Quote:
Originally Posted by Nee
"First Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 14, and Revelation 2 all show that God forbids a woman from teaching. Any sect that is started by a woman or headed up by one, or any group in which the woman occupies the same place as the man is highly suspicious. More than half of the heresies in the world have been started by women. For example, the founder of the Christian Scientists was Mary Baker Eddy, and the founder of the Seventh-day Adventists was Mrs. White. When the Bible speaks about Roman Catholicism, it also refers to the teaching of the woman Jezebel." [Watchman Nee, Messages for Building Up New Believers, Vol. 3, Chapter 20, Section 5]
"Paul forbade woman from doing the work of a teacher in 1 Timothy. The ascertaining of truth is a work that belongs to the teacher, and sisters should not do this. Some of the greatest heresies in this world come from women. The founders of the Christian Scientists, the Seventh-day Adventists, etc., have been women. The work of the sisters can be great, but the person of the sisters cannot be great. They should not expose themselves and should not be the ones to discern the truth." [Watchman Nee, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 3) Vol. 58: Spiritual Judgment and Examples of Judgment, Chapter 13, Section 1]
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This assessment is contradictory coming from someone who was saved, trained, heavily influenced by, and who worked closely with women such as Madame Guyon, Jessie Penn-Lewis, Elizabeth Fischbacher, Miss Groves, Margaret Barber, Peace Wang, Dora Yu, Mary E. McDonough, and Ruth Lee. Among others.
If women had constitutional or dispositional incapacity of exerting functional influence, then why the admittedly great influence, here, upon the speaker, who then promptly denied them and their role?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
... Since there is no male or female IN CHRIST, then, when a woman becomes spiritual by being reborn spiritually, she is the same as a reborn man. Both man and woman should be assessed the same way. It is futile to keep harping on the sins of a woman who is still in the natural, because the focus should be on the spiritual, not the natural. I am a born again woman. I contend for the right to be as spiritual as a man, as able to learn directly from God, His Word and His Spirit, as a man. It is God Who teaches us all our roles in Him, whether as godly men or godly women. But nevertheless we all need no man teach us, for we all have the anointing. To represent that man learns directly from God but that woman needs a third entity -- a man -- to teach her, is NOT SCRIPTURAL. Paul could not have meant that. Surely he was speaking only in the context of speaking out of order in meetings, and somehow that was a problem in that particular early setting. Paul in other places, speaks very highly of certain women ministers.
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To me, key to understanding Paul's word here (on women functioning in church) was that he was addressing it within his present social context. To Paul, freedom in Christ Jesus did not mean an abandonment of society's mores and constraints. A slave and a master were brothers, and equal before God as redeemed and revived sinners, but they still must heed social conventions. Internally, and eternally, they were "in Christ", but externally and temporally they still were slave and master, with the unchanged expectations of those roles. Paul merely counseled, "Do all unto the Lord." Likewise men and women. In Christ there was no man or woman, but in the flesh one still must respect God's sovereign arrangement. The established and accepted social order must be respected.
But God's sovereign arrangement, circa 50 or 60 AD Palestine, was not once and for all. Slavery as an institution ended, and eventually women were recognized as having the same personhood as men. Except in certain churches, of course. There, it is still first-century Palestinian social arrangements.
And the glaring incongruity of it all is seen in the disparity between the words and actions of Watchman Nee; what he actually did, versus what he proclaimed as his 'truth'.