It's important to understand the context. Paul is writing letters to communities dealing with the problems and situations going on in those communities. As such, it can be easy to misinterpret Paul.
Imagine that I have a close friend, and I write him a letter concerning all sorts of things going on in his life, offering advice. Now, him and I have all sorts of extra-letter knowledge about these situations; but if you were to read that letter as an outsider, there's a whole lot of missing information. Thus to try and make sense of my letter to my friend, you may need to find out more information about me and my friend--and even then are likely going to have a highly imperfect record to work with.
That's what happens when we read Paul's letter. We are effectively peeking in on two other party's correspondence. This complicates things as we try to make sense of it. Some things will seem more clear than others, some things are going to make no sense at all, and other things are going to be in a very hazy middle and then we try to do the best with it that we can.
I often see Paul less as setting down universally applicable commandments as putting forth practical solutions to community struggles. For example, when Paul instructs wives to be quiet, he is not saying all women everywhere are to be quiet little church mice without a voice in the Church (in act, this would make no sense given everything else he says throughout his letters); rather he seems to be dealing with a very specific problem, most likely a few Chatty Kathy's who were being disruptive, Paul says they should stop being disruptive and if they want to ask questions they should wait until later.
This reading makes more sense when we consider that most likely early Christian worship followed standard Jewish customs, such as having men and women seated separately. If this is the case then we're not simply talking about a wife whispering to her husband in the back of the church, but interrupting everything going on to talk to her husband across the whole church. The problem wasn't women talking, the problem was a specific one involving women who were persistently making things difficult in that local community, and the instruction was specifically for that community with this specific problem. Not a universal commandment given for all time.
-CryptoLutheran
