Original Meaning

IF INTELLIGIBILITY IS A PRIORITY for the gathered community, how then should worship proceed? Verses 26–40 answer this question and subdivide into three parts: a description of orderly spontaneity in verses 26–33a, the silence of women during the evaluation of prophecy in verses 33b-38, and a concluding summary in verses 39–40. Verse 26 insists that the Corinthians continue to worship in highly participatory and spontaneous fashion: “Everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.” This does not mean that every person present exercises all of the gifts, nor even that all exercise at least one in every service. But opportunity is made available for all whom the Spirit leads on any given occasion to contribute.

This list gives sample contributions; other standard elements of early Christian worship are itemized in Acts 2:42–47: apostolic instruction, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper, prayer, miracles, sharing of finances, praising God, and evangelism. Yet once again Paul stresses the need for everything to be done so as to build up fellow believers. It is just possible that the shift in focus from evangelizing non-Christians in verses 22–25 to edifying believers in verse 26, together with the more informal and highly participatory model of verse 26, indicates that this is the pattern for the regular small home-fellowship gatherings, whereas the earlier verses reflect periodic larger, more public assemblies of multiple house-churches.1

Verses 27–32 again narrow the focus to the two key gifts of tongues and prophecy. In closely parallel fashion, verses 27–28 and 29–32 temper the spontaneity described in verse 26 by regulating the exercise of these two particular gifts. No more than two or three may speak in tongues in any given service (or, less likely, before someone interprets), they must do so sequentially not simultaneously, and there must be an interpretation (vv. 27–28). If this is not possible, then the would-be tongues-speaker should remain silent or say his or her prayer inaudibly to God.

Verses 29–32 regulate prophecy in similar fashion, lest it too be abused, however inherently more valuable it may be. Again only two or three should speak, one at a time, and their messages should be evaluated. This last constraint probably applies to the interpretations of tongues as well, since tongues plus interpretation closely resembles prophecy in function.

The “others” of verse 29 are more naturally taken to refer to the rest of the congregation, not merely the other prophets.2 If “weigh carefully” meant exercising the gift of discernment (12:10), then there would be clearly no guarantee that those who had the gift of prophecy necessarily had the gift of discernment too. But even if, as we have suggested, exercising the gift of discernment is not what Paul means by carefully weighing prophecy, it is still unlikely that the prophets were the best persons to evaluate each others’ messages. Certainly, when prophecy is taken to include Spirit-filled preaching, it seems clear that the ordinary “layperson” is often in a better position to determine how well or accurately the preacher has communicated than are fellow-preachers, who are absorbed in the fine points of the theology or technique of the message.3

Verse 30 parallels verse 27 in insisting that prophets, like tongues-speakers, exercise their gifts in turn. Verse 31 parallels verse 5 in illustrating Paul’s desire that all might exercise these gifts, without implying that all can or will. Paul merely leaves the door open for the Spirit to empower whomever he chooses on any given occasion. Verse 32 proves that Christian prophecy (and presumably also tongues and their interpretation) is not “ecstatic” in the technical sense of that term. In other words, believers in the process of exercising their spiritual gifts are never so “out of control” as to be unable to stop or regulate their behavior. Verse 33a concludes the unit of thought begun in verse 26 by giving the rationale for the regulations of tongues and prophecy just stipulated: orderliness and peace.

Verses 34–35 seem quite intrusive at this juncture. Why does Paul seemingly interrupt his discussion of these two spiritual gifts in order to silence women? In verses 37 and 39–40, he is clearly still addressing the topic of tongues and prophecy. A few late manuscripts, probably for this very reason, place verses 34–35 after verse 40 instead. At least in that position, they could appear as the beginning of a brand new discussion. A popular view in more liberal circles today is that Paul did not write these words; rather, they were added later by some scribe who was far more conservative than Paul himself.4 But there is not one existing manuscript in which these verses are lacking, and the textual relocation that occurred in a few manuscripts is readily explainable along the lines noted above, without resorting to the conjecture that verses 34–35 were not what Paul originally wrote.

