Order and Authority

Listen or read the following excerpt as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians 14:20-40.

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For this material, you will need to follow in your text. The arguments, at several points, are quite tight, and I will be referring to the text constantly. I hope you have your Bibles with you and will follow along. A great deal of the argument has to do with the nature of prophecy. If the arguments are of interest to you and you would like more information, I hope that you will follow them yourself.

There is a sense in which the contrast between the gifts of prophecy and tongues developed by Paul in the first 19 verses of this chapter continues in the second half of the chapter. Certainly tongues and prophecy are set over against each other in verses 20–25. Although verse 26 lists several of the charismata, its primary function is to set the stage again for renewed discussion of tongues (verses 27 and 28) and prophecy (29–33). Even verses 33b–36, on what I judge to be the most likely interpretation, are not unrelated to the gift of prophecy.

The closing verses include a warning (verses 37–38) and again a final pithy contrast between prophecy and tongues (verses 39 and 40). Nevertheless, several noteworthy characteristics set this part of the chapter off from what precedes. Paul’s tone becomes a shade more strident, heralded in the first instance by the words, “Brothers, stop thinking like children.” (verse 20)

The contrast between prophecy and tongues in verses 20–25, though still related to the themes of intelligibility and edification, introduces unbelievers as a new factor and cites antecedent Scripture as precedent for the very purpose of tongues. Verses 26–40 assume the values of intelligibility and edification have been adopted and seek to implement those values with simple practical rules, rules shaped by an overarching conviction that public worship must mirror the orderliness and peace of the God whom we worship. We shall examine each of these sections in turn.

1. The relation of tongues and prophecies to unbelievers (verses 20–25)

The word brothers (14:20) helps to soften the sharpness of the rebuke that follows it. The Corinthians thought of themselves as mature. Paul, for his part, has already had occasion in this epistle to tell them he considers them so infantile they haven’t even attained the place where they can consume solid foods (3:2). In the context of chapter 14, this can only mean Paul sees the errors he is correcting as indices of spiritual immaturity.

The very gift some exercise as a token, in their view, of special enduement of the Spirit has become so overblown in their minds, and thereby so distortive of proper spiritual proportion, that Paul can accuse them of remarkable childishness. As one commentator puts it, “Overconcentration on glossolalia is a mark of immaturity. There is indeed a right way for Christians to be childlike—in their freedom from guile …; but in their intelligence they ought to be mature.”

At least some Corinthians wanted to measure their maturity by the intensity of their spiritual experiences without consideration of other constraints, such as love’s demands for their brothers and sisters in Christ. Thus they became “mature” or “advanced,” wittingly or unwittingly, in evil and immature in their thinking. Paul wants to reverse this trend.

The relation between verse 20 and verses 21–25 is uncertain. Probably Paul is casting about for another way to show the Corinthians the high estimation in which they hold tongues is misplaced, and he decides to tackle the relation of tongues to unbelievers, hitherto not considered.

These verses are extraordinarily difficult, primarily because tongues are said to be a sign for unbelievers in verse 22, while in verses 23–25 unbelievers respond negatively to tongues and positively to prophecy, at first glance contradicting the judgment of verse 22. Of the many explanations that have been advanced, the following deserve mention.

First, Edgar, eager to show “tongues” are always real human known languages, argues that tongues are a sign for unbelievers in that, as on the day of Pentecost, they serve as an evangelistic tool. This means, of course, that the connection Paul makes with the “strange tongues” of the Isaiah quotation (verse 21) is a little obscure. Whatever the tongues were there, they were not evangelistic.

Edgar dogmatically affirms his view is the only one that makes sense of the passage. He says it stands in line with Acts 2, where real languages are used and for evangelistic purpose. But it is not entirely clear the tongues of Acts 2 were used evangelistically, except in the derivative sense that they attracted many people together who heard the first Christians praising God in the diverse languages of the hearers.

The evangelistic message of Acts 2 is found in Peter’s sermon, not in the tongues. Peter’s sermon was delivered in one language (presumably Aramaic) and cast as an explanation of the tongues. Edgar’s interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14:22 not only requires him to adopt incredible interpretations of much of the rest of the chapter, but, astonishingly, he does not so much as comment on verse 23. Yet that is precisely where the nub of the debate lies.

Sadly, Edgar’s work is angry and will therefore not receive the attention that parts of it deserve, especially his detailed examination of the meaning of glÛssa (often used in discussing the range of speaking in tongues in the New Testament). A variation on this view is that of Thomas, who with more sophistication agrees that tongues were used evangelistically to communicate with the unbeliever and frankly admits Paul is divorcing his use of Isaiah 28 from its own context.

The explanation he offers for verses 23–25 is these verses “point out the inappropriateness of tongues in an assembly composed primarily of believers. The gift had a perfectly valid purpose in a group where unbelievers predominated (verse 22), but prophecy is much more useful among Christians.… This view provides the only adequate way of reconciling verse 22 with verses 23–25.”

I am afraid it is not adequate, for verses 23–25 do not give as the reason for the inappropriateness of tongues the predomination of believers over unbelievers, but that the unbeliever himself will conclude that the tongues-speaker is raving. One would have thought, under Thomas’s reconstruction, that the only person who appreciated what was going on was the unbeliever, but that is precisely what Paul does not say.

Second, some writers of dispensational persuasion say Paul’s point in quoting the Isaiah passage is to affirm that tongues are a sign exclusively for Jewish people, “from which it follows,” writes Hodges, “that the average heathen visitor to the Christian assembly (far more likely to be a Gentile than a hostile Jew) would be exposed to a phenomenon never intended for him in the first place.” The exegetical naÔvetÈ is somewhat staggering and turns in part on how the New Testament writers use the Old Testament.

Such fundamental issues aside, however, it is remarkable that Paul, in verses 23–25, does not distinguish the unbeliever’s response to tongues and to prophecy along the lines of his race and what is appropriate to it, but along the lines that the unbeliever deduces from this one activity (tongues) that the speaker is raving or possessed and from the other (prophecy) he gains understanding that he is a sinner and in need of the grace of God.

Third, a far more sophisticated variation on a racial distinction or perhaps better, a covenantal distinction, is that of Palmer Robertson. He rightly draws attention to the fact that behind Isaiah 28:11 stands the covenantal curse of Deuteronomy 28:49 and 50. If the people of God turn from him, they are there told, “The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young.”

Robertson then notes that Isaiah 28:11, picking up this theme in connection with the Assyrian invasion of Israel as divine punishment, is followed up by the messianic promise of Isaiah 28:16: “God will lay a stone in Zion, a tested and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts will never be dismayed,” cited by Paul in Romans 9:31–33 in connection with the dawning of the gospel.

