The Issues
Paul, Women, and Wives - Week 1
See, however, Robert Culver, “A Traditionalist Position: Let Your Women Keep Silence,” in Women in Ministry: Four Views, ed. Bonnidell Clouse and Robert G. Clouse (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1989), 36; more recently, Bruce Ware (“Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God,” JBMW 7 [2002], 20) argues that men bear God’s image directly and women only derivatively; hence the priority of male over female. Evangelical scholarship (with rare exception) has come to see that female self-deception and a derivative divine image conflict with scriptural teaching elsewhere. If women were so inclined, Paul would have forbidden women from teaching per se. But he does not do so; indeed, he does just the opposite. For instance, he instructs older women to teach and train the younger women (Titus 2:3–4). Also, while Paul does assert that all human beings without exception sin, at no time does he suggest that women are more susceptible to sin’s deceiving activity than men (e.g., Rom. 3:9–20). In fact, it was two men (not women) Paul expelled from the Ephesian church for false teaching that stemmed from personal deception (1 Tim. 1:19–20).