Paul is not God
I’ve been told God commanded…
Wives obey your husbands….
Women be silent…
Women are forbidden from holding positions of authority…
After all, “Paul* made it clear!” they say.
Ok.
If you believe that everything Paul said is a command from God, then you better pucker up:
“Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
You too, men- lips to lips. Let’s do it like the Romans do. 1 Thess 5:26
No? Hmmm...
Peter said Paul’s words are hard to understand and that certainly hasn’t changed in 2000 years. 2 Peter 3:16
On the topic of women and marriage, people go round and round debating a few words and phrases.
Does head (kephale) mean authority or source? Ephesians 5:23
Is a diakonos a deacon if it’s referencing a man, but somehow means something different and of lesser authority if it’s referencing a woman. Romans 16:1
Was Paul quoting a section of a letter and then refuting it where we read “women be silent?” Or was he actually telling women to be silent, contradicting his own encouragement of women teaching and prophesying in other passages? 1 Corinthians 14:34-37**
Does “all believers submit to one another” not include men submitting to their wives? Is there an opt out clause? Does it only mean “obey” if it’s directed at women? Ephesians 5:21-24***
Volumes have been written by many Greek scholars on these topics and I’m not one of them. I find those resources highly valuable, and some of them certainly stand up better to scrutiny than others, but at the core of my beliefs on these verses, I come back to one fundamental truth:
Paul is not God.
If a doctrine’s only leg to stand on is a single verse or the definition of a single hotly contested Greek word in a letter written to a specific church about a specific situation, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
We can’t read the Bible backwards and expect it to make sense.
Paul was a Torah Observant Jewish Rabbi who surely would have understood the importance of the command “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it…”
If Paul issued any commands, he would have been in violation of this law that came directly from the mouth of God.
That is not to say that Paul’s words were not inspired by God. They certainly were! The apostles held the incredible responsibility of helping congregations properly apply the Torah now that Messiah had come, during a time of tension between Jews and Gentiles who were coming together from vastly different backgrounds to worship and attempt to find unity. They did so with wisdom from God and they wrote down these inspired words.
Doctrinal disputes, cliques, cross-group drama, and power struggles didn’t start with us. Paul et al dealt with people being people just like we do today and we get to read one side of the conversation. If your situation mirrors a situation Paul discussed, then his exhortations, encouragement, admonishments or praise, applies to you. However...
Paul is not God.
If God didn’t command women to be silent…
If God didn’t command women to obey their husbands…
If God didn’t forbid women from holding positions of authority....
And then Messiah came to show us all how it’s done and just.. whoops, forgot to mention those cornerstones of a believer’s walk...
What would give Paul the right to add to his commands?
Nothing.
He doesn’t even claim to have the power to do so. He never says, “Thus says the Lord, say to the children of Ephesus….”
In fact, Paul says to only follow him in so much as he follows Messiah. 1 Corinthians 11:1
Messiah told women to go speak the most powerful words ever spoken, “He is risen!”
I’m not promoting dismissing a single word of Scripture, Genesis to Revelation. We need to wrestle with hard passages until the light comes and we have understanding. Learn some Greek, read about the cultures, understand the original audiences.
When Torah is the foundation, all of the New Testament letters are beautiful pictures of unity between husband and wife, and between male and female co-workers in Kingdom work. Paul never actually says the things he’s accused of (or credited for) saying when understood in context.
But if there’s ever a question or when people get fixated on a single Greek word, I come back to:
Paul is not God.
*I’m using Paul as a catch-all for whichever New Testament writer is in question in any particular passage.
**There is no law in Torah that says women be silent, but there is in the Jewish oral law. Paul is likely quoting an argument from a letter written to him and he refutes this argument saying “What?! Did the word of God come out of you? Or come to you only?” And then he makes his claim that he speaks of the actual commands of God, referencing the commands *in Torah.*
***The Worldwide English translation, one of the only Bibles that translateshypotassōas obey in verse 22, translates the same word as “give way to each other” in verse 21.
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