He argues that even the tongues at Pentecost are in line with this. Even though all present on that day of Pentecost were presumably Jewish or committed proselytes; nevertheless, tongues at Pentecost “represent the taking of the kingdom away from Israel and the giving of the kingdom to men of all nations. […] No longer will God confine himself to one people, speaking a single language.”

Thus, “Tongues serve as a sign to indicate that God’s redemptive program has shifted from a Jewish-centered activity to an activity involving all nations of the world.” As for the apparent awkwardness between verse 22 and verses 23 and 25, Robertson observes that in verse 22 only tongues, strictly speaking, are said to be a sign for anyone (in this case, unbelievers). Prophecy, in the Greek text, is merely for believers. There’s no sign word in there.

Robertson admits that Paul has had to transfer “unbelievers” (in 1 Corinthians 14) from a Jewish context to a Gentile context, but the point is tongues constitute a sign and prophecy does not. He says, “ ‘Tongues’ serve as an indicator; ‘prophecy’ serves as a communicator. ‘Tongues’ call attention to the mighty acts of God; ‘prophecy’ calls to repentance and faith in response to the mighty acts of God.”

Since this crucial change in God’s covenantal purpose is now ancient history, there is now no longer any purpose for tongues, which “are attached vitally—but irretrievably—to a particular juncture in the history of redemption.”

This last sentence, I think, is again remarkably reductionistic, for even if Robertson’s interpretation of verses 21–25 were right, that would not prove he has exhausted all the Bible has to say about the purpose of tongues. It is certainly difficult to think how the use of tongues in private devotion can be integrated into Robertson’s synthesis.

A more devastating weakness with this interpretation, however, is that the unbeliever in 1 Corinthians 14 is a Gentile. Robertson cannot legitimately retreat to the observation that Old Testament categories of unbelief (primarily Jewish) are habitually transferred to the Gentile unbelief of Paul’s world, for his argument turns on seeing signs as a covenantal curse on Jews.

Moreover, it is far more likely that Paul, in verse 22, is saying tongues are a sign for unbelievers, and prophecy is a sign for believers. That is far more likely (not simply prophecy is for believers, but rather prophecy is a sign for believers), even though the extra words are, in fact, left out. The omission is not unexpected in Greek. Greek often leaves out the second elements of parallelism where it’s reasonably clear from the context, and a lot of other things, for that matter.

The matter is well discussed by Turner. Moreover, the dichotomy that makes tongues an indicator and prophecy a communicator is not very felicitous anyway, for Paul has gone to considerable trouble in verses 1–19 (especially verse 5) to say tongues themselves may be a communicator provided there is interpretation.

Fourth, Johanson resolves the tension between verse 22 and verses 23–25 by postulating that verse 22 is, in fact, a rhetorical question, Paul’s summing up of his opponents’ views in order to oppose them in verses 23–25. This is part of the trend to discover quotations of the opponents’ positions wherever there is an exegetical difficulty. This one does not meet my three criteria necessary to be considered valid.

The Johanson thesis labors under the further disadvantage that the connectors are inappropriate. For instance, at the beginning of verse 23, instead of a strong adversative, we find hōste (what NIV renders as “so then”), which can be salvaged for the theory only by postulating a rather considerable ellipsis or some kind of construction of inserting some words you think must have been presupposed by Paul.

Fifth, another proposal argues that tongues must be understood as a positive sign here. Ruef suggests it was the sign by which Gentile Christians were accepted by Christian Jews, in the same way that the tongues-speaking of Cornelius and those with him apparently opened the way to their acceptance as Christians by the believers in Jerusalem (Acts 10 and 11).

Once these Gentiles have actually been accepted as believers, Ruef argues, the proper sign for them, as for other believers, is prophecy. Continuing the practice of tongues at that point will only confuse the outsider, the unbeliever who is watching. There seems little to commend this view.

The Cornelius episode is best understood as a critical salvation-historical turning point, not a paradigm of the way Jews commonly tested the validity of the conversion of Gentiles. In epistles with demonstrated focus on Jew/Christian/Gentile relationships (for example, Galatians), the test of tongues Ruef advances is nowhere in view.

Moreover, the flow of the argument through 1 Corinthians 12–14 spawns no suspicion that Jew/Gentile conflict lurks behind the abuse of tongues. To put the same issue more positively, these chapters consistently pit prophecy against tongues in the area of intelligible communication. That context is lost by this interpretation. Ruef’s proposal also means Paul has abused Isaiah 28:11 rather badly, for God was not speaking a positive sign through the Assyrians. This is of some importance, for verse 22 opens with the logical “so then.”

Recently a more believable variation on this proposal has been advanced by Thiessen in his German work Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology. He removes the Jew/Gentile conflict from the discussion and suggests the Corinthian church was trying to make tongues a criterion for membership. Paul replies, in effect, that this is inappropriate because tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, just as in Isaiah 28 the strange tongues come to those who do not hear, who do not belong to the Gemeinde (the believing community).

Prophecy is the appropriate sign of the believer. This preserves a positive sense to sign in both cases, but a central weakness to the interpretation remains: the text focuses attention not on confirmation of the church’s assessment of the individual but of the individual’s reaction before the two phenomena, tongues and prophecy.

Sixth, Roberts suggests tongues would have been a sign of some kind of spiritual activity, and thus positive, without it being clear just what the source of that tongues phenomenon was. Tongues are therefore a positive sign but not communicative. If an unbeliever enters the church and hears everyone speaking tongues, he will say, “You are possessed,” which is what the verb means. Not a reproach, merely a statement of fact, possibly even mingled with mild admiration. “Oh, there’s a lot of spirit here!”

That is not enough to make the unbelieving onlooker a Christian. That requires content and the resulting moral reformation. That is why prophecy is superior to tongues. The point of the Isaiah quotation is simply that tongues are an ineffective means of communicating God’s will. That is surely an abuse of Isaiah 28. The measure of the effectiveness of the strange tongues, in the context of Isaiah, is not in their ability to communicate but in their signal of divine judgment, and that was remarkably effective.

Moreover, the contrast in verse 22 is not between a gift that serves as a mildly positive but incommunicative sign to unbelievers and another gift that serves as a positive and communicative sign, also to unbelievers, but between a sign to unbelievers and a sign to believers.

Seventh, There is a growing number of scholars who adopt one form or another of the interpretation I shall briefly defend here. Not all of them agree on the details, but the general shape of the proposal is capturing majority approval.

In the context of Isaiah 28:9–13, the “strange tongues” of foreigners represent God’s visitation in judgment on his people. They had refused to listen to him when he spoke clearly; now he will visit them and speak in a language whose content they will not understand, even though in it they will hear a message of judgment.

The “strange tongues” therefore do not convey content to the unbelieving Israelites, but they do serve as a sign, a negative sign, a sign of judgment. This is the example to which Paul appeals. In the law it is written (and by law he here means what we would call the Old Testament Scriptures) that at a crucial juncture in the history of the covenant community, God spoke, in a manner of speaking, to his people through “strange tongues,” but when he did so, he was speaking a message of judgment.

