how I understood what was happening in the church in Corinth, and as I said, that the whole of the letter to the Corinthians talks about things that are wrong. Paul is not writing to a wellbehaved church that are doing things properly; he is writing to a church that’s got a lot of things wrong.

And so I think this is talking about women who are being noisy and chattery asking their husbands questions in the service, maybe not even understanding the language. I don’t think it’s talking about preaching (l Corinthians 11:5). 1 know we don’t hear about women preaching in the New Testament, but then there are a whole lot of other things we don’t hear about.

As Duncan pointed out, women weren’t educated in Jewish society, and I said, if they weren’t educated they were in no position to teach. Here in the letter to the Corinthians the women are still learning. I think that a generation later when the women did know their Bibles, when they did know the gospel of Jesus, then they were in a different position and they were able to teach. I don’t think they were able to teach men even in that generation. But today I think women are in the position.

When I was at theological college and we had our exams at the end of the year, it was a woman who came top of everybody. If the women know so much about the Bible then they have to share it with others, so that they too can tell others again about the Lord Jesus.

Chairman

Thank you Jacquie. Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we’ll call an end to this part of our evening because the time is now gone twenty to ten. I did say that we’ve been going for nearly two hours and I said that we would try and finish between quarter to ten and ten o’clock.

There still remains five minutes for each speaker to sum up, and so I am going to ask Duncan please to once again take the floor and give us his summing up.