Fallacies in Interpreting 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35
by Tim Melvin
Fallacies in Interpreting the Passages about Women's Silence
I applaud our debate on the issues of the NT church life in our attempt to reach the NT norm for the church. However, I think we need to step back and ask ourselves how we are to do that. We all believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture—that is not the issue. At issue is how we come to an understanding of what the Scriptures mean. The following paper attempts to correct deficiencies in the interpretation of various passages concerning NT church practices being debated today. I’m writing specifically about arguments for and against women’s silence in the house church community, although the principles apply to any doctrinal or practical study of the Scriptures. All who teach the Scriptures can profit from a life-long pursuit of how to study the Bible.
Those who deny that women should remain silent in church meetings make several mistakes, some of which are easier to detect than others. First, they misapply Gal. 3:28 to the roles of men and women as described in Scripture. Second, they cite experience that convinces them that women were not to be silent in church. Third, they ignore progressive revelation and the work of the Holy Spirit regarding continued revelation to the Apostles. Fourth, they misuse word studies of miseo, laleo, sigao, and hesuchia. Fifth, they set up a false contrast between submission and silence.
Many different approaches to Scripture have been used over the centuries since Moses wrote the Pentateuch. You can read about these approaches in the books mentioned in the reference list at the end. The approach that opened millions of people’s hearts to the Gospel is the approach developed and sharpened about 400-500 years ago that reached its zenith with the likes of Jonathan Edwards. Called the grammatical-historical approach, it depends on an understanding of what the text says and the people, places and events out of which the text springs. That approach to the Scriptures will yield results that can again turn people’s hearts to God and to the NT church practices. Several principles will guide us.
First, the truth of Gal. 3:28 does not prohibit the silence of women in the church meeting.
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is not male and female; for you are all in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:27-29). Paul is establishing the fact that all people in Christ are heirs to what God promises. Jews don’t have one set of promises and Greeks another. Men and women are fellow-heirs in Christ. Slaves and free men have the same access to the inheritance that God promises to all who are in Christ. This is true in spite of the fact that men and women don’t become gender neutral upon conversion, slaves don’t become free upon conversion, or Jews become Greeks or vice versa upon conversion. Those physical distinctions still exist after conversion; they just don’t matter when it comes to our inheritance in Christ. This side of heaven all these distinctions exist, but we are not to treat Christians differently based upon them.
The implication of some teachers’ use of Gal. 3:28 is that no roles exist in for men and women in the church. We could take the interpretation to a logical conclusion—that since there is neither male nor female, both can be teachers, elders, deacons, the family breadwinner, the stay-at-home dad, etc. We could also conclude that in Christ men can marry men, yet we know that God gave man a wife to be his fitting helper, not another man. We could conclude the same about women. The abomination of homosexuality clearly violates other portions of Scripture; therefore we know that any other marriage or union but between a man and woman is abhorrent to God. We cannot take a general truth of Scripture and say that it has absolutely no qualifications to it at all elsewhere in Scripture.
None of us deny that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each unique and yet comprise the unified Godhead. Yet in that unity each Person of the Trinity has a unique role to play which requires submission to Another Person. For example, the Holy Spirit does not glorify Himself but Jesus. Moreover, in 1 Cor. 11:3 we find that God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of a woman. Christ is no less God because of this position beneath God the Father just as the woman is no less a Christian for submitting herself under her husband in silence during the church meeting. Christ submitted Himself to God the Father to die for our sins and thereby became the head of the man. “Not my will but Thine” has tremendous implications for the Christian who seeks to understand the three unified yet distinct Persons of the Godhead and the roles of men and women in the church.
Second, let’s look at extra-biblical experience. Until the Scriptures were completed and preserved by the sovereignty of God, the church depended on the Apostles and other gifted people to accurately represent what Jesus said and to develop Christian doctrine through the Holy Spirit. In John 16:13, Jesus said to the disciples about the Holy Spirit, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth….” The attesting miracles and gifts of the Apostles proved God’s anointing to be authoritative in the developing doctrines of the church. With the death of the Apostles came the end of revelation to the church because the apostles and prophets laid the foundation for the church through their ministry (Eph. 2:20).
