1 Cor 11

If you are in the area, I would love to see you at one of my upcoming talks in Washington, Texas, Uganda, and Kenya.

Redmond, WA, March 31, 2012, main speaker at the Christians for Biblical Equality Puget Sound Spring Meeting at Overlake Christian Church, 9900 Willows Road NE, Redmond, WA 98052 from 2:00 – 4:30 PM.

Houston, TX, April 27-28, 2012, two plenary sessions, each with Q & A at the conference entitled”New Creation, New Tradition. Reclaiming the Biblical Tradition of Man and Woman, One in Christ” at the Heights Church of Christ, 1548 Heights Boulevard, Houston, TX 77008. http://www.cbehouston.org/Pages/aboutus.aspx (more…)

On Friday, July 29, 2011, from 12:30 – 2:00 PM I will be presenting the Christians for Biblical Equality Annual Meeting Plenary Lecture 1 at the Doubletree Guest Suites Seattle Airport/Southcenter. The title of the lecture is “The Biblical Foundation for Mutual Submission and Shared Authority Between Men and Women in Church and Marriage.” Click here to download the PowerPoint for this lecture. If you do not own PowerPoint, you may download the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer or you may install LibreOffice, a free Open Source Office Suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office.

On Saturday, July 30, from 2:50 – 3:50 PM I will lead a workshop on “Justice and Equality for Women Created in God’s Image: The Scriptural Mandate for Ministry and Marriage.”

Hope to see you there!

Kriste Patrow is the contact person to use special discount coupon UPCBE11 for a discount on your registration, also available on site. Her telephone number is 612-872-6898 (good until she leaves for the Conference Wednesday, July 27, 9:00 AM CST).

The Irving Bible Church of Irving, Texas invited me to participate in two two-hour”We Engage” panels March 29, 2011 discussing 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and 14:26-40. Professor Sandra Glahn of Dallas Theological Seminary and Dr. Alice Mathews of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, also on the panel, gave excellent insights. The moderator, Jackie Roese, did a magnificent job adding humor and tying everything together. I loved the opportunity to provide satisfying answers to difficult questions. Everyone was respectful of the others’ views, and all the responses I heard were enthusiastically positive. All 51 copies of Man and Woman, One in Christ I provided sold out. One lady told me, “Until tonight, I hated Paul. Now I respect him.” You can listen to the audio of the panel in English at: http://www.irvingbible.org/media/all-audio/ and a Spanish translation of the panel at http://irvingbible.org/media/series/details/we-engage-panel-2011-spanish/. The next day I had a wonderful time seeing Bill Eubanks’, SMU’s, and Charles Ryrie’s Bible collections. Charles Ryrie and Bill Eubanks were fascinated by photographs of the eight distinctive distigme-obelos symbols at the precise locations of widely-recognized, multi-word interpolations in Codex Vaticanus B, including one at the exact point appropriate to mark 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as an interpolation.

I was in the midst of a delightful conversation with Dr. Teresa Okure of the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, at the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta in November, 2011, when she noticed my SBL exhibitor badge and asked “Are you the Philip B. Payne who wrote Man and Woman, One in Christ? I just wrote a review of that fine book.” (more…)

S. A. from S. Barrington, Illinois, asks for comment on a statement by Alexander Strauch arguing that since Jesus was male, “biblical eldership” … must be an all-male eldership. (more…)

Two new reviews on Amazon.com give Man and Woman, One in Christ a five star rating (just like the two earlier reviews). Following are the complete contents of these new reviews. I have interspersed a few personal comments into the second review. (more…)

A Critique of Thomas R. Schreiner’s “Philip Payne on Familiar Ground: A Review of Philip B. Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters.” JBMW (Spring 2010) 33–46 (more…)

Susanna Krizo wrote comments based on thinking that 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 addresses women in the church in Corinth who were cutting their hair off and men who were growing long hair, both of which Paul opposes. I explained that if Paul were trying to keep women from cutting their hair off, it does not make sense that he would give the command in 11:6 “If a woman will not cover herself, then she should cut off her hair.” I believe our correspondence may be helpful to others since it sheds light both on various [mis]readings of 1 Cor 11:2-16 and how my interpretation answers these questions.

The key insight of this discussion is that Paul gives the proper answer to the question of 1 Cor 11:13, “Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God uncovered?”  in verses 14-15, “Does not the very nature of things teach you that it is degrading for a man to wear long hair, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her as a covering.” By conjoining these questions, Paul associates “uncovered” with hair and explicitly states that “hair is given to her as a covering.” Consequently, Paul here defines hair as a woman’s covering and explains that if she wears it “as a wraparound,” it is her glory. Since verses 14-15 identify long hair as degrading to a man but the glory of a woman, they also answer the question raised by 11:4 regarding men’s head covering: “What ‘hanging down from a man’s head’ is disgraceful?” Long effeminate hair is disgraceful. (more…)

Some people try to restrict Paul’s affirmation of women prophesying in 1 Cor 11:2-16 to prophesying  done only outside of assemblies of believers. Six factors demonstrate that 1 Cor 11:2-16 refers to practices in gatherings of believers, namely in the church. (more…)

Paul Adams continues his insightful reviews of Man and Woman, One in Christ, which you can read in full at http://inchristus.wordpress.com/. Following are highlights from his reviews of chapters 6-15:

“Readers are highly encouraged to spend time with this masterpiece. (Note: Those who choose to ignore the footnotes do so to their loss. Payne has painstakingly annotated all of his sources and provided considerable comments showing where some have either misrepresented or under-represented the data to support their alternative interpretations.)”

Chapter 7 “1 Corinthians 11:2-3: Head/Source Relationships” is worth the price of the book many times over. (more…)

I was greatly encouraged to receive emails from David R. Booth from Balcatta, Western Australia, sharing how my book helped to change his views from his previous complementarian position:

“Thank you so much for your book, Man and Woman, One in Christ. I have found it a most challenging and edifying read. From the purely exegetical perspective I think your book is the best I have read to date and certainly places the onus on  the ‘complementarian’ camp to refute.” (more…)

The first two are crucial studies for understanding Paul’s teaching regarding slavery.

The first gives twelve reasons to understand 1 Corinthians 7:21-23 as an encouragement for slaves to gain freedom if they can. These factors are crucial because some people have interpreted Paul as discouraging slaves from gaining their freedom and has been used to support slavery.

The second shows how Paul applies maximum social pressure on Philemon to free his slave Onesimus.

These two articles support the understanding of Galatians 3:28 argued in my book that in Christ there is no special privilege given to slave over free or to male over female. These studies show that Paul in practice undermines the slave/free dichotomy.

The third is a critique of Preston T. Massey’s article in New Testament Studies 53 (2007): 502-523. Massey states five conclusions regarding the meaning of “covered” in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. His article cites passages that contradict each of his five conclusions. He is unwarranted in concluding that “covering” implies a garment.

To see or download these studies, in the red box at the top of this page click on Publications, then click on Supplemental Studies.