14:31-33
“The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets”. People who do evil sometimes claim “the devil made me do it”, this is never a convincing argument. Similarly, people may sometimes say “the Spirit made me do it”, this is nonsense. The one who prophecies is in control of himself, he is responsible for his actions, including prophesying. Similarly charismatic churches sometimes seem to think the more disordered a meeting is the more the Spirit was present. This is also nonsense. Now the converse is also wrong, i.e. refusing to deviate at all from a set programme. God has created us as sentient beings, with responsibility.
14:34,35
A couple of verses guaranteed to raise hackles. There are some manuscripts where these two verses do not appear until after 14:40, but the location after 13:33 is the most likely, but that is a minor point. Some see this as the God ordained order, and take the verse absolutely literally. However, elsewhere Paul does refer to women prophesying or praying in church so an absolute ban on women speaking does not seem likely. Two other suggestions are more plausible. One is that within the culture of the time it would have been unseemly for women to be speaking in church. A second is that it refers to women raising questions or disputes within church about a tongue or prophecy.
No comments:
Post a Comment