It appears, then, that when God speaks through strange tongues and the lips of foreigners to unbelievers, it is a sign of his judgment upon them. It may well have been that some believers in Corinth were justifying their undiscriminating overemphasis on tongues by extolling their virtue as a witness to unbelievers, as a sign to them of God’s powerful presence in the life of the church.

Paul replies, in effect, “Yes, you are partly right. Tongues are a sign for unbelievers,” but if you examine how the Scriptures describe the relationship between unbelievers and “strange” (that is, foreign and unknown) tongues, you discover they constitute a negative sign. They are a sign of God’s commitment to bring judgment. When in the same verse (verse 22), Paul says prophecy is a sign for believers, does he not mean this in a positive sense?

Indeed, the most frequent criticism of this interpretation … in fact, the only one that is regularly raised against it … is that it uses sign in a negative sense with respect to the gift of tongues and in a positive sense with respect to the gift of prophecy. Two things must be said in defense of this interpretation.

It is possible that verse 22 is still commenting on the situation in Isaiah’s day. The unbelievers faced judgment and were addressed by God in the unintelligible language of foreigners, but there remained a godly remnant who benefited, not from tongues but from prophecy, Isaiah’s prophecy. (Compare Isaiah 8:16) In other words, the distinction as to whether a certain phenomenon served as a positive sign or a negative sign extends back into the context of Isaiah himself.

Also, the word sign, or sēmeion, especially in the LXX (in the Septuagint), often simply means an indication of God’s attitude. Whether those indications are positive or negative is a subordinate issue. Grudem, for instance, provides long lists of examples in which signs are entirely positive, entirely negative, or something in between.

Entirely positive, to list just a few (and in each case the word sēmeion is actually specifically mentioned in the text): the rainbow (Genesis 9), the blood on the doorpost (Exodus 12), the mark on the forehead (Ezekiel 9 and elsewhere). Entirely negative, for example: the bronze censers of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; the defeat of Pharaoh Hophra (Jeremiah 44), and many others.

In the former series (the positive ones), the signs show God’s approval and blessing, in the latter, his disapproval and impending judgment. Indeed, many signs are simultaneously negative and positive: negative to the rebellious and unbelieving and positive to the Lord’s faithful people. For example, the signs and wonders at the time of the exodus are said specifically to be negative to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians, but they are positive to Israel. Both points are made with that word again and again in the LXX.

Even in the New Testament, a sign can indicate God’s approval and blessing, as in Acts 2. In John 2, for example, this first miracle in Cana of Galilee is a positive sign. Or it can indicate God’s disapproval and threat of impending judgment. Again, there are many examples: Acts 2:19; Luke 11:30; and many other places. In other words, it is more intrinsic to the word sign that something about God be “sign-ified” than that the “sign-al” be positive or negative, if I may risk prostitution of English.

If this approach to the sign value of tongues is taken in verse 22, then there is no longer any great difficulty in understanding verse 23. When outsiders or unbelievers come into a Christian assembly where everyone is speaking in tongues, it will not be surprising if they simply conclude the believers are possessed. Which is simply, I think, what the word mainesthe here means.

The two words I have rendered outsider and unbeliever probably refer to the same kinds of people: non-Christians. The first word is used in 14:16 to refer to Christians without the gift of tongues, and because of this, some have preferred to think it here refers to some sort of “halfway” Christian, a catechumen perhaps, but that imposes too narrow a referent on the term and fails to recognize its intrinsic genius.

It simply means (usually) an outsider, but what this person stands outside of can only be determined by the context. In 14:16, it’s outside the gift of tongues. Here it’s outside of the family of faith. In other words, the flow of the argument in these verses contrasts believers with unbelievers, newcomers with the established Christian community; therefore, it seems best in outsiders and unbelievers to see a double description of the non-Christian visitor to the congregation.

It appears, then, that these tongues do not have exactly the same function as those in Acts 2. If an unbeliever enters the congregation when everyone is prophesying instead of speaking in tongues, then communication takes place. It may even be communication designed by the Spirit to expose the secrets of his own heart and thereby to convict him of sin, bringing him to repentance and worship.

Schlatter rightly observed that this picture fosters the assumption that Paul was concerned, in evangelism, to begin by producing a consciousness of guilt. Certainly his goal was not so much to generate the maximum possible number of tongues-speakers as to bring sinners to their knees in repentance and worship.

Moral renewal, like love in chapter 13, is one of the essential factors that distinguishes Christianity from its immediate rivals. Of course, this interpretation of the passage means that although prophecy serves as a sign to believers, it also has more positive effect on unbelievers than does the gift of tongues.

This does not mean Paul is reversing ground, for the prophesying of verse 24 is not evangelistic preaching. The unbeliever comes in and overhears what is going on in the assembly and by that means is brought to recognition of need and to repentance and worship. The point is, even so far as outreach is concerned, tongues must take a back seat to prophecy. The question of intelligibility has returned but now with reference to unbelievers.

Those of us who have spent any time on the borders between the ranks of the charismatic movement and the noncharismatics can easily sympathize with Paul’s warnings. I have known more than one Christian group, especially in university settings for instance, where the leadership was taken over by aggressive charismatics.

These leaders succeeded not only in splitting the group but in driving away some students who had become interested in Christian things but who were now alienated by the perplexing phenomenon of tongues. It is that kind of abuse Paul here warns against. Which again, of course, does not call in question the gift itself.

One other issue emerges from these verses. When Paul says the unbeliever comes into the assembly while everyone is speaking in tongues (verse 23) or while everyone is prophesying (verse 24), how far can the universality of such descriptions be pressed? Everyone? That leads us to the next section.

2. Order in public worship (verses 26–36)

The preliminary question this section raises, then, is.… Who may prophesy? At one level, the answer is obvious: only those who are so gifted. In Paul’s view, that is only part of the church, since his rhetorical questions, “Are all prophets?” and so forth in 12:29 demand the resounding answer, “No!”

Within that framework, 14:24 may not mean everyone in the congregation either was or could be prophesying when the unbeliever walked in, still less that they were all doing so simultaneously. It may simply mean that when the unbeliever entered, all he heard from anyone who was participating, one by one, was prophesying (or, in verse 23, speaking in tongues).

Verse 31 is more difficult. “You can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.” Is it fair to restrict the scope of this verse? If not, how can it be reconciled with Paul’s repeatedly expressed commitment to the principle that the various spiritual gifts are distributed to the church with no gift universally poured out?

There are, I think, only three possible answers. It is possible that verse 31 is not as comprehensive as it first sounds. It may be that “you … all” does not refer to every person in the church without exception but to every person in the church without distinction: men, women, slaves, nobles, and so forth. Or it may be that Paul simply presupposes “you … all” refers to those who are recognized as prophets; that is, all of you prophets may prophesy, one by one.

