Are women allowed to preach and teach in the church? Or are we to be silent?

Which validates why men should not listen to women and they ought to be silent... lol, oh boy... I should not be participating in this forum - my wife is gonna kick my butt!

the priesthood is ANY person chosen from God, who believes and lives the Christian life and all that it entails.

ANY person. J ew., Gentile, Male or Female

The priesthood is not the same as preacher/teacher.

"Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." 1 Peter 2: 9.

actually, this is partially right, but not all the way right.

the woman was to SUBMIT to the authority of man from that point forward. It does not say that the woman cannot minister, teach, preach, pray, encourage, guide, speak the Word.... etc. Or especially, be silent. The passage about silence is ALWAYS taken out of context.

Just like Abraham did, Ahab did, Solomon did...so on and so on. What we have here is a FAILURE of leadership and lapse (lack as in Ahab's case) of trusting God.

You should write an essay about what a believing wife can do with her non-believing husband. I think the ministry of evangelism and teaching applies.

i got a lot of red karma for this thread.

sad, really.

i have brought forward a serious topic.

i never said women should pastor over men, or take place of authority over men as head-pastor in a church.

some of these Christian men have a lot of serious fault.

i will pray for you guys.

Women most certainly have equal status beside men in all things. We are the same, two sides of the same coin, humans.
Without women their is no balance, no opposites. Two opposing forces bound by a third is the secret of creation and i bet they don't teach that in sunday school.

Anyway no women, no balance and vice versa.

If your church doesn't allow woman to be priests, leave it and find something better.

Most religions tell us that it is the only real true one and you will suffer terribly, perhaps for all time if you leave or don't believe and that is nothing but a fear driven control mechanism. A very effective one...

Stand up for yourselves, in the end it's between you and God and whether you did what you felt was right in your heart. Let no one put their thumb on you or worse get between you and God.

Theirs more than one church and you don't even need one.

Best Wishes,

Frater

God -> Man -> Woman

this link is important to anyone who thinks women are to be completely silent

[link to www.angelfire.com]

The first passage we have is 1 Cor. 11:4-16. In verse 5 it reads: “But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoreth her head”; and in the 13th verse: “Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?” These verses show that in the meetings of the Corinthian Christians the women also took part in prophesying and praying.* This, Paul does not forbid here; he denounces only the manner in which they do it; neglecting to cover their head. Here we ask: Did not Paul then tacitly permit the women to prophesy and pray in public meetings? Meyer, pointing to chapter 14:34, where silence is imposed upon them, and to 1 Timothy 2:12, where they are forbidden to teach, says: it has to be taken into account that in these two passages the public assembly of the congregation as such – the whole ekklhsia – is spoken of. There is no sign of such being the case here, where he does not forbid the prophesying and praying of the women, and at the same time cannot mean family worship simply. Therefore Paul here must mean smaller meetings for devotion in the congregation, more limited circles assembled for worship, such as fall under the category of a church in the house (compare chapter 16:19; Rom. 16:5; Col. 4:15). Paul’s readers understood just what kind of meetings were meant, because he wrote on the basis of the information received from the Christians in Corinth.

The second passage is 1 Cor. 14:34-36: 34. “As in all churches of the saints, 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 says the law.” 35. “And if they will learn anything let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame (aiscron, unbecoming, disgraceful) for women to speak in the church.” 36. “What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?”

Here in plain words Paul demands that the “women keep silence in the churches,” “as in all assemblies of the saints.” Meyer insists upon connecting the last clause of verse 33 with the beginning of 34, and reads (with Luther and with Weizsaecker in his careful translation of the New Testament) as quoted above. Note that Paul here speaks of a speaking of the women in the public congregation, in the ekklhsia. Some very modern exegetes have tried to evade the simple and obvious meaning of Paul’s words by pointing to the word speaking, lalein, in verse 34. They say speaking is not teaching, and then they interpret that the women at Corinth had harmed the peace of the congregation by too much talking and gossiping, and that Paul here was forbidding only such unedifying and frivolous conversation. Is such an interpretation admissible? Five counter-arguments speak against it:

1. Nowhere in the letters of Paul to the Corinthians is there any indication that the peace of the congregation was especially disturbed by too much talk of the women.

2. True, lalein can have the meaning of mere talking, of simply employing the organs of speech; but it can also mean exactly the same as teaching. An example is Romans 7:1, “For I speak (lalw) to them that know the law.” There is therefore no reason why speaking here cannot mean teaching, preaching.

