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NT Wright on Women preachers

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A while back on Church Leaders, N.T. Wright was interviewed on what he thinks about women preachers. Here’s what he said: “The usual idea that women were kept down in the ancient world and it’s only recently that feminism has brought them back up is quite wrong,” Wright argues.  The theologian, who recently published a book called The New Testament in Its World, said women who had some authority in the church and society were not anathema in the ancient world.  “There were many independent women in Paul’s world, and that was something Paul worked with.” In John 20, when Jesus is raised from the dead, the first person he meets is Mary Magdalene. “He does not say, Mary, I’ve got some essential news–I want you to go get Peter because I need to tell him so that he can then go and tell everybody else,” Wright explains.  Instead, “he says, ‘Mary, go and tell my brothers–those men who are hiding at home because they’re scared–go and tell them I am ascending to my father and your father….’” Th

1 Corinthians 14:34–35 and what is the role of Women in the Church

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We have several indications in the NT that the prophetic gift was bestowed upon and exercised by women no less than by men. In Peter ’s speech on the day of Pentecost he explicitly said that characteristic of the present church age is the Spirit ’s impartation to both men and women of the prophetic gift. Look closely at his citation of Joel ’s promise: “ ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy , and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even upon My bondslaves, both men and women , I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit,’ and they shall prophesy ” (Acts 2:17–18; emphasis mine). In Acts 21:9 Luke refers to the four daughters of Philip as having the gift of prophecy. And in 1 Cor. 11:5 Paul gave instructions regarding how women were to pray and prophesy in the church meeting. What, then, does he mean in 1 Cor. 14:34 when he says,