It is probably marginally more natural to read the Greek in the widest possible sense. In that case, many have suggested that we need to distinguish between those who prophesy now and then, and those whose gift is so developed, so deployed, or whose prophecies, when evaluated, receive high assessments, that they achieve the semi-status of “prophet.”

The debates are intricate, the results uncertain and rather unsatisfying, but they may have some bearing on the attempt to synthesize the material gathered so far on the nature of prophecy. Yet once more we aim toward the eschaton. The introductory question of verse 26 anticipates what Paul thinks can be learned from the discussion so far.

His position, in a word, is that whatever the charisma, all that is done when the believers come together (that is, when they meet as the gathered church) must be done for the edification of the church. Of the nature of each gift here mentioned we cannot be certain. Does the person who brings a hymn, for example, simply introduce a known composition for all to sing? Does it mean a fresh contribution each time, as many have suggested?

The brief answer is we possess too little information to warrant firm conclusions. What is quite clear is the Corinthian service was not boring! I shall draw out one or two implications for our own corporate worship at the end of this lecture. At the moment, we need to hear Paul descending to the extremely practical as he attempts to curtail the enthusiasm of those in Corinth who speak in tongues and prophesy.

A) Tongues (verses 27-28)

In brief, Paul imposes three specific limitations on tongues-speakers in the church. First, there must be an interpreter present, though how that interpreter is identified in advance is not specified. Second, only one tongues-speaker may speak at a time. Third, only two, or at the most three, may speak.

Whether this last restriction stems from a concern that the meetings do not become unwieldy or from a concern that tongues-speakers must not assume a more prominent place than prophecy, which also has its set limits (verse 29), is uncertain. What is quite clear is tongues-speakers are understood to have control over themselves. If the allotted two or three have had their say, Paul expects the others to keep quiet, which confirms the gift is not of the sort where the individual loses self-control.

It also hints at a remarkable and dynamic tension between the Spirit who is producing the gift and the individual who is the gift’s vehicle. Paul does not argue that after two or three have spoken, the Spirit will not grant the gift to anyone else, and therefore the fourth and subsequent tongues-speakers at any meeting must be fraudulent or inspired by some spirit other than the Holy Spirit.

Precisely the same dynamic tension operates in the gift of prophecy (verses 29–30). The compulsion of the Spirit is not of the order where the prophet loses ability to hold his or her peace. If a revelation comes to the fourth party, after three prophets have had their say, that does not provide warrant to the prophet to break the firm guidelines Paul is imposing on the church. One cannot help but see some decided differences between this sort of prophesying, and that, say, of Jeremiah. Can anyone imagine shutting up Jeremiah for that reason?

B) Prophecy (verses 29–33)

Some of the main points in these verses are: the limitation on the numbers of prophets who speak at one meeting; the fact that the prophets retain control of their spirits throughout the prophesying, hinting at a dynamic tension between the promptings of the Spirit and the constraints of the order imposed by the apostle; the presupposition that the informational base of prophecy is not study but revelation (verse 30); the fact that the evaluation of prophetic messages is couched in language that presupposes the message may contain a mixture of the valuable and the worthless.

One other question must be posed … Who are the “others” who “should weigh carefully what is said”? (Verse 29) On the face of it, this word could embrace either the prophets or some larger group, even the entire Corinthian assembly. Almost certainly the responsibility to weigh what the prophets say rests with the entire congregation, or, more precisely, with the congregation as a whole.

Certainly that is true elsewhere in the New Testament (compare 1 Thessalonians 5:21). One commentator rightly remarks that if Paul had wanted to say “the rest, that is, of the prophets,” the Greek more plausibly would have been hoi loipoi rather than, as it is, hoi alloi.

Grudem suggests a psychological point: “If we understand hoi alloi (“the others”) to be restricted to a special group of prophets, we have much difficulty picturing what the rest of the congregation would do during the prophecy and judging. Would they sit during the prophecy waiting for the prophecy to end and be judged before knowing whether to believe any part of it? […] Especially hard to believe is the idea that teachers, administrators and other church leaders without special gifts of prophecy would sit passively awaiting the verdict of an elite group.”

Moreover, there is no evidence that this careful weighing of the content of Christian prophecy should be confused with the gift of discerning spirits (12:10). It seems best, then, to see in “the others” the church as a whole. There is an important corollary to this testing.

If this was the common practice in churches regulated by Paul, it follows that a prophet who treated his or her prophecy as so immediate and direct and untarnished a product of divine inspiration that it should be questioned by no true believer, would not only be stepping outside the Pauline restrictions but would, presumably, ultimately fall under the suspicions of the church.

If I may digress a moment, one of the more troubling aspects of the modern charismatic movement is the frequency with which prophecies are given as direct quotations from the Lord, even though that pattern is extraordinarily rare in the New Testament. In other words, there is sometimes a preliminary remark such as, “This is what the Lord says unto you,” or “I …” and then God speaks in this prophecy. That is purported so frequently in the modern setting to be understood as a direct quotation from God. That is very rare in New Testament prophecies.

This aberration (and from the biblical point of view, that is what it is) is then compounded by far too little attention to the importance of Paul’s exhortation to weigh carefully what is said. I think that really means here not to test the prophet but to assess the content of the prophecy, to weigh it, to evaluate it with the presupposition being that it can be a mixed bag, as in the prophecies of Agabus, for example. Or in 1 Thessalonians 5, to “test everything …” In the context of prophecies. “… and to hold on to what is good.”

The divine reality behind these restrictions is given in verse 33a: “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.” This truth does not, of course, sanction mere traditionalism in worship or sanctify stuffiness, but it does warn us sharply about the dangers of the opposite end of the spectrum. That is not wise and biblically-informed Christian worship that pursues freedom at the expense of order or unrestrained spontaneity at the expense of reverence.

C) Role restrictions with respect to women (verses 33b–36)

This highly disputed passage begins its daunting array of challenges with a text-critical problem and uncertainty as to whether verse 33b belongs to the preceding verses or to the passage before us. The interpretation of verses 34–36 is sufficiently difficult that many commentators treat this text or some part of it, especially verses 34 to 35, as a gloss, an addition to the text that’s not from Paul.

From a purely text-critical point of view, however, the evidence that these verses are original and in their original location (and not, as some manuscripts have it, with verses 34–35 placed after verse 40) is quite substantial. The problem of the linkage of verse 33b is more difficult.

Do we read: “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the saints,” reading verse 33 together, or putting a period in the middle of verse 33 and starting a new sentence at 33b: “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches.”

The latter is stylistically inelegant, in that in Greek the words rendered congregations and churches by the NIV are the same word. To put it into English: “As in all the churches of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches.” It’s not very elegant. On the other hand, what some see as stylistic inelegance, others see as powerful emphasis.

