Women Teachers?

1 Corinthians 14: 33-35

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

1 Timothy 3:12

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

Paul's prohibition on women exercising authority in the church remains clear-cut and a non-negotiable foundation of church polity.  However in recent decades mainline Protestants have foregone Paul's command in the name of egalitarianism,  diversity and inclusion.  The LCMS isn't immune to this latest fad of modernity, adapting to the culture around it, rather than conforming to the standards of Scripture. There's a significant rise in deaconesses adopting teaching roles including men, women writing essays on confessional material for pastors as with the latest edition of the Large Catechism, and women serving as self appointed apologists. In a recent conversation with Dr. Nancy Almodovar, one of the latter,  I was told that her permission to serve as an apologist and teach men came from her husband and pastor. Since when, do men get to ignore a command from Scripture to give women a role that is forbidden to them. To me this is another sign of the increasing feminization (or to put it more crudely, pussification) of men within the church who have given up on asserting their God given authority and instead are letting women usurp leadership roles to appear more palatable to the wider culture. The usual Scriptural excuse given for this egalitarian move is the example of Priscilla and Aquila teaching Apollos in Acts 18. However, on closer examination of the text, both parties take part in the private counseling of Apollos: "When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately."  Priscilla does not exhort any special authority in this situation but rather seems to work in tandem with her husband, as one under his headship. In the same conversation with Dr. Almodovar,  she placed some significance on the placing of Priscilla's name before her husband's, as if this granted her some special status. However the text does not attach any primary importance to the placing of the names, so in my opinion Almodovar's contention is an argument from silence to excuse her unbiblical role in the church. Sadly she's not the only one. With the rise of woke ideology in our culture, our churches, our seminaries and our Synod, the slippery slope to women's ordination appears to be in the near horizon for the LCMS' future, one of many contentious issues that is polluting the purity of Lutheran theology. 

May God give us godly teachers and leaders who will hold fast to Scripture rather than trying to appease the culture.  Help us follow the way of repentance.

In the name of Christ. Amen.