Why did you say that women praying and prophesying was on unofficial or semi-official occasions?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Christian Philosophy of Man’ (1994).

I've got myself into a lot of hot water there!¹ I can answer your question, if you will allow me to say this. There is an apparent contradiction between chapter 1 Corinthians 11 and 14. Chapter 11 talks of women praying and prophesying. You can pray without doing it audibly, but you cannot prophesy without doing it audibly. So in chapter 11 women prayed and prophesied audibly. Whereas 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 says '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 husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.'

How then do you reconcile the two?

Some people will say, 'You choose the one that's clear, and if you can't explain the other, never mind. So the one that's clear is 1 Corinthians 14, "Let the women keep silent". We don't know what the other is saying, so we go by chapter 14.'

There's always guaranteed to be some who will take another opinion. 'No, 1 Corinthians 11 is the clear one and women do pray and prophesy. Whatever chapter 14 means, we don't know, but we go by the clear Scripture in chapter 11.'

These people are all seeking to be true. They're not irresponsible.

In my youth there was one way of trying to reconcile it. 'It is shameful for a woman to speak in church' (1 Corinthians 14:35)—and people used to say the word there translated speak means chatter. 'It is shameful for a woman to chatter in the church.' She can speak, if she's speaking sensibly, but not chatter, and they had the view that in the ancient Christian churches women chattered. I don't know where they got this view.

The last time I was at a service in the Jewish synagogue here in Belfast I don't know what the women did, because I wasn't allowed to sit among them. I had to sit amongst the men, and they chattered from beginning to end. When they got a bit bored with listening to the Law, they got up and went across and had a word with Joe and Jack about their holidays and the state of this, that and the other, with an occasional, Baruch hashem ('thank God'), just to make out that they were listening!

I don't know where the notion came from that it was only women who chattered in the early churches. It is a gratuitous insult to women. If the chattering was the problem, the men would have had to be told that they mustn't chatter either. But the word doesn't necessarily mean 'chatter' at all, does it? It's the normal word that means 'to speak'.

A more modern interpretation is to say that the verses are to be read in the light of 1 Corinthians 14:26–33. 'Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said' (1 Corinthians 14:29). That is, let the other prophets judge, and some say it is in that connection, and only in that connection, that women are told they mustn't speak. They mustn't speak for the purpose of questioning the prophets.

Why mustn't they? Well, the view that was given to me at one stage was that some of these women might be married; and if their husband was one of the prophets, under the guise of questioning they might be wanting to bring him down a peg or two. Being a bachelor I didn't know what to make about that, because I didn't believe women would do such a thing! It seemed to me to be another gratuitous insult to women.

Some said, 'It's the married women that mustn't speak.'

Why mustn't they?

'Because if they started to speak they might interweave a little teaching and thus usurp authority over their husbands, and that wouldn't do in public either.'

What about the unmarried women? They wouldn't be wanting to bring their husbands down a peg or two, would they? Is it just the unmarried women, then, who are to speak in this context, not the married ones? But that would be absurd, wouldn't it? Here's a senior Christian woman with years of spiritual experience behind her, and she mustn't question? Whereas some newly converted bright young thing of seventeen may, who scarcely knows where to find the Gospel of John? It sounds a bit odd to me.

At any rate, if those were the reasons Paul would say so. When he says 'it is shameful' (1 Corinthians 14:35), and they mustn't ask a question, he gives the reason. Not that it would be shameful for a woman to question a prophet; simply 'it is shameful for a woman to speak in church'.

I may be wrong, but in my humble estimation the contrast is between the church and the home. What women are asked not to do in the church, they're encouraged to do at home, and that will be the explanation of the apparent difference between chapter 14 and chapter 11.

So I said that, when it came to women prophesying, we could take the example of the Jewish prophetesses like Anna. They wouldn't have prophesied in the course of the temple or synagogue services, but on other occasions in that part of the temple where the public gathered. Many people gave lectures there, and it was where Anna exercised her ministry in the presence of both men and women. Why shouldn't she? It wasn't in the formal services of either the synagogue or temple, and I understand that the Christians likewise would have followed that same thing. Not in the formal services of the church but elsewhere on other occasions.

¹ See ‘A Christian Philosophy of Man’, p. 60 ‘2. A symbol of glory’.