Refuting Christian Feminists: No More Silent Women?!

The Charge Against Biblical Feminist Interpretation

Robert L. Thomas, quoting Mary A. Cassian in his book Evangelical Hermeneutics, states this,. Biblical feminists view the Bible as open to alteration. One of the basic presuppositions of biblical feminist theology is that the Bible is not absolute and that its meaning can evolve and transform.

Since the Bible presents no absolute standard of right and wrong, feminists maintain that they must decide this for themselves. This basic premise allows them to interpret the Bible in any manner appropriate to their immediate circumstances.

The women in the church were being loud and distracting during church. That's just what they were doing at that time. Because they were being that way, this obviously was making it so God's word was not being able to go forth because there was so much distraction.

It was messing with the work of God. So because of what was going on, Apostle Paul used wisdom for this moment in time and spoke a prophetic direction. Okay women, you guys need to keep silent in the churches.

Ask your husbands at home. Apostle Paul was not saying that for all women. He was just speaking that for these women at that time because of what they were doing. Apostle Paul was not saying that for all women.

He was just speaking that for these women at that time because of what they were doing.

Why the Ad Hoc Reading of 1 Corinthians Fails

Catherine Crick argues here that this portion of scripture was written to correct certain women at a certain time only, claiming that the instruction to women to be silent is not for all time, therefore restricting this passage to only be addressing an individual situation experienced by this individual church.

Now this is called an ad hoc interpretation of this passage. Ad hoc means done for a particular purpose as necessary, meaning then that it is limited to only the receivers of this epistle. Egalitarians and biblical feminists use this type of argumentation often and apply it especially to the first Timothy and second Corinthians verses centered on the roles of women in the church.

When one takes on this type of interpretation, they look at these epistles with a selective lens. Instead of interpreting these epistles as instructions on what to believe, how to live, and how to run the church, they use the cultural background to override instruction depending on how supposedly better or advanced or more knowledgeable the current culture is.

They do not use the historical context to strengthen the teaching but to undermine it. Now let's chew on this. If this passage in Corinthians was only to correct boisterous women in the Corinthian church and we don't need it for today because women behave better, then what of all the other corrections or instructions to the Corinthians?

What do we do with the corrections regarding head coverings, communion, the use of spiritual gifts, the judging of prophecy, and the interpretation of tongues? If instructing the boisterous Corinthian women to be silent was only for them, well, what about these other instructions?

If those are interpreted as merely corrections for the Corinthians and we are more advanced now on how the church should worship and behave when it gathers, then can't we just scrap all the other corrections as well?

Well, hey, why not just scrap first Corinthians altogether? Sure, read it to see what Paul was dealing with when discipling the Christians, but when it comes to the actual application for the churches today, well, we can just simply disregard that.

But what do we do if there are clear passages in the epistle that state otherwise? Might there be clear passages that say that first Corinthians 14 is to be applied to all the churches? Well, let's go to the passage and see.

1 Corinthians 14:33-38 and the Command for Silence in the Churches

First Corinthians 14, 33 to 38. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says.

If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husband at home for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or was it from you that the word of God came or are you the only ones it has reached?

If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. Notice that she completely rejects by her ad hoc argument here that the instruction to women to be silent regarding weighing, explaining, and judging prophecy is a command of the Lord, instructed in the law, and is a rule for all the churches of the saints.

When she stands on the platform teaching men what the prophetic word of scripture means or explains a vision she received from God as a big a apostle, she's doing just that, judging, weighing, and explaining the word of God.

She does not recognize that these are the commands of the Lord and therefore is not recognized. The apostle Craig has shown here that she does not view all scripture to be God breathed, his very words, and his very instructions.

She doesn't believe that it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that her disciples are thoroughly equipped for every good work. Instead, she teaches through these ad hoc arguments like this one that only the passages that she determines apply to us today are necessary to equip the church.

She has shown she is willing to pluck a verse out and ignore the context of the passage to teach it according to her desire. She exposes that she will impose her beliefs regarding the cultural context upon the text to negate a command.

She teaches, therefore, that the culture or behavior at the time determines whether we are called to obey the instructions or not. This exposes that she is not presenting herself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

The Claim to Apostolic Authority and the Five-Fold Ministry

We have a specific vision and assignment, and to summarize it, God has called us to partner with him in helping to restore what we are seeing that's missing in the Acts church to the church today. And so God's saying, I want my five-fold ministry that we see in the book of Acts that we see in the New Testament church that we don't see today.

We only see a part. We don't see the foundation. We don't see apostles and prophets. God's saying, I want my apostles and prophets restored because this is how the body will be fully equipped and be fed the proper spiritual nutrients when we have the equipping of the apostles and the prophets.

So I want apostles and prophets.

I want the apostolic and prophetic ministry restored in the church. She also reveals that her belief that she is called to be an apostle overrides God's commands, rejecting what Paul taught regarding roles of women in Christ's church, going beyond what is written because of her twisting of these passages, causing herself to be puffed up, calling herself a big A apostle, subjecting those under her teaching to favor her vision over Paul's clear instruction to all the churches of the saints.

According to her, the Holy Spirit has no problem contradicting his word given through the apostle Paul to call her as an apostle. Will he call a person to leadership and allow him or her to do hermeneutical flips to twist, reject and rebel against his clear commands?

What happened to the Holy Spirit's work in convicting Christ's disciples of sin? What happened to the Holy Spirit's work in convicting against rebellion against God's clear instructions in the epistles, which include instructions on how the church should gather and worship?

What happened to the desire to not revile God's word? Would the Holy Spirit empower a leader to rebel against his word, or would he empower him or her to submit to it? Does Christ grow his church through a leader who reviles his word or through one who submits to it?

The Danger of Twisting Scripture to Fit Desired Desires

If you sit under a pastor or a vision caster or a female teacher who has used this ad hoc argument to justify female pastors or to allow women to judge and teach the prophetic word of scripture over men, then you know they pick and choose what is instructed to believers based on their own desires.

They use culture, past or present to undermine clear teachings. Now, knowing this, we then need to ask, well, if they do this here, how can we trust that they're not doing it with other commands? And if they are twisting commands of God to suit their own desires, maybe, just maybe, they're twisting the gospel to suit their own desires.

And that's why I pray, ladies, that you are in his word.