Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
What Evangelicals Have Never Been Taught….about Paul

What Evangelicals Have Never Been Taught….about Paul

Last updated on: February 19, 2021 at 4:53 pm by Beth Allison Barr

What Evangelicals Have Never Been Taught….about Paul 2021-02-19T16:53:27-04:00 Beth Allison Barr

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“Why do you think that is?” he asked.

The steady stream of hungry students forked around our lunch table, flowing towards the sandwich bar on the left and the hot lunch items on the right. Time has blurred the students into a current of faceless forms. But Dr. Talbert’s piercing eyes gaze just as intently through my memory as if he still sits across that table.

It was 2006 or 2007, and I held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Baylor Religion department. Often, Dr. Charles Talbert, Distinguished Professor of New Testament and a life-long committed Baptist, would invite me to join his lunch group. That day the conversation turned to teaching about women in the early church. I remarked how some verses in 1 Corinthians 14 reminded me of a speech recorded by Livy (which I referenced regularly in my Roman history lectures). The words of the second-century B.C. Roman orator Cato, as Livy recorded in the first century A.D., were just so similar to Paul’s words. Cato, lamenting the behavior of Roman women protesting an unpopular law in 195 B.C., exclaimed, “What kind of behavior is this? Running around in public, blocking streets, and speaking to other women’s husbands! Could you not have asked your own husbands the same thing at home?” It isn’t word for word, but Cato’s speech rings remarkably similar to Paul’s words, “If there is anything [women] desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.”

It was at this point when Dr. Talbert interjected.

“Why do you think that is?” he asked me.

Decades of experience teaching and mentoring students gave him patience to wait, gently rapping his fingers on the table as I stared, surprised, back at him. I don’t remember what I said, but moments later he was explaining an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14 that I–in my more than thirty years of regular attendance at evangelical churches–had never heard before.

In his 1987 article “Biblical Criticism’s Role: The Pauline View of Women as a Case in Point” (The Unfettered Word: Southern Baptists Confront the Authority-inerrancy Question), Talbert argues that verses 34-35 in 1 Corinthians 14 “are Corinthian assertions, reflecting cultural values like those of pagans and Jews; and verse 36 is Paul’s response, rejecting the Corinthian stance about women. Paul’s position here would then be in harmony with that taken in Gal. 3:27, 28, and 1 Cor. 11:2-16. Whereas some Corinthians rejected the participation of women in the leadership of worship, Paul responded with horror.” (67-68)

Or, as I explain it in The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, Paul was so concerned that Christians in Corinth were imposing their own cultural restrictions on women that he called them on it. He quoted the bad practice of silencing women, which Corinthian men were trying to drag from the Roman world into their Christian world, and then he countered it. Instead of telling women to be silent, could it be that Paul was actually telling men that–in the brave new world of Jesus–women were allowed to speak?

“Why haven’t I ever heard this before?” I asked Dr. Talbert, furiously thinking through all the past interpretations I had been taught about 1 Corinthians 14. He just smiled. Later that day he brought me a copy of his Unfettered Word article along with a list of references. I soon realized that Dr. Talbert was only one of many scholars who had been arguing for over a century that the most “plain and literal” understanding of 1 Corinthians 14 was to consider its historical context. From Katherine Bushnell and Helen Barrett Montgomery at the turn of the twentieth-century to Robert Allison, Neal M. Flanagan and Edwina Hunter Snyder, David W. Odell-Scott, Chris Ukachukwu Manus, Walter Kaiser, Charles Talbert, and Lucy Peppiatt, just to name a few, a solid line of renowned Christians scholars have argued that historical context helps make sense of Paul’s words toward women in 1 Corinthians. As Talbert concludes, “it is difficult to see, once the clear meaning of 1 Cor. 14:34-36 is discerned in its first-century context, how anyone today can exclude women from leadership in worship without violating what Scripture meant and means” (70).

Yet this was a line of scholarship that I, at the time of my lunch conversation with Dr. Talbert, knew nothing about.

I had never been taught about Katherine Bushnell, a late nineteenth-century physician, missionary, and biblical scholar. She seems to have been one of the earliest to fully consider 1 Corinthians 14 through the historical context of the Corinthian church as well as the overall picture of Paul’s words to women. Paul was not giving a directive for all time to all women, she observed, because Paul endorsed women praying, prophesying, and leading throughout his letters. As she wrote in God’s Word to Women: “We are driven to believe the Apostle was not uttering his own views in verses 34 and 35 of 1 Corinthians 14, which read: ‘Let the woman keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak: but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law. And if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church’ (R. V.) We believe this is the language of Judaizers* at Corinth, which has been reported to Paul, and which Paul quotes to answer back in the words: ‘What! came the word of God out from you! or came it unto you only?’ with what follows to the end of the chapter.” Bushnell was not a radical feminist who rejected the authority of scripture. She was, according to New Testament scholar Sharon Dowd, a conservative Methodist who believed the Bible was “inspired,” “infallible,” and “inviolable.” According to Dowd, it was not the Bible that Bushnell believed “suppressed the ministry of women, but rather the ‘sex bias of translators and the ‘antiquated notions’ of ‘fossilized theologians.’ She warned that ‘those who stupidly hinder. . .prophesying on the part of women are placing themselves, as it were, across the path of the fulfillment of God’s Word’ and delaying the coming of Christ.” Isn’t Bushnell fascinating! (If you want to know more about her, I highly recommend A New Gospel for Women: Katherine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.)

