Paul must have been wrong when he wrote:
2Ti 3:16
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Paul didn't have the Bible back then, he had the Old Testament. On top of that, it was men who got together and gathered what letters they could find from the apostles and decided which ones would be canon, "the Bible". We can note this easily by looking at the "book" of 3 John, which is really just a short letter John was writing to someone else. It adds no significant moral understanding, and it's very clear that it's a short letter from John to Gaius. 3 John wasn't written as a "Thus saith the Lord, remember these moral teachings;" it's a letter, but I guarantee there has been people who have stood on 3 John and defended their biblical position from it. That said, I think way too many Americans (and probably other people around the world alike) are far too eager to assume that they know "The Truth," even though they have almost no understanding of the context of these letters that were written by the apostles near 2000 years ago. These letters were often written to specific churches for specific reasons. That has to be taken in mind, as does the cultural mindsets of the day that may have affected the apostles. Look at how much Peter struggled eating with Gentiles. The Jews had that much of a mindset about not associating with Gentiles, and
this was after Jesus had already ascended. If 90% of the population of the world would have gotten ignored if God had not woken up the apostles to get the apostles and early Christians to accept us non-Jews, then that goes to show that there may have been a lot of cultural mindsets that had not been dealt with yet that would need to be changed at some future time. If I'm not mistaken, women were still basically treated like property back then. This may be part of the reason why Paul had no issue talking about them keeping a minority role.
BUT, elsewhere in the Bible, like someone else already noted from Joel and another person I believe noted from Acts (with the evangelist's prophesying daughters), women are shown as prophecying or leading. And don't forget, in the beginning, God told men and women to rule:
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26 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let
them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. Gen 1:26
Also, that men gained an unholy rulership over women in the Fall, as part of the consequence of the Fall:
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16 To the woman he said,
I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you. Gen. 3:16
But we aren't called to be under the curses of the Fall any more. We are called to come out from them and to live fully in Christ.
Also, don't forget the circular reasoning of women not being seen in power as much in the Bible because of the fact that they lived in cultures where they were kept out of power to begin with and so one assumes women should still not be in power because they are not seen in power in the Bible. How does one get around that?
Imo, we to apply deep thinking when we are working on interpreting the Bible. Even the parables probably made a lot more sense to people who understood sheep and harvest times and etc. It was written first and foremost to the audience of the time, and we need to understand that time and what the audience was going through to better understand what the words we are reading might mean. Also, we need to use "common sense", apply our ability to ask the question "does this interpretation seems like it makes logical/scientific sense?", when we read the Bible. Some people believe that God is against jewelry and make-up, when other passages in the Bible show God adorning Israel with "jewerly" as if it's a blessing. We can't just jump to conclusions, because if our interpretation of what God believes seems like it's useless or immoral in it's own right, then our interpretation may very well be useless or immoral.
As far as women goes, we have passages in the Bible to back up women being leaders. And for logical sense, there is no significant scientific data that shows that women can't handle being leaders. That said, I choose to side with the side that both has the Bible and everyday evidence to back it up.
