What do we do with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (Women Silent in Church)?

Thanks

RB<><

I quoted Timothy. Revelation was written by John. False prophets can be as obvious as Mohamed or they can be sneaky like a few of the people congregating in Florida right now. Paul was converted on the road to Damascus by the Resurrected Lord, blessed with the Holy Spirit, and sent to convert the Gentile world TO Jesus. Your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is obviously strong. You might be missing out on His message if you rule out the Old Testament or parts of the New.

There is a slippery slope here where ordaining women has led to ordaining gays. Liberal interperetations seldome, if ever, end well.

Thank you,

I DO NOT rule out the Old Testament, nor Paul. I only say, as rule upon rule is heaped upon believers, when conflicted, or troubled; Look to the words of Christ for help. This thread is a case in point. A good knowledge of scripture is a weapon against the Devil and his tools. But I do remember Jesus and his teachings as being superior instruction to that which came before OR after.
Jesus was a radical and the Religious right of his day, made him pay.

"Then you believe God Almighty to be a moron."

Your equating Paul with God?

Nope, I just consider you and your kind to be morons.

All Scripture is inspired of God and important for today, and a conservative Christian would recognize that.

“you may be drinking deeply from the DaVinci Code well”

I personally think that book is entirely a work of fiction. I admit to not reading it, but I did watch a program about it – possibly the Discovery Channel.

I guess that by your referencing the "persecution" or Arians, Gnostics, and Cathars.

By inclosing “persecution” in quotes, am I to assume you believe it never happened?

Second you give way too much authority to the idea of the Church of Rome. Your information seems to indicates some sense of the Roman Catholic Church as this enormous global entity which from its beginning could control events and pursue worldwide conspiracies. That is simply not the case.

It’s not the case? The Roman Church never called for a crusade against various heretical movements and the Islamic forces around Jerusalem? For a king to be recognized as legitimate in Christendom through the Middle Ages his coronation had to be sanctified by the Pope – there was no control there? The Roman Church never compiled the Index Of Forbidden Books?

The Roman Church itself did not come into existence as a separate entity until the 11th century and although it is the largest body of Christians in the world it does not have jurisdiction over hundreds of millions of Christians and never had any jurisdiction over any of the churches of the East even at the height of its medieval power.

No kidding! The Great Schism was not finalized until the Council of Florence in 1472, although it had its beginnings in the 9th Century and a major split occurred in 1054 when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I excommunicated each other. Even during the long separation both Churches had much of common interest.

Interestingly, though, many of the best conspiracy theories about the Church are simply based on the faulty assumption that Constantine created something called the Roman Catholic Church.

Prior to the Great Schism of 1054 both churches were united, following identical doctrine; with differences only being manifested in style of worship. This Church called itself The One, Holy, Catholic (universal), and Apostolic Church.

How blasphemous.

Why, yes – it is blasphemous in that it is contrary to Church doctrine.

Can you assent to everything in the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds?

My belief is closer to the Nicene that the Apostle’s creed. I still have some trouble with the Virgin Birth, but that is a minor part.

I prefer to consider the meaning in the cultural context it was WRITTEN IN

AND TO.

I think there's an argument to be made that the Roman Catholic Church has overstepped its bounds on a number of occasions. It's just not worldwide.

You can call a Crusade but the Eastern Churches didn't go along with it, in fact we were the victim of it. You can claim any doctrine you want but if four of the five historic Patriarchates and their people don't agree it just ain't so no matter how hard you bluster. You can say that the Pope has universal jurisdiction but it means little if every other church founded by an Apostle disagrees and has the paper to prove their claim.

Remember Western Europe is a fraction of "Christendom" and outside of that sphere of influence the Pope had some political effect but no affect at all on the core beliefs of
Christians. If the Pope had come to Antioch demanding the libraries so they could be purged the response would have been the ecclesiastical equivalent of "cop a hike". All attempts at reunion between the East and West, for example, were basically nullified by Orthodox Christians who said an emphatic "NO" or in more literal terms "better to live under the sultan's turban than the Pope's mitre".

As to the use of the word "persecute" in quotes. The Church never persecuted Gnostics, they disputed with them, anathametized them, and sometimes called them names but nothing ever happened to them on the same scale that Christians endured before the Church was legalized. The Arians were deposed from their positions, they lost their jobs if they were in the Church, but again I have never seen evidences of large scale killings, tortures, etc., of Arians. The Cathars were physically persecuted at the behest of the Roman Catholic Church and so were a number of other groups that cropped up in the time when the Catholic Church exercised significant civil authority in the West and in the Reformation era.