I had never been taught (at least not before my postdoctoral fellowship) about Helen Barrett Montgomery. She studied Greek and graduated in the first class of Wellesey College in 1884. She became an advocate for international missions and was very active among American Baptists. Did you know that, in 1921, she was elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention–the first female president of any religious denomination in the U.S.? She also translated the Bible in English to help her Sunday School class full of young boys better understand the Gospel of Jesus. It was published as The Centenary Translation in 1924. In her discussion of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, she reached a conclusion very similar (and possibly inspired) by Bushnell: “This can only refer to the oral law of the Jews, as no such prohibition is found in the Law. Paul is probably quoting a sentence from the Judaizers*.”

I had never been taught about David W. Odell-Scott, Associate Dean and Professor of Religious Studies at Kent State University. In 1983 he created quite a stir in biblical scholarship when he published an article that made a very similar argument to Bushnell’s and Montgomery’s (although most at this point seemed to have forgotten the pioneering work of these early female scholars). As Odell-Scott wrote, “1 Cor 14:33b-36 is neither inconsistent nor possesses a problem for the status of women as presented in the Pauline corpus. The text does not admonish anyone for allowing women to speak in church. In fact, the text is one of the most emphatic statements for female participation in the membership of the church to be found in the New Testament.” At the time of publication, Odell-Scott was a PhD Candidate at Vanderbilt University. He has since become an established scholar publishing frequently on Paul, including his 2003 Paul’s Critique of Theocracy: A/theocracy in Corinthians and Galatians. Throughout his career, Odell-Scott has remained active in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and, I think it is worth noting, he didn’t question the authenticity of Paul’s authorship of 1 Cor 14:33-36. I think my favorite section of his 1983 article is the conclusion. Just listen to this. “The text is an authentic Pauline passage, consistent with his written work and the Acts account of his life and ministry. The irony of all this is that the very scripture which has for centuries been interpreted as silencing female participation in the worship of the churches, may now be understood as declaring their equality.”

And so, that day in a college dining hall, Charles Talbert changed my life. He helped me see clearly that there was more to understanding the Bible then what I had learned in my very narrow Southern Baptist world. He helped me fully realize that respected Biblical scholars who were also faithful Christians interpreted women’s roles in the Bible differently than I had been taught. Yet scholars like him, who I heard pray before our meal every day I joined him for lunch, had not slipped down the feared-evangelical slope into heresy and atheism. Scholars like Charles Talbert still believed in Jesus and the trustworthiness of Scripture just like I did, but they also believed that women could preach, teach, and lead.

Of course, I know that D.A. Carson dismissed the Corinthian-quotation theory. In his essay printed in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood he stated the theory is “doubtful” and accused scholars of proposing Corinthian quotations when “the commentator does not like what Paul is saying.” Carson is just wrong. The theory is not doubtful; it is solidly grounded. Indeed, the historical evidence that Paul is quoting from the backdrop of his Roman world is overwhelming (just read Talbert or my overview in The Making of Biblical Womanhood). It also makes perfect sense with what Paul is doing (correcting the Corinthian church) and aligns with Paul’s rhetorical method. Perhaps the reason Carson doubts the historical reality of Corinthian quotations is due to the motive he ascribes to others–because Carson doesn’t like what Paul is actually saying. After all, when 1 Corinthians 14:33-36 is understood as Paul quoting a bad Corinthian practice and refuting it, it completely undermines complementarian teachings.

I owe so much to Charles Talbert. He helped me fully realize that what I knew as a historian and what I believed as a faithful Christian were more compatible than incompatible. He helped me see how my skills as a historian could help my students better understand their faith. Because of this, I gained the confidence to write The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Like Bushnell, I believe that the Bible is the “inspired, infallible, and inviolable” word of God. Yet, also like Bushnell, I believe that the reason women have been pushed out of ministry in evangelical churches is because we have misunderstood, misinterpreted, and even intentionally suppressed the word of God.

Next month I am going to post on The Anxious Bench the full introduction to my forthcoming book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. In the endorsement words of Aimee Byrd, I hope you will “read this book and be challenged and encouraged.” Then I hope you will return to The Anxious Bench and continue with my new series “What Evangelicals Have Never Been Taught…” Like the introduction today, I will show you how much more there is to evangelical understandings of the Bible, Church History, and our traditions than we often have learned.

The world of Jesus is so much bigger than we have imagined it to be. I hope you will join me!

*both Bushnell and Montgomery attribute the quotation to a Jewish source. Most scholars now understand that these types of attributions are misplaced and often reflect anti-semitic attitudes; the quotation source (as I relate above) would be from the Greco-Roman world.

In honor of Charles Talbert as well as the fact I wrote this from the frozen wasteland of Central Texas (I wore fingerless mittens to type), I decided to change the pictures to snow-covered Baylor campus. 2-16/17-2021

Baylor Religion Department

Baylor University

Paul

The Making of Biblical Womanhood

Previous Post

February 16, 2021

God's Cold Warrior

Next Post

February 18, 2021 Discipline and Punish: A Guide to Power in American Evangelicalism

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian group believes in "baptism of the Holy Spirit" with evidence of speaking in tongues?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Presbyterians Pentecostals Methodists Lutherans