No one today receives revelation equivalent to Scripture, i.e., new truth from God. We receive illumination through the Holy Spirit to understand what has already been given to the church—the Scriptures. Thinking that God communicates revelation today apart from Scripture or previous to a study of Scripture shows a decided lack of understanding of revelation, illumination, and interpretation of the Scriptures. 2 Peter 1:3 declares that “He has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” which includes the completed revelation as found in the Bible. Anyone who declares himself to be the recipient of revelation today places himself in the false teacher or prophet category described by Peter in 2 Peter 2:1-3.
Some teachers will cite an experience which lead them to believe a certain way about this issue. I began my study of this topic without any convictions about the meaning of 1 Cor. 14. Which of us is right? Bernard Ramm in his prologue to Protestant Biblical Interpretation, p. x, quotes Alexander Carson who wrote “No man has a right to say, as some are in the habit of saying, The Spirit tells me that such or such is the meaning of such a passage. How is he assured that it is the Holy Spirit, and that it is not a spirit of delusion, except from the evidence that the interpretation is the legitimate meaning of the words?” Notice the last few words: “the legitimate meaning of the words.” The very words of Scripture were inspired by God, not just the ideas behind them. We know theology through the words, not theology through extra-biblical revelation. Carson gets to the heart of the matter—is it the Holy Spirit or delusion? We cannot give ground here on what has been established over the centuries since Christ. His Word as revealed to the Apostles and preserved by the sovereignty of God must be our ONLY source of truth as granted to each of us by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit.
Third, the fact that Jesus did not command something or that the other Apostles did not teach it does not lessen that command’s importance. Revelation was progressive not only from the Old Testament era to the New, but also within the lifetimes of the Apostles. Jesus did not speak to all the doctrinal needs of the church, but the Apostles completed the body of truth we have today as the New Testament through their addressing the doctrinal needs of churches in their letters. Homosexuality is a perfect example of silence on Jesus’ part but strongly condemned in the OT and by the Apostles. The argument that Jesus did not speak about it does not hold water because of Jesus’ declaration that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth (John 16:13).
The fact that only Paul addresses the issue does not lessen the force of the command. Peter himself declared that “just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15, 16). Both Peter and Paul wrote to some of the same churches yet had different emphasis on truth because the church needed the different points of view and doctrine. While their letters do overlap in some points, Peter did not duplicate Paul’s writings or vice versa; what benefit would that be?
The fact that Peter found Paul’s writings hard to fathom should encourage us in our study. Knowing that some things are difficult to understand should give us motivation to study on the one hand and patience on the other as we seek to know. We don’t want to be found in the category of those who distort the truth either knowingly or unknowingly. Moreover, Peter supported Paul’s ministry and his writings as shown by his statement above. Paul wrote with wisdom from above guided by the Holy Spirit.
Exactly how many times must a command appear in the NT for it to be valid? Which of the NT authors must write it for it to have meaning and application? How many of the NT writers must affirm the same command? For example, in Acts 20:35, Luke quotes Paul quoting Jesus as saying “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This is the only occurrence of this quote. How did Paul know that? Was it from direct revelation or from talking with those who followed Him and heard Him say it? We don’t know, but it is still true. The virgin birth appears in one gospel. Is it untrue or unimportant? I don’t think so. A single occurrence of truth does not lessen its force.
Fourth, word studies in and of themselves can prove almost anything. Only words in context have a certain meaning. These meanings are established by much scholarly research into the Greek literature of the New Testament period. For example, a popular theory of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s described New Testament Greek as an angelic language given to the Apostles just for the purpose of writing the New Testament. However, discovery in the mid- to late 1800’s of many Greek documents from the New Testament period showed that the language of the NT was the common Greek spoken throughout that period. It was the language of commerce and politics just as English is today.