Another popular recent proposal is that these two verses represent another Corinthian slogan which Paul quotes only to refute in verses 36–38.5

This view too proves highly implausible, for no fewer than seven reasons: Unlike all the other widely acknowledged slogans in 1 Corinthians, these verses (1) are not concise or proverbial in form; (2) do not reflect the libertine wing of the church; (3) require the assumption that there was a significant Judaizing element in the church, which little else in the letter supports; (4) are not qualified by Paul but rejected outright; and (5) as best as we can tell represent an explanation that was never proposed in the history of the church until the twentieth century. In addition, (6) this view requires taking the Greek conjunction e (“or,” left untranslated in the NIV) at the beginning of verse 36 as a complete repudiation of what has gone before, even though no other use of e in Paul functions in that way. Finally, (7) it assumes that “the only people” in verse 36, a masculine plural adjective (monous), refers just to men rather than to both men and women, even though no other plural reference to the Corinthians ever singles out the men in this way without explicitly saying so.

Equally implausible is the older, extremely conservative perspective that verses 34–35 are absolute commands silencing women in every way during the Corinthian worship service. This view has to assume that 11:5 was in fact not implying Paul’s approval of women praying or prophesying publicly, but surely if that were the case he would have had to say so. Or else one has to assume, without any contextual support, that two different kinds of Christian assemblies are in view in the two passages. Or, if one has an extremely low view of Paul, not only as uninspired but also as unable to remember what he has recently written, one can simply admit a contradiction. But these approaches surely reflect last-ditch resorts to support a highly chauvinistic interpretation of 14:34–35.

Another cluster of interpretations seems more probable, though none is without its problems. Factors of cultural background may have explained Paul’s commands.6 Perhaps the largely uneducated women of that day were interrupting proceedings with irrelevant questions that would be better dealt with in their homes. This would explain the language of verse 35.7 Perhaps they were “chattering,” or even gossiping, as some Jewish women sitting in their segregated synagogue balconies reputedly liked to do. Or perhaps they were caught up in subtly promoting false teaching. But while historically and contextually plausible, each of these views fails to explain why Paul silenced all women and no men, when presumably there were at least a few well-educated, courteous, or orthodox women and at least a few uneducated, less than polite, or doctrinally aberrant men!8

Still others think Paul is excluding women from speaking not in general but in tongues. This perspective has the advantage of recognizing that the verb “speak” in verse 34 is regularly used throughout this chapter for charismatic speech. But if tongues is a spiritual gift, then surely the Spirit gives it to whomever he chooses irrespective of gender (cf. 12:11; 11:15).

Perhaps the best perspective, therefore, is to take Paul’s commands as prohibiting women from participating in the final church decisions about the legitimacy of any given prophecy. To begin with, “speak,” in twenty of the twenty-one appearances of this verb in this chapter outside of vv 34–35, refers either directly or by analogy to one of four very particular kinds of speech: tongues, their interpretation, prophecy or its evaluation. But the first three of these are spiritual gifts, distributed regardless of gender. An authoritative evaluation of prophecy, however, while requiring input from the whole congregation, would ultimately have been the responsibility of the church leadership (what Paul elsewhere calls elders or overseers), who, at least in the first century, seem to have been exclusively male. This interpretation also explains why these verses come where they do. The sequence of topics from verses 27–33 has been precisely: tongues, their interpretation, prophecy, and its evaluation, in that order. The obvious drawback of this approach is that it must infer a meaning for “speaking” which Paul never spells out. But that problem afflicts all of the views that take Paul’s words as less than absolute at this point, and this view seems to have the least number of additional difficulties.9

What then do we do with verse 33b? It is awkward whether we take it as concluding the sentence begun in verse 33a or as introducing verses 34–35. The NIV’s approach seems slightly more probable. “It is difficult to think that such a far-reaching principle” as that of God’s orderliness “should be qualified as no more than the custom of the churches.”10 The awkward repetition created by taking it with verse 34 (literally, “as in all the churches of the saints, let the women in the churches be silent”) can be plausibly explained by understanding Paul to be moving from the non-Corinthian congregations to the different Corinthian house-churches. They seemingly think they have a corner on the truth with respect to a practice that no one else has adopted (v. 36), so Paul reminds them that what is done everywhere else should be observed in their assemblies as well.11

As in 11:2–16, the women whom Paul silences may be only wives. This would explain why they must not publicly challenge the church’s prophecies but consult “their own men” at home (v. 35, surely a reference to husbands, as in the NIV). To do otherwise might be to challenge their husbands in church in ways that would contradict their God-ordained submission to them (v. 34).12 The “Law” cannot refer to a specific Old Testament passage telling women to be silent in public worship, since no such passage exists. Neither does it likely refer to Genesis 3:16, since Paul does not elsewhere cite the results of the Fall as a rationale for desirable Christian behavior.13 Rather he probably alludes to the order and purpose of creation in Genesis 2, just as he did in 11:8–9 with respect to women’s honoring their heads.