3. From the remark, verse 34, “it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also says the law,” we see that Paul means here speaking as an act of independence. The woman shall be subject to her husband and therefore shall not speak publicly in the church, which is unbecoming to her. This argument would not suit the idea of Paul merely forbidding the women to become engaged in talking, gossiping.

4. According to verse 35, the women, in the public congregation, shall not ask questions even for their own instruction, but shall go with such questions to their husbands at home. Therefore Paul must mean public speaking (putting questions) in the services of the congregation where religious instruction was given and received, and cannot refer to indiscriminate talking.

5. With his remark in verse 36, Paul wants to say: The church at Corinth is not the mother church, having the right to establish customs for other churches. Neither is she the only one existing. The same gospel has gone to others who then would also have the right to originate customs and peculiar habits. And what a confusion and disorder that would bring into the Church if every individual congregation was permitted to introduce new customs in questions like this! These words would be unintelligible if Paul here meant nothing but idle talk on the part of the women.

The issue is kind of a mute issue, seeing the churches are mostly false. The real christians aren't getting together even at this point. And youre asking about when we get together if a woman should be able to preach. That's not even putting the cart before the horse, that is the horse is way back miles away from the cart!

Now we come to the third passage: 1 Timothy 2:12-14.
12. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13. “For Adam was first formed, then Eve.” 14. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”

“But I suffer not a woman to teach.” Here we have didaskein. Again Paul takes the public teaching (preaching) of the women in the congregation as an act of independence, which is contrary to divine economy. For a woman to teach in the congregation (in our language, to fill the pulpit) is an “usurping authority over the man,” that stands in contradiction to a fact established at the time of the creation and emphasized after the fall because of the part woman took in it.

Then it weighs something that Paul denounces the public teaching of women in the congregation not only in his letter to the Corinthians, but also in his pastoral letter to Timothy, where, in a language stronger than that used over against the Corinthians, he gives to his co-laborer instructions not to one church merely but to the practice “in all the assemblies of the saints.”

There are people who say: If Paul would live today and in America he would speak differently. He wrote his instructions on the background of his age with its conceptions of inferiority of the female sex. Such apostolic teachings, they say, must be taken in an historical sense. Now this interpretation would be alright in the mouth of a champion of modern theology; but one who does not want to give up the formal principle of the Reformation, namely that the Holy Scripture is source and rule for all faith and practice, can not afford to take that view.

If we cannot believe that in a question like the one here under consideration Paul, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, said something that is true and binding today just as well as at the time of the founding of the Church, then we are on dangerous ground; then we cannot with Peter say that we have a “sure word of prophesy” (2 Pet. 1:19). If we have the right to interpret thus, and so get rid of something that does not suit the taste of our age, what then can we answer if, for instance, a champion of “free love” attacks the institution of marriage, saying that such requirements of the Bible do not hold for our day?

We sum up: A careful exegesis always will show beyond all doubt that in 1 Cor. 14:34-36 and in 1 Tim. 2:12-14 Paul forbids the women to preach in the church. In 1 Cor. 11:4-16, where he does not forbid them to prophesy and to pray, [but is] merely criticizing the manner in which they did it, Paul must have a speaking of the women in view that did not take place in the ekklhsia, in the public assembly of the congregation, but in smaller meetings for devotion. Specifying among the different species of services of a Christian congregation of today, from the public preaching in the pulpit down to Sunday school and women’s missionary meeting, true Christian tact will always easily find what a woman can do without breaking in upon that ground rule of creation which Paul in the above passages has reestablished.

[link to www.angelfire.com]

the thing that upsets me about these people who continue to misunderstand this scripture:

12. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13. “For Adam was first formed, then Eve.” 14. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”

is that they do not even realize that in the J e wish culture at the time, this was a HUGE BLESSING for women. Women were not allowed to be educated in ANY manner. Here Paul and Timothy are allowing women to learn and attend. This was a cultural thing FOR THE TIME.

Now, with that being said, there were some women (Ephesians) who abused their new freedom, and this was addressed in epistles.

I don't know what they really did in the early church. Do I think the men preached? Yes. Do I think the women were probably mostly quiet? Probably. Simply because many were probably very uneucated. Have things change for us today? Yes, it's changed a lot. The churches we have around us today have fallen away. So who knows what we're suppose to do? I've been studying this for 30 years and I still don't know those kind of answers.

Isssh!!! People! Wake up!

That's what haters without arguments do, they lash out from behind a mask.