Some teachers will declare that laleo, translated “speak,” really should be translated “speak at random” or “babble,” especially when used with sigao, “silent” as in 1 Cor. 14:34&35. Some will go to great lengths to prove that the passage about women’s silence is mistranslated and will make claims about other mistranslations to prove the first. Here is an example from Luke 14:26: “If any man comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” “Love less” is given as the proper translation instead of “hate.” I disagree that the verse is mistranslated; it was translated exactly right. The word for hate, miseo, also means despise, disregard, or be indifferent to. Well-known and scholarly Greek dictionaries do not give definitions such as “love less” for miseo. I’ll give three examples below.
Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Danker’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BAGD) gives “hate, persecute in hatred, detest, and abhor” as possible definitions for miseo. Nowhere does this dictionary give “love less” as a definition.
Thayer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Thayer) gives the definitions “to hate, pursue with hatred, detest.” He does give “love less” as the “significance” of the word in certain contexts such as Luke 14:26, but he does not give it as a definition. Defining a word and interpreting a word in its context are two different actions for the Bible student.
The United Bible Societies’ A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament (UBS) in their Greek New Testament gives “hate, despise, disregard, be indifferent to” as meanings. Again, no mention of “love less.”
The translators of the KJV, NKJV, RSV, NASB, etc, have properly translated miseo as “hate.” The real understanding of “hate” comes from an understanding of the figures of speech that the rabbis of Jesus’ day and Jesus himself used, not from the translation of the word. We have to understand that a conscious exaggeration or overstatement in order to drive home a truth was commonly used then as it is now. Known as hyperbole, we use this in our everyday speech, advertisements, and writing. Jesus’ statement “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” is a well-known saying. You and I know that a camel cannot go through the eye of a needle and that rich men have entered the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said, “If your right eye offends you, pluck it out.” Did he really mean to pull my eyeball from its socket or did he mean to take every measure I can to fight temptation? If we followed the literal meaning we would all be sightless and without hands. We cannot be sloppy in our attempts to understand Scripture.
Getting back to laleo, in the immediate context of 1 Cor. 14 and the broader contexts of the two Corinthian letters, laleo never has the meaning of speaking at random. In 14:27-28, Paul used laleo to describe what the man who speaks in tongues is to do and used sigao (be silent) with it. Is that “speaking at random” or babbling nonsense if the Holy Spirit prompts someone with that gift to speak? In 14:29, as he described what the prophets are to do, he used laleo and sigao again. Is that prophet “speaking at random?” I think not. Take a look at the 28 times laleo appears in the two Corinthian letters. Not a single time does Paul mean “speak at random.”
Going to the Greek dictionaries, BAGD tells us that laleo means “chatter or babble” in the classical Greek literature but not in the NT era. Classical usage does not apply to the Greek of the NT era. Thayer wrote “Perhaps this may account for the fact in part that, though in classic Greek laleo is the term for light and familiar speech, and so assumes a readily disparaging notion, in biblical Greek it is nearly if not quite free from any such suggestion.” Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words under “speak” and laleo has this to say: “the command prohibiting women from speaking in a church gathering, vv.34, 35, is regarded by some as an injunction against chattering, a meaning which is absent from the use of the verb everywhere else in the N.T.: it is to be understood in the same sense as in vv. 2,3-6, 9, 11, 13, 18, 19, 21, 23, 27-29, 39.”
It is not proper interpretation to insert a meaning (speak at random, chatter, or babble nonsense) in one place where the immediate context gives another meaning (speak). These occurrences of laleo in 1 Cor. 14 apply to the same situation, i.e., the church meeting. When he tells the tongues speakers to speak only if an interpreter is present or be silent, he means mute. When he tells the prophets to speak in turn and give way to another and be silent, he means mute. When he tells the women to be silent and thereby submissive, he means mute.
