Women 4: Response to Ben

Ben asked some good questions, so here are some quick thoughts:

Ben: Dr. Schenck,If we are to assume that these verses are early interpolations, 1) who may have composed and added them to this epistle? 2) Do you suppose the reason for the addition is the same reason Paul included these verses if they are original? 3) If these verse are not original, was their addition inspired? If not, what sort of paradigm shift must we make from the common evangelical approach to inspiration? 4)Would this sort of early interpolation be found elsewhere in the New Testament?Thoughts floating in my head...interested to hear yours.~Ben

Great questions. I think we must suppose that they were added very early indeed, perhaps even as an addition to the original manuscripts.

And while I don't think they fit very well with the flavor of the 1 Corinthian Paul, they fit very well with the 1 Timothy Paul. In this sense I can pass the buck to David Smith, who's going to discuss the place of 1 Timothy in the women in ministry debate. We have to deal with 1 Timothy whether these words in 1 Corinthians were original or not.

Given the church hermeneutic I advocate, the question of their early inclusion and persistence is an important one. I would place it into the bag of objections to women in ministry raised by those who point out that women have not held pastoral offices in the church from as early as the late first century except in certain off the mainstream groups like the Montanists. If I adopt the kind of church hermeneutic I use with the Trinity, how can I then support women in ministry from this angle?

I think of the words of a friend of mine who ultimately converted from the Anglican Church to the Roman Catholic Church: "I will support women in ministry when it is affirmed by an ecumenical council." I think he was sincere.

And this is partially my position. I will support women in ministry because I believe we are in a period leading up to a consensus on women in ministry. It may not completely look that way now, but I can't imagine even the Roman Catholic Church holding out on this one for very long. The idea of compartmentalizing roles in the church because women don't have certain physical organs is simply incomprehensible in my mind in the light of the truth of the gospel. And when people are only maintaining positions that don't make spiritual sense because it's the "rules," I can't see these ideas lasting for very long.

I see the same thing with the pro-slavery parts of the church 150 years ago. It's "obvious" to us today that they were on the wrong side of the issue and we have a hard time today even believing that the hearts of such individuals were right with God. They were just on the wrong side of history. In reality it's more complicated than this, but I do believe Christians a hundred years from now will view anti-women in ministry people similarly.

I put this in the same category as "Moses said give them a writ of divorce because of the hardness of your hearts." I truly believe God's word to the church today is, "God allowed the New Testament church to conform to the patriarchal values of its day because of the hardness of their hearts. But God did not intend it to be so, as it is written, 'In Christ there is neither male nor female.'"

I'll reiterate many of these thoughts in my final blog on the subject.

There are other places in the Bible where I would suggest that what you see is not what you get. I treat these as fully Scriptural, which may imply some inconsistency on my part in the way I am tempted to dismiss 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

For example, I tend to see 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 as misplaced, although I accept Paul as its author. I have no external evidence for this conclusion, only the fact that it seems so inappropriate to its context.

I suspect that there probably are other very early interpolations or textual problems for which we have no textual evidence, but I consider it highly problematic to go around suggesting such unless you have really, really good internal reasons for the suggestions. I actually can't think of any.

Some thoughts...