Paul’s Teaching about Women in 1 Corinthians Chapters 11 and 14

This text originally appeared in The Word, 1994.

QUESTION: How do you relate and reconcile Paul’s teaching on women in 1 Corinthians chapters 11 and 14? He appears to allow women to pray and prophesy in chapter 11, but in chapter 14 they must say nothing: ‘keep silent’ (v. 34). What would a godly woman nowadays be doing when she is prophesying? Can you give a description and some examples? Can you give details about both chapters 11 and 14 regarding the flow of the argument and the words used, especially in chapter 14. (We already have Symbols of Headship and Glory, based on chapter 11.)

DWG: The matter of Scripture versus tradition or fashion is important here, i.e. the cultural question. The two passages that are most frequently discussed in the context of whether women should be allowed to take part audibly in the meetings of the church are 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 and 1 Corinthians 14:33–35. It seems clear enough to me from the first of these passages, and from Acts 21:9, that in New Testament times Christian women did both pray and prophesy.

The point at issue nowadays is where did they do this praying and prophesying, and in particular did they do it publicly in the church, or elsewhere? Disagreement over the matter may arise among Christians who are sincerely anxious to do the will of God. If 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 stood by itself, one would get the impression that Paul is here giving directions on how women should pray and prophesy in the church; whereas in 1 Corinthians 14:33–35 Paul forbids women to speak in the church. And while one can pray in the church without speaking audibly, one certainly cannot prophesy in the church without speaking audibly.

At first sight, therefore, these two passages seem to conflict, and Christians divide in their reaction to this apparent conflict. Some take chapter 11 as the controlling passage, and maintain that chapter 14 must be interpreted so that it does not contradict chapter 11. Even if they do not understand chapter 14 completely, they argue that we should not allow these obscurities to remove the freedom which 1 Corinthians 11 seems to give to women to speak audibly in the church.

Others take the opposite view. They hold that 1 Corinthians 14 is absolutely clear, and must therefore be allowed to control the interpretation of chapter 11. Chapter 14 says that women are not allowed to speak in the church. Therefore, their praying and prophesying mentioned in chapter 11 must have been done, not in the church, but elsewhere.

I suppose that dear and godly Christians will be arguing about this until the Lord himself comes. Certainly one cannot settle the question by counting the number of expositors and commentators ranged on each side of the question. One must decide the matter in one’s own heart before the Lord. But also one must presumably submit to the rule of the elders in each church. Here, the question of the autonomy of each church seems to me to be very important. If each church is really autonomous, then the elders of each church have not only the right, but the duty, to decide disputed matters before God, and to guide the church in the way which they feel is right, without interference from outside by other churches.

That said, my own feeling is that the two passages in Corinthians do not contradict each other. If, by way of putting things into their historical context, we think of ancient Israel for a moment, their women prayed and some of them also prophesied. How marvellous and effective Hannah’s prayer was, for instance.

However, in New Testament times they would not have done either, at least audibly; neither in the formal services of the temple nor in the formal services of the synagogue. A famous example in the New Testament is Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:36–38). She did not prophesy in the course of the temple services nor in the course of the synagogue services. On the other hand, she did prophesy in the presence of men. On the one famous occasion that we know of, Joseph and Simeon were present, and doubtless there may well have been men among those to whom she spoke, who were ‘looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.’ But the situation in which she exercised her ministry was an informal one in the temple courts when there were no formal services going on in the temple.

At such times the temple courts would be frequented by various individuals and groups of people, each doing their own thing, whether praying or offering a sacrifice, or celebrating a Bar Mitzvah, or what have you. In such informal situations, Anna would have prophesied, as led by the Lord, to both men and women. How many of Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah’s prophecies were delivered in the course of the formal services in the temple or synagogue?

I imagine then that the early Christians followed the Jewish custom. In the church, women were not expected to speak: 1 Corinthians 14:35 says so explicitly. Therefore, they did not pray and prophesy audibly in the church. But what they were not expected to do in the formal meetings of the church, they were expected and encouraged to do elsewhere.

I know that there are other explanations of the apparent contradiction between chapters 11 and 14. In my youth, attempts were made to resolve the difficulty by saying that in 1 Corinthians 14:35, the word ‘speak’ means ‘chatter’. The idea was that the women in the early churches were much given to chattering. That view has now become old fashioned and has faded away. Very rightly so, for, without intending to, it offered a gratuitous but very serious insult to Christian women. When I was last in a service in a Jewish synagogue, I had to sit among the men. I do not know what the women did; but I can tell you that the whole way through the service the Jewish men kept up a constant babble of conversation about everything under the sun. Why should it be thought that it was only the Christian women that were given to chattering during the meetings of the church, and not the Christian men?

Nowadays a more modern explanation is put forward. People say that 1 Corinthians 14:35 should be interpreted in the light of verses 29–33, and that ‘speak’ in verse 35 means ‘speak’ in the sense of questioning the prophets, as verse 29 encourages the other prophets to do. In other words, what verse 35 is forbidding women to do is not praying and prophesying, but publicly questioning the men prophets. And it is suggested that the reason for this prohibition is that, if women were allowed publicly to question the prophets, they might, under the guise of questioning, attempt to teach the church, correct the doctrines of the prophets, and substitute their own.

