Different Rules For Different Cultures? A Response To James R. Payton Jr. -- By: James W. Scott

Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 14:1 (Spring 2009)
Article: Different Rules For Different Cultures? A Response To James R. Payton Jr.
Author: James W. Scott


Different Rules For Different Cultures?
A Response To James R. Payton Jr.

James W. Scott

Publications Coordinator

The Committee on Christian Education

of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

Willow Grove, Pennsylvania

In the Priscilla Papers, published by the evangelical feminist group Christians for Biblical Equality, James R. Payton Jr., upbraids me, as “a seminary-trained Ph.D.” who ought to know better, for trying, in an article that appeared in a denominational magazine, to interpret 1 Cor 14:33b–35 at face value within its scriptural context. It was “startling” to Payton that “nothing in the entire article indicated any awareness of the potential importance of the cultural situation for understanding the New Testament passage examined.” In fact, my article was “the most striking example” Payton had ever seen “of this lack of attention to historical context in treating the question of women’s roles in the church.”1

My purpose here is not to defend my exegesis of that passage, as disconcerting as my interpretation may be to egalitarians, but rather to consider the relevance of “the cultural situation” and to examine how Payton uses it to explain the apostolic rules about women speaking at Corinth and in other cities. The passage reads in the ESV:

As in all the churches of the saints, 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.

Hermeneutical Considerations

There are indeed sometimes special circumstances in the situations addressed by Scripture that determine the instructions that are given. Those instructions would not apply in situations where those circumstances do not obtain. The chief example of this, of course, is the commands given specifically to the people of Israel under the Mosaic covenant. We do not literally apply to the church today the Lord’s condemnation of his people “who eat pig’s flesh” (Isa 65:4), because that passage invokes the dietary laws of the Mosaic economy, which have passed away. This limitation of the passage’s applicability comes from an understanding of its place in redemptive history, as revealed in Scripture as a whole.

In the case of the New Testament, there are some passages that presuppose the Mosaic economy (especially in the Gospels), but generally the New Testament presupposes...

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