As an attorney for more than 30 years, I have regularly used the Texas Family Code, a systematic statement of family law. The code outlines the law in every circumstance for every citizen of Texas. If we similarly think of Scripture as a legal code, then we must try to harmonize the conflicts within the code, including those surrounding the role of women. We must somehow harmonize the two passages in Paul’s letters that say women should be silent and never teach men with the facts that the Lord God also gifted Deborah to lead Israel in the Old Testament, raised up Junia to be an apostle, empowered Priscilla to teach Apollos, and affirmed women praying and prophesying in the Corinthian assemblies. The effort to harmonize all this is impossible because the underlying premise of the Bible as a legal code is dead wrong.
If the current Texas Family Code had in it as many “apparent contradictions” regarding the role of women as does the Bible, the governor would call an emergency session of the Texas Legislature to get the code reworded so that the laws contained therein could be easily understood with all contradictions removed. That’s the way legal codes work.
But what if that is not the way the Bible works because it is not a legal code? Does not the Bible say, “The written code kills; the Spirit gives life?”
What if the Bible is fundamentally the True Story of the world, told over 2,000 years about the mighty acts of God to redeem the world? What if there was redemptive movement in Scripture that changed the behavior of the actors in the drama as the storyline moved through time? Was this not happening in Matthew 19:1-12 about when Jesus said that Deuteronomy 24 was no longer the Word of God for the people of God because Jesus had come to establish the Kingdom of God? Is not the story moving through time as God acts in Creation, at the Exodus and Sinai, and then in Jesus Christ and at Pentecost?
Paul in his letter to Corinth certainly moved away from a legal vision of the kingdom of God and resisted those who argued for a legal justification for their actions by saying, “All is lawful, but not helpful. All is lawful, but I will not be under the authority of anything” (l Corinthians 6:12-13). In every case, Paul says the legal question is inadequate. We need to ask better questions. So in 1 Corinthians he helps the Corinthians ask instead: Is it helpful? Is it an act that will lead us into bondage? Is it consistent with our identity as Christ’s body? Is it consistent with our identity as temples of the Holy Spirit? Does it advance the proclamation of the Gospel? Is the Spirit leading us to do this?
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We live in a time that not only rejects the legalism of the past but sometimes has little respect for Scripture as spiritual authority. There are many in the church today who don’t care what Scripture says. For them, spiritual authority resides in experience and intuition. Yet ignoring Scripture is not an option; asking the Spirit to help us interpret Scripture is a much better option. Repenting of our past failures to interpret Scripture so that we can better equip the entire church for ministry is a still better option.
Though we reject the interpretive grids of the past that led us into oppression, we do not reject Scripture in order to announce the liberation of women by Jesus the Lord. In fact it is Scripture’s witness to us and the witness of the Spirit among us that has brought us to strong convictions regarding the liberation of women for ministry. Our convictions have changed not by ignoring Scripture but by listening to the Spirit’s witness and embracing the witness of the entire story from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22.