Last week, I made a YouTube video called God Has NEVER Called Women to Preach. Many have responded to me and told me that I preach, which I do not, and that preaching and teaching are the same things. They are not!
Here she lists a bunch of verses that use the word “preach” in some cases and “teach” in others. But eventually she comes to her main argument:
So we see that Jonah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and His disciples preached. How do we know that preach and teach are different? We know by this verse in His Word: “And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to TEACH and to PREACH in their cities” (Matthew 11:1). God clearly distinguishes between teaching and preaching in His Word and so should we!
As far as arguments go, this is certainly rather weak. The Bible is full of parallelism, a method of writing in which two words or phrases meaning essentially the same thing are written consecutively for emphasis. Instances of this are especially common in the Psalms. For example:
Psalm 11:4:
“The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord is on his heavenly throne.”
Psalm 32:1:
“Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.”
So Lori bases the legitimacy of her entire ministry on yet another instance of parallelism in the Bible? If she were to judge herself by her own standards, I think she would be on pretty shaky ground!
Lori seems to recognize this is not enough evidence, however, so she also presents two definitions from a nearly 100-year-old dictionary:
The 1828 Webster Dictionary defines “preaching” this way: “To discourse on the gospel way of salvation and exhort to repentance; to discourse on evangelical truths and exhort to a belief on them and acceptance of the terms of salvation. This was the extemporaneous manner of preaching pursued by Christ and His Apostles. (Matthew 4, 10 and Acts 10, 14).”
The same dictionary defines “teaching” in this way: “To instruct; to inform, to communicate to another the knowledge of that of which he was before ignorant.”
Of course, one of the problems is that the definition of “teach” is not assumed to be in a religious context in the dictionary, so of course it will appear different. But it sure seems to me that what Lori does falls nicely under the category of “to discourse on evangelical truths.”
God has given men the command to preach.
No, He hasn’t. There’s no one verse in the Bible stating the command to preach was given specifically to men. There are specific instances of a particular man being commanded to preach, but not “men” generally. So to follow Lori’s logic to its natural conclusion, we must assume only the specific people told to preach in the Bible are allowed to do so, which excludes every preacher today (both men and women)!
There’s not one place in the Bible where women were given the ministry of preaching since they are to be silent in the churches and they are forbidden from teaching men.
This is really an argument from silence: unless the Bible specifically says women should preach, Lori assumes they shouldn’t. Of course, she herself doesn’t apply this standard elsewhere. For example, I don’t remember the Bible commanding women to make blogs or Youtube videos.
And the word for “silence” here doesn’t mean to be totally quiet, but rather to be orderly (all believers are commanded to live “quiet lives” with the exact same word in 1 Thes.4:11). Additionally, the word for “authority” when women are told not to have authority over a man is “authentein”, which meant an overbearing, dominating authority, instead of “exousia”, the word for legitimate authority. Paul is not prohibiting women from having any authority, but from trying to rule over men. This was a problem in the Ephesian church because it was being influenced by a cult that taught female-dominance over men. Of course, what both that cult and Lori fail to understand is that Paul taught against any dominance of ANYONE over another, whether based on gender or any other factor.
I don’t preach. I TEACH women biblical womanhood as God commands in Titus 2:3. I have never stood in front of a crowd and exhorted them to repentance and belief. I teach women to become godly woman as God has commanded that I do. Yes, I share the Gospel at times but I don’t preach it. I’m not standing in front of a crowd of people preaching and I never will. Feel free to share the Gospel with your neighbors, friends, strangers, and family, but this isn’t preaching. Women aren’t called to preach.
So this is interesting. She seems to be implying she isn’t preaching because she isn’t standing in front of a crowd, but that sharing the Gospel one-on-one is okay. In that case, my question is this: what qualifies as a crowd? Can you share the Gospel with two people instead of one? Three? Ten? She must believe there’s a particular cut-off, after which you must hush up. The whole idea disintegrates into ridiculousness.
Why do I care about this so much and why have I made such a big deal about this topic? Why do I want you to know the difference between preaching and teaching? Because I want to warn you about the many female preachers and try to explain to you that what they are doing is wrong.
Sorry, Lori, but I don’t believe you. I don’t think you’re fooling anyone. You’re only making a big deal about this because you can’t stand criticism. If you were only concerned with alleged false teachers, there would be no reason to bring yourself into the discussion at all (and yet it’s your video and the responses to it that you’re writing about!).
They are not to teach nor have authority over men because Adam was created first, proving that men are the ones that God has ordained to be in authority, and Eve was deceived, proving that women are more easily deceived (1 Timothy 2:12-14).
There could not be weaker arguments than these. If Adam has authority because he was created first, then the cows and squirrels and giant squid have authority over him because they were created even earlier!
And if the story in Genesis proves that all women are more easily deceived, I suppose it also should prove that ALL men tend to blame their own sin on their wives? I seriously doubt Lori would take it that far. Can’t damage men’s fragile egos!
Besides, this kind of implies that Adam was not deceived, in which case his sin was more deliberate than Eve’s. How exactly is this better?
Sorry, Lori, but you’re a preacher. You have a very large audience containing both men and women. You wrote your own Bible-study guide. You teach from the Bible, and attempt to correct the theology of both men and women on your Facebook page. But guess what! There’s nothing wrong with you preaching! I believe you have far more freedom than you do. We just wish you would stop making excuses for yourself while trying to place man-made chains on all your fellow women.
Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.
No comments:
Post a Comment