May Women Teach Adult Sunday School Classes?
Report of the
Committee to Study the Question Submitted By the Session of New Hope
Church
Note: I was the principal author of this Presbytery
committee report on a question posed to the body.
The question submitted by the
session was this: "Is it Biblically
permissible for a woman to teach men and women in an Adult Sunday School
Class if she is submitted to the session?" We shall reflect on four
matters pertaining to this question.
1. General and
Special Teaching Offices
Reformed theology has often
distinguished between the special teaching office, which consists of the ordained elders, and the general teaching office, which includes
all believers. The special office has distinct qualifications:
an extraordinary spiritual maturity together with unusual, Spirit-given
ability to teach. The church recognizes these qualities through the laying
on of hands. Those in the special teaching office are divinely appointed
to rule in the church under Christ, and God calls his people to hear and
obey these teachers (Heb. 13:7, 17).
In addition to this special office,
however, there is also the general office. Every believer, not just the officers, has a God-given ability to
understand the truths of Christ (I Cor. 2:6-16,
I John 2:20f, 27). And every believer, insofar as he or she has the
ability to communicate, can and should communicate those truths to others.
In Col. 3:16, Paul exhorts the people to "Let the word of Christ
dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another." This
teaching and admonishing, certainly, is done by all the members of the
church, not only by the officers. Compare also I Cor.
14:26.
2. Women and the
Teaching Offices
Your committee unanimously holds
that scripture excludes women from the special teaching office. Scripture plainly teaches this limitation in I Cor. 14:33-35 and in I Tim. 2:11-15. But scripture
says with equal plainness that women are not excluded from the general teaching office. The
passages mentioned above have a universal reference within the
church. All believers, male and female (allowing as we must
for differences in physical and mental ability) can and may teach
one another.
Scripture specifically endorses
women teaching children (II Tim. 1:5) and it urges that older women be
trained to teach younger women (Tit. 2:3-5). Further, it is evident that
in some biblical contexts women taught men with divine approval.
There were female prophets in the early church (Acts 21:9, I Cor. 11:5), in fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel
that "your sons and daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17).
Further, Priscilla and her husband Aquila are
both mentioned as those who instructed Apollos
more accurately concerning the Word of God (Acts 18:24-28).
Indeed, according to the teaching of
Rom. 12, I Cor. 12-14,
and Eph. 4:1-16 concerning the gifts of the Spirit,
all spiritual gifts are given for the edification of the whole
body of Christ. How can we imagine that God would give to women
gifts of wisdom, knowledge, communication, which are for the edification
of the church except for the adult
male members? Most all of us men can testify to the great insight of
godly women into the scriptures and their application of scripture
to the Christian life. Can we really believe that we have sinned
on those occasions when we have profited from the teaching of women?
3. Scriptural
Limitations on the Teaching Role of Women
It is evident so far that Christian
women are called by God to teach in terms of the general teaching office,
and that on some occasions it is proper for such women to teach, to
edify adult men. The only question remaining concerns the proper occasions for such teaching. Here the
New Testament data is more difficult to understand, and we must exercise
some caution.
I Cor.
14:34, 35 does place some limitation upon the teaching of women. From our
earlier discussion, it is clear that this passage does not rule out all teaching of women. Evidently,
then, the passage is circumstantially limited: i.e., it forbids women to
teach in certain circumstances. Which ones? That is not easy to discern
from the text. As with many of the detailed teachings in the Corinthian
letters, the precise situation is evidently much better known to Paul and
his original readers than it is to us.
Clearly it does not forbid all
public exhortation by women, for such a view would make these verses
contradict 11:5. Further, the exhortation to silence does not necessarily
impose silence at all times and under all circumstances: compare
verses 28 and 30, for example, along with Luke 18:39, Acts 21:14,
18, Matt. 13:34, Mark 4:34, John 18:20, Rom.
15:18, I Thess. 1:8, I Tim. 2:12.
Some members of your committee are
impressed by James Hurley's
[1]
argument that Paul urges
the women to be silent during the "judging of the prophets"
described in verses 28-33. Another member of the committee, skeptical of Hurley's proposal, sees the passage as forbidding
women to carry out the official preaching and teaching in public worship.
On either interpretation, however, Paul in this passage essentially
forbids to women the exercise of the special office. It does not appear, then, that this passage is relevant to the
exercise of the general office except, perhaps, that it forbids to women
any general-office teaching that might be confused with the teaching of the ordained elders.
I Tim. 2:11-12 also limits the
teaching of women, but your committee is agreed that here too Paul has in
mind the special office rather than the general. Paul is here
writing about the way in which a woman is to learn (verse 11). She learns as we all do, through the means
of grace. In that process, her role is to be submissive and quiet; she is
not to take the role of a teacher. Paul then describes the qualifications
for the special office in chapter 3. We do not believe that this
limits general-office teaching by women except insofar as it urges us
to permit no confusion between special-office and
general-office teaching.
