Hearing her voice: an analogy

The year is 4000AD
 Someone very well respected from 2013 once said
' I do not permit a woman to be a policeman'. And we are trying to understand and apply such a command.
Looking through various uses we come up with a general definition
'A policeman is someone who enforces the law with authority'.
It works for all cases so everything looks good. And perhaps we have come to call in our culture all instances of law enforcement and the legal process 'policing'
But then we come to historical cases of women (affirmed by our writer) being lawyers and judges.
We provisionally accept that women may do some kind of activity called 'lawyering' or 'judging', but because of our general definition of 'policeman', whatever they were doing couldn't be enforcing the law (perhaps they were only defence lawyers, or perhaps they were just commenting but with no authority).
The more conservative among us would also question whether a wife who questioned her husband at home was in some way acting as a policeman, after all, they were attempting to enforce a code, with some kind of authority.

So a historian comes along and says, "hey wait a minute, when this person was writing, police had batons and guns to enforce the law, they walked and drove the streets trying to keep peace, and involved themselves in investigation, in fact context seems to suggest that our writer was speaking specifically of cops on the beat. Perhaps we could allow women some involvement in court prosecutions, deliberation and even investigation."

But his critics reply, "no, no, we all know what 'policing' means, it means 'enforcing the law with authority'. That definition works in every case. It simply does not matter that you can show copious historical evidence that the practice of policing at that time primarily involved getting on the street and investigating crime. I can even show you some historical evidence of police going into a courtroom, and some other evidence of police directing questions to someone who is accused, the very things you want women to now do as 'lawyers' and 'judges'. I'm afraid this is simply because you want to evade the text. You haven't even addressed WHY a woman couldn't be a policeman, which as we all know is about her having authority."

HT Luke for the converation that brought this up for me

Why I don't think Lionel Windsor has nailed John Dickson, and the worrying approach to language that comes from his reply.

In John Dickson's 'Hearing Her Voice', John puts forward a particular understanding of what Paul means by 'didaskein' in 1 Timothy 2. Lionel Windsor has responded to John's claims. I have said elsewhere that I (and others, including John) are still waiting for someone to do the work on a proper critique. Some have asked why Lionel's critique isn't 'proper'.

This is a debate about the meaning of a particular use of a particular word, so it is interesting to contrast the linguistic approaches of John and Lionel.

1. Lionel seems to think that words have a 'general' meaning, and perhaps a more 'technical' meaning, and that the general meaning can be assumed until otherwise disproved.

This is a false approach to language. Words do not have a 'core' or 'general' meaning. Words simply mean whatever they mean when they are used. Different contexts, registers, different places in sentences, different combinations of words show different meanings for the same bunch of letters.

So, the word 'set' can mean a complete collection

the word 'set' can mean the hardening of concrete

the word 'set' can mean a unit of games in tennis

the word 'set' can mean to place down

None of these are 'general' or 'technical', they are simply available meanings.

Where words are set within a given set sets their meaning. Game ,set and match Dickson.

Everyone has the burden of proof when the meaning of a word is contested.

But where will this proof and evidence come from?

2. Dickson looks for his evidence internally to the Pastoral letters of Paul. How is didaskw used in these letters?
   He then correlates his findings to external historical evidence to practices in the first century

Lionel Windsor on the other hand appeals to conceptual analysis of a translated gloss. That is, he is asking philosophical questions about a 'concept' in English, 'teach'. This is the lexicographical equivalent of allegory. It can sound quite profound, and can even bring some insight, but struggles to find objective controls. Whatever may be conceptually said about the concept can be transferred back into the source language, or made the chief emphasis. Lionel goes for a relational dynamic of authority for 'teach', but it could as easily be.. 'all teaching requires the breathing out of truth.. breathing is the essential part of teaching and therefore didaskw.

3. But conceptual analysis shouldn't be thrown away altogether. There is at least one control in this debate, and that is the way Paul uses other terms about speaking (or breathing out!) truthful statements about Jesus. That is the importance of lexical choice. Now, we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that every time a writer uses a different lexeme they must have a completely distinct concept in mind. Sometimes we use different words simply for variety. But in the conceptual framework of a writer, if they say forbid 'x', but explicitly encourage 'y' and 'z', we would expect ther to be some significant difference between x and (yz). This is exactly the case for Paul, who forbids 'teaching' but encourages 'prophesying and exhorting' for women.
   John's definition makes the difference quite clear by positing 'teach ' as a particular office of handing down the apostolic deposit (an office largely taken by our written Gospels)
   I don't think Lionel's definition of 'relational dynamics involving authority' makes a clear enough difference between 'teach', 'prophesy' and 'exhort' to make any sense of Paul (unless we say that Paul is incoherent, not somewhere I am going). Is there no authority in prophesying? Is there no authority in exhorting? This is particularly distressing for those of us who see authority lying in Scripture, and why Lionel's position, though in theory allows women to speak with a church service, actually allows them no place..lest God exercise his authority through them. (and indeed, why restrict oneself to the church service, or even the church, if what Paul is disallowing is a 'general' conveying of truth within a relationship of authority.... ie taking the definition to it's extremes (which Lionel doesn't), if a female expert in Art History tells me the truth about a painting, and knows more than me, then she is breaking Paul's command)
   That is, because Lionel is unwilling to the historical work of asking 'What relationship?' 'What Authority?' of the text in Timothy, it can be expanded to any and every relationship and authority.