Moving to the fifth point, sometimes a false dichotomy will be made between submission and silence. Looking at the six times that the NT authors address a wife’s submission, we find that the wife shows her submission in various ways.
- 1 Cor. 14:34—let them subject themselves by keeping silent in the meeting and asking their questions at home
- Eph. 5:24-be subject in everything
- Col. 3:18—be subject to her husband
- 1 Tim. 2:11—let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, not be a teacher of the Word, and not be in authority over a man
- Titus 2:5—being subject to their own husbands
- 1 Pet. 3:1—be submissive to your own husband even if he is disobedient to the Word
In 1 Tim 2:11 hesuchia is properly understood as an inner stillness or quietness and not necessarily silence. Paul is going after the attitudes with which a wife “ought to conduct [her]self in the household of God, which is a pillar and support of the truth” (2:15). Not dressing as a harlot, being modest in dress and behavior, practicing good works, not teaching, not being in authority over a man, and continuing in faith, love, and sanctity characterize the godly wife. This passage, by the way, closes the door to women teaching the Word and women being in charge of activities in the church. Instead of being an argument against certain women and practices in the Ephesian church only, Paul refers to the entire household of God. He also backs up what he forbids by appealing to creation. He bypasses all possible cultural arguments and goes straight to the order established by God at creation. If we believe God created, then we must believe that God created a certain order as well. Again referring to the context expressed in 2:15, in the general activities of the church, the wife is supposed to be and act as he portrays her here. In contrast, 1 Cor. 14 refers to the specific time of meeting for the church and therefore has more specific guidelines for the church, i.e., the women are to be submissive by being silent and asking questions of her husband at home.
We need to study and debate these issues within the church and among the churches. We need to be careful that we are not divisive with rancorous arguments and ill will among us. We should study to show ourselves to be approved by God and not to win an argument. I would add that the grammatical-historical approach to studying the Scriptures is the method that will yield a complete understanding of Scripture with the aid of the Holy Spirit’s illumination. I also contend that extra-biblical revelation does not exist today because the Apostles have written all we need through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
To sum up, Christian women are fellow heirs with Christ just as Christian men are. That does not negate the different roles for men and women and different actions they are to take in the church meeting. Proper understanding of truth comes through diligent study of the Scriptures and does not come through extra-biblical revelation but through the illumination of the Holy Spirit as we study. Word studies can lead to erroneous conclusions without a complete grammatical-historical approach to the Word of God. A complete survey of the roles of men and women will produce a distinction between them with emphasis on the husband’s loving headship and the wife’s respectful submission that includes silence in the church meeting.
Reference List
Carson, D. A., Exegetical Fallacies, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1984.
Fee, Gordon D. and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, Academie Books, Grand Rapids, 1982.
Greidanus, Sidney, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text, Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, 1988.
Metzger, Bruce M., The Text of the New Testament, Oxford University Press, New York, 1980.
Osborne, Grant R., The Hermeneutical Spiral, Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1991.
Ramm, Bernard, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1978.
Virkler, Henry A., Hermeneutics-Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation, Baker Book House, 1989.
Dictionaries
Bauer, Walter, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979.
Thayer, Joseph H., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1987.
Vine, W. E., An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Fleming H. Revell Company, Old Tappan, NJ, 1966
Tim Melvin
After college and a military career, Tim went on to earn a Masters of Divinity from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary (MABTS) while serving on two Baptist church staffs in Memphis, Tennessee. He then did three years of doctoral work in Hebrew and Old Testament while teaching Research, Writing and English at MABTS. He and Sarah home educated their three daughters, two of which are married. While in the Memphis area, he also planted two house churches. He and his wife Sarah and their youngest daughter now reside in Columbus, Georgia. Tim travels widely teaching church life workshops for NTRF. In addition, he teaches a child training seminar, "Raising Wise Children in a Foolish World," and is a contributing author to both Toward A House Church Theology and Ekklesia: To The Roots of Biblical Church Life.
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