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Articles
Responding to "Women Serving God"
The following article first appeared as a Facebook post by Matthew Bassford in the fall of 2023, shortly before brother Bassford's passing. It critiques the book Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story in the Bible by John Mark Hicks. This article is a suitable follow-up to our recent series addressing Searching for the Pattern and the dangers of the "theological hermeneutic" it advances.
Several weeks ago, I posted a response to the John Mark Hicks book Searching for the Pattern. Predictably, it attracted critiques of its own. One of them accused me of treating his views on women in the church in a cursory and inaccurate fashion.
Fair enough. Consequently, I added his book on the subject, Women Serving God, to my reading list. Once again, I have much to say. I could address each of his arguments at length, but the resulting response would be a book of its own. However, I am quite literally running out of time and unable to undertake such a project, even if I were so inclined.
As with my previous critique, I perforce must address the most significant claims of the book instead. Of these, the most worthy of discussion concern the passages that enjoin Christian women to submissiveness, 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:11-12. Hicks’s arguments here have significant consequences not only for our understanding of the role of women in the church but also for the way we read the Bible and even for our existence as a church.
Obscuring the Text
Hicks takes the same approach to both passages. First, he engages in an extremely close reading of both, so close that he uncovers ambiguities in the meanings of words and questions the text cannot answer. Thus, he declares that two apparently simple commands are anything but, and the resulting muddle frees him to seek other interpretations.
These arguments seem persuasive at first, but the problem is that a similar approach will render any significant passage in Scripture equally confusing and ambiguous. Take, for instance, Acts 2:38. For centuries, false teachers have seized upon different possible meanings of the word “for” to argue that the verse does not teach that baptism is necessary for salvation.
The same is true of 1 Peter 3:21. Indeed, it is a much better candidate for this treatment than either 1 Corinthians 14:34 or 1 Timothy 2:11-12. The second half of the 1 Peter text is ambiguous, so much so that the most common translations are divided over its meaning. The context immediately before verse 21 is one of the most difficult in the entire New Testament. For those who wish to deny that baptism saves, here is fertile soil indeed!
Now, it is true that Hicks himself defends the importance of baptism. That’s not the point. The point is that the tools that Hicks wields to undermine Biblical teaching on the role of women also can be used to undermine the most fundamental doctrines of our faith. Once that hermeneutical door has been opened, we can’t control what walks through it.
Relying on Experts
Regardless, this strategy frees Hicks to engage in a display of inferential gymnastics, relying on retranslations of key words, legions of outside authorities, and comparisons to other contexts to arrive at meanings that are very different from what appears in the pages of our Bibles.
Now, 1 Corinthians 14:34 means something like, “Women may freely prophesy and preach in church, provided that they do so in a non-disruptive way.” Now, 1 Timothy 2:11-12 means, “Widows from the first-century church in Ephesus who are morally corrupt and are teaching false doctrines based on the cult of Artemis should not teach men until they themselves have been better taught.”
I do not think these conclusions are correct, but I want to focus on the implications if they are correct, which are even more important. Because I have read the book, I understand how John Mark Hicks arrived at them, but I have never worshiped with anyone who would discern these things in the text without his help. They are simply beyond the reach of the study of ordinary Christians.
This undermines one of the key tenets of the Restoration. In the churches of Christ, we really have two fundamental beliefs. First, we ought to return to the Bible as our sole guide to faith and practice. Second, ordinary disciples can study the Bible themselves and learn God’s will from it.
If Hicks is correct, this second foundational belief is wrong. Ordinary Christians cannot study the Bible and grasp what it says themselves. Because we lack the brilliance and learning necessary to discern Artemis cults in the pages of 1 Timothy when the text mentions no such cults, the meaning of that text will always escape us.
Who knows what other vital truths we are missing because we don’t have a doctorate in divinity and a massive library? In truth, we cannot understand the Bible. We need John Mark Hicks and his peers to understand it for us.
If this is so, the most important spiritual task of the Christian in search of wisdom is no longer to study the Bible. It is to pick the right expert. This is a daunting task! Sadly, the same ignorance that keeps us from accurately reading the Bible also will keep us from accurately assessing Bible scholars.
Instead, our allegiance can only be based on our desires. We will pick experts because they come from the right religious tradition, look particularly distinguished on YouTube, or simply tell us what we want to hear. The entire project of attempting to determine the will of God will become hopeless.
I’m not willing to accept that. I acknowledge that I don’t have a doctorate in divinity or a vast library full of learned commentaries, but I do have a Bible. That same Bible tells me that the word of God abides forever, and that when I read I can understand.
I am certain that my understanding of the Scriptures is flawed in many ways, but the flaws are in me, not it. I will presume that I can understand the correct reading of 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 by turning to the word, not John Mark Hicks. It is the only course that leaves me any hope of understanding at all.
Consequences for the Church
In the afterword of _Women Serving God_, Hicks includes essays written by several women who are now acting as preachers and teachers in churches of Christ. Every one of them emphasizes their love for our religious tradition and their determination to remain in it.
I do not question their sincerity, but the very reasoning that they rely on for their position will poison the thing they love. If we too must rely on the experts, our clergy class, to tell us what the Bible means, even if their conclusions are opposed to the plain meaning of the text, we are no different from the other denominations. Yes, I use the phrase “other denominations” intentionally. After all, what are those who rely on men instead of Scripture if not a denomination?
In fact, at that point, how can we justify the separate existence of the churches of Christ at all? Once we too have women in leadership roles, one of the great stumbling blocks on the road to ecumenicism will have been abolished. Would it be any surprise if our leaders helped us to abolish all the other stumbling blocks too? After all, the same process occurred in the mainline denominations a hundred years ago.
This claim may well sound extravagant, but ideas have both meaning and momentum. If we reject the pattern of the primitive church, we surely will conform ourselves to the pattern of the wider religious world. Hicks’s book is a powerful step in that direction, probably an irreversible one. If that is not a direction we are willing to travel, his argument is not one that we can accept.
