3462 - Is It Right for Women to Teach?

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 13, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 23.

3462 — Is It Right for Women to Teach?

Please explain 1 Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:12. P. I. H.

There are many passages that are and always will be obscure and difficult to understand, because we do not know the circumstances that demanded the instruction given. It clearly seems that there was danger, in the apostle's day, in the new-found freedom in the Gospel, of women's doing things that were unwomanly, out of place, perhaps after the manner of heathen priestesses. This the apostle rebukes. Altho there may be women capable of leading, and men docile as lambs to be led, reduced to practise, it is inconsistent, incongruous, and to most women abhorrent. Mannish women or womanish men are little help either to church or State or society.

But does this give woman no place, no voice, in the church of the Lord? Let our timid querist read Ex. 15:20; 1 Samuel 1 and 2; 2 Chron. 34:22-28; Prov. 31:10-31, records of God's use of women, and instructions to them. Let her read of the holy women who followed Jesus, ministering to Him; of the labors of Dorcas and Phebe and Priscilla; of the promise that "your sons and your daughters shall prophesy [teach];" of the four daughters of Phillip, all of whom prophesied; of the mothers of good kings, specially mentioned of God. See Luke 8:2, 3; 24:10; John 4:28, 29; Acts 2:17, 18; 9:36-42; 21:9; 18:24-26; Rom. 16:1-3; 2 Tim. 1:5. God wishes to use woman in all her sweet and blessed winning ways, a thousand times more potent in the proper place than in the assumption of undue authority. Will she teach? — Certainly she will; perhaps preach; but she will do it, or should do it, like a woman.