Moreover, if verse 33b is linked with what precedes, it is difficult to see what the line of thought is. The sentence, “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the saints” is either trite or meaningless. It is trite if it means, “Of course God will be the same God everywhere!” or it is meaningless if you ask, “Exactly what is being compared? God and the congregations of the saints? God’s peaceful order with what is in all the congregations of the saints?”

On the whole, it seems best to take verse 33b with what follows, but even if someone prefers the other option, little is changed in the interpretation of verses 34–36, since the phrase “in the churches” (in the plural) is also found in verse 34. The nub of the difficulty is that in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, Paul is quite prepared for women to pray and prophesy, albeit with certain restrictions, but here, a first reading of the text makes the silence he enjoins absolute.

The solutions that have been advanced are, like devils in certain instances of demon possession, legion. I can do no more than list a few and mention one or two of my hesitations about them before turning to the interpretation I find most contextually and exegetically secure.

Some continue to see the demand for silence here as an absolute rule. In this view, the fact that women pray and prophecy in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, in a context that most judge rightly to be a church setting, is a concession to those who cannot manage to submit to the rule of chapter 14. But the praying and prophesying exercised by women in chapter 11 is not cast as a concession.

Moreover, the church enjoyed the heritage of Pentecost and the fulfillment of the Joel prophecy, which promised both men and women would have the Spirit poured out upon them and they would prophesy (Acts 2:18). Some are willing to leave a contradiction and say no more, but apart from any doctrine of Scripture, it is hard to believe Paul could contradict himself as boldly as some think he has within the space of a few pages. A variation on this approach interprets verses 34–36, or some part of them, as a gloss of no relevance in establishing Pauline theology.

Many of these writers exercise a similar source-critical skill with all the other passages in the Pauline corpus that seem to restrict women in any way. The authentic Paul is the Paul of passages like 1 Corinthians 11, where women do pray and prophecy, and Galatians 3:27 and following. I confess I am always surprised by the amount of energy and ingenuity expended to rescue Paul from himself and conform him to our image.

Equally unlikely is the view of Kahler, to the effect that the subordination Paul has in mind is not of women to men but of women to the order of worship. Again, we must ponder why women are singled out. Do not men also have to submit to the ecclesiastical structures Paul is setting forth?

To her credit, Fiorenza suggests the reasoning behind many such judgments is based on theological bias, so she is prepared to let Paul be Paul. However, she doesn’t like him. She thinks the restriction is placed on wives only. After all, 1 Corinthians 7 displays Paul’s “ascetic preference for the unmarried state,” she says. Thus it is “apparent that Paul, here is ‘taking over bourgeois moral concepts which denote not absolute but conventional values.’ ” Fiorenza finds Paul’s attitude surprising since we know of missionary couples.

Paul derives his stance from “the Jewish Hellenistic propaganda tradition” that “places the demand for subordination of wives in the context of the Law.” Verse 36 betrays the fact that Paul expects strong response from the church against these restrictions, for indeed, Paul himself recognizes that his argument “sounds preposterous” and “goes against the accepted practice of the missionary churches in the Hellenistic urban centers. He therefore claims for his regulations the authority of the Lord.”

Here we have Paul not only strapped into a bourgeois mentality but guilty of the worst sort of religious jingoism: knowing what he says is preposterous and preparing for the backlash by appealing to the Lord’s authority. I confess I cannot help entertaining the suspicion that Fiorenza’s exegesis tells us more of her than it does of Paul.

Another cluster of interpretations argues that the problems behind Paul’s demand for silence are local, probably doctrinal and/or cultural. These positions are defended with varying degrees of sophistication. The argument that some of the women were too noisy (perhaps because they were separated from men in a different part of the room or the like) cannot be taken very seriously, for we must ask why Paul then bans all women from talking. And were there no noisy men?

Nor is it plausible the women are silenced because they were uneducated, for again, we must ask why Paul doesn’t silence uneducated people not just women. Since Paul’s rule operates in all the churches (verse 33b, probably; verse 34, certainly), it would be necessary to hold that all first-century Christian women were uneducated, which is demonstrable nonsense.

You have a woman like Lydia, an international business traveler, for example, who can cross continents to sell her wares. She’s not likely to have been a complete illiterate. There is a great array of information now indicating the cultural diversity from city to city of the status of women. A place like Corinth was quite different from a place like Athens, and so forth.

The more sophisticated approach argues that women were exploiting their emancipation, refusing the ruling of verse 29 and falling into various heresies. The law, to which Paul appeals in verse 34, is his own prior ruling, alluded to again in verse 37. In other words, these women are refusing to submit to Paul.

Moreover, verse 36 makes it clear the crucial issue at stake was the Word of God. As one writer puts it, “The Corinthians were claiming to have originated the divine message, with their women giving the lead.” The doctrinal error may have been related to 15:12, a claim to have already been raised, and this claim “may well have carried with it, on the part of women, a tacit denial of their married state on the ground that as ‘risen ones’ they no longer owed marital allegiance,” so Ralph Martin.

None of this is convincing, and some of it is misleading. There is no evidence Paul ever uses the word law to refer to his own ruling. Not one unequivocal case. There is, as we shall see, a much more natural interpretation of that word. Surely the thrust of verse 36 is the charge that the Corinthians were trying to stand apart from the other churches (verse 33b).

In other words, verse 36 does not define the problem but describes the attitude that supports it. What evidence is there that the women “gave the lead,” to use his words, in this heresy if there was a heresy? The attempt to link this situation with a similar one in 1 Timothy arouses all the same kinds of objections about the exegesis of 1 Timothy.

There is a more foundational objection. These approaches are unbearably sexist. They presuppose there was a major heresy in which one of the following was true: A) Only women were duped. Has that ever happened in the history of the church? Yet Paul brutally silences all the women and none of the men, regardless of whether the women were heretics or not, B) Both some men and some women were duped, but Paul silences only the latter, thus proving to be a remarkable chauvinist, or C) Paul was entirely right in his ruling, because all the women and only the women were duped, which perhaps I may be excused for finding hard to believe.

The truth of the matter is this passage raises no question of heresy, but if it did, some explanation would still have to be given for the fact that Paul’s response silences women not heretics.

Yet another cluster of interpretations attempts to resolve the difficulty by ascribing verses 34 and 35, or some parts of them, to the position of the Corinthians, perhaps even a quote from their letter. There are many variations to this view, but the central purpose of this interpretation is to assign the parts that do not seem to cohere with Paul’s thought, as enunciated elsewhere, to the Corinthian position Paul is setting out to refute.

