Women Silent in Church
“"Women should remain silent in the churches." How does this relate to Paul's earlier acknowledgment of women prophesying?”
"Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." — 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)
First Corinthians 14:34-35 directly contradicts 1 Corinthians 11:5, where Paul gives instructions for women who pray or prophesy in the assembly. The same letter that regulates women's speech also presupposes it. These two passages cannot be harmonized by treating 14:34-35 as a universal prohibition on women speaking; the question is what specific kind of speech the passage restricts, and whether it was even written by Paul.
Hard verses are where our biases and assumptions do the most damage. Before diving into scholarly perspectives, consider which thinking patterns might be shaping how you read this passage.
A significant number of New Testament scholars (Gordon Fee, Philip Payne, Antoinette Clark Wire) argue that 14:34-35 is a non-Pauline interpolation inserted into the letter after Paul's death. In several early manuscripts, these verses appear after verse 40 rather than after verse 33, suggesting scribal uncertainty about their placement. The verses sit awkwardly in a passage about tongues and prophecy, interrupt the flow of argument, and directly contradict 11:5.
The interpolation hypothesis holds that a later scribe, perhaps familiar with 1 Timothy 2:12, inserted the passage to harmonize the Pauline corpus toward greater restriction.
Traditional interpreters (Leon Morris, F. F. Bruce) read the prohibition as restricting a specific kind of disruptive speech, particularly the practice of women calling out questions during the weighing of prophetic utterances (14:29).
The command to ask husbands at home implies the prohibited speech is interrogative, not prophetic. Women could prophesy (11:5) but were not to disrupt the evaluative process with questions that broke the flow of the assembly. This reading harmonizes the two passages by distinguishing types of speech rather than contradicting one with the other.
Some scholars (Neal Flanagan, Edwina Hunter, Anthony Thiselton) suggest that 14:34-35 quotes a position held by a faction in Corinth that Paul then refutes in verse 36: "What? Did the word of God originate with you? " The rhetorical question in verse 36 would then be Paul's sharp correction of the restrictive position he has just cited, not an endorsement of it.
Paul uses this quotation-then-rebuttal device elsewhere in the letter (see 6:12-13, 7:1-2).
Complementarian scholars (Wayne Grudem, Thomas Schreiner) argue the passage is authentic and consistent with 1 Timothy 2:12, representing Paul's consistent position on male leadership in the assembled church. The apparent contradiction with 11:5 is resolved by distinguishing contexts: women may participate in less formal or prophetic settings while a different standard applies to the official teaching and deliberative function of the assembled congregation. The verse's appeal to "the law" (verse 34) grounds the position in Scripture rather than in cultural preference.
The Greek verb sigao ("to be silent"), used in this same chapter (14:28, 30), refers to a specific contextual silence rather than permanent prohibition: a tongues-speaker should be silent (sigao) if there is no interpreter; a prophet should be silent (sigao) if a revelation comes to another. The pattern suggests contextual rather than absolute silence. The phrase "as the law says" in verse 34 is striking because Paul rarely appeals to the law as authority for ecclesial practice, and no Old Testament law directly commands women's silence in worship assemblies, raising questions about what text Paul (or an interpolator) has in mind.
First Corinthians 14 is devoted to regulating charismatic gifts, specifically tongues and prophecy, in the Corinthian assembly. The chapter addresses multiple parties in sequence: those who speak in tongues (14:27-28), prophets (14:29-33), and then the women's silence passage (14:34-35), followed by a concluding appeal (14:36-40). The Corinthian assembly appears to have been marked by considerable disorder (14:33: "God is not a God of disorder"), and the restrictions in the chapter are all contextual rather than absolute.
The flow of argument from tongues to prophecy to the women's silence passage suggests the latter is also a contextual regulation, not a different kind of instruction.
Sources: Published scholarship View all →
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