The East had a different take on some of this because large areas of it were under Muslim domination and so the ability to exercise civil authority was largely limited to the Christian community, if at all. Even now, for example, the Patriarch of Constantinople needs to have the approval of the Turkish government to be enthroned. In places where the Orthodox Churches existed as state entities there were
occasional persecutions, particularly of Jews. There was, however, no serious "reformation" movement in the East to induce wide scale persecutions of dissenters because many of the things that provoked the Reformation, indulgences, purgatory, highly centralized transnational power structures, basically don't exist in Orthodoxy. Ironically there was some persecution in Russia of people called "Old Believers" who were actually arguing for, in one sense, MORE Orthodoxy and not less!

In the current situation there are Orthodox countries where there are limits placed on non-Orthodox religious groups. This is particularly the case in Russia where following the break-up of the Soviet Union hordes of Americans descended on the country to prostelytize the supposedly "atheist" Russians to Protestant Christian faith. This was, and is, seen as a threat to Russian national identity and there have been a variety of laws passed regulating religion in the former Soviet Union. Indigenous Protestants, and there have been Protestants in Russia for centuries, have not, in my best understanding, experienced the same kinds of limitations but that could be changing. I'm not comfortable with such laws but I understand why.

That's why I encourage people seeking to know Church history to not neglect the Eastern Orthodox. Knowing Eastern Orthodox life and faith provides a larger perspective on things and a more diverse picture than working within a Roman / Protestant matrix.

So we know, for example, the Apostle Paul in a different way. Whatever later generations of Roman magisterium may have decided about his life and ministry and what it gave them permission to do or be for us he was a brother, one who literally lived with us, taught us, and was sent from us to the world. He was an Eastern man whose life and faith were shaped in the Orient, born in Turkey, educated in the Holy Land, and based in Syria. Although he traveled far and saw much this was his home. People can choose to blame him for all sorts of things that may have happened centuries after he died but out experience of him is very different and over the centuries he lives with us still as he did then.

You can call a Crusade but the Eastern Churches didn't go along with it, in fact we were the victim of it.

The forth Crusade is the noteworthy example. By this time (1204) the separation between Eastern Church and Rome was complete, with the Eastern Church referring to the Roman Church as the “Frankish” Church. While the official reason for the Crusade was to “liberate” Jerusalem by conquering Egypt they didn’t have the money needed even for transportation. They solved this problem by sacking Zara and Constantinople.

That's why I encourage people seeking to know Church history to not neglect the Eastern Orthodox. Knowing Eastern Orthodox life and faith provides a larger perspective on things and a more diverse picture than working within a Roman / Protestant matrix.

Like many Westerners, I tend to equate the Roman Catholic Church as “The Catholic Church”, and consider the Eastern Orthodox Church as a separate entity. The Orthodox Church has a history of peace, love and little corruption – far different than the Roman Catholic Church. As you pointed out, there was no need for a Protestant reformation. As to redacting the records and scriptures, this would have happened long before the Schism.

So we know, for example, the Apostle Paul in a different way. Whatever later generations of Roman magisterium may have decided about his life and ministry and what it gave them permission to do or be for us he was a brother, one who literally lived with us, taught us, and was sent from us to the world. He was an Eastern man whose life and faith were shaped in the Orient, born in Turkey, educated in the Holy Land, and based in Syria.

Paul’s attitude toward women is reflected in this. Women were separated not only in Muslim countries, but was common in ancient Greece and many areas of the East. Helena stands out as a woman of power – it was rare but not unknown in the ancient world.

The history of the Eastern Church is full of spiritual "mothers" women of great faith some of whom like St. Nina were identified with the title "equal to the Apostles".

In some Orthodox churches there had been a historical seperation of the genders in worship, women sitting on one side and men on another, but this was done as a matter of propriety more than theology. It was simply considered "proper" in the culture of the time.

Regardless the history of Orthodoxy, despite it in insistence on an all male clergy, has a long history of powerful spiritual women and that is still encouraged today. Go to some current Orthodox websites and you will see advertisements for conferences and such where women, often but not exculsively nuns, are listed as speakers. There is even an organization called "St. Catherine's Vision" that has the full blessing of the canonical Orthodox Bishops in the United States to celebrate, define, and develop the work of women with seminary degrees.

Now as to the whole peaceful and incorrupt thing. We have instances of it and sometimes a lot of it. Had we had the same cultural situation as the Roman Church (namely having to fill in the void of civilization following the collapse of the Roman Empire) who knows what we would have done. As it was we were either unable to to grow politically as powerful as the Roman Church because we were under Muslim domination or because we lived in areas where Byzantine Roman civilization still flourished. Add to that the Orthodox polity of having each nation have its own self-governing church and you get some sense of the limitations.

Believe me, though, there have been some real jerks in Orthodoxy and God help me if I ever become one.