If the law (verse 34) means the Old Testament, one must find some place where women are told to be silent, and we are told there isn’t one; therefore, law must refer to something else. One common view is that it represents Torah, which in the first instance means “teaching” but was commonly used to cover both Scripture and associated Jewish traditions. So the law, here, refers to Jewish tradition the Corinthians have unwisely adopted. Verses 34 and 35 then summarize that position.

Paul’s horrified response is given in verse 36, and the fact that the word only in our text (Greek monous) is masculine may suggest, then, that Paul is saying, in effect, “Did the word of God originate with you men only?” Moreover, it has been argued that the first word of verse 36, (in the Greek text, the particle ē), must not be taken here as a comparative particle (“or”) but as a disjunctive particle, expressing shock and overturning what immediately precedes. “What! Did the word of God proceed originally from you?”

Again, however, the arguments are not as convincing as they first seem. That the word for only is masculine is irrelevant. People considered generically are regularly found in the masculine gender in Greek. It is more natural to read verse 36, I shall argue, as addressed to the church not just to the men in the church. If verses 34 and 35 constitute a quotation, this quotation breaks every one of the formal criteria for the certain quotations I set out previously.

Moreover, Paul never uses law to refer to Jewish tradition. Although it is true the first word in verse 36 is probably a disjunctive particle; nevertheless, the proffered explanation does not follow. Odell-Scott and Manus understand verses 33b and 35 as “the proposition against which the disjunctive ‘what!’ responds.”

More likely, verse 36 is responding to that attitude in the church that thinks it can act independently from the rest of the Christian churches (verses 33b and 34). That is to say, they are acting independently, and Paul says, “What! Does the Word of God originate with you?”

There is, in addition, a variety of interpretations that cut more or less independent swathes. For instance, Ellis sees the restriction applied to wives only in the light of the distinctions in roles he holds Paul does expect to be maintained in the Christian home. Perhaps these women were even questioning their own husbands’ prophecies, provoking some very embarrassing situations. But in at least much of the ancient world, marriage, to a woman, meant an improvement in freedom and social stature.

Even if these verses deal primarily with the married women, I suspect both Paul and his readers would assume an a fortiori argument: if married women are enjoined to be silent, then how much more the single ones? Besides, does Ellis really think Christian women enjoyed full freedom and perfect egalitarianism in function in the church as long as they were single, and then from the day of their marriage onward became silent for fear of offending the husbands to whom they were to submit?

All of these interpretations share another quite decisive weakness. They do not adequately explain why these words should be found here in the first place, in this context, dealing with prophecy and tongues. After all, Paul has not yet abandoned the subject (as is clear from verses 39–40). If we accept the text as it stands, we must ask why Paul seems to interrupt the flow of his thought to add this little unrelated section into his chapter. Or is it unrelated?

Another interpretation has been set out by various writers and meets the objections put to it. The view has been ably defended elsewhere; I can merely sketch it in here. Paul has just been requiring that the church in Corinth carefully weigh the prophecies presented to it. Women, of course, may participate in such prophesyings; that was established in chapter 11. Paul’s point here, however, is they may not participate in the oral weighing of such prophecies. That is not permitted in any of the churches. In that connection, they are not allowed to speak—“as the Law says.”

Mary Evans suggests that to take this as Paul’s appeal to law sounds “strangely unlike” him. That, in my judgment, is a rather strange assessment, since Paul, in this chapter, has already appealed once to the law (chapter 14, verse 21), by which he means the Old Testament Scriptures. Paul regularly appeals to Scriptures; it is rare that he appeals to law qua Mosaic code or law qua the Ten Commandments, except in an adjacent sort of argument, but he does appeal regularly to Scripture. He’s already done so in this chapter.

By this clause, “as the Law says,” Paul is probably not referring to Genesis 3:16, as many suggest, but to the creation order in Genesis 2:20–24, for it is to that Scripture Paul explicitly turns on two other occasions when he discusses female roles (1 Corinthians 11:8–9; 1 Timothy 2:13). The passage from Genesis 2 does not enjoin silence, of course, but it does suggest that because man was made first and woman was made for man, some kind of pattern has been laid down regarding the roles the two play.

Paul understands from this creation order that woman is to be subject to man, or at least that wife is to be subject to husband. In the context of the Corinthian weighing of prophecies, such submission could not be preserved if the wives participated. More broadly, Paul refuses to permit any woman to enjoy a church-recognized teaching authority over men (I think that is the thrust of 1 Timothy 2), and the careful weighing of the prophecies falls under that magisterial function.

This does not mean women should not learn. “Let them ask their husbands about various aspects of these prophecies once they return home,” Paul says. Why should the Corinthians buck not only the practice of all the churches but also the Scriptures themselves? Are they so enamored with the revelations they have received that they dare to pit them against the authentic deposit found in Scripture and in the apostolic tradition?

If they feel they are merely interpreting that tradition under the promptings of the Spirit, are they not troubled to see all the churches have translated the same texts and the same gospel into quite different ecclesiastical practices? “Are you the only people the word of God has reached?” (Verse 36) Four final observations on this interpretation may prove helpful.

First, the major objection that has been set against it is it seems inconsistent for Paul to permit women to prophesy and then to forbid them from weighing prophecies, but the objection carries little weight provided the view of prophecy I am outlining is understood to be the one with which Paul operated. It constitutes a problem only if prophecy has the same authority status that the great writing prophets of the Old Testament enjoyed, whether or not it was immediately recognized.

In certain respects, then, it is perfectly proper for Paul to elevate teaching above prophecy, especially if the teaching is considered part of the non-negotiable apostolic deposit that serves in part as one of the touchstones enabling the congregation to weigh the prophecies that are granted to the church, and especially if the prophecies themselves, unlike the apostolic deposit, are subject to ecclesiastical appraisal.

Second, this interpretation fits the flow of chapter 14. Although the focus in the latter part of the chapter is still on tongues and prophecy, it is still more closely related to the order the church must maintain in the enjoyment of these grace gifts. Verses 33b–36 fall happily under that description.

Third, this is not all the Bible has to say about relationships between men and women in Christ. I have said nothing, for instance, about the command for men to love their wives even as Christ loved the church, an exquisitely high and self-sacrificing standard. Nor have I listed the many things Paul expects women to do in the church. Yet …

Fourth, if this interpretation is correct, and there are some role distinctions between men and women to be observed, it is essential to recognize this teaching is for our good and not for our enslavement. This is a theme I would dearly love to enlarge upon, but I shall pass it by.

3. Warning (verses 37-38)

Part of the answer to the questions in the preceding verse (verse 36, Paul’s shocked rhetorical questions) must be something like: “No, no, we admit that the word of God first came to us through you; you first preached it to us.” Verse 37 then follows naturally with a focus on apostolic authority, but this is so elevated it stands a quantum leap above that of the prophets at Corinth.

Indeed, Paul can actually make the acceptance of the authority of what he writes a necessary criterion of the validity of all claims to spiritual giftedness, including prophecy. Several observations on the text will help to clarify the thrust of Paul’s claim.

