The Holy Bible, in both testaments, declares that women should keep silent in public assemblies of the church.
The command for woman’s silence in church is historically continuous and unchanging, and not historically contingent or dispensational. It applies universally, or independent of time or place. The timeless command from God, and its underlying rationale, as stated most explicitly by the Holy Spirit speaking through the Apostle Paul at 1 Corinthians 14: 33-35, allows no exceptions.
God, in His written Word, commands that women are not to speak, either declaratively or interrogatively or otherwise, in public assemblies of the church. They are not to ask questions for their own information in the church, but instead are to ask their own husbands at home. All public speaking by women in church, as contrasted with permissible private conversation, is forbidden, including the reading of Scripture or teaching in a congregation. Also, women are not to ask questions in church, but are to listen and learn in silence.
The same verses describe how the woman is to learn, in the church and at home, in subjection. The man’s duty is to keep up his superiority by Biblical study and thought, so that he may instruct her. As Matthew Henry (b.1662), echoing Thomas Aquinas (b. 1225), observed in his justly-famed Bible Commentary (1706), “If it is a shame for her to speak in the church, where she should be silent, it is a shame for him to be silent when he should speak, and not be able to give an answer, when she asks him at home.”
Now certainly, every man, every husband, is not obliged to answer as would expert theologians like Augustine or Luther or Calvin. Still, he is to diligently study the Word of God and be in readiness to answer and instruct his wife, the weaker vessel. Nor is every woman, every wife, obliged to ask the most metaphysically and theologically challenging questions of her husband. What matters is that: each keeps to his or her own God-appointed rank; that a home culture of Biblical thinking and acting is cultivated; and that children reared in the home may be nurtured in the wise order thus established and maintained.
In healthy civil society, the fundamental or foundational social and political unit is the family, rightly ordered and maintained. God the Creator made man and woman for their respective roles, and the chief business for all people in this earthly life is the Godly education of their children, under the man as family head and the woman as his helpmate. In distempered and dysfunctional society, Godly family government has been supplanted by distant and tyrannical government, by the vain and selfish striving of deracinated individuals, by general rebellion against God, by role-confusion, and by all manner of moral and spiritual evil.
In first Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 33 tells us that “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” Verse 34 says to these churches, across all lands and generations, “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 (of the Old Testament).” And verse 35: “And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church.”
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary, aptly defines “shame” as “the mind’s uneasy reflection on having done an indecent thing.” And he adds, “And what [is] more indecent than for a woman to quit her rank. The woman was made (by God Himself) subject to the man (Genesis 3:16), and she should keep her station and be content with it.”
In Corinthians, the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, rebukes the pride and self-conceit of the church at Corinth. These sins had destroyed the peace and order of that church and had introduced confusion and multifarious other sins. Much of that sin and confusion, as evinced by both the tone and content of verses 34 and 35, was due to women being allowed to speak in church. So, the men of the Corinth church had sinned by allowing the women to speak; and the women themselves had sinned by presuming to speak.
Now of course, our modern churches are rife with such sin, and it has become so common, so widespread, and so habitual, that any who dare criticize and call it out, by citing these verses as the timeless and universal commands that they are, are mocked and condemned and then shunned as misguided, chauvinistic, misogynist, and mean-spirited. Worse: Timid Christians, more fearful of worldly opinion both inside and outside the church than fearful of displeasing God, now habitually self-censor their own more Godly thoughts and feelings. And by doing so, they go along with what they know is morally wrong and destructive and contrary to God’s will.
Modern churches have trimmed themselves so much to fit a fallen and sinful world that they have nearly whittled themselves away. But of course, whatever may be the worldly and anti-Scriptural desires and habits of sinful men and women inside or outside our churches, all will answer at the Judgment. And, by the by, the sinful habit of women speaking in church is due in large part to the sinful modernist habit of women working outside the home, under the illegitimate rule of someone (the employer) other than their own husbands. And husbands are typically complicit in this now pervasive sin, since they sinfully welcome the resultant two-income material gain for the household while blithely ignoring the devastating spiritual loss for parents and children.
So weak and lazy and cowardly men – including, especially, weak pastors, weak deacons, and weak elders – will answer for sinful woman-speak in churches. And, prideful and mouthy women will answer for their prideful and rebellious presumption, and for their sinful loquacity.
God commands that woman be fully honored and protected in her station as man’s God-created helpmate and as the weaker vessel. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the true and universal Church (the elect), and the wife is to obey her husband in the Lord.
In our churches, it is time to end devilish confusion and to restore Godly order. In our churches, it is time for men to dutifully study up on Scripture and to speak out there and at home. And in our churches, it is time for women to dutifully keep silent and listen. And so, without Godly order and peace in our churches, there is no hope of more Godly and less devilish children and government and society.
