“As in all the churches of the saints, ³⁴ the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. ³⁵ If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. ³⁶ Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? ³⁷ If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. ³⁸ If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Corinthians 14).

In every conversation I’ve had with egalitarians on this passage, the only response I have ever received is simply: ‘but! it says elsewhere that women prophesy! So Paul can’t have meant women should stay silent.” What then follows is an attempt to paint this passage as a temporary command Paul gave that is no longer in effect. So not only did Paul not mean the words he actually wrote (women should be silent), but even what he did mean is no longer to be obeyed. As for his teaching that it is shameful for a woman to speak in church? Well, whenever I’ve pushed them on that issue I’ve been called a misogynist.

The egalitarians therefore functionally eliminate this entire passage from Scripture by making it useless, all because they make it contradict another statement. Egalitarians often use the same strategy when they blot out Eph 5:22 saying wives should submit to their husbands as to the Lord, by appealing to 5:21 saying we should all submit to one another, or strike out 1 Cor 11:5-10 saying women should cover their heads to show their submission, all because 11:15 says women’s hair is a covering.

So the egalitarian strategy is not only to Scripture contradict itself, to render entire passages utterly useless, and to erase them and say we cannot base any doctrine or practice off them. The result? Scripture is – quite simply – undermined. Rather than seeking to harmonise and make sense of all of Scripture and utilise all of its teaching, they instead look for ways to pit Scripture against itself and delete some of its teaching. This is not the spirit of obedient Christianity, this is faithlessness and insubordination. Any hermeneutic that, rather than bringing clarity to a passage, instead makes it nonsensical is either utterly foolish or blatantly sinful – usually both.

Next time you talk with an egalitarian, and they say of 1 Cor 14:34 ‘but! women prophesied!’ my recommendation is that you don’t let them escape from the verse in question. Don’t let them distract you and take you down the rabbit hole of what it meant that women sometimes prophesied (not necessarily at church), instead, ask them: ‘okay, so what does verse 34 mean then?’ Often they will say that at Corinth the women were making a ruckus during the liturgy and so Paul was telling them to hush up, but that doesn’t square with v33 which says: ‘as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent.’ They might make other arguments to prove that the commandment was intended only for a specific time and place, but that doesn’t square with Paul’s definitive statement that ‘it is shameful for a woman to speak in church’ (v35), and him saying right after to ‘acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized’ (v38-39). Not to mention the fact that three chapters prior Paul said that ‘the head of the woman is the man… For man was not made from woman but woman from man, and man was not made for woman but woman for man, that is why a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head’ (1 Cor 11:8-9), which is quite obviously related to what Paul says about women’s silence. The reality is that the passage in question is a universal commandment, from the Lord, for all the churches, based on unchanging principles (‘it is shameful for a woman to speak in church’), which cannot be rejected.

And because Scripture is inspired by God so that the man of God might be equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:17), and because this passage is from the Lord and to be obeyed, the fact of the matter is that 1 Cor 14:34-35 has to mean something and has to be applied to us today somehow, but the egalitarian method is simply to put a black line through it. This method is frankly unfaithful to Scripture and is, in every possible sense, a ‘liberal’ strategy. Once the Church permits such ways of reading (or rather, erasing) Scripture, she allows a poison to enter the Church which will eventually lead to many other heresies.

Since there does have to be a sense in which the Lord commands (v38) that women must be silent in church (v34) even today, and a sense in which it would be shameful for them to speak (v35), that surely, surely, rules out the possibility of women being Priests/Pastors. It is impossible to maintain that a woman can lead the liturgy, preach the sermon, and preside over Communion, while also maintaining that there is a sense in which women must be silent at church. Or what? Are you going to say that it’s just fine and dandy for a woman to lead, preach, and preside, but good heavens, it would be SHAMEFUL for her to read out the parish notices! Even if we granted that women prophesied during the liturgy at Corinth, it must surely be the case that preaching a sermon to the congregation and expounding God’s would come under Paul’s understanding of ‘speaking’ or that presiding over the Communion liturgy and thus signing, sealing, and confirming God’s promise of salvation to the congregation on His behalf is also ‘speaking.’

The other option, again, is to simply blot 1 Corinthians 14:34-39 out of the Bible. No matter that Paul tells us it is a command of the Lord for all of the churches and if it is not recognized one is not received. No, don’t worry your pretty little head about that, because we’ve found a way out. All we need to do is say that it contradicts a vague statement Paul made earlier and then we can get out our permanent markers and strike this bothersome passage out of the record with full impunity! Often egalitarians will say that we shouldn’t base our church teachings or practices off of 1 Cor 14:34-39 because it’s too ‘vague.’ In fact, it’s not. Sure, there are some grey areas (such as, for instance, can a woman read the notices?) but what it certainly does do is rule out women being Pastors, and since we aren’t even close to sorting out that problem, let’s not worry just yet about the grey areas.

What in fact is vague, is Paul’s prior statement that sometimes women prophesied (1 Cor 11:5), however nothing in that passage suggests that women prophesied at church during the liturgy. At best, then (and this is what I would argue) this verse has absolutely no impact on Paul’s command that women must be silent, at worst, it is vague and inconclusive on how it impacts the command. The statement that women prophesied cannot seriously be used as the clear teaching which sheds light on (or rather, destroys entirely) the supposedly unclear statement that the Lord commands women to be silent in all the churches. What’s most maddening is when otherwise intelligent thinkers use such laughably stupid logic, in what is very obviously a desperate attempt to escape Biblical teachings they don’t like. And, once again, if the Church allows this nonsense to occur, and allows 2000 years of consistent teaching and practice to be thrown into the same trash heap as all the Biblical passages that served as its basis, then there is no way to avoid the same thing happening for Scripture’s teachings on sexuality.

Instead, how about this: when Scripture commands women to be silent at church, before we get to the nitty gritty details about how that works with the tricky stuff, and how it can be harmonised with some other statements, let’s sort out what it definitely does rule out: women preaching and presiding over Communion. With that established, why don’t we, I don’t know…. Obey it?

Coda: A New International Revised English Translation of 1 Corinthians 14:33-38

“For your particular church only, ³⁴ might I kindly suggest that people don’t talk during the service? And I don’t want to be presumptuous but I have heard that the people talking are usually the women. Now, don’t get me wrong, women are absolutely permitted to speak, and I am not demanding their submission, because as the Law says, that would be misogynistic, in any case it would have contradicted what I said before about how the entire service should be nothing but women prophesying with their long hair uncovered (since their hair is their covering). ³⁵ But, if the women talk throughout the service and miss what is said, then perhaps they should ask their husbands afterwards what they missed. Not that women cannot also teach their husbands of course, for in fact, I would rather more women were leaders and teachers in your church and I want them to instruct their husbands to be better. For it is shameful if a church does not allow women to speak.