11. Women in the New Testament church prophesied in church meetings (1 Cor 11:5).
12. Paul did not allow women to chat to each other while others were speaking during church meetings and/or to interrupt their husbands to ask questions while they were prophesying (1 Cor 14:33-35).
13. When the New Testament church gathered, anyone could bring a song, a teaching, a revelation, a language, or an interpretation (1 Cor 14:26).
14. Married women in the New Testament church are instructed to submit to their husbands (Eph 5:22, 24; Col 3:18; 1 Pet 3:1).
15. In the thought world of the early Christians, relational submission did not necessarily imply ontological inferiority (1 Cor 15:28; Heb 13:17).
16. Husbands in the New Testament church are described as being the head of their wives and instructed to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Eph 5:23; 1 Cor 11:3).
17. Paul said to Timothy that he did not allow a woman to teach or exercise/assume authority over a man (1 Tim 2:12).
18. The requirements for elders/overseers in the New Testament included being faithful to their wives, keeping their children submissive, and governing their households well, all of which assume that elders/overseers are men (1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9).
19. No spiritual gift – not prophecy, teaching, leadership, or anything else – is identified in Scripture as being exclusively given to men or women (Rom 12:3-8; 1 Cor 12:4-13, 27-31).
20. All nineteen of the above statements reflect an internally consistent and coherent vision of the way men and women are to function in marriage and the church.
With the exception of the last one, these statements are essentially exegetical judgments: decisions about what authors and texts meant in their original settings. The last one is more a presupposition about Scripture; but although I said it was highly controversial, it is, in fact, likely to be affirmed by all self-identifying evangelicals, since it is nothing more than an application of a general evangelical conviction (the consistency and clarity of Scripture) to a specific issue. So frankly, there’s an awful lot for evangelicals to agree about.
The main reason for laying them out like this is to show, once again, how much agreement there can and should be amongst egalitarians and complementarians. (Many will be surprised to find that Gordon Fee and Phil Towner agree with Bill Mounce and Andreas Köstenberger on #17 and #18, for example, or that Tom Schreiner and Doug Moo agree with Scot McKnight and Tom Wright on #8 and #10).
This, following my previous posts on how much we agree on marriage and the myths in the gender debate, is therefore intended to provide a platform for two further Wednesday posts, on hermeneutics and application, which move from exegesis (on which there is huge agreement) to how these passages should be applied (on which there is huge disagreement).
This post forms part of a series I wrote for whatyouthinkmatters.org on the gender debate. You can find links to all the articles in that series here.
