Paul and Jesus

Surprisingly, Paul considers none of this and abruptly closes the door on further discussion with his final declaration: “If anyone is disposed to be contentious, we recognize no other practice, nor do the churches of God” (1 Corinthians 11:16). But even while laying down the law Paul cannot resist giving at least a nod to the ideal. Even though these male and female roles are still operative in the “old” creation, he observes, almost parenthetically: “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not without man, nor man without woman; for as woman was made from man, so the man is now born of woman. And all things are from God” (1 Corinthians 11:11–12). Since Paul is speaking of an alternative to the order of creation in which woman was made from man and for man, he must here have the “new creation” in mind, or as he says—in the Lord. The reference to “the man” seems to refer then to Christ, the new Adam/Man, even if by extension all the select group, whether male or female, who are “born of women” are included as part of the new Adamic race. The idea is that in the old creation woman needed man to exist (Eve from Adam), but in the new creation the male needs the woman to exist (Jesus from Mary)—not referring primarily to human birth in general, but the birth of the Man—Jesus Christ, through the woman Mary. As Paul says in Galatians, “When the fullness of time arrived, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). I am convinced this is the best interpretation of these difficult verses. Paul’s affirmation that the first creation, while important to honor, is balanced by the new creation, with the ultimate “Man” (i.e., Christ as “last Adam”) coming from a woman, fits precisely the tension Paul faces in both affirming the old reality and denying its priority over the new.

Although Paul apparently allowed women a limited role in the group gatherings, so long as they were exercising prophetic gifts of the Spirit, he lays down a general rule a bit further on in the same letter to the Corinthians:

As in all the churches of the saints [the chosen ones], the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Corinthians 14:34–35)

By referring to the Law or Torah, Paul is going back again to the created order in Genesis. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, Eve was told that, as part of her punishment, “your desire shall be toward your husband and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). As with Paul’s previous discussion about women covering themselves with their hair, Paul will brook no compromise on this point, ending his discussion with an appeal to his own authority as one in contact directly with Christ: “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Corinthians 14:37–38). Here we see that in Paul’s churches the single test, in the end, was whether one submitted to what Paul said or not—regardless of any kind of claim to one’s own spirituality or prophetic gifts.

Paul’s rigid instructions demanding that women be modest, silent, and submissive, with no direct access to Christ other than through their husbands, seems to stand in blatant contradiction to Paul’s teaching about baptism into the one body and being in Christ. Some interpreters of Paul have gone so far as to suggest that Paul’s insistence on the silence of women in 1 Corinthians 14:33b– 36 is an interpolation added by a later pious scribe who wanted to take the opportunity to bring Paul into conformity with the writer of 1 Timothy, writing as late as A.D. 100, who had claimed his letter was from Paul:

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:11–14)⁶

As appealing as such a suggestion might be as a way to ethically “sanitize” Paul for our modern sensitivities, I think we should resist this kind of editing of his letters. There are no manuscripts of 1 Corinthians that omit this passage, and Paul’s demand that women be silent and submissive fits precisely with what he says earlier in his discussion of women’s hair. He grounds his dogmatic rulings on the public behavior of women in his understanding of Genesis, which describes how God set the parameters of the present physical creation.