Ordaining women to offices of minister, bishop, elder, pastor, etc.

[Ernie]

And how do you explain the verses about keeping silence, asking their husbands at home, and not teaching?

I could give a verse-by-verse understanding of why the Scriptures you reference do not, in my mind, prohibit women from serving in ministry. But I believe that we each bring assumptions and frameworks for understanding Scripture. In my view, it is a hermeneutical approach that leads to different understandings of the relevant verses to women in ministry.

Testing our hermeneutics with Scripture would be a more interesting conversation for me. The challenge is that we often use hermeneutics without thinking about them so it can be difficult to articulate. I think these questions are important, but I am not sure this forum is the best place for this kind of conversation.

The Fundamentalist will say the surface reading of scripture is timeless, silent means silent. The progressive will say most of this was written for specific situations in the first century that no longer exist so it should be ignored.

Cooper, does Barnhart's assessment describe your general thoughts about how to read the scriptures being referenced in this thread, or do you think that the teachings are intended to communicate something different than what I would consider a straightforward reading of these scriptures?

P.S. Whenever you have time, I would be glad to read your verse-by-verse understanding.