4. The Adult Sunday
School Class
It is important to keep in mind that
"Sunday School" as such is not mentioned in Scripture. As an
institution, it is a product of the last hundred years. This does not mean
that Sunday School is illegitimate. It is, we believe, a legitimate way
of carrying out the biblical command to teach people "to
obey everything I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:20). But
scripture does not give us a definition of Sunday School, nor
a detailed methodology as to how that work must be carried on.
"Adult Sunday School" can
mean many things: Consider President Carter lecturing to hundreds in the
Baptist churches of the nation's capital. At the other extreme, in a tiny,
newly planted church, Adult Sunday School might mean two or
three people sitting around a table, discussing questions of
importance to them. In some cases, one person might be delegated as
"the teacher;" in other cases, a topic might be thrown to the
group for free discussion, with no single person controlling
the discussion. There are many degrees in between these
extremes; some classes are more authoritarian than others.
Sometimes Sunday School is much like
a formal worship service, especially in those Sunday Schools that
emphasize "opening exercises." Sometimes the pastor leads the
Adult class; sometimes the Adult class is even an extension of the sermon.
But that is not always the case. Sometimes there is no singing
or liturgy at all, no offering, no special role for the
teaching elders.
In Acts 18:24-28, do we not have
something like an "Adult
Sunday School Class?" To be sure, there are only three members:
Priscilla, Aquila, Apollos.
Priscilla and Aquila were trying to teach Apollos the word of God more completely
and accurately; Apollos admitted his need and
was learning from them. Granted the many forms that "Adult Sunday
School" can take, may it not take this form among others? But if it
does, surely it cannot be denied that a woman may in that class use
her general-office gifts of teaching. That is plain in Acts 18.
One could argue that when
"Sunday School" approximates formal worship and/or where
leadership is generally monopolized by the ordained elders it would be
inappropriate for a woman (or an unordained
man!) to step into such a leadership role. We have seen that there are
dangers in confusing the special
office with the general.
On the other hand, granted the many
things "Sunday School" can mean, your committee is unable to say
that women should never use
their general-office teaching gifts in a mixed group. There may be
occasions such as the Priscilla-Aquila-Apollos
discussion where the insight of a woman is much to be desired and where
there is no confusion created between the general office and the special
office.
Our conclusion, then, is that
scripture does not forbid under all circumstances a woman to teach men and
women in an Adult Sunday School Class. Three cautions, however,
are important:
(1) Such use of women's gifts should
not be used in such a way as to blur the distinction between the special
and general offices. Appearances are important in this regard. When a
woman teaches in church in such a way that she "acts like an
elder" or claims the same authority as the elders, or even appears to
be doing so to reasonable people in the congregation, then
the session should act in gentleness and love to remove the
danger. What "appears" wrong or "causes confusion" may
vary from congregation to congregation and from situation to situation.
We cannot, therefore, furnish a final, exhaustive list of
what precisely can be done and not done. Application of the
biblical principles to specific situations is something we all must
do, especially those in leadership positions. God expects
the church's leaders to be sensitive to dangers in
specific situations and to act, speaking the truth in love.
(2) The New Hope Session rightly
draws our attention to the importance of women teachers being
"submitted to the session." Submission, of course, is not just
literal obedience; it is an attitude, a fruit of the Spirit.
Scripture requires such submission of all teachers in the church, especially
those who are unordained. Unordained
teachers must take pains to make plain that they do not rule in the
church, that they teach only by the delegation of others. But
perhaps this principle has special application to women who teach. I
Tim. 2 stresses the attitude of women in the church, that they are
not to be seeking or claiming inappropriate authority over
others, but responding in quietness and submission to the
teaching authorities. It is not easy to maintain such quietness
and humility while at the same time teaching others.
(3) Consider the responsibilities given to women in scripture: bearing and teaching children, teaching other women, working at home, being "helpmeets" to their husbands. Making suitable allowance for differences in gifts and calling, it should be evident that most married women will have their hands full carrying out their scripturally mandated tasks, if those tasks are taken seriously. Many today believe that a woman cannot fulfill her God-given potential unless she is involved in church tasks normally carried out by men. On the contrary: scripture calls women to a very rich variety of tasks which are of vast importance and which can challenge the most gifted. After carrying out such responsibilities, most people would be simply too tired to aspire to anything else. While we cannot condemn women teaching men in every circumstance, we reject the notion that women are unfulfilled without such experience or that the predominance of male teachers in Adult Sunday Schools amounts to "oppression" of women.