Verses 36–38 thus challenge the Corinthians not to reject Paul’s counsel lightly. If every other Christian church practiced what Paul preached on this matter, who are they to be the sole exceptions (v. 36)? Those who contested Paul’s teaching undoubtedly justified their rebellion by claiming the Spirit’s direction (v. 37a). So Paul adds that if they are truly Spirit-led they will come to acknowledge his views as from the Lord (v. 37b). If they continue to go their own way, they demonstrate that they are out of touch with the Spirit, and the Lord will continue to ignore them and to accomplish his work without them (v. 38). (The NIV footnote [“If he is ignorant of this, let him be ignorant”] reflects a less well-attested textual variant that was probably trying to smooth out the text.)

Finally, verses 39–40 bring all three chapters (12–14), but especially this last one, to a fitting conclusion, as they balance Paul’s twin concerns for freedom and structure. Every gift has its place, but each must be used to build up the church in unity and love.

Bridging Contexts

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN most contemporary church services and the picture of Corinthian worship in verse 26 makes application of this verse difficult. The vexed question of why Paul silences women in verses 34–35 should make our applications tentative there. Nevertheless, there are numerous important principles that emerge from the passage as a whole that have cross-cultural value.

Verses 26–33a illustrate key facets of Christian worship. As in chapter 12, Paul strongly encourages every member’s participation or use of his or her gifts. Little wonder that the church historically has usually grown the fastest, and evangelism has proved the most effective, in small, informal fellowships. These may be fledgling “church plants,” or small groups within larger, more established congregations.14 Even the exceptions to this trend, as with mass response to large crusades, tend not to bear lasting fruit unless newly converted individuals are linked up with local congregations for ongoing nurture and discipleship.15 Crucial to that nurture is involving new believers in the exercise of their gifts. As the “headline” to this half-chapter, verse 26 reminds us that Paul’s principles for prophecy and tongues in verses 27–38 apply to all the gifts. And preeminent among them is the principle that God gives gifts to prepare all church members to contribute to the growth of the body (v. 12).

Verses 27–33a balance verse 26 by stressing the need for order in worship. The fact that Paul never mentions church leaders does not mean they are not present. Acts 14:23 describes Paul and Barnabas appointing elders in all the churches they evangelized. Our reconstruction of the role of patrons in Corinth suggests that the church had powerful leaders indeed (see Introduction, p. 20). Although Christianity, like new religious groups in general, experienced a growing institutionalization over its first few centuries, the evidence suggests that there was a built-in structure from the beginning. The discussion of the offices of overseer and deacon, with the criteria for selecting people to hold these offices (1 Tim. 3:1–13; Tit. 1:6–9), cannot be relegated merely to a late, post-Pauline date, on the presupposition that Paul did not write the Pastoral Letters. After all, Paul’s indisputably authentic letter to the Philippians begins with a greeting to precisely these two categories of church officials (Phil. 1:1), no later than A.D. 62, only seven years after the writing of 1 Corinthians.16

Verse 27 combines with verse 13 to show us two ways in which interpretation of tongues can take place. If certain believers know they have the latter gift, they can proceed to speak in tongues with greater confidence, trusting that they will subsequently be able to provide the interpretation. It is interesting that verse 13 introduces a paragraph on glossolalia, in which tongues function not to communicate a message to God’s people, but to pray and give praise to God. Perhaps in such a situation it is more natural to expect the tongues-speaker to be able to interpret his or her own message. That way, such people could speak in tongues privately as well, while still understanding the meaning of what they are saying. Verse 28, on the other hand, acknowledges the truth of 12:30, that not all tongues-speakers will necessarily be able to interpret. If such people find themselves in Christian assemblies where they do not know if anyone else has the gift of interpretation, they should proceed more cautiously.

