Hermeneutical Imperatives

I accept and embrace the Bible as the Word of God, inspired and without error. This was not always the case.

God made his claim on my life during high school, but I was slow in coming to trust the Bible as anything more than a collection of Aesop's fable-like stories and poetic sentiments useful on ceremonial occasions. I was only dimly aware that there were people—vaguely referred to as "fanatics"—who held more robust views. Raised in a home and a church with the same view as my own, my perspective on Scripture did not detract from my intention to enter ordained ministry in the United Presbyterian Church. I knew God was real, and I had encountered him in every way possible except through Scripture. I had no notion that I was missing anything.

It wasn't until college that I met intelligent believers who accepted the Bible as God's Word, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. I wrestled with the authority and inspiration of the Bible for several years. Choosing to do an independent study course on the subject, I went through a reading list given to me by a professor only to come to the conclusion that all the books were written from the same point of view. Several reading lists later, I found myself intimately acquainted with textual criticism, textual variants, oral tradition, the Q document, the Essenes, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, demythologizing, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and a lot more.

For me, exploring the fields of higher, biblical, and textual criticism revealed the fundamental accuracy of the canonical texts. Yet it was actually a very simple question that resolved the deeper issue of authority. Jesus trusted the inspiration of the Old Testament and promised the inspiration of the New Testament. He quoted Scripture at every point in his life, including his words on the cross from Psalm 22. Jesus bled Scripture. If I trusted Jesus to be who he said he was, why wouldn't I also trust his view of the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures? This was a game-changing realization for me. And it changed a lot more.

I have recounted this personal odyssey in order to assure the reader that I had every opportunity—and a major motivation—to stop short of fully accepting Scripture as the only rule of faith and practice. No one among my family or friends believed that; so it wasn't a view I was raised to hold, and it brought with it massive consequences. For instance, now that I trusted God's Word as truth, written to aid my flourishing and not to diminish it, my choices needed to be submitted to Scripture. When my choices and God's commands clashed, he won.

This made the study of hermeneutics one of utmost personal urgency. What was the Bible really saying on key issues? Could anyone know, or was there wiggle room? If there was wiggle room, was it anywhere useful to me?

The subject of hermeneutics is vast, and not all of it is relevant to the topic of women in ministry, so I will only summarize the basics. In the past generation there have been many new works on the science of biblical interpretation, and they contain much of value. Yet these books, even while recognizing the complexity of the task, if written by evangelicals with a high view of Scripture, still hold to the same two touchstones. For me, these two principles have made all the difference, particularly in the area of gender roles, ministry, and the collision between them.

First, Scripture does not contradict Scripture. Or in the elegant words of Article 20 of the Anglican Church's Thirty-Nine Articles, "neither may it [the Church] so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another." The corollary of this could be stated thus: What is clear in the Bible interprets what is cloudy.

How could it be otherwise, especially if One Mind was behind the revelation, the writing, and even the choice of the diverse recipients of God's Word? I am always amused, and occasionally annoyed, that common sense doesn't figure into the discussion of the understandability of Scripture. If you can accept the existence of a Being powerful enough to be called God—the Creator and Sustainer of the universe—why is it so difficult to believe that he would be capable of communicating authentically and clearly to his creatures? That seems a somewhat smaller matter than spinning all the electrons around all the nuclei of billions upon billions of worlds, never mind simultaneously attending to the broken hearts and crushed spirits of his sentient creatures.

Second, every text must be understood in its context—historical, cultural, and social. What was the author's intent in each book, passage, and sentence, and what did it mean to the original hearers? The corollary to this principle is: We must find a way to obey faithfully whatever we discover to be God's revealed will, even if our cultural situation has changed since it was first revealed.

Again, common sense should be an aid. God inspired human beings to write his revelation. The Bible is therefore a human book, using human language. Yet if God is immutable and in his providence assembled a book to guide his people in all times and places, then what he revealed yesterday about his character and his design for his creatures will not be changed today. God is not capable of "new and improved" anything, because his perfection is such that any change would be a step away from complete holiness, complete love, complete justice, and complete mercy. We may need to practice obedience to his commands in creative ways, reflecting the changed contexts in which we find ourselves, but that rarely presents any real hurdle. God gives unalterable commands, but he also gives us freedom to obey them in culturally diverse ways.

Having established the hermeneutical ground rules, let us jump into the deep end of the pool and consider what some feminists call the "texts of terror": 1 Corinthians 14:33b–38 and 1 Timothy 2:11–12.

What 1 Corinthian 14:33b–38 Cannot Mean

First Corinthians 14:33b–38 reads as follows:

33bAs in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

36Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. 38If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.

This passage cannot mean that women may not in any way communicate orally in public gatherings of the church. In 1 Corinthians 11:5, just three chapters earlier, Paul writes that "every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head." The discussion...