19: DISRUPTIVE WOMEN IN CORINTH? 161concerns for order in public assemblies does not prove that women in
the church at Corinth were being disruptive or disorderly!^5
This theory attempts to make the Corinthian situation a special one,
when in fact Paul applies his rule to “all the churches” (1 Cor. 14:33b).^6
Thus his rule cannot be restricted to one local church where there sup-
posedly were problems. Instead, Paul directs the Corinthians to conform
to a practice that was universal in the early church.
Moreover, this “noisy women” theory either does not make sense
of Paul’s solution or else it makes his remedy unfair.
First, it does not make sense. If women were being disruptive, Paul
would just tell them to act in an orderly way, not to be completely silent.
In other cases where there are problems of disorder, Paul simply pre-
scribes order (as with tongues or prophecy in 14:27, 29, 31, and as with
the Lord’s Supper in 11:33-34). If noise had been the problem in
Corinth, he would have explicitly forbidden disorderly speech, not all
speech.
Second, it would be unfair. With this view, Paul would be punish-
ing all women for the misdeeds of some. If there were noisy women, in
order to be fair, Paul should have said, “The disorderly women should
keep silent.” But this egalitarian position makes Paul unfair, for it makes
him silence all women, not just the disorderly ones. It is unlike Paul, or
any other New Testament writer, to make unfair rules of this sort. Also,
Paul would be unfair to punish only the disorderly women and not any
disorderly men. And to say that only women and no men were disor-
derly is merely an assumption with no facts to support it.
Finally, and perhaps most important, we should note the reason that
(^5) For a more detailed response to this claim and other variations of it see Wayne Grudem,
Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2004), 243-247. In
Keener’s subsequent essay, “Learning in the Assemblies: 1 Cor. 14:34-35,” in Discovering
Biblical Equality, ed. Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity, 2004), 161-171, he still holds that “women were interrupting the service with
questions” (165), but he gives additional emphasis to the lower educational status of women
as the probable reason for this: “women on average were less educated than men” (169). What
is noteworthy, however, is that this recent essay provides no more evidence for the fundamental
premise that women were being disruptive: this “event” is assumed to be true, and after that
Keener goes on to provide historical factors that might have caused this event. But the exis-
tence of the “event” itself remains without proof or evidence.
(^6) See Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, 254, for my discussion of how the
phrase “as in all the churches of the saints” (v. 33b) relates best to verse 34. But even if some-
one thinks that phrase goes with the preceding sentence, Paul still says, in verse 34, “the women
should keep silent in the churches.”