What Bible verses do feminists most hate? 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 are near the top: “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.” Hosts Scott Brown and Jason Dohm explain the wisdom of God’s command—it prompts husbands and wives to grow together, as they wrestle through matters of theology. By asking your husband hard questions at home, it requires him to lead, which affirms God’s order and promotes unity in the marriage bond. 

We're going to talk about what is largely an unknown and often hated verse in the Bible that says, ask your husband at home. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Jason, we're not going to talk about one of the most popular verses. Like, this is not like the life verse of many men or women that I know. This is not about conquering all things through Christ, huh?

Well, kind of. I don't know. It's, well, it's 1st Corinthians 1434. I quoted it, I quoted it about, you know, I don't know, 18 years ago or so, and like it almost caused a revolution in our church, but here's how it reads, 1 Corinthians 1434, Let your women keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home.

And there's the kicker for it is shameful for a woman, it's, I'm sorry, it's shameful for women to speak in church. Yeah, so let me start with an overriding statement or just sort of hang a banner over it. Why do we keep coming back to this? This is a topic that we revisit in different ways, but we keep coming back to it. Why is that?

Well, it's because we're convinced that the church is not well, and we're convinced that the church has departed from really what the New Testament is calling us to in church life. And we think it's been bad for churches, and we think it's been bad for homes. And so we want to try to scratch back. And we think it's been bad. And we think it's been bad for homes.

And so we want to try to scratch back. And we think it's been bad. And we think it's been bad in the civil sphere as well. Yeah. This is directed specifically at the church And kind of at the center of this, you have the admonition for wives to ask their husbands at home.

I think that's the title of the podcast, Ask Your Husband at Home. So I think our brains play a trick on us here. The trick is this, we mistranslate this, ask your husband at home to shut up women, stop talking women. But that's not actually what the verse says, and it's not actually a fair translation into mine. When our brains convert the words of the text, ask your husband at home, to women shut up at church, it's actually a great disservice to the text.

Why is that? Because the text is assuming that the women are there, that they're listening, that they're hearing, that they're learning, that they have questions and the right to ask those questions. And the only thing that is being considered is where should they be asking those questions when they have listened and learned. And where should they be speaking, right? Not in the meeting of the church.

Now you also have 1 Timothy 2, 11 through 15, which is sort of an explanatory, you know, it fills in some of the gaps. You talked about women learning. Yes, the women are learning in the church. Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man but to be in silence for Adam was formed first then Eve and Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived fell into transgression nevertheless she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control.

So you have a woman who is, she's silent in the church, she's learning, And she has a duty to ask her husband questions. Yeah, so same trick our minds play on us here, skipping right past the learning to the silence, as if the learning wasn't there at all. At all. Again, the Apostle Paul presuming that the women are there present, listening, learning, and if they have a question, telling them the appropriate way to handle that question. You know, for the record, we don't believe that theology is just a male sport.

We do believe that women should be there, they should be learning theology, and most of us are homeschool dads. Most of us, our wives are teaching theology to our children on a daily basis, and so are we. Sometimes at our elbows, sometimes when we're not even present, they're teaching theology to our children. So we think the women in the church should be theologians because Theology is just the study of God, and it's the duty of the Christian to know their God. Women are Christians, they should know their God, they should study theology.

And here in this passage, you have the commands of God doing what the commands of God do. And when it comes to family life, this command drives a husband and a wife together. It calls for husbands and wives to be talking. It urges wives to deal with theological matters with their husbands. It drives the husband and wife together.

I think another way to say it is it prioritizes the theological unity and the growth and the learning and even the debate, because when your wife is asking you questions, a lot of times you don't know the answer and you're kind of embarrassed. Some of her questions, you know, they reveal your lack of knowledge. It's embarrassing. Yeah, so I'm going to re-say what you just said in a little different way, because I think it's a really important point. Why are wives to ask their husbands at home to hold the question until she can just ask her husband.

