The Bible Teaches that Women can Teach Men in the Church

My opponent rightly points out that Paul is either reacting to a false teaching, or what he says is valid. However, my opponent has not shown legitimate proof that women being silent during Church is a false teaching. However, as we shall see, he has not sufficiently met burden of proof in asserting this. My opponent points out what appears to be a logical contradiction within the text. If a woman is going to prophecy, then they should do so with their head covered. I would like to respond to this in three ways. 1) Some laws are by concession. That means that God allows it not because it is his desire, but because he realizes that it is going to happen and thus desires to give it structure. An example of this is seen in Moses's teaching on divorce. Christ, when teaching on divorce, writes that Moses taught that by concession, because the heart o the people was hard. Isn't it possible that Paul was doing the same thing here? 2) This whole portion of the letter (Ch 11-14) is about order in worship. He begins the passage by discussing the proper way for women to act during Church... he says that every wife has her husband as a head (authority), and every man has Christ as his head (authority). He again roots hi reasoning for this in the creation order (11:9-12) and appeals to nature to show the Corinthian church that this is true (Vs 14) He then goes on in the next 3 chapters to prescribe orderly worship when preaching, partaking in the Lord's Supper, when exercising charismatic gifts. However, the Church functioned differently back then, the vast majority of Church life was not done in large public gatherings under the headship of a single authority. It happened in people's homes, as they met in the streets, as they worked in the fields. That is why this is not a logical contradiction. Vs 26 says "When you come together..." Paul's prescriptive teaching that includes women being silent is for when they are a gathered Church. If a women and man were walking to market together and she felt a prophetic message coming to her, she was free to express it. However, if they were sitting in a gathered meeting, she is to remain silent. 3) My opponent continually refers to 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, but fails to include vs 33. "For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints," the sentence carries on into verse 34 which begins "the women should keep silent." Not only does Paul include these instructions for the gathered church, but he affirms that in all the gathered churches of Paul's day followed this same pattern. My opponent also appeals to my own perspective when he says "I hope he doesn't believe it is a SHAME for a woman's voice to be heard in the congregation." This is a false appeal to emotion... it is irrelevant to this debate what I, my opponent, or anyone else believes... we are debating what the Bible teaches. My opponent then takes a verse from 7 chapters earlier that is given to a TOTALLY different context... and applies it to the rest of the book. However, when we look only a few verses earlier (Vs 21) Paul actually appeals to the Law, and quotes a legitimate passage in Deuteronomy and Isaiah. Why would we jump all the way back to Chapter 7, when a passage in the same Chapter is more closely related? Instead, it is much more likely that Paul is either A) Referring to a Biblical Law that has been lost to History. Even Jesus himself makes reference to books outside of the canon from time to time (He appeals to the Wisdom of Solomon when explaining why he has authority over demons [A]). Could not Paul also be referring to an extra-canonical book or an oral tradition. Perhaps the midrash? My opponent then continues to argue from emotion when he says "This is very demeaning to women." I don't believe it is, but even if it is... we are not debating if the Bible is demeaning to women or not, we are arguing if it is teaching that women able to teach men. He also continues to ignore that the translation of "What" for the Greek word "hey" (Eta with rough breathing mark and accent) is a poor translation. It comes from the KJV translation, which has been shown to contain many inaccurate translations and uses older and less reliable manuscripts. I previously referenced Thayer's lexicon which explicitly defines this particle as a way to set up a dichotomy that is mutually exclusive (the word translates as "or"). So either Women should keep silent, or the word of God came from the Corinthians. I will not belabor this point, my opponent is simply entrenching in a faulty argument because abandoning it will dissolve the assertions based on this supposition. My opponent makes claims about the end of 1 Timothy 2:9-15 referring to them being "protected" in their marital relationships by having children. Does he really think that Paul is encouraging women to have babies to keep their men around? Beyond the laughable nature of this assertion, there are several problems that his methods bring up. A) Paul is not teaching about how to have a successful marriage. He is teaching about prayer, modesty, and teaching and authority. My opponent earlier argued that it was demeaning to say that women should keep silent in the Church and that they could not teach. Is it not demeaning to say they should keep silent in the home and not teach there? This is a consistency issue. Furthermore, a woman being silent in a marriage does not lead to a healthy marriage, it leads to adultery and divorce. B) My opponent attacks my interpretation of "she being saved through childbearing" in a few ways. I will keep my responses short, because this interpretation is not critical to my argument and I am short of space. 1) When looking for an antecedent (the word a pronoun refers to) we should look as close to the pronoun. In this case, the closest possible antecedent is "the woman (Eve)." You'll notice that "she" turns into "they." This is useful for refuting another one of Pro's points here. Most importantly, it is shifting the subject of "continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control" back to the women and men referenced in vs 9-11. My opponent also states that "Christians in Paul's day would have already made up their minds regarding whether or not Adam and Eve ever repented..." This is a ridiculous and unproven (and unprovable) assertion. Christians hadn't even decide the nature of Christ or the Trinity, or what Books belonged in the Bible... why would an auxiliary fact have been decided? 2) My opponent claims the singular nature of "She" excludes the rest of humanity... however, We see that Paul uses Adam as a prototype and federal head for all of humanity when he refers to how sin entered the world (Rom 5:12-4), why not use Eve as a prototype and federal head for all of humanity in this regard? 3) He would not tell them that THEIR childbearing leads to salvation through the Messiah, but he would tell them that EVE's childbearing would. We see this because the "She" refers to "The Woman." 4) We are not talking about other women's lineage... we are talking about the "Woman"-that-"She"-refers-to's lineage, which DID lead to the Messiah. My opponent then tries to claim that since the letter to the Ephesians teaches on Family, that 1 Timothy does also. We must recognize the differing natures of the letters. Ephesians was written to the believers in Ephesus while Timothy was written to an in individual leading the Church in Ephesus. In Ephesians he was writing to believers to tell them how to LIVE AS THE CHURCH. In Timothy, he was writing to teach Timothy how to run the Church. I would like to thank the Readers for their endurance in reading this debate. Thank you for sticking with us through this long debate. I would also like to thank my opponent for his vigorous and passionate discourse. [A] http://forum.bible-discussion.com...