It is probably appropriate, in settings in which glossolalia has never before been experienced, for persons who believe God is leading them to speak in tongues to “float a trial balloon” and go ahead and speak at a timely moment that does not interrupt someone else. They might want to proceed cautiously, however, unless they sense some openness to tongues in that particular assembly. But if no interpretation is forthcoming, they should refrain from continuing to speak in tongues in that congregation until they have reason to believe an interpreter is present. This might occur, for example, when another member of the church admits to feeling that he or she understood the message but was simply too fearful or shy to speak up.

Given our interpretation of verses 5a and 31, we must continue to insist that believers never try to make any one gift a criterion of any kind of spirituality. It is illegitimate to insist that all Christians prophesy or speak in tongues, or experience any other particular spiritual gift. These verses do show, however, that all believers can potentially receive any specific gift, including these two. So it remains appropriate for us to pray for a gift that we earnestly feel would benefit the church, but we may never claim that God has to give it to us.

These verses almost certainly imply as well that Paul anticipates the Spirit’s sovereign distribution of his gifts irrespective of gender, as in 12:11. Nor is there any need to try to distinguish between these verses and 12:29 by arguing that all believers may occasionally prophesy or speak in tongues, whereas only some do so often enough for others to consider that they are actually gifted in these areas. There is no indication in Scripture that giftedness is based on frequency of use. It is true that the same terminology can in some cases be used to refer to both gifts and offices (teaching/teacher, pastoring/pastor, and perhaps prophecy/prophet), but there is no hint in 1 Corinthians 12–14 that Paul has any offices in view.17

Verses 27–32 also refute all claims to “ecstasy” in the practice of tongues, interpretation, and prophecy. If a person is genuinely “out of control” in the exercise of such behavior, he or she is not being controlled by the Holy Spirit! These verses also demonstrate that even the more supernatural gifts do not carry the same authority as Scripture, since it is conceivable that a particular revelation might never get spoken if the guidelines Paul lays down are carefully followed. “Truth is not arrived at by quantity.”18 What is more, believers dare not assume that even genuine tongues or prophecy is necessarily communicated or interpreted inerrantly, otherwise there would be no reason for the congregation to “weigh carefully what is said” (v. 29).

A good example of this problem appears in Acts 21:4. There Luke describes how Christians in Tyre urged Paul “through the Spirit” (the identical expression used for Agabus’ prophetic speech in Acts 11:28) not to go on to Jerusalem. In 21:11, Agabus himself arrives in Caesarea and declares in the name of the Spirit how Paul will be imprisoned if he goes ahead with his travel plans. But he remains unpersuaded, and when he decides to continue on his journey anyway, Paul’s fellow Christians reply, “The Lord’s will be done.” Someone has misunderstood the Lord’s will, and it doesn’t seem likely that it was Paul! More probably, the Christians in Tyre had received the same message as Agabus did but mistakenly interpreted the prediction of Paul’s fate as a command to him not to go on. But they presented their word from the Lord as if the Spirit himself had told Paul not to continue.19 Clearly, Christians must have the freedom to test and reject what other believers tell them God has privately revealed, if it does not match up to the ways they believe God is personally guiding them.

What criteria can be deduced, then, for evaluating Christian prophecy? Michael Green gives seven suggestions: (1) Does it glorify God rather than the speaker, church, or denomination? (2) Does it accord with Scripture? (3) Does it build up the church? (4) Is it spoken in love? (5) Does the speaker submit him-or herself to the judgment and consensus of others in spiritual humility? (6) Is the speaker in control of him-or herself? (7) Is there a reasonable amount of instruction, or does the message seem excessive in detail?20 Even after using criteria such as these, there will often remain ambiguities, further reinforcing our conviction that such messages cannot be trusted perfectly. But where several of these principles are clearly violated, the church should lovingly but firmly insist that the speaker stop claiming gifts of inspired utterance, or at the very least work with a mentor in smaller, less public settings to cultivate his or her gifts so as to be able to use them more accurately or appropriately.

