Women in the Pulpit

Answer: "God does not indeed honor, but he does employ, agents whom he disapproves. Surely God does not approve a man who "preaches Christ for envy and strife" (Phil. 1:15), yet the apostle rejoices in it, and "knows that it shall result in salvation through his prayers and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." Two very simple truths, which no believer disputes, explode the whole force of this appeal to results. One is that a truly good person may go wrong in one particular, and our heavenly Father, who is exceedingly forbearing, may withhold his displeasure from the misguided efforts of his child, through Christ's intercession, because, though misguided, he is his child. The other is, that it is one of God's clearest and most blessed prerogatives to bring good out of evil. Thus who can doubt but it is wrong for a man dead in sins to intrude into the sacred ministry? Yet God has often employed such sinners to convert souls; not sanctioning their profane intrusion, but glorifying his own grace by overruling it. This experimental plea may be also refuted by another answer. If the rightfulness of actions is to be determined by their results, then it ought evidently to be by their whole results. But who is competent to say whether the whole results of one of these pious disorders will be beneficial or mischievous?" --Dabney

What about the woman that converts or confirms several souls by her preaching?

Isn't it clear that this present seeming good cannot ever be a sufficient justification of conduct which violates the rule of the Word of God?This is our only sure guide.

Bad results, following a course of action not commanded in the word, may present a sufficient, even an imperative, reason for stopping, and good results following such action may cause one to think in its favor.

When the course of action transgresses the commanclment such probability becomes worthless.
"Pursuing the arguments of the opposite party in the reverse order, we remark next, that when the apostle teaches the equality of all in the privilege of redemption, it is obvious he is speaking in general, not of official positions in the visible church, but of access to Christ and participation in his blessings. The expository ground of this construction is, that thus alone can we save him from self-contradiction. For his exclusion of women from the pulpit is as clear and emphatic as his assertion of the universal equality in Christ." -Dabney

God does not, cannot contradict Himself.
Wouldn't we naturaly exclude children from office in the church, yet no one would disparage their equal interest in Christ?

" When the claim is made that the church must concede the ministerial function to the Christian woman who sincerely supposes she feels the call to it, we have a perilous perversion of the true doctrine of vocation. True, this vocation is spiritual, but it is also scriptural. The same Spirit who really calls the true minister also dictated the Holy Scriptures."---Dabney

"No human being is entitled to advance a specific call of the Spirit for him individually to do or teach something contrary to or beside the Scriptures previously given to the church, unless he can sustain his claim by miracle. Again, the true doctrine of vocation is that the man whom God has designed and qualified to preach learns his call through the word. The word is the instrument by which the Spirit teaches him, with prayer, that he is to preach. Hence, when a person professes to have felt this call whom the word distinctly precludes from the work, , the child, the penitent polygamist, the female, although we may ascribe her mistake to an amiable zeal, yet we absolutely know she is mistaken; she has confounded a human impulse with the Spirit's vocation."---Dabney

" Last, the scriptural vocation comes not only through the heart of the candidate, but of the brotherhood, and the call is never complete until the believing choice of the brethren has confirmed it. But by what shall they be guided? By the "say so" of any one who assumes to be sincere? Nay, verily. The brethren are expressly commanded "not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they are of God." They have no other rule than Scripture. Who can believe that God's Spirit is the agent of such anarchy as this, where the brotherhood hold in their hands the word, teaching them that God does not call any woman, and yet a woman insists against them that God calls her?"---Dabney

God "is not the author of confusion..."

God has a proper place for a woman's gifts to come into play. But it is not reverent for a woman to decide, against God's word, that her call is the pulpit.

God's wisdom surpasses man's.

"The sin involves the presumption of Uzzah. He was right in thinking that it would be a bad thing to have the sacred ark tumbled into the dust, and in thinking that he had as much physical power to steady it and as much accidental proximity as any Levite of them all; but he was wrong in presuming to serve God in a way he had said he did not choose to be served. So when men lament the "unemployed spiritual power," which they suppose exists in many gifted females, as a dead loss to the church, they are reasoning with Uzzah; they are presumptuously setting the human wisdom above God's wisdom.
The argument, then, whether any woman may be a public preacher of the word should be prevalently one of Scripture. Does the bible really prohibit it? We assert that it does. And first, the Old Testament, which contained, in germ, all the principles of the New, allowed no regular church office to any woman. When a few of that sex were employed as mouth-pieces of God, it was in an office purely extraordinary, and in which they could adduce a supernatural attestation of their commission. No woman ever ministered at the altar, as either priest or Levite. No female elder was ever seen in a Hebrew congregation. No woman ever sat on the throne of the theocracy, except the pagan usurper and murderess, Athaliah. "---Dabney

" If human language can make anything plain, it is that the New Testament institutions do not suffer the woman to rule or "to usurp authority over the man." (See 1 Tim. 2:12; 1 Cor. 11:3, 7-10; Eph. 5:22, 23; 1 Peter 3:1, 5, 6.) In ecclesiastical affairs, at least, the woman's position in the church is subordinate to the man's. But, according to New Testament precedent and doctrine, the call to public teaching and ruling in the church must go together. Every elder is not a public teacher, but every regular public teacher must be a ruling elder. It is clearly implied in 1 Tim. 5:17 that there were ruling elders who were not preachers, but never was the regular preacher heard of who was not ex officio a ruling elder. The scriptural qualifications for public teaching, the knowledge, piety, experience, authority, dignity, purity, moral weight, were a fortiori qualifications for ruling. "The greater includes the less." Hence it is simply inconceivable that the qualified person could experience a true call to public teaclling and not also be called to spiritual rule. Hence, if it is right for the woman to preach, she must also be a ruling elder. But God has expressly prohibited the latter, and assigned to woman a domestic and social place, in which her ecclesiastical rule would be anarchy."---Dabney

'...We never find the apostle drawing a depreciated picture of woman; every allusion of his to the believing woman is full of reverent respect and honor. Among the Christian women who come into Paul's history there is not one who is portrayed after this imagined pattern of childish ignorance and weakness. The Lydia, the Lois, the Eunice, the Phoebe, the Priscilla, the Damaris, the Roman Mary, the Junia, the Tryphena, the Tryphosa, the "beloved Persis" of the Pauline history, and the "elect lady" who was honored with the friendship of the aged John, all appear in the narrative as bright examples of Christian intelligence, activity, dignity, and nobleness. "---Dabney

"Paul does he say that woman must not preach in public because he regards her as less pious, less zealous, less eloquent, less learned, less brave, or less intellectual, than man. In the advocates of woman's right to this function there is a continual tendency to a confusion of thought, as though the apostle, when he says that woman must not do what man does, meant to disparage her sex. This is a sheer mistake. ...Woman is excluded from this masculine task of public preaching by Paul, not because she is inferior to man, but simply because her Maker has ordained for her another work which is incompatible with this. ---Dabney

"Every true believer should regard the scriptural argument as first, as sufficient, and as conclusive by itself. But as the apostle said in one place, that his task was "to commend himself to every man's conscience in God's sight," so it is proper to gather the teachings of sound human prudence and experience which support God's wise law."---Dabney

"God commits no waste." It is not for us to surmise how he will utilize those seemingly abortive endowments. He knows how and where to do it. ...The woman of sanctified ambition has nothing to regret as to the dignity of her sphere. She does the noblest work that is done on earth. Its public recognition is usually more through the children and beneficiaries she ennobles than through her own person."---Dabney