[The following is my rebuttal, in defense of Holy Scripture, to egalitarian remarks from a young pastor directed at my earlier piece titled "Christian Woman: Keep Silent in Church." This pastor had cited the verses of 1 Corinthians Chapters 11 and 14, on women publicly and vocally praying and prophesying, as being in tension and, even, contradictory.]
The Apostle Paul, as fully inspired by the Holy Spirit in his letters, does not and indeed cannot contradict himself. Any who are inclined to think so are merely showing, by their own eo ipso false interpretation of Scripture, how deeply the egalitarian heresy is embedded in modern thinking, and in modern churches. (The most prevalent and crippling heresy among Christians these days is the egalitarian heresy, which flouts Divinely-ordained hierarchy and subordination, followed closely by the Arminian nonsense, which denies election and God's sovereignty.)
The verses in Ch. 11 in fact dovetail easily and perfectly with the verses in Ch. 14, when viewed from the correct hermeneutical vantage point. The verses in Ch. 11 are not (by inference or otherwise) affirmations of women publicly and vocally praying and prophesying, and they are not merely condemnations of the manner (uncovered) in which the women at Corinth did it. Set alongside all other relevant verses in Scripture (Old and New Testament), they are in fact part of a general Scriptural condemnation of both the women's acts of speaking (public) and the women's manner (uncovered). The ultimate point of the verses, viewed in general Biblical context, is that these women, unveiled and speaking publicly in the worship assembly, were in full rebellion against their male heads and against the Lord Himself.
Pride and presumption were indeed the signal sins of the church in Corinth.
Matthew Henry, in his commentary, sees clearly the univocal and non-contradictory nature of all of these verses, including in Timothy, when he says, "It is indeed an apostolical canon, that the women should keep silence in the churches (1 Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:12), which some understand without limitation, as if a woman under inspiration also must keep silence, which seems very well to agree with the connection of the apostle’s discourse, Rom. 14:1-23." (Henry was also aware of some in the church in his day who wanted to wrongly limit the prohibition.)
Of the verses in Ch. 11 Henry says: It is plain the apostle does not in this place prohibit the thing, but reprehend the manner of doing it. And yet he might utterly disallow the thing and lay an unlimited restraint on the woman in another part of the epistle. These things are not contradictory. It is to his present purpose to reprehend the manner wherein the women prayed and prophesied in the church, without determining in this place whether they did well or ill in praying or prophesying. Note, The manner of doing a thing enters into the morality of it. We must not only be concerned to do good, but that the good we do be well done". (emphasis added).
Paul, a learned man, is making an explicitly Aristotelian point here. For Aristotle, a virtuous act consisted of doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, and from the right motive.
In interpreting Paul (and the Holy Spirit), we must guard against taking a part of what he says for the whole of what he says.
The philosopher Rousseau once said, all of my views are consistent, but I can't say them all at once. Leibniz and Nicholas of Cusa talk about the limited receptivity of the finite, oh-so-finite, human mind. I have found that this mental finitude [of man], especially when combined with sinful and self-serving motive, generates heretical misinterpretations.