A valid application of verses 34–35 obviously depends on the option adopted as to the original meaning of these verses. If Paul did not write them or if they reflect a Corinthian slogan that he refutes, then clearly we can ignore the commands that they contain and even work to combat a similar mentality in contemporary Christianity. But if they do reflect Paul’s perspective, as seems highly likely, then we ignore them at our own peril (vv. 36–38). That still would not necessarily mean that they remain normative today, at least not in every detail. If one of the cultural explanations for Paul’s silencing the women is accepted, then contemporary Christians will silence women in church only where comparable problems—lack of education, interfering chatter, or the promotion of false teaching—still exist. And they will impose silence on men who fall victim to one of these problems as well.

If the evaluation of prophecy is in view, several more options come into play. For interpreters who limit prophecy to its more spontaneous manifestations, the application of verses 34–35 will be limited to more charismatic congregations, where such manifestations occur. Those who adopt a broader understanding of prophecy will raise again the question of women in the highest levels of Christian leadership. If the elder/overseer was the office that was uniquely responsible for teaching and exercising authority over the congregation (1 Tim. 3:2; 5:17), then perhaps Paul is precluding women from holding this (and only this) office. This interpretation, incidentally, stands a good chance of explaining the combination of verbs (“teach” and “exercise authority”) in 1 Timothy 2:12. There Paul is referring to the office of overseer, which he immediately elucidates in the opening verses of chapter 3.21 But if “women” is better interpreted as “wives,” then these restrictions would not bar single women from the eldership, nor husbands and wives from positions of joint leadership, nor wives from offices of oversight in churches in which their husbands are not members (though the last of these arrangements is less than desirable on other grounds).22 And, as noted in discussing 11:2–16, our understanding of sensitive topics such as women in ministry will ultimately have to be governed by our synthesis of all the biblical material relevant to the issue.

Interestingly, Paul gives the same threefold rationale for his commands in verses 33b–35 as he did for honoring one’s head in 11:2–16. These include cultural disgrace (v. 35), the universal practice of the churches in Paul’s day (v. 33b), and an appeal to creation order (v. 34). As in chapter 11, the specific injunction is supported by situation-specific arguments, while the broader principle of submission is supported by an appeal to a timeless mandate.23 So married women in other times and places should feel free to participate even in the evaluation of prophecy, and even beyond the general level already implied in verse 29, so long as they do not do so from the vantage point of an office of leadership that jeopardizes their God-ordained deference to their husbands.

Verses 39–40 round out Paul’s discussion with remarkably balanced conclusions. We dare not rule out any of the spiritual gifts as limited to some previous age or as a sign of the immaturity of particular believers or congregations. But we dare not make any gift, especially tongues and prophecy, a criterion of anything. Unity and mutual edification always remain the overriding goals. Everything must be done decently and in order. But Paul’s last word here does not endorse a dead formalism. Decorum itself is highly culture-specific. The thrust of chapter 14 still highlights spontaneity and freedom.24 Church should be a place that exudes joy and life, but never to such a degree that outsiders are repelled or insiders alienated from each other.

Contemporary Significance

SIGNIFICANT SECTORS OF the Christian world continue to insist that all who really want to be at the center of God’s activity must experience one or another of the seemingly more supernatural gifts, an insistence that flatly contradicts Paul’s theology in this half-chapter. In other cases, churches stop short of this demand but continue to violate, week in and week out, Paul’s rules for regulating tongues and prophecy. Repeatedly, alleged words of the Lord are never tested or challenged; indeed no mechanism is in place for doing so. Far more than two or three individuals speak in tongues at any given service. People are taught to pray, or have had hands laid on them while they are told to pray, in order to claim by faith that they will receive a certain gift, even though Paul makes it clear they can have no assurance that God will choose to grant that particular gift.

More subtly, some churches have a regular period of time in which large numbers of people simultaneously pray out loud in tongues, justifying this practice as the mass exercise of a private prayer language. But unbelievers can have the identical reaction to this behavior as to regular tongues (recall verse 23), so this theological sleight of hand seems indefensible. When Paul says “two or three,” and “one at a time” (v. 27), he means precisely that. And private prayer language is for personal, private edification. “The building up of the community is the basic reason for corporate settings of worship. They should probably not be turned into a corporate gathering for a thousand individual experiences of worship.”25

The noncharismatic church, on the other hand, has a large number of lessons to learn from verse 26. If gifts are given to every believer for the corporate edification of the gathered community, then there must be opportunities for church members to exercise those gifts in public worship. One of the few modern churches to capture this emphasis has been the Plymouth Brethren, but even their “spontaneous” sharing can become quite predictable.