It's because theological unity of women with their church leaders is subservient, it's less important than her theological unity with her husband. You just stop and think of that, okay, well it's important for a woman to have theological unity with her church leaders, but is that more important than theological unity with our husbands? Absolutely not, of course not. I think if you ask 100 people, 99 people would get the answer right to that. No, no, no.

Theological unity is most important between a husband and wife because the two have become one, and it's really the nurturing and the preservation of that oneness that's at stake, which the stakes aren't as high with church leaders. We don't believe that this means a woman can never ask a pastor, an elder, a question. We don't think it means that. We think that there is, but there's this explicit duty of husbands and wives to talk about these matters that relate to life and the Bible and things like that. And there may be occasions where a husband or wife need to go sit down with a pastor and try to talk things through, but the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, And that's substantial.

God has designed the family to be a unity, and these types of conversations, well, they ought to build unity. What you have in 1 Corinthians 14 is such a general statement. In other words, all of the attempts to narrow it down to something besides what it is are futile because the text couldn't be more clear. The text is very general, that women are to be silent in the church because it's shameful for women to speak in church. Now why is that?

Because women never have anything good to say. That's not what the text says. It's because when we gather as the Lord's people, we're actually approximating something. So if you trace out gender meaning, gender roles, to the ultimate expression of it where you end up is at Christ and the church. And so we're actually, when the Lord's people get together, the expressions of gender in the meeting of the church is an approximation of the ultimate expression, which is Jesus Christ and His church.

And in the context of Jesus Christ in His church, we don't tell Jesus, Jesus tells us. Jesus is the one who speaks and we're the one who hears. So this is not only an important thing in the life of the church, but actually a precious thing in the life of the church that we would come together and approximate what gender is about. And you have this other issue of who's going to be teaching in the church. It's men.

That's very clear from scripture that it's men who teach the gathered church. Women are, women teach women, Titus too makes that very, very clear. Women teach children and other women, but it's not appropriate for women to be teaching men in the Church of Jesus Christ. Right, and Aquila and Priscilla together as a married couple outside of the context of the meeting of the local church teach Apollos, who was mighty in the scriptures, and explain to him the way of the Lord more accurately. So she was part of that, the text actually talks about her being part of that, but that's a completely different context, a context that's completely appropriate for what's being done there, whereas in the meeting of the church that would not have been.

Yeah, these kind of discussions are non-public, private discussions between individuals or small groups of people, but not in the gathered meeting of the church. And in this case, our husband is with her. They're doing it together. They have this knowledge together, and they're imparting it to a man who needs it together. So there you have it.

You have a husband and a wife, they're in church and the wife is learning and the wife is asking questions. And it's very helpful for a marriage when wives ask their husbands. You know, one of the things that is not helpful is when wives just bottle things up, they might need to talk about the questions that they have. And so this is, like you said at the beginning, this is not a verse that says, women, shut up. This is a verse that really urges wives to speak to their husbands, to the one that they married, to the one that they are one with.

And I think all of us who have been married for a while understand that both of us are on a growth curve. The husband isn't done growing. Far from it. The wife isn't done growing. Far from it.

So when she has a question, this is part of her growth curve. Well, guess what? When she asks it, it often becomes, I think you already alluded to this, often becomes part of the husband's growth curve together. But and when she asks her husband at home, they are growing together. This is just how God wants it, growing together.

So there you have it. You've got this remarkably controversial, actually often hated, particularly by women and many men as well, but actually it's a command to grow love in the family. So let's acknowledge the goodness of it and stop feeling so prickly about it. You mentioned one time you just read the verses and it causes a revolution in a church. So these things are but ought not be.

It's not bad. We have nothing to fear from this. It's actually good and for our good. Yeah. Amen.

Okay, so, let your women keep silent in the churches for they're not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law says, and if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home for it's shameful for women to speak in church. This is the word of God. And it's good. And it's good. Amen.

Okay. Well, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast and I hope you can be with us next time around. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com.