Sermon Tone Analysis

Liberty University

 

 

A Position On the Ordination of Women According to Scripture

 

 

A paper submitted to Dr. Bayles

In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for

the course EDMN 505

 

 

Liberty Theological seminary

 

 

By

Christopher W. Myers

 

                                                                                   

Lynchburg, Virginia

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

 

 

 

Table of Contents

Introduction- 3

The Arguments For Women Pastors in Brief- 4

Scripture and the Biblical Evidence- 5

The Creation Order- 8

The Reflection of God's Nature- 12

A Conclusion- 13

Bibliography- 16

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

!!! Introduction

       One of the most hotly debated topics within the church today is the issue of women ordination.

It must first be understood that ordination of associate pastors will not be within the domain of this discussion because this paper takes the position that ordination is defined as an official order by God to engage in certain responsibilities or offices of the church; and the order set forth by God is confirmed by God's people.

With this definition, there is no invested problem with an associate pastor not being officially ordained of men because it can become part of the proving[1] of his ordainment by God, in other words, an associate pastor is undergoing apprenticeship as the necessary training for his later work in the shepherding ministries and given the opportunity to prove his calling before God and the church.[2]

Therefore, as long as the associate pastor meets all of the character qualifications in the Pastoral Epistles and shows a desire to fulfill his calling in the Lord[3], then he is eligible for an apprentice pastor position under a senior pastor who is willing to disciple the individual toward growth and spiritual strength.

Now we must narrow the discussion.

Ordination on earth by God's church is merely recognition of God's ordination from heaven.

God ordains a calling to men and women and desires for them to seek, find, and walk in their calling.[4]

There are certain callings within the church that seem to be limited to men.

One of these callings is to become a pastor[5] of a church.

This limitation is not believed to be over gender, but over the ordainment of God for order within the church and family founded by creation.

So this paper will take a position against the ordination of women in the local church as a pastor.

In effect, this paper will take a position that God does not ordain women to the office of pastor because of his ordained order within life.

It must be made clear from the outright that this does not subordinate women or make men superior to women, but instead this very concept reflects the nature of God.          

!!!

The Arguments For Women Pastors in Brief

 

       The view advocating the ordination of women bases itself upon Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."[6]

This verse is used to say that women are no different from men in Christ and therefore, cannot be discriminated against when contemplating church leadership.[7]

Furthermore, Genesis 1-2 is appealed to as the ideal reality that God intended for mankind where men and women are mutually equal.

The hierarchical order of the church has structured itself after the result of the fall, which is said to be far from the intent of Christ's new order where the creation ideal is restored.[8]

Another argument for the ordination of women is the examples in scripture that seem to display women authority, such examples include: Miriam,[9] Deborah,[10] women prophets[11], women as governmental leaders, [12] Priscilla, [13] Phoebe, [14] and Junia.[15]

In addition, Jesus' high treatment of women as recorded in the gospels is said to set the stage for the times of the new covenant.

This view advocating women ordination has the following consequences.

Proper hermeneutics, the Trinity, and marriage need to be redefined in light of the above arguments for women ordination to make sense.

The proper hermeneutical interpretation and application is redefined for such verses as Genesis 1-3, I Corinthians 11:2-16, I Corinthians 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:18-33, and I Timothy 2:9-15 among others.

With that said, let us remember that this issue is not black and white as many people would like to think, very educated and sensible evangelical scholars such as N.T. Wright, Craig S. Keener, and Walter C. Kaiser Jr. are convinced that women ordination is Biblical.[16]

This paper can take a position because it sees a superior exegesis of scripture for the view that women are not to be ordained as pastors.

!!! Scripture and the Biblical Evidence

 

       The strongest scripture against the ordination of women as pastors is found in I Timothy 2:9 through I Timothy 2:15.

Since these verses stand against women ordination so strongly almost every major word is disputed.

Every italicized word or phrase is disputed in some way:

9 in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation/, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing/, 10 but, which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works.

11 Let a woman /learn in silence/ with all /submission/.

12 And I do not permit a woman /to teach or to have authority over a man/, but to be /in silence/.

13 /For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

15 Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing/ if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.[17]

Christians that view women ordination as Biblical must understand I Timothy 2:11-14 to be culturally restrained and not universal for all-time principles of truth, and then they must provide the cultural situation that would cause Paul to speak in this way against women teaching men.

Furthermore, Paul's supporting his argument from the creation account is very troublesome for advocates of women ordination and needs to be explained against the plain reading of the text in order for the argument for women ordination to make sense.[18]

The arguments against women ordination begin their argument by showing that Ephesus was not any different a city in gender distinctions than the rest of the Roman provincial cities.

The lexical word meanings and Greek sentence structure are evaluated for the most superior interpretation of the syntax in light of proven hermeneutics from both progressive and historical scholarship.