If Paul were writing the average congregation today, his advice would have to work the other side of the street. Rather than an unstructured spontaneity that creates bedlam, he would be confronted with a well-regulated order of worship that often creates boredom. The smallest of churches often prints or mimeographs for its members a program of everything that is going to happen during the hour and the sequence in which it will take place, and once it has been printed it becomes a sacred thing to those who planned it. And the likelihood of the Spirit’s leading anyone to say or do something that was not anticipated on Tuesday when the stencil was cut is very remote.26

Orders of service are not necessarily bad, but if they are to be used there must be consistent, built-in opportunities for congregants to share more spontaneously how the Lord has been guiding them to contribute to worship. Some churches do this effectively by including a time for anyone to request or lead in a hymn, share a brief message, offer a prayer, share an answer to prayer, and so on. If Sunday morning worship services are too large for most people to feel comfortable entering into this process, other settings must be found where they can—for example, in Sunday School, during other worship services, or in small groups meeting in members’ homes. Even more significant may be the resurgence of the house-church movement, both in charismatic and increasingly in noncharismatic circles as well. Where there are several like-minded house-churches in reasonably close geographical proximity, they may choose to unite periodically for larger group worship and instruction and enjoy together the resources to which none of them has access on its own.27

Verses 27–33 remind us, at the same time, that however creative or flexible the structure of worship may be, duly recognized leaders must have the authority to intervene and correct when Scripture is contradicted or disobeyed. When someone speaks out loud in a tongue, if no one proceeds to give an interpretation, the worship leader should call for one. If one still does not emerge, the leader should request that no further tongues be manifested at that particular service. This in fact is the procedure that many churches do follow today, though at times uninterpreted tongues are tolerated without response.

In other instances, if no one answers the call for an interpretation, the worship leader himself or herself often supplies one. In such instances, it is hard not to suspect that the “interpretation” is fabricated. If God had given the interpretation to that individual in the first place, he or she should have spoken it at once. Giving it after no one else is willing to do so unfortunately looks more like a “face-saving” device.

A somewhat daring but certainly reliable way to test the authenticity of the practice of interpreting tongues in a given context is for a speaker who knows a bona fide foreign language that no one else in the congregation knows to speak a brief message in that language. If an interpretation follows that bears no relationship to the meaning of the words, as has at times happened when such a test has been conducted, we can be sure it is not the Spirit supplying the “interpretation.”28

Comparing verses 1–33a with contemporary Christian practice suggests two sweeping generalizations to which there are many exceptions. First, large segments of charismatic Christianity so dwell on alleged words of the Lord, under various labels, that are so trite, repetitive, and predictable in nature that one cannot help but suspect that most of them come from human manufacture. God is not in the business of using miraculous means consistently to call attention to the obvious or ordinary. Probably a few people in each of these circles experienced the genuine gift, others wanted or were encouraged to get on the “bandwagon,” and so they have imitated the genuine gifts in their own strength. Second, large segments of noncharismatic Christianity are so enslaved to traditional patterns of worship that the Spirit could not break through without substantial disruption. A considerable majority of the church members are convinced that their gifts don’t count. Not surprisingly, they remain relatively uninvolved. Both groups typically recreate worship after the models of their immediate spiritual predecessors rather than genuinely seeking to overhaul their worship and bring it into conformity with 1 Corinthians 14.29

When we turn to verses 33b–38, we enter another maze of competing applications. Not surprisingly, many egalitarians quickly jump to endorse one or the other of the two least probable interpretations—that verses 34–35 are an interpolation or a Corinthian slogan. Equally predictably, some hierarchicalists continue to try to defend an absolutist interpretation of these verses, notwithstanding 11:5, and they too throw aside exegetical common sense in the process. One can maintain greater credibility, and still be either egalitarian or hierarchical, by supporting one of the other positions surveyed earlier (see pp. 280–82). If Paul is responding to a lack of education or a problem with chattering or false teaching, then one must look for contemporary analogies. Where believers remain so uneducated that their questions would overly distract from the proceedings of a service or time of instruction, they must be given extra teaching privately. Many churches effectively meet this need with special classes for prospective or new members and with “graded” curricula for adults who need to be taught the basics of the faith before entering into more advanced discussions. Some congregations unfortunately tolerate adults and teenagers incessantly talking during the worship service, or coming and going at will, in ways that hinder those around them from entering into or remaining fully concentrated on actual worship. Words from the pulpit to discourage such behavior can prove very helpful.