But it is not clear to me that verses 34–36 are carrying on the topic dealt with in verses 29–33. It seems to me that at verse 34 Paul turns to dealing with a different matter; and, secondly, the reason why Paul says that women should not ask questions in the church is not that they might be tempted to usurp authority over the men prophets and teach the church publicly—if he did mean that, he would have said that—the reason he gives why they should not even ask questions in the church is, ‘for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church.’ Since Paul could have put it otherwise, if he had chosen to, I take it that when he says ‘speak’, he means ‘speak’. In other words, I take his words at their face value.

Nor is it an unusual or unlikely thing that women should be forbidden to do in the church what they are encouraged to do elsewhere. Both in chapter 11 and chapter 14 we have occurrences of the same phenomenon. At 11:34 the eating of ordinary meals to satisfy one’s hunger is forbidden as part of the proceedings of a normal church meeting, but it is encouraged at home. Similarly, at 14:28 a man with the gift of tongues is told to be quiet in the church if no interpreter is present. Outside the church he is free to do with his gift as he pleases.

Now it is sometimes said that, if Christian women are not allowed to lead the church audibly in the worship of God, they are being denied the exercise of priesthood that belongs to all believers equally, men and women. But that is not true. One does not even have to be in church in order to exercise one’s priesthood; and moreover, when Paul tells men with the gift of tongues not to exercise it in the church if no interpreter is present, he is not denying a man’s right to exercise his priesthood. The man is encouraged to use his priesthood by speaking to himself and to God; that is, inaudibly (1 Cor 14:28). The vast majority of members in any church, whether men or women, exercise their priesthood in this way. Some men never lead the church audibly.

APPENDIX

1. Prophecy is a gift. Not all men have it, nor all women (1 Cor 12:29).

         a. Anna is explicitly said to be a prophetess (Luke 2:36). She was recognized as having that gift.

        b. Philip’s daughters are likewise singled out as women who engaged in that activity (Acts 21:9). N.B. the Greek participle, prophesied.

        c. Jezebel claimed to be a prophetess and teacher, but she was false (Rev. 2:20).

How common is this gift? It should not be overlooked that, according to 1 Corinthians 14, it is one of the greatest gifts in the church. In any one church meeting only two, or at the most three, would be allowed to function, with time given for others to discern if what they had said was right (v. 29).

2. Examples of prophesying in the New Testament.

        a. Zacharias (Luke 1:67)

            (1) the special filling for the occasion

            (2) the message delivered at that crucial moment was an exposition of the significance of the events taking place.

        b. Elizabeth’s exclamation (1:41–45)

            (1) shows the same filling

            (2) contents are shorter, but of the same kind

            (3) she is not said to be a prophetess.

        c. Mary’s magnificat (1:46–55) shows similar contents to Zacharias’ statement, though more personal.

        d. Anna’s remarks (2:36–38) show the same kind of mixture of thanks to God and explanation for the significance of the momentous events happening through the Incarnation.

        e. Simeon’s words (2:25-35) are similarly interpretative and predictive.

        f. Agabus (Acts 11:27–28; 21:10–11). On both occasions the message was directed to predicting the immediate future.

3. In addition one could cite:

        a. Acts 2:11—the mighty works of God could be thought to be the topic of the prophesying mentioned in 1:18.

        b. 1 Corinthians 14:3 gives a statement of the general aim and effect of prophesying (not so much of its contents).

        c. 1 Corinthians 14:30 shows that sometimes prophecy resulted from ‘a revelation’.

4. The demand made by the high-priest’s men (Luke 22:64) reflects the belief that prophets had special powers of discernment (see 1 Kings 14:1–5).

Apart from the utterances of Elizabeth, Mary and Anna, I am not aware of any record in the New Testament of the contents of women’s prophecies.

Mary’s words were in a stylised poetic form, in Old Testament phraseology. Perhaps the more famous hymns written by women are expressions of Spirit-led insights and comment on Christ—the gospel, plus praise.

On the point that prophesying took place as much, or more, outside the church as inside—and therefore 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 is not necessarily and primarily concerned only with behaviour in the church—it is perhaps significant that the phrase, ‘when you come together’ is first mentioned at verse 17 and then frequently after that (11:18, 20, 33; 14:23, 26).

On the thought-flow of 1 Corinthians 14:33–34:

1. The second part of 14:33 does not belong to what has gone before. It makes no sense to say ‘God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.’
2. It belongs to what follows and should read: ‘As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches.’

Paul is making the point that the ruling he was about to lay down applied in all Christian churches, everywhere, in all countries: Semitic, Hellenistic, or whatever the varying local cultures may be. Women’s not speaking was to be maintained ‘in all the churches’ as distinct from all other places and situations.

3. Notice the limitation it puts on verse 26, ‘when you come together.’
4. The same limitation applies in verse 28.