Women should…Say what?

Today’s DT passage on 1 Corinthians 14 has a section that might be confusing to some.  1 Cor. 14:34 says “women should remain silent in the churches.  They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.”  (Some of you might be wondering, “Whoa! What kind of church is that??  And where do you find that Law?”)  As you can imagine, this passage along with 1 Timothy 2:11-15, has been a point of contention for a long time over whether women should be able to teach in the church.

I don’t want to get into a big debate over this issue, but I do want to offer some help in understanding difficult passages like this.  While there are many Greeky academic journal articles on this topic, I think you’d rather not go that way…

Well, I recently found an excellent explanation written by Dr. James Choung (the National Director for InterVarsity’s Asian American Ministries) that’s very understandable for everyone.  So please take a read at this pdf document “Can Women Teach? An exegesis of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33-40“–it’s very well written:

http://www.intervarsity.org/mx/item/4175

But what’s most important in all of this is that we all remember the overarching context of Apostle Paul’s letter in the first place:  That there should be loving unity and not division in the church.  That is the context of 1 Cor. 14 (and much of the previous chapters), and so I trust that everyone will exercise grace & love in interpreting and applying Scripture.  After all, if everyone took even one verse of 1 Cor. 13 and applied it with the same rigor, zeal and passion, then there would not be much bickering over obscure passages in the first place.