If the issue in verses 34–35 is the evaluation of prophecy by an all male eldership at Corinth, then we must ask what are the functional equivalents to elders today? That office is usually most closely approximated, at least in congregationally run churches, by the senior pastor, except in those rare instances in which a body of elders is made up of individuals who are genuinely equal in responsibility for teaching and directing the affairs of the congregation. In presbyterian or episcopalian forms of church government, even senior pastors submit to larger structures of authorities over them, so presumably women’s subordination could be preserved even with a female senior pastor at the congregational level. And women’s contributions to the leadership of the church in general, and to the evaluation of reputed messages from God in particular, dare not be stifled in ways that prevent them from a full exercise of their spiritual gifts.

Men and women alike need to evaluate with greater consistency and acumen the messages their leaders proclaim to them week in and week out. Ours is the age of professional Christian leadership. Sermons are swallowed by a gullible laity even though they promote rank heresy in many liberal churches, racism and other forms of discrimination in many conservative churches, and less serious mistakes and banalities in both contexts. Better are the models in which Sunday-morning messages are discussed in question and answer or dialogical format on Sunday evenings (or at some other time), or in which pastors consult with a group of trained laity before and/or after sermons to aid in preparation and debriefing.30

Equally troubling is the phenomenon of church members trusting some itinerant Christian celebrity over their own local pastors. It is good occasionally to invite guest speakers to a church to bring a fresh perspective and energy, but many churches rely on outsiders to bring a level of expertise that they should be cultivating among their own members. A seminary professor, for example, can offer a breadth of biblical and theological learning to which few in any local congregation have had access, but with the wealth of commentaries and other Bible study tools available in the Western world today, we ought to be encouraging all church members to use these resources on a regular basis.

Verses 36–38 call into question the continued attachment to denominational distinctions that prevent the contemporary evangelical church from achieving powerful, visible unity. If only one small branch of contemporary Christianity holds to a particular doctrine or practice, it is probably not clearly mandated in Scripture and therefore not important enough to divide believers. The main exception to this principle lies in matters of racism, sexism, ageism, and the like, precisely because the groups that are discriminated against are by definition minorities! But the broad-based consensus on the fundamentals of the faith achieved by many organizations in the parachurch movement needs to be imitated by church folk too.31 Then views on baptism, church polity, eschatology, and so on would no longer hinder churches from working in cooperative ventures for the promotion of kingdom priorities. And surely views on women’s roles come under this category.

We desperately need to allow one another the freedom to agree to disagree, to set up alternate models, to encourage local fellowships to determine for themselves, according to their best understanding of Scripture, what men and women should and should not do in home and in church. Egalitarians and hierarchicalists alike need to stop accusing each other of being unbiblical and instead acknowledge more humbly that the biblical data simply aren’t clear enough to permit dogmatism on either side.

The same is also most certainly true for charismatics and noncharismatics. Verses 39–40 end with strikingly plain words that are nevertheless disobeyed by large sections of the contemporary church. Many noncharismatics flatly forbid tongues, while many charismatics seldom come close to worshiping decently and in order. As Fee comments,

It is of some interest that people who believe so strongly in the Bible as the Word of God should at the same time spend so much energy getting around the plain sense of verses 39–40. Surely there is irony in that. What Paul writes in these chapters he claims to be the command of the Lord; one wonders how he might have applied verse 38 to those who completely reject this command.32

On the other hand, if a majority of Christians obeyed Paul’s commands, most of the divisiveness of the charismatic phenomena could be prevented and Paul’s dominant concern for the mutual strengthening of believers enhanced. In some circles, the best illustration of the balance Paul commands appears in the charismatic renewal movement within liturgical churches. But where they may achieve an exemplary combination of structure and freedom, other problems sometimes intrude, not least of which is the danger of authoritarian charismatic leaders compounding their heavy-handedness with the weight of an elaborate denominational hierarchy above them. A combination of true congregational governance, with a balance between spontaneity and structure in worship, would seem to reflect Paul’s ideal. But such churches remain few and far between.