But what's really tragically comic is watching all these people behave as though they have authority. Who do they think they are? And since women are adults and fully human, they will think and decide for themselves on such matters. Women need not ask permission of men for anything, and if the men whine about it, they can take their egos someplace else. What woman needs a "churchianity" like that anyway? What matters IN CHRIST is the Holy Spirit, and I've seen none of it in evidence from these haters.

THIS THIS THIS THIS

And i am sure it is these men who can't understand why their women won't submit to them in the proper fashion.

they are corrupt. women are not to submit to corruption.

Could women today preach in a real church gathering? No, I don't think so, men (as bad as they have managed this) are still called to lead the church.

Do I think woman can talk in a real church gathering? Yes, probably. They have to be able to prophesy.

These women in the Corth. church were evidently causing distractions. We don't really know what was going on.

Myself, I don't have to talk in church, I don't really care too. I don't care to preach either. I'm content just learning from God, that means more to me than preaching.

My take on 1 Cor.: [link to bible.fether.net]

well, everyone has their particular calling.

Many women are kept in the false churches because they feel like they have to be obedient and submissive to their husbands, who quite frankly are demonpossessed. Yes, the people that are in the false churches, those who call themselves christians, are demon possessed.

No man is allowed to keep a woman in bondage.

Salt (OP)

What that calling that you first feel when you baptised in the Holy Spirit that makes you feel like you just have to get out there and preach? Is that what you talking about?

Feelings can be deceptive.

the fear driven, eternal damnation and hellfire dogmas are false.

most real Christians are not motivated by fear and damnation.

my calling is not to preach.

it is to counsel, minister and teach

I explained why Yeshua said it was new, reading comprehension problem again. Since Yeshua is YHWH in the flesh...make the connection yet? Or do you believe Yeshua was not the Creator in the flesh?

Hebrews 10:1 For The Written Law had a shadow in it of good things that were coming. It was not the essence of those matters; because of this, while they were offering those sacrifices every year, they could never perfect those who offered them.

Opinion? I have not added anything; you do not know Scripture or His Guiding Light. Here is an example of the physical Law also represented in the spiritual:

Matthew 5:21 You have heard that it was said to the ancients, "Do not murder, and whoever murders is condemned to judgment." 22But I am saying to you, that everyone who will be angry against his brother without cause is condemned before the judge, and everyone who will say to his brother, 'I spit on you', is condemned before the assembly, and whoever will say 'You fool.' is condemned to the Gehenna of fire.

Yeshua rendered the spiritual meaning of the sixth commandment right there.

This one might be too abstract for you, but I pray it helps someone:

Matthew 12:48 But he answered and said to him who told him, "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" 49And he stretched his hands toward his disciples and said, "Behold my mother and behold my brothers!" 50"For everyone who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother."

This means Father is our Father and His will is our mother, both deserving of honor. Did the will of God create us? Did the will of God place Himself in the flesh? Did the will of God decide upon Abraham to establish His covenant? The will of God is our mother and deserves that praise, right? That is the spiritual meaning of the fifth commandment.

What you are saying is that the physical Law was not the will of God and that God does not tell us what to do through His Holy Spirit. Does God not tell you what to do or where to go? If not, I would be crying out to Him day and night!

We might also ask whether men who feel the exact same "calling" are grilled about it as women are. But I suppose they'll just wave the magic wand of "deceivable" and make the double standard go away. (Never does the Bible say women have a deceivable spirit.)

these men love the idea of keeping the woman down. but, they fail to see the context of these scriptures. would any leader of a church want a group of uneducated people standing up to teach? no. but, Paul and Timothy allow the women to get educated, and they go on to lead large congregations. yes, a few got crazy with their new freedom. that was corrected. never never never was that meant to be a FOREVER standard.

Women are told that they can teach younger women. I would say that if you stay counseling, minitering, and teaching other women and children that would be OK.

I guess what I'm trying to say is our problems are a lot worse than what people think. The churches are totally fallen away. So where you even going to minister? A shelter? An organization?

I'm a woman, an older woman, techically I can teach younger women. I've helped my own husband. Was I to stop helping him because I'm a woman? No. In our days and time we have to try to stay inside the rules but we have to let the Spirit lead. I helped my husband be delivered of 9 demons. Was I not to do that because I'm a woman? No. We should help where God tells us to help. Use our common sense. I couln't just walk out on my husband when he needed help from me. But neither did I want to run out and preach in a church after my husband's deliverance either. Because that is not of God.

Thank you for your testimony, love.