Women Pastors:The True Biblical Position(2)
By Richard R. Melick
Biblical Contexts
Biblical exegesis requires sensitivity to the context of a passage. When Scripture is taken out of its context, faulty conclusions and blurred perspectives result. Two matters impact this discussion significantly – the issues of literary context and cultural context. Let us first examine literary context. Each biblical writer directed his word to specific issues. The task of the biblical expositor is to determine the precise nature of those issues.
An example of the importance of correct contextual analysis occurs in Galatians 3:28. In explaining the meaning of justification, Paul said that in Christ there is “neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female.” The outstanding social characteristic of Christianity is that ethnic (“Jew nor Greek”), economic (“bond nor free”), and gender (“male nor female”) distinctions have no bearing on salvation, nor upon equal standing among all Christians. It is obvious that the context of the statement is its explanation of the impact of justification. This is a soteriological statement: it speaks to the doctrine of salvation. The teaching is that all believers, without regard to social distinctions, have equal access to God through Christ, and, consequently, are to be unified in the Body of Christ.
Near the end of his life, ten to fifteen years after the writing of the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul wrote to both Timothy and Titus, giving them pastoral instructions about how the church is to be organized. Both 1 Timothy and Titus provide clearly for a hierarchical approach to church order in which men rather than women were to occupy that role.
Some have pointed to Galatians 3:28 as justification for women serving as pastors. However, it is a misuse of Scripture to produce ecclesiastical patterns from soteriological passages! While Paul clearly affirms the equality of men and women in salvation, he equally and just as clearly affirms the priority of men in church leadership. There is no conflict. The contextual issue is crucial for an accurate exposition in this, as in all areas. Readers must exercise great care, therefore, to determine the nature of the issue under discussion in order to understand and apply the message relevantly today.
Organizational Patterns
Biblical teaching regarding church order goes hand in hand with its teaching regarding family order. Indeed the instructions for one often interrelate with instructions for the other.
One finds a similar tension in biblical teachings on family order that occurs in the doctrines of salvation and the church. Passages teaching the equality of women, reveal an important principle: in their standing before God and with each other, men and women are equal in several ways. First, they have equal value as persons (Gal. 3:28). Next, men and women have equal responsibility to communicate intimately in marriage relationships. This is seen in God’s plan that marriage is to be a companionship of equals (Gen. 2:24). It is never biblically warranted for either the man or the woman to depreciate the social, intellectual, physical, or spiritual companionship of a spouse. Finally, the Bible affirms the equal responsibility of men and women in propagating life (Gen. 1:28).
On the other hand, the Scriptures teach a hierarchy of responsibilities. The wife is to submit to her husband (Eph. 5:22). Some insist the introductory words “submitting yourselves to one another” (Eph. 5:21) somehow tempers the command for wives to submit, but the explicit teaching of the passage is that wives are to submit; husbands are to love. This interpretation is confirmed by the clear parallel passage in Colossians (3:18), and the teaching of Peter (1 Peter 3:1), where submission is specifically commanded of the wife. The Greek term used for submission (hypotasso) suggests a voluntary submission based on a commitment to proper order. It does not imply an organization based on inability or inferiority. Indeed, this term seems to have been chosen by Paul to honor the unique value of the wife. In a beautiful tension, he affirms both value and order, both equality and subordination.
