Teachings of Paul?

Question

Why do people think that Paul wanted women to "second class citizens"? That is a really poor interreptation of the scripture.

The bible teaches about women being upheld and as equals.

That is the exact scripture that I knew would come up. Paul was speaking to the early church where women weren't allowed in the "men's area". They were in the balconies yelling down to their husbands. Paul was telling the men to break the law as it was illegal to teach women at all.

Answer 1

Katheryn, he meant don't interupt the mass with questions. Up until that point, women were not allowed in the inner sanctum of temples. They did not get to see the whole service, but in Chrisitianity, they could. Apperently, a few women would question "What's going on? What does that mean" when the priest was talking. Paul wanted them to concentrate more on the mass and ask questions afterwards.

Answer 2

People fail to take into account the times, and the already existing cultural practices.

Men and women didn't sit together in the synagogue. And few men ever spoke there, let alone women.

Paul was a highly disciplined, conservative teacher of the faith, and he may have never realized that his writings would some day be part of sacred scripture.

If he did, he might have worded things a bit more precisely, but God obviously doesn't have a problem with it.

Tradition plays a very big part in middle eastern religious practices.

Muslims, to this day, separate the men from the women during prayer time.

Answer 3

The Book states that Elijah was the greatest human that ever
lived. But he was still a man, and had the passions of a man!
He killed 100 soldiers because he was afraid to go to the King.
Paul was the greatest Apostle, because he learned from Christ
when Christ was in Spirit. But he was still a man.
He tried hard to push a custom of the Pharisees, about men
should not wear a hat in church, and women should.
Humans tend to exaggerate in order to make themselves
right. Paul clearly exaggerated when he said, doesn't nature itself
show you a man should not have long hair? It's natural for a mans hair to grow.
In Nature, the male is often more beautifu than the female.
Look at the Cardinal. The female is gray, and the male bright red.
The lion, the male having the mane.
Paul was taught in a patriarchal society that demeaned women.
And his comments about women were his OPINION.
If one reads the whole chapter about the hat and the hair.
One will see that while Paul was really pushing it. The Holy Spirit
finally spoke to his heart and said CHILL OUT! And Paul said,
"But if anybody wants to argue. The CHURCH does not have
this custom!"

Answer 4

What is the whole context of 1 Corinthians 14...Speaking in tongues. So this tells me the women was speaking in tongues, and my guess not a language but a jibberish. I know some will dispute this but I know I am in the right context. Them women had to be doing something to do with tongues. If those women wasn't talking tongues then they kept asking questions interupting the teaching.

Answer 5

Paul isn't so hard to interpret. He say that women should be silent in church and that if they have questions they should ask their husbands when they get home. How else could the following (from Corinthians) be interpreted?

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.

14:35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

Edit - there is no evidence to suggest that Paul was only making this a "rule" for the people in Corinth, unless you wish to say that all of Corinthians should only apply to those folks.

What evidence do you have that women sat in the balcony. Are you able to site your sources?

Answer 6

Because he says a woman should stay silent in church and he wouldn't allow a woman to teach men (I Corinthians about 11,12, and 13)and a woman should cover her head when she prays but not a man.I believe it was just an ancient custom that doesn't apply today.

Answer 7

<< Paul has been perceived as basically negative toward women. He did write that "it is well for a man not to touch a woman" (1 Cor. 7:1). The passion that burned so deeply in Paul did not seem to be related to the desire for union with a woman. Why would that desire create such negativity in Paul, anyway? Marriage, married love, and married sexual desire were not thought to be evil or loathsome. Paul's sexual passions do not fit comfortably into this explanatory pattern. But what does?

Obviously there is no way to know for certain the cause of Paul's anxiety prior to that moment of final revelation in the Kingdom of Heaven. But that does not stop speculation. The value of speculation in this case comes when a theory is tested by assuming for a moment that it is correct and then reading Paul in the light of that theory. Sometimes one finds in this way the key that unlocks the hidden messages that are present in the text. Once unlocked, these messages not only cease to be hidden but they become obvious, glaring at the reader, who wonders why such obvious meanings had not been seen before.

Some have suggested that that Paul was plagued by homosexual fears. This is not a new idea, and yet until recent years, when homosexuality began to shed some of its negative connotations, it was an idea so repulsive to Christian people that it could not be breathed in official circles. This is not to say that our cultural homophobia has disappeared. It is still lethal and dwells in high places in the life of the Christian church, and it is a subject about which ecclesiastical figures are deeply dishonest, saying one thing publicly and acting another way privately. The prejudice, however, is fading slowly but surely. With the softening of that homophobic stance we might consider the hypothesis that Paul may have been a gay male. We might test that theory by assuming it for a moment as we read Paul. When I did this for the first time, I was startled to see how much of Paul was unlocked and how deeply I could understand the power of the gospel that literally saved Paul's life.

When I suggest the possibility that Paul was a homosexual person, I do not mean to be salacious or titillating or even to suggest something that many would consider scandalous. I see no evidence to suggest that Paul ever acted out his sexual desires and passions. He lived in an age and among a people that cloaked the way he would have viewed this reality with layer after layer of condemnation. But for a moment assume the possibility that this theory is correct and look with me again at the writings of Paul and, more important, at the meaning of Christ, resurrection, and grace in the life of this foundational Christian.

Paul felt tremendous guilt and shame, which produced in him self-loathing. The presence of homosexuality would have created this response among Jewish people in that period of history. Nothing else, in my opinion, could account for Paul's self-judging rhetoric, his negative feeling toward his own body, and his sense of being controlled by something he had no power to change. The war that went on between what he desired with his mind and what he desired with his body, his drivenness to a legalistic religion of control, his fear when that system was threatened, his attitude toward women, his refusal to seek marriage .as an outlet for his passion-nothing else accounts for this data as well as the possibility that Paul was a gay male. ...>>

~John Shelby Spong,
Episcopal Bishop

Answer 8

Pauls letters were writen to spacific churches about their problems not intended to be taken as gosple they were letters to friends who knew him. to many people will read them out of context as gosple