1 Corinthians 14:34-35

From the January 2016 parish magazine, preparing for the arrival of Monken Hadley's first female curate, following an introduction and comments on 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in the previous issue.

Does Paul wish women to be silent in the church on the grounds that it is “shameful for a woman to speak in church”? This can hardly be the case, as in chapter 11 Paul refers to both men (verse 4) and women (verse 5) praying and prophesying in public. This is a short note outlining some ways of reading 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

Paul initially spent eighteen months in Corinth sharing the good news about Jesus Christ, teaching, pasturing, and making disciples. What we call “1 Corinthians” was not Paul’s first correspondence with the church after he had moved on from Corinth to proclaim the good news elsewhere (1 Corinthians 5:9 refers to an earlier letter). It is a letter written in response to news from Chloe’s household that there were quarrels within the church (1 Corinthians 1:11). On a whole range of issues the apostle has stern words with the church.

One issue was disorderly and wrong-headed worship, namely teaching and leading prayer being done in attire that communicated social status and independence, drawing attention away from the glory of God (11:2-16), the Eucharist being celebrated in a way which sets the rich apart and shames the poor (11:17-34), and God’s gifts, with a particular focus on gifts related to speaking, being used for self-promotion (chapters 12-14).

The various abuses have in common a greater concern for oneself than for the other. It is in this context that we need to read the final passage dealing with worship (14:26-40). “God is a God not of disorder but of peace” (verse 33) and “all things should be done decently and in order” (verse 40).

If one of Paul’s concerns had been to differentiate roles within the church long gender lines, the apostle would have done a spectacularly bad job, given that he begins the discussion with having both men and women pray and prophesy (11:2-16), then makes nothing at all of different roles for men and women in his discussion of the Eucharist (11:17-34), and finally fails to note any distinction in the way men and women are to employ spiritual gifts and responsibilities (12:1-14:25).  It would be odd if only in the conclusion of his discussion on orderly worship the apostle were to discover an interest in limiting the ministries that women can exercise within the church.

In fact, it seems that the apostle’s concern remains firmly with things being done in such good order that everyone will benefit. So, when he concludes this discussion by asking, “What should be done then, my friends?” (14:26), Paul answers his own question by emphasising not the need for everyone to remain in their place but for each one who has something to contribute to bear in mind the aim of building up the church in faith and to this effect the apostle offers the following guidelines.

1. There is to be no use of foreign languages without interpretation;
2. not too many people should speak at any one meeting and their contributions need to be evaluated;
3. if someone has a new insight to offer, the first speaker should be prepared to stop speaking and to listen.

Finally, the controversial passage, verses 33c-35:

As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

It is not plausible that Paul suddenly contradicts himself by insisting that women should be completely silent in church. To avoid a contradiction with, e.g., what Paul says in 11:5 and 14:31, as well as the way he commends women elsewhere, we must assume that Paul did not instruct women never to say a word in church.

As one commentator asks, “How can women like Euodia and Syntyche (Phil. 4:2–3), Prisca (Rom. 16:3; 1 Cor. 16:19), Mary (Rom. 16:6), Junia (Rom. 16:7) and Tryphaena and Tryphosa (Rom. 16:12) function as co-workers in the churches if they cannot speak in those churches? How can Phoebe fulfill her role of deacon (Rom. 16:1–2) if she cannot speak out in the assembly? How can a woman like Nympha, who is influential enough to host a house church (Col. 4:15), have been required to remain silent in her own home (cf. also Prisca, the wife of Aquila, 16:19)?” (As there were no church buildings then most acts of worship would have taken place in private homes which created an ambivalence about behaviour that is appropriate in private or public settings.)

There are very few people, if any, who would argue that women must not speak in church. But some believe that Paul seeks to limit the speaking of women. When he prohibits speaking does Paul mean to prohibit teaching or leading prayers? The problem with this interpretation is twofold. One is, as we have observed, that women seem to be engaging in these activities in previous chapters (e.g., prophesying). The other is that the verses specifically identify the reason for speaking as a “desire to know” and offer as an alternative that they should “ask their husbands at home”.

Various reading strategies which give more credit to the integrity of the apostle have been proposed. One is quoting his opponents in these verses as he seems to do elsewhere in the letter. Our typographic conventions for marking quoted speech were not available in his time and his first readers would of course have known better what was said in letters to Paul. We only have his reply.

Another proposal is that Paul was concerned to reduce the number of interruptions from women asking questions or chatting because they did not understand what was being said. (Being less involved in public life, many women would have had less facility with the standard Greek used in public gatherings than the local dialects used at home.)

A third proposal is that Paul is asking wives (the Greek for “wives” and “women” is the same) to refrain from evaluating a prophetic word when the prophet that is being cross-examined is their own husband. This would explain that the apostle instructs these women to ask their husbands at home, without saying anything about what single women or widows were to do.

None of these proposals is entirely without problems but either of the last two proposals would place the instruction in a similar category to the preceding list of guidelines for regulating worship life. I am inclined to believe that Paul is indeed addressing a situation in which wives defy convention by publicly embarrassing their husbands through speaking.

David E. Garland sums up what I believe is going on in these verses: “Paul disallows speech in the assembly that would suggest that a wife is being insubordinate toward her husband, whether it is an interruption or a challenge to a prophetic utterance. The delicate relationship between husband and wife is imperiled by the wife’s public questioning, correcting, or challenging.” He asks these women to hold their tongue, not to be forever silent in church. Whether the opposite case, of men publicly asking questions about prophecies uttered by their wives, was simply not an issue or was not perceived to threaten the marriage relationship in the same way is impossible to tell. In my understanding Paul is not as traditional about hierarchical relationships within marriage, as he is sometimes made out to be. But neither does he seem to have huge problems with the typically non-egalitarian arrangements of his time. The apostle is arguably more concerned with mutual love and submission (esteeming the other higher than oneself) within marriage than with the question whether the roles of husbands and wives are different or the same.

From all we know, women played a more prominent role in Christian communities than in many Jewish synagogues and pagan temples. But there were some pagan cults in which women exercised very prominent roles and Paul may have feared that in promoting the ministry of women the church could be “mistaken for one of the orgiastic, secret, oriental cults that undermined public order and decency” (Schüssler Fiorenza). To forestall this impression the apostle commends the practice of “all the churches of the saints” – they don’t promote lawlessness and insubordination of wives. The church should not be a place where chaos rules or people are shamed. For this reason, it is right that prophets and wives should be able to hold their tongues.

PS: I decided against including a fuller range of options in the parish magazine article but in a blog post I should add two other proposals, as Ian Paul rightly pointed out to me. Many view these verses as a non-Pauline interpolation by a copyist. Gordon Fee has maybe made the best case for this. Others see these verses as an extended quotation of a view which Paul rejects. This was most recently argued again by Lucy Peppiatt, Women and Worship in Corinth: Paul's Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015). She discusses her book here.

Among the commentaries, other than Gordon Fee's, I would like to single out  Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000; see pages 1146-1162) and Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Nottingham: Apollos, 2010; see pages 718-730). The latter point out that many at the time considered personal interactions in public between married women and men other than their husbands scandalous and point out that in our context "it would be more scandalous to prohibit women from speaking with men than it is to allow men and women to speak freely with each other as long as our sense of propriety is not offended" (p. 730).