First, the words rendered “what I am writing to you” are a translation of a plural expression, “the matters about which I am writing to you,” if you like. This suggests but does not quite prove that Paul has in mind not just the single injunction dealing with the silence of women but what he has said so far in this epistle.

Second, the textual variant, whether we should render it “is of the Lord” or “is the Lord’s command,” has little bearing on the authority claim Paul is making. The latter (“is the Lord’s command,” as in most of our English versions) is marginally more likely, but that means the use of command here (entolē) is a little different from that in 1 Corinthians 7, where “the Lord’s command” refers to what Jesus himself taught in the days of his flesh. Paul is certainly not making that claim here. What this shows is “the Lord’s command” was not a stereotyped expression but could vary in force according to context.

Third, the word Lord is placed emphatically. Paul is therefore associating submission to what he writes with submission to the Lord himself. Not to submit to what the apostle writes is thus to deny the lordship of Jesus, which is the Christian’s central confession as stipulated at the beginning of these three chapters (12:3).

It is hard to resist seeing an inclusio; that is, a figure of speech in which everything in these three chapters, sandwiched between the strong references to the lordship of Jesus, must be read in the light of that lordship. As we shall see in a moment, there are two other hints Paul is harking back to 12:1–3 and drawing his argument to a close.

Fourth, that Paul’s authority should be placed so decisively above that of the prophets has obvious bearing on our understanding of prophecy in Corinth. Paul clearly believes prophecy is revelatory (verse 30). Equally clearly, he does not conclude, on this ground, that the authority of the prophets is therefore absolute.

Conversely, of course, this verse presupposes not only considerable authority vested in the apostle Paul but his self-conscious awareness of it. Some of the protestations over the obscurity of this verse are located, I think, in the failure to recognize this fact. Conzelmann provides a marvelous example, but I’ll let you track that down yourself.

Fifth, the use of pneumatikos (or “spiritual”) is striking. Literally, “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or a spiritual …” That is, a spiritual person, a pneumatic. The three chapters began with consideration of what spirituality consists in (12:1–3). Now that Paul has concluded his arguments, he can go so far as to say not only that the prophet will recognize the authority of his remarks but also that the spiritual person, the person with the Holy Spirit, will do so.

Here, then, is a foundational test of the Spirit’s presence, of spirituality if you like: submission to the apostolic writings, not simply because they are the writings of an apostle but because they are the Lord’s command and, therefore, tied irrevocably to the believer’s confession, “Jesus is Lord.” (12:1–3)

Sixth, this apostolic authority grounds the open threat of verse 38. The initial clause does not mean “if he is ignorant of this,” despite the verbal similarity to 12:1, for after three chapters of exposition, Paul may reasonably expect his readers are not ignorant of what he has to say. What he fears, rather, is some may ignore what he has to say.

If anyone succumbs to that temptation, Paul warns, “he himself will be ignored,” and I think he means by God. That, I think, is the severity of the threat, not, with some variant readings that try to soften the thrust, “let him not be recognized,” (that is, by the congregation) or still less “he himself will be ignored,” (that is, by the congregation). The latter two are simply inadequate as a threat in the light of the immense claims Paul has just made, as Hemphill, in his excellent dissertation, rightly points out.

The Corinthians may pursue their own self-interested definitions of what is spiritual and run the risk of being ignored by God, or they may recognize afresh that their confession of Jesus as Lord is not only the significant criterion of the Spirit’s presence (12:1–3) but also is itself no mere arbitrary chant but a confession that can be tested by enthusiastic obedience to that Lord’s commands mediated through the apostle.

4. Summary (verses 39–40)

Paul wraps up. So far as the competing claims of prophecy and the gift of tongues are concerned, prophecy is heartily encouraged and tongues are not to be forbidden.

Some time ago, a pastor in England happened to discuss some of these matters with a well-known charismatic clergyman. The charismatic, doubtless thinking of Paul’s words, “Do not forbid speaking in tongues,” asked my friend what he would do if someone began to speak in tongues at one of the meetings of the church he served.

The pastor replied, “I’d allow the tongues-speaker to finish, and if there were an interpretation immediately forthcoming, I’d have no objection.” Then he paused and asked in return, “But what would you do if there were no public tongues-speaking in your church for six months or so?” “Ah,” the charismatic replied, “I’d be devastated.” “There is the difference between us,” friend pastor replied, “for you think tongues-speaking is indispensable. I see it as dispensable but not forbidden.”

That is Paul’s distinction exactly. Of course, more can be said from a pastoral point of view. What is quite clear is Paul wants the public meetings of the church to be conducted “in a fitting and orderly way.” (Verse 40) For him that means not less than the observance of the rules he has enunciated in the second half of chapter 14: “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.”

5. Concluding reflections

Before this lecture ends, I must say a little more about first-century practices when the church gathered together. In part, these reflections are tangential to this discussion, but because chapter 14 preserves a glimpse of what went on, or what Paul expected to go on, in at least one first-century church, and because these verses have fueled debate over patterns of contemporary worship, a few remarks may not be entirely out of order.

Let Schweizer set the stage: “It is completely foreign to the New Testament,” he writes, “to split the Christian community into one speaker and a silent body of listeners.” The same point has been made by many more popular writers. Chapter 14, it is argued, reflects a church service where there is a dynamic interplay, sharing, give and take, not detailed liturgy climaxed by lengthy exposition delivered by one properly recognized authority.

There are immense complexities to this subject that cannot be probed here, such as the role and numbers of elders in the early church, the ways in which the Pastoral Epistles should be related to 1 Corinthians, and much more. If I may be forgiven for offering suggestions without taking the time to substantiate them, I would offer these three:

First, these verses (especially 14:26 and following) do not describe all that should take place in every meeting of the church. Nothing is mentioned, for instance, of corporate prayer or reading of Scripture, both of which are mentioned elsewhere (1 Corinthians 14:16 and 1 Timothy 4:13, respectively).

Moreover, if the “word of instruction” in 14:26 is, as seems likely, equivalent to the “word of knowledge” or “word of wisdom” identified in chapter 12, then there is nothing here that describes regular teaching ministry, even though regular teaching of the apostolic tradition is one of the distinguishing characteristics of elders.

This focus on the apostolic tradition can be traced back to the earliest days of the church. In Acts, chapter 2, the church continues in the apostolic doctrine, we are told. When was it communicated or explicated if not when the church met together?

Moreover, if verses 26 and following are taken as an exhaustive list of the activities carried out in Corinthian public meetings, when did they gather for the Lord’s Supper, which also is not mentioned? We are forced to recognize that verses 26 and following do not purport to tell us everything that must go on in the Corinthian assembly, but, as seems obvious on the face of it, only what restrictions Paul lays out for the Corinthians so far as the participatory charismata are concerned.

