Mary says to the Angel – May it be unto me as you have said. 

Mary is not the first woman to fill a central role in the story of Jesus. Any quick perusal of Jesus' genealogy reveals a list of "scandalous" women from Israel's history - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah's Wife (Bathsheba), and finally Mary. It is odd that they are mentioned in this context, odder still that their "scandal" is not painted over. Women are not silent in the narrative of Jesus.

But does Paul claw all of that back?

1 Cor 14: 34-35, seems to be about women not speaking in the Church. Few Churches act out the simplest reading of these verses, which is that women should remain absolutely silent in Church. That doesn’t just mean preaching or teaching; that means praying, singing, doing children’s time, reading announcements, saying hello, etc…Even those who believe that women shouldn’t preach or teach have given up this most basic reading. So already we have some interpretation happening.

And we need interpretation, because it seems impossible that Paul is actually saying that women must remain totally silent in the Church. In 1 Corinthians 11:4-5 Paul assumes that women will be praying and prophesying in the Church. In other letters Paul commends various women as prophets, deacons, even apostles (eg. Rom 16:1-12; Phil. 4:2-3). And in Acts 2:17-18 it is announced that sons and daughters, male and female servants will prophecy.  All believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit can prophesy, and the context for this prophecy is the building up of the Church. In fact, if women are not allowed to speak at all in the Church assembly, then it must mean that the rest of 1 Corinthians 12-14 – which instructs believers on how to build up the Church with their Spirit-given gifts - must apply only to the male members of the Body of Christ!  

Some have suggested that women were allowed to prophesy and pray, but not to teach, preach, or weigh the prophecies of others. But this passage is not about preaching and teaching at all, and Paul does not limit the gift of discernment (nor any other gift) to men alone. And prophecy was designed at least in part to teach everyone (1 Cor 14:31), so women who were prophesying were teaching. So it seems the verses in front of us cannot mean that all women should never talk in Church. What do we do with these verses, then?

Problem is, we simply don’t know, aside from educated guesses, what was going on in Corinth at this time that caused Paul to give the corrections he did. One popular notion is that the men and women were split up into different rooms or sections for their Church meetings, and that the women were idly chatting too much and interfering with the worship of the men. But this probably wasn’t the way the home churches were set up, and verse 35 shows us that the women in the Church in Corinth weren’t idly chatting; they wanted to learn. This, Paul agrees, is a good thing, just as speaking in tongues is a good thing. But asking questions in the middle of the meeting, as it appears the women in Corinth were doing, was not a good thing. It caused disruption and confusion just as speaking in tongues in a disorderly and unintelligible way caused disorder and confusion.

But why then were women told to not ask questions in this context, and not men? One strong possibility:  If the women in Corinth were asking questions during the time that Scripture was being taught, as seems likely, then they were probably causing offense by doing so. Questions were normal in public lectures, but they were asked in an orderly way, and it was considered rude to ask irrelevant questions, or questions that could be answered on your own time through your own study. And 2000 years ago, women were far more likely to be uneducated or unfamiliar with public lectures, so they were far more likely to be asking irrelevant or inappropriate questions while the Scripture was being taught. This was shameful and scandalous in the culture that the Corinthian Church wanted to reach with the gospel. 

Thus, goes the argument, the Corinthian women’s silence, in this particular case and time, would be loving and God-honouring to the rest of the Body. The women here were being asked to submit, as the Law required, to the needs of Church peace. Remember, this whole section of Paul's letter was about love for the Body, and helping those outside the Church understand what was going on. The emphasis is on taking down any barriers for understanding.

But shouldn’t the Church be in favour of changing unequal and unjust situations? Well, Paul was still in favour of women learning more by asking questions. So he points out that there was another venue in which they could ask questions and learn what they wanted to know: asking their husbands at home, who were probably more educated than they were. This is the most progressive program for the education of women at the time! When we read this instruction from a 21st century Western mindset, it seems dismissive. "Go ask you husband!" But we have to learn not to do that with ancient writings. Far from belittling the women, this instruction assumes that they can and should learn the things they want to know, and addresses the inequality of Scriptural education between men and women. It asks husbands to take responsibility for ensuring that their wives receive the education they are looking for.  (A modern application of this principle could be ensuring that those who have not had the same educational opportunities as others, regardless of gender, have access to classes in which they can be taught Scriptural basics.) 

The careful conclusion I come to is that these verses are a correction given to the Church in Corinth. There is a message here for us, but the letter is not written to us. I therefore believe that this passage does not prohibit women from speaking in the Church today. The passage does not address preaching or teaching, and the cultural situation that made it necessary for the women in Corinth to save their questions for their husbands at home no longer exists. This interpretation does leave open the possibility that there may be cultures in the world today that are similar to that of Corinth, and in which women might still cause scandal by asking questions in the Church. But it insists, as Paul did, that Christian men in those cultures work towards resolving any inequalities in education the women face, so that they can participate more fully in Church gatherings. The Church must work to change those cultures from the inside out, and it must not simply be content to adopt the prevailing culture.

I also believe this passage does not prevent women from exercising any role or gift in the body, as we see women in these roles and using these gifts in other parts of Scripture, and as we receive Paul’s instruction from this passage that “all may prophesy…so that all may learn and all be encouraged.”  The case-specific instruction given here fleshes out the same principle that underlies all regulation of Christian worship: act in love towards one another, and do not cause confusion or disruption in worship, so that all within the Church can understand and be built up, and all outside the Church can hear the message of the Gospel. The Scriptural principle to which we are called here is order and peace in worship, not the silence of women.