So, we need to address a highly controversial and very important passage on who can preach. We must address it because it is part of God’s inspired, infallible, and inerrant word. We must address it because it is a part of God design for the ministry of the church. The aim is to be faithful to God’s will, and nothing more. What God ordains is right and good. See 1 Timothy 2:12-14: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” The controversy is clear, women are fully possessed of every capacity needed to perform the tasks of preparing and delivering a public address. There is no obvious difference here between a man and a woman in our perspective. Paul is not making a qualitative argument and neither are we.
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Who Can Preach?
Paul is making an argument about God’s design. God intended men to preach and not women. Paul does not elaborate beyond this, opening the mind of God to show us why He reserved the responsibility of spiritual authority for the man. It is enough to know that God did in fact order it so. We cannot expect God to give us reasons why at every turn, we cannot expect that if He did, we would comprehend them. See Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Some would argue that Paul has inserted his own personal (sexist) views here. After all, he says “I” do not permit; but he is writing under inspiration and backing up the prohibition with a reference to Genesis 1 and 2. Furthermore, if this is an uninspired insertion, how can we tell what is actually in the Bible and what is not? We have to make a judgment ourselves based on some perception we have of the text. We become the arbiters of truth, standing in the place of God and passing sentences on His revelation. We end up breaking the integrity of Scripture so that it becomes just another human book like the Jefferson bible.
The implications are critical so we must draw them out clearly.
Another objection is that the prohibition against women preachers is founded in the perverted order of the fall as witnessed near the end of Genesis 3. However, Paul’s reference is clearly to Genesis 1 and 2 and a pre-fall order which God pronounced to not just good, but very good. See Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” This argument is simply poor exegesis, and sloppy scholarship in service of a political agenda.
Paul does reference Gensis 3 and the story of the temptation in the garden. His purpose is not to cast blame on Eve, or to make any sort of claim about her at all. Rather Paul is out to show us what happens when God’s intended order is broken. The prohibition from preaching is not a punishment. Most men are not called to preach either. It does not make anyone any less if they do not preach, it is only one function in the body. All the work of the body is necessary for it to go living. Every member is worthy of honor according to 1 Corinthians 12:22-27:
- 1 Corinthians 12:22-27: “Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”
This passage does not stand in isolation either. Paul writes a similar instruction in 1 Corinthians 14:34: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” All the language used of elders in 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1 is masculine. We have no positive examples of women preaching in the New Testament, and only one in the Old Testament. The singular exception to the rule is Deborah from Judges 4 and 5, and many believe her appointment was itself a punishment for the weak-willed men of Israel at that time. The overwhelming weight of Scripture is on the side of prohibiting women from preaching to mixed audiences.
We want to be very clear on this point. Paul does not permit a woman to preach to men. There is no apparent issue with a woman preaching to other women. Indeed, verses like Titus 2:4 may encourage it! See: “That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,” So, what if a man should happen into a women’s conference or a women’s only meeting? For several reasons we should do everything in our power to prevent this kind of thing from happening. If all measures truly have been taken to bar and they remove men from the event, we cannot hold the teacher at fault. In such cases, it is the men who are violating Scripture.
However, there are some women who blatantly broken the prohibition of this Scripture and openly preach to mixed audiences on a regular basis. We have dealt with some of their attempted justifications already, but there are a few more that we should examine. What about special occasions? There is no caveat in the text, the prohibition is always enforced.
Some have claimed a woman’s husband, or pastor can give them permission to preach, but nowhere in Scripture do we find any man’s authority sufficient to overturn the authority of God’s word. Other have laid claim to a special revelation which overruled existing Scripture, but God is not man that He should change His mind. See Numbers 23:19 and Psalm 119:89:
- Numbers 23:19: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”
- Psalm 119:89: “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”
A very weak argument is that this passage is out of date, but the order of creation does not go out of date. There really is no way around this passage without denying the inspiration, authority, inherency, and infallibility of Scripture.
So, it is no surprise that the consequences of having women preachers have been dire. Churches who have ordained women to fill the pulpit, have stagnated, declined, and wandered further and further into unbiblical doctrines and practices. As Dr. R. Albert Mohler observed on his Ask Me Anything podcast: “If you look at the denominations where women do the preaching, they are also the denominations where people do the leaving. I think there’s just something about the order of creation that means that God intends for the preaching voice to be a male voice.”
When we have a woman preaching, we are undermining the source of any real preaching. We are demonstrating that the very book from which we learn of the Gospel is not really trustworthy and true. We are demonstrating that there are priorities higher than faithfulness to God. At the very time we are purporting to teach God’s Word we are teaching something entirely different. Of course, people will leave when this happens, they came for something transcendent and found a different version of the world’s tired old self-worship.
There are some who will always celebrate liberation from God’s Word, thinking as Adam and Eve did that by abandoning God’s commands, they will somehow become like Him, gods themselves. We know what happened to our first parent, and we can see what is happening to those who forsake the Scriptures now.
There are so many ways that our sisters contribute to the ministry of the Church. There is so much affirmation of the value and ability of women in the Bible. This single verse with its single prohibition is not to undo the rest of the Bible’s valuing of women or to keep women under some awful tyranny. God’s order is for our good women and men alike.
We realize this is a very truncated treatment of a very hot topic, and would suggest two articles for further reading to make up for what is lacking by necessity here. The first deals with the topic very thoroughly, and very broadly. The second is more narrowly focused on the recent debates within the Southern Baptist Convention.
As we have said already not all men are qualified to preach. God narrows the field considerably in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1: Lord’s Library has a detailed exposition of these passages here. Infidelity to a wife disqualifies a man. Abuse of the pulpit disqualifies a man. Any persistent unrepentant sin disqualifies a man. Unrecanted heresy disqualifies a man.
Having a disqualified man in the pulpit shows an utter disregard for the wellbeing of the flock, as well as the holiness of God. Those who have not esteemed the commands of God will not take the sacred responsibility of preaching seriously. And those who witness such inconstant actions will have a hard time taking the Gospel seriously as well.
Then there are men who simply are not gifted to preach, or called to that service they are not strictly disqualified, but they aren’t strictly qualified either. They may have the heart to preach, but not the knowledge. To put them in the pulpit unprepared is a disservice to them and our congregations.
Finally, it is very important to remember that everyone is under the same authority when it comes to preaching, the ultimate authority of Christ. Even the preacher himself is in submission to the Lord and to His word. Submission is not for some in the Church, it is for everyone in the Church.
The choice of preacher is in God’s hands. He can call whomever He wishes. He has told us what kinds of men He will call. Those who are called to preach can go about it in different ways. We will consider these methods of preaching in our next section.
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- Who Can Preach? Explaining God’s Design for Pulpit Ministry - June 29, 2024
- The Priority of Preaching: Why Churches Center on Sermons - June 29, 2024
- Failures in the Pulpit: The True Signs of Bad Preaching - June 26, 2024
