The New Testament, as several readers of this column have
not failed to point out, has its pitfalls. I quoted last week, in connection with the debate in the Convocation of Canterbury on the functions of women in the Church, the words from Galatians " in Christ there is neither male nor female." As a riposte I am faced with " Let your women keep silence in the Churches " from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and asked what I make of it. The general controversy is not one in which I feel any call to be involved, but the answer I should give to this particular question is that the phrase from Galatians seems to me unlimited in time and scope, whereas that from Corinthians appears to take account of the general thought and custom of the time, particularly in Corinth and other Greek cities, where public utterance by women, apart from exceptional cases, would cause a sensation. I should not therefore treat it as authoritative in respect of twentieth-century England.
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