Did Paul blow it?

For instance, Paul gave the Christian position regarding the structure of a Christian society thus: “In it there is no room for Greek and Jew [social distinction]; circumcised and uncircumcised [religious rite distinction], barbarian, Scythian [cultural distinction], slave, or free man [social, economic distinction]; Christ is everything and everywhere” (Col. 3:11, Moffatt). And in Gal 3:28 he adds: “There is no room for male and female [sex distinction]; you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That is the Christian position—clear, positive, sweeping. And in Peter’s speech at Pentecost he said: “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy”—note “and daughters”—(Acts·2:17, Moffatt).

But in 1 Cor. 14: 34 (Moffatt) Paul enjoins something else: “Women must keep quiet at gatherings of the church. They are not allowed to speak; … as the Law enjoins.” Note that he appeals to “the Law” for authority. Is he falling into the very thing he told the Galatians they were doing? It seems so. Every time Paul tried to put woman in a subordinate position, he appealed to the Old Testament, not to Jesus. Note: “but woman represents the supremacy of man. (Man was not made from woman, woman was made from man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for man.)” (1 Cor. 11:7–9, Moffatt); Here he turns back to the first creation for corroboration for his position—the first creation, not to the new creation in Jesus where “there is no room for male or female.” Again in 1 Tim. 2:12-14 (Moffatt) he says: “I allow no woman to teach or dictate to men, she must keep quiet. For Adam was created first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, it was Eve.” Here he turned to the first Adam for the sustaining of his position—the first Adam, not the Second Adam, Christ. His Christianity slipped a cog. And that slipping back to the pre-Christian has caused much confusion. Paul says that sometimes he was not inspired-he was speaking on his own. This was one of the times. And the ages have suffered because of it.—E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, 307

<idle musing>
You can not accuse E. Stanley Jones of being a progressive! Yet, he sees something wrong here and isn't afraid to say it: Paul blew it! Paul spoke out of himself and not at the leading of the Spirit!

Just an
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Reallexikon der Assyriologie links

I have these links on the abbreviations page, but its handier to have a separate page linking them.

RlA abbreviations:
https://rla.badw.de/reallexikon/abkuerzungslisten/literatur-und-koerperschaften.html

RlA entries:
https://publikationen.badw.de/en/rla/index

Table of contents for copyediting stuff

A sense of mission? Not so much…

Many Christians know little or nothing about personal guidance from God. They go from event to event and live a kind of hand-to-mouth spiritual existence—a spiritual and moral opportunism. They have no sense of working out a plan of life under God’s guidance. They have little or no sense of destiny, of mission.

This is true of the nation as well as the individual. When a nation loses its sense of mission, it is beginning to disintegrate. Someone asked President Eisenhower, before he was nominated for the Presidency, what was the greatest need of America, and he replied: “A sense of mission.” A very wise and penetrating reply. Personally I believe this sense of mission for America is to be true to the last line of the pledge of allegiance to the flag: “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is the thing we have been raised up to do: to give “liberty and justice for all,” at home and abroad. This rules out all imperialisms—economic, social, political, military. We have been the proving ground of an idea—an economy of liberty and justice for all, apart from race and birth and religion and color and sex. We have been brought up to make the word “all” operative in all relationships at home and abroad. This is the mission of America. We must work it out—or perish. And if we don't work it out, we ought to perish—we will be a useless, amorphic mass of selfish people struggling for personal advantage. If we as a nation go out to dominate anyone economically, socially, politically, militarily, then our “name is mud.” “Ichabod”—“God has departed”—will be written on our banners, and angels will weep. For we who began by breaking with imperialism would end in setting up one of our own—the saddest ending to the greatest beginning in human history. One of our greatest needs is a call for a national day of prayer in which we will humbly bow our knees to get back as a nation “a sense of mission”—a sense that we are working out a divine destiny in the world.—E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, 274

<idle musing>
He wrote this in 1953. His fears have definitely been realized, haven't they?
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The greatest danger

I'm reading Abraham Joshua Heschel's great work, The Prophets. Came across this yesterday and it seems appropriate for our time, when outrageous evils are happening every day:

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, 2:64