160 FEMINIST VIEWS BASED ON UNTRUTHFUL CLAIMS
Stanley Grenz writes,
The most widely held view among egalitarians claims that the prob-
lem in Corinth focused on certain women who were asking many
questions that disrupted the worship services.... The women may
have been recent converts... or perhaps they were uneducated
women voicing irrelevant questions.... Or perhaps the women were
interrupting either the Scripture exposition in the services or the eval-
uation of the prophetic messages.... Regardless of the actual details,
the results were the same. The adamant questioning resulted in chaos.
In response, Paul rules the women out of order.^2One detailed explanation of this view is from Linda Belleville, who
says that married Corinthian women were less educated than their hus-
bands and were asking questions because they wanted to learn. She says,
“It is likewise plain that the questions of these women were directed at
men other than their husbands, for Paul instructs them to ask their own
men.”^3 (Linda Belleville was until 2005 a professor of New Testament
at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, and is a widely pub-
lished egalitarian author.)
The first thing to be said about this claim is that there are no facts
to support it. There are no data in the book of 1 Corinthians itself to
support this claim, nor are there any extrabiblical data to corroborate
it. It is true that Craig Keener cites some twenty-six extrabiblical refer-
ences, and with such a long string of references readers may imagine that
there is abundant historical information to support his claim.^4 But when
we actually look up these references, they are all references to Graeco-
Roman and Jewish writings that talk about concerns for decency and
order in public assemblies. Not one of them mentions women in the
Corinthian church. Not one of them mentions women in any Christian
church, for that matter! Proving that Greeks and Romans and Jews had
(^2) Stanley Grenz, Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry (Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 123-124. See also J. Lee Grady, Ten Lies the Church Tells
Women (Lake Mary, Fla.: Creation House, 2000), 61-64.
(^3) Linda Belleville, “Women in Ministry,” in Two Views on Women in Ministry, ed. James Beck
and Craig Blomberg (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), 116. See also Cindy Jacobs,
Women of Destiny (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1998), 233; Judy L. Brown, Women Ministers
According to Scripture (Springfield, Ill.: Judy L. Brown, 1996), 271-273.
(^4) Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives, 89n4.