Second, those of us who do not think the account of Paul’s appointment of elders on the return swing of the first missionary journey (Acts 13 and 14) is anachronistic recognize that there were elders operating in the Pauline churches virtually from their inception. In other words, we don’t delay and make them late, connected only with the Pastoral Epistles. We must, therefore, ask ourselves what these elders were doing.

We must similarly ask when and where in the church’s life those who were recognized teachers (as in 12:28) here discharged their gifts. The approach of Schweizer, at first attractive, suddenly seems a trifle reductionistic.

Third, I suspect there is biblical warrant for thinking, on these somewhat more remote grounds, that there were aspects of corporate worship characterized by a great deal of spontaneity: Spirit-led sharing, mutual edification, and the like, and other aspects characterized by solemnity, formal reading, and explication of the Scriptures already given, enunciation of apostolic truth, and corporate prayers and singing.

So far as our practices today are concerned, this means we should give more thought to developing, in our own context, both trends found in the biblical evidence. Even if we cannot satisfy both emphases in every service, the least we must do is develop structures in which both emphases are worked out in proper proportion in the total life of the church.

Beyond these comments I must not venture. It is enough to remark that Paul’s chief aim in these verses is not to lay out an exhaustive list of necessary ingredients in corporate worship but to insist that the unleashed power of the Holy Spirit characteristic of this new age must be exercised in a framework of order, intelligibility, appropriateness, seemliness, dignity, peace, for that is the nature of the God whom we worship.

We have a few minutes remaining in which I can take some questions, if you like.

Male: Is it your opinion that women are permitted to prophecy but not to join in the public evaluation of those prophecies in the meeting?

Don Carson: That’s exactly correct.

Male: This question concerns laleÛ. When a woman is speaking here, the verb is lalein. The question is, when it came to the evaluation of prophecies in verse 29, the verb is diakrinō. Why doesn’t Paul use that verb here? In fact, laleÛ is sometimes used in these chapters in connection with tongues.

Don: All of that assumes these terms are technical expressions that are used univocally. Lalein sometimes is used for prophecy, sometimes for speaking in tongues, and elsewhere, quite clearly just for speaking. The context, however, in verses 34 and following indicates the speaking is asking questions about what’s going on.

It is the context, in other words, that shows what kind of question it is, what kind of speaking it is. It is not simply bound up in the word lalein itself, as if it were a technical term that has to be restricted in one such way. It is demonstrable that in Hellenistic Greek of this period, the distinctions that were maintained in older Greek between legÛ and laleÛ are pretty well obliterated.

The second word you raised questions about was sigaÛ. Again, there is an excellent treatment of that by Doug Moo in an interchange between Moo, Payne, and Moo in a triplet of articles in Trinity Journal about two and a half years ago, where he demonstrates that, again, Paul’s use of sigaÛ is not a technical expression. In other words, you are making, I think, too much ride on individual words as if they were technical expressions when in fact they are not. So the precise force they have to bear has to be determined from context.

Male: I was interested in your interpretation of verse 38 where, I’m sure many of us have always believed that verse to have meant if you don’t practice this way or follow these practices, then you are not recognized in the context of church.” You’re saying that means God is not going to be recognizing a person. What do you think that means in terms of the practical workings of that particular church …?

Don: I won’t quite go the stake on that interpretation; my argument for the flow throughout the chapter doesn’t quite turn on it, but the reason why I am not persuaded by the other argument (that is, he is not recognized in the church) is simply that judging by Paul’s relationships with the Corinthians, both in this epistle and in the second epistle, to argue that he is not recognized by the church just won’t fit the bill since the church itself is the problem.

How do you say that to a church that is chafing against apostolic authority? You say, “If somebody doesn’t tow the line here, he’s not recognized by the church.” It’s the church that’s not towing the line! So it seems intrinsically very weak to come out with that kind of conclusion after all of these claims about his apostolic authority, even above that of the prophets in the church. To come out with that conclusion seems to me, I think, unbearably weak. I think you’ve got to read it in context, more likely at least, as not recognized by God.

The reason, again, why I think he can speak in such powerful terms is precisely because he is harking back to chapter 12, verses 1–3. Paul sets out who is a spiritual person in the first instance. A spiritual person in the first instance is not someone who has such and such a gift. It is someone who, by the Spirit, confessed Jesus as Lord.

Question. Does this mean there is any content to such a test? Do you just mouth it? After this long exposition, Paul says, “The one who is spiritual …” Who is pneumatikos, harking back again to chapter 2. “… confesses Jesus as Lord and recognizes that what I am telling you is the Lord’s command.”

So really it is, therefore, a very strong argument. It is saying, in effect, “If at some fundamental point in the very nature of spiritual reality in what’s going on, a person then wants to step outside the Lord’s authority as mediated through the apostolic tradition, he’s not recognized.” That is, by the Lord himself. How else does one testify to not being a Christian but by coming out from under the rubric, “Jesus is Lord”? I think it’s entirely self-consistent.

Moreover, elsewhere when Paul has his strongest contentions with the Corinthians, it is precisely that kind of thing he can ultimately end up with. See, for example, the way he ends up in 2 Corinthians, chapter 13: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith,” and in other verses, “Test your calling and election. Make your election sure.”

In other words, Paul is always concerned when the disobedience swings too violently aside from the mandates of what he judges to be the Lord’s command. He is always concerned to question whether or not the person, ultimately, is a Christian at all, which may remind us that in Paul’s view, we are not simply playing games and squabbling amongst denominations. There are some fundamental issues at stake here.

Male: Does this mean, therefore, that if someone rejects your understanding of what Paul is saying about the silence of women and so on, they’re ultimately in great danger of being rejected at the last judgment?

Don: That’s a good question, but you’re trying to get me in a lot of hot water. In the first place, I would want to distinguish as sharply and as absolutely as I could between the authority of Paul and mine. I’m just an interpreter, and I am wrong far too often. What I would say, however, is that at the end of the day, for those who hunger to submit themselves to Paul, Paul must not be approached in such a way as to domesticate him by clever exegetical ingenuity to make the text say things it doesn’t in order to fit the modern mood.

In that sense, therefore, if a person is approaching the text on women’s issue or anything else, for that matter, with a fundamental principial attitude that does not submit to the apostolic gospel, what then is meant by the foundational confession, “Jesus is Lord”? Now that doesn’t mean everybody has to agree with my interpretation. Don’t misunderstand.

A person might be far more reverent, pious, scholarly, and accurate in exegesis than I and come out elsewhere. Pray God he will convince me, then, and show me the light and show me a better way of understanding the text. Fair enough. I have no problem with that, but where, in reality, what is going on is a sidestepping of the authority of the Lord’s command, in this instance mediated through the apostle, what then does submission to the lordship of Jesus mean?

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