Should women teach?

Dear Editor,

I would like to respond to a couple of the points in Andrew Bartlett’s article.

Firstly, repeating an assertion like ‘submit to your husbands as to the Lord’ (Eph. 5:22) has the effect of emphasising it. Introducing the repetition with ‘But’ (Greek alla) empha-sises it even further, as it adds the element of ‘contrary to what you might expect’. So, in Philippians 1:18-19, having stated: ‘And because of this I rejoice’, Paul continues: ‘Alla [contrary to what you might expect] and I will continue to rejoice’. Similarly, in Ephesians 5:24, he states: ‘Alla as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything’. In other words, he is telling the wives: ‘Yes, I really meant it when I wrote that you should submit to your husbands’. However, just in case husbands get the wrong message from such emphasis, he then reminds us that we are to love our wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her (v.25).