So, there you have my reasons. Jury is still out for me re the whole passage, we still havn't touched on 'authentein'. Nevertheless, I'm still waiting for someone to do a proper job on Dickson's work

You are not Paul, I am not Timothy

John Dickson has noted with surprise that none of the evangelical critiques of his recent work 'Hearing Her Voice' have really done the work on the text of the Epistles to prove him wrong.

I'm not so surprised. Partly because of the way the Pastorals are taught in Sydney.

There is very little room for a special theological place for the Apostles. People equate their own opinions and words directly with the words of the Apostle Paul.
The logic goes, if I am the preacher, then I am like Paul. If you are my little ministry intern, then you are Timothy. It is a kind of helpful way to teach the Pastorals as a 'handbook for ministry' 'passing on the baton' yadyada...

So, then John Dickson asks, 'What is Paul actually talking about here?". But the person who has been through their ministry training program doesn't need to do linguistic work, contextual analysis, historical reflection, precisely because THEY HAD PAUL STAND RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM to tell them what it means. Their ministry trainer 'was' Paul.
In fact, if they have started preaching, or if they have ministry interns now, THEY have become Paul. Their words from the pulpit are the apostolic deposit.

The real offence of John Dickson's argument in 'Hearing Her Voice' has nothing to do with women. The real offence is telling male preachers and ministry trainers that they are in fact, not Paul.
That the words coming out of their mouth may, or may not be, the infallible apostolic deposit of the gospel.
That those words have to be tested against the text, and preferably with responsible methods of interpretation, like context, decent linguistics (not just equivocating), historical consideration. The very things John is attempting to do.

Hauerwas: prayer on Trinity and loneliness

Blessed Trinity, you gather us so that we will not be alone. You will us to enjoy one another, to rejoice in one another’s existence. Just as you can be three, perfectly sharing but without loss of difference, so you make us capable of love without fear that in our love we will be lost. Yet we do find ways to be alone, to be in hell. Caught up in fantasies that we can create ourselves, we become frozen in our self-imposed smiles of self-satisfaction. Because we can fool others into believing we are in control, we even come to believe it ourselves. Great and powerful Lord, shake us free of such loneliness that we may cry for help and be surprised by the willingness of your people to share. How happy we are to be your people. Amen.

All I can do is pray: pushing through number two

So,
the stomach healed up. Lost a couple of days.
Got back into the swing of things. Kept swinging.
A couple of days ago my eye starts weeping. Rinsed it, left it, slept on it, worked a day.
Still weeping at 9pm. Hmm. Back to hospital. 6hr wait in emergency. Looks like another corneal infection, maybe an ulcer. Up to the specialist in the morning. Hourly drugs and daily visits for the next few days.
Get a call from a retired pastor who is worried about my health.
"Oh yeah" he says. "I get eye problems like that."
"Though not so much now that I have retired and am not under so much stress"
"You wouldn't be under any stress though would you... hahaha".

Another week of Scripture lost. Feeling really useless. Can't read, not meant to mix socially (could be contagious). All I can do is pray

On 'pushing through'

It has been a big couple of weeks.
A lot on at work. A big fundraising push. 'Interesting' pastoral issues. Diocesan training. Lots of meetings with big, controversial, difficult decisions to be made. As well as the usual week to week stuff. Friday night we had a '24hrs of prayer' at church that had me filling a gap at 2am.
The temptation has been to push on through this tough time.

Yesterday I got a massive headache. In bed all morning. Then in the afternoon I started vomitting blood. Not just vomit with tinged with blood. Rich red mouthfuls of blood.
Freaked out, called the ambulance. Off to hospital. Blood tests. CT scan. Morphine, mmmmm, morphine.
8 hours later I was released.
The most likely scenario is that the overtiredness gave me a migraine. The migraine gave me nausea, and the force of the vomitting, as it pushed through, tore the lining of my stomach. I'll have to go and get a camera down there to check.

Which makes me question the idea of 'pushing through'. When you 'push through', things get torn.

Our church has great Bible teaching

Every church thinks that it has great Bible teaching.
It is a simple law of attrition.
Whoever is left likes it
Whoever does not like it has left