We will now explore these areas of the discussion toward a solid foundation for a position on women ordination.[19]

Ephesus did have a temple to Artemis where the religious officials were restricted to priestesses, but this does not mean that domineering women dominated Ephesus.

Archaeological evidence establishes Ephesus as a typical Greco-Roman city.

Ephesus was one of many Greco-Roman cities that had priestesses serving in the pagan temple compounds.

Historical evidence has established from inscriptions of the names of the priestesses that they were not married women, but set aside for what was essentially religious prostitution.[20]

Furthermore, there was false teaching in Ephesus, but scriptural evidence only names men as false teachers in Ephesus, not women.[21]

And in Acts 20:30, Paul uses the specific Greek word for "men" to warn the Ephesians' elders of future false teaching.

While we are looking at the Greek it is important to note the monumental study of the Greek syntax of I Timothy 2:12 by Andreas J Kostenberger.[22]

Kostenberger, using the IBYCUS computer program system that searches all the extant Greek literature directly relevant to syntactical situations, was able to find 53 Biblical syntactical parallels[23] and 48 extra-biblical syntactical parallels to I Timothy 2:12 in the LXX, ancient inscriptions, Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, Philo, and Plutarch.

The research concluded that two patterns can be deduced from the evidence and that the two infinitives in I Timothy 2:12 can be viewed either positively or negatively.

So the verse can be translated, "I do not permit a woman to teach [error] or to usurp a man's authority" or "I do not permit women to teach or to have (or exercise) authority over a man."

The way to understand which rendering is superior to the other is by discovering the positive or negative emphasis of the infinitives.

The infinitive διδάσκειν meaning 'teaching' or 'to teach' is always viewed positively in the New Testament when used absolutely.

If the writer wants to use it in connection with a negative idea, he will add some type of contextual qualifier such as "false" or he will use a different Greek word such as ετεροδιδασκαλειν.[24]

Since the beginning of I Timothy 2:12 begins as, "But I do not permit a women to teach," and the coordinating conjunction ουδέ requires the second action to be understood correspondingly, then αυθεντεϊν should be understood to be positive as well and be rendered, "to have (or exercise) authority," and /not/ "to domineer" or "to flout the authority of."

It should be clear from the evidence that trying to provide a cultural reason for Paul disallowing women to teach men puts one in error because Paul gives his reasoning in verse 13 for his principle of why women should not teach men; he bases it on the creation order.

Also, syntactical evidence points us away from trying to explain the passage away with cultural bounds, but rather it points us right where Paul was pointing us, to Genesis 1-3.

!!!

The Creation Order

 

       Paul supports his argument for the prohibition of women teaching and taking authority over men by appealing to two areas of the Creation narrative: the order by which God created Adam and Eve and the fact that Eve was deceived and not Adam.

First, some things need to be made clear pertaining to what Paul was /not/ saying.

Paul was not saying that because Adam was first in order, so he is in rank.

Paul was not saying that with "birth order" or "creation order" there came more significance or a hierarchical "right,"[25] because then he would have to say that the animals were more significant than man!

But instead Adam was formed first and God placed him in the Garden to name all of the animals and by naming all of the animals, Adam found that there were no life that was like him in nature.

God knew it was not good for Adam to be alone, but he waited to let Adam find that out himself by beholding the entirety of the different natures of God's creation and how they were entirely not like his.

When Adam did find it out, God had him fall into a deep sleep.

This is when God constructed woman out of the bone of man and then he placed her before the awakened Adam.

One can only imagine the delight in his eyes when he beheld the work of the Lord and he declared, "This /is/ now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."[26]

With this in mind, in order to understand what Paul is saying we must understand that the theological purpose for Genesis 2 is summarized in verse 24, it is revealing to us the origins of marriage.

And if we take the focus outward to view it in a larger context, we see that Genesis 2 supplements Genesis 1 by showing that God creates male and female in His image to have dominion over the entire earth and this is most practically worked out through marriage.[27]

How else could man and woman fulfill the commission of God decreed in Genesis 1:28:

“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

How could man accomplish this commission by himself?

This is why it was not good for Adam to be alone, he needed a helps meet.

Now we have laid the foundations for understanding what Paul means.

Adam was not created to be Eve's 'help meet.'

Eve was created to be Adam's 'help meet.'

Man was not taken out of woman, but woman out of man.

The woman does not depart out of her parent's home and cleave unto her man, but the man does the leaving and cleaving, he is the leader.

God did not create Eve first, but God created Adam first.

God could have created both male and female simultaneously, but he did not.

Therefore, there is a purpose behind the way that God created male and female and Paul says that this reason is one of the reasons why women should not teach or have authority over men.

Secondly, Paul qualifies his argument with Genesis 3, citing the fact that Adam was not deceived, but Eve was deceived and fell into sin.

Paul was not saying that Eve was deceived because she was prone to deception.