“While the roles of men and women are separate, they are unified through Christ. “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11). The position of the Church in this regard was beautifully stated by President Joseph Fielding Smith:

I think we all know that the blessings of the priesthood are not confined to men alone. These blessings are also poured out upon our wives and daughters and upon all the faithful women of the Church. These good sisters can prepare themselves, by keeping the commandments and by serving in the Church, for the blessings of the house of the Lord. The Lord offers to his daughters every spiritual gift and blessing that can be obtained by his sons, for neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord.(Joseph Fielding Smith, Conference Report, April 1970, p. 59; also “Magnifying Our Callings in the Priesthood,” Improvement Era, June 1970, p. 66.)

” Neither the man without the woman,
neither the woman without the man,
we will go on — finding at last
what all love songs reach for but never can grasp! “

Rigel (19): I still keep my LDS KJV version in my regular Bible reference library because some of the Topical Guide references are so oblique and distinctive. Ran into this a week or two ago when discussing Psalms 46 in Ray’s thread on “Be Still and Know.” The TG reference of “Silence” doesn’t contextually frame the scripture so well — though the direct cross ref to D&C 101 was pretty good. I think TG references regularly support the contention that LDS “proof text” study the Bible rather than try to let internal and historical context be the guide. (I know LDS aren’t the only people who “proof text” the Bible, I just haven’t found a Christian study concordance yet that is quite so oblique as the LDS version can be.) I wonder who created the LDS TG and how it came to be? I’ve never studied that out.

If you read this verse in the LDS scriptures, the footnote takes you to TG Eternal Marriage. Reading this verse in its context or with the other verses Hawkgrrl has cited do not give one the impression that Paul is attempting to make a case for marriage being a celestial principle. Unless you view that one quote stating ‘it is better to marry than to burn’ in the same way another scripture teaches that it is better to pay tithing than to burn.

Plenty of criticism is heaped on post-restoration church leaders. There seems to be a tendency to hold them up against an impossible and inaccurate standard of perfection while giving a pass to figures in the Old and New Testaments. But is that fair? Wouldn’t OT & NT leaders have the same shortcomings when viewed from our “enlightened” modern perspective?

You hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t think it is remotely certain that Paul was married — at best inconclusive. The Greek “syzygos” in Phil 4 can refer to a person who shares a common work or effort, though it could mean spouse. Given how much Paul addresses the status and needs of the single and widowed, maybe that could mean that he identified with them more because he was also single or widowed. (Maybe they were just a more needful bunch.) Either way, 1 Cor 7 certainly doesn’t do much to clearly settle the issue of whether Paul was married. If he wasn’t then, or had never been, he was practical in dealing with marriage as a useful sexual-behavior checking system for most people, and humane in his suggestions for Christian interfaith marriage.

Also, it’s almost certain that Paul was married since in Philippians Paul addresses a woman as his wife. (Although the King James version translates it as “yokemate”)

If the female hair were seen as “genitalia” to be covered before God it seems, from a symbolic angle, counter-intuitive to that which we see in the Genesis narrative. When humankind existed with God it was naked, unashamed and fully known. When it exercised its individual will to supplant God’s will, we tried to hide our nakedness. Thereafter, separated from God, we are clothed to represent our fallen and continued separation before God. To come before Him in prayer, symbolically clothed, seems contrary to symbols of removing ourselves from the earth, filth, material-orientation, for example, by removing shoes. Seems opposite to the abiding love imagery that is used in scripture to describe our affection for God and His affection for us, the Church, the Bride. As we seek intimacy with a personal God how can that not be most close and abiding than to be symbolically and spiritually “naked” before Him — unhidden, vulnerable, dependent?

I think it is fascinating the apostolic autonomy, the unity and friction, the dynamic fluidity, that existed in the early church. Often sounds much more like early Mormonism than modern Mormonism. In my past as an LDS teacher I found my students were often very confused by this; it made it hard to reconcile the way they imprint present LDS governance back in time as an assumption on how things worked then. They viewed Peter as the prophet who had his tidy governing board of assistants in twelve apostles. When you find apostleship not contained to 12 persons and discipleship sometimes described with a very similar role, then it even elevates what it can mean to be a disciple and nuances what it means to be an apostle. In sum, a confusing challenge to those LDS who have an unreasonable presentist understanding of the apostolic church.

This autonomy is a fundamental way that Protestants see the role of apostles still continuing today: they were those whose role it was to embrace the missional call of Jesus and start new communities of believers, get them established in sound doctrine. In that way, we Protestants have our apostles, too, though they be less monastically inclined like you can find the complement in Catholicism or title-oriented and hierarchical like in the LDS faith.

Paul is a complex figure to try to understand – and it is very difficult for us in an age of highly coordinated ministry and correlated message to understand the relative autonomy of the ancient apostles. There is obvious disagreement among the authors of the epistles of the NT, and it is merely by sheer volume of canonized output that Paul is seen as such an authoritative figure now. for example, to hearken to the other discussion about historical information, I have no doubt the general Christian understanding of faith, salvation, grace and repentance would be different if James or John had been the writer of the majority of the NT epistles. It’s certainly worth considering, anyway.

Regarding your question on the translation of 1 Cor. 7:36:

The expression “past the flower of her age” is an attempt to translate a single Greek word, huperakmos, derived from huper “beyond” and akmE “point, edge, flower, zenith, time, etc.”

There are two broad approaches to understanding this word in this verse. The more traditional is to take it as referring to a girl who is the daughter to a father or the ward to a guardian. In that context the word probably means a girl who has passed puberty, who is sexually well-developed, who is “ripe” like a fruit. The KJV is a little ambiguous but it appears to be following this tradition.

The second approach, favored generally by modern scholars, is that the passage is talking about a single man deciding whether to marry the woman to whom he is engaged. Under that approach, the word refers not to the woman but to the man and means something like “he is past the critical point; his passions are too strong.” (I’m sure many an engaged young BYU coed can relate to that concept!)

BTW, here’s an old post of mine that examines an interesting take on one of your passages above:

http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/05/for-long-hair-is-given-to-her-instead-of-a-testicle/

There are a couple cultural contexts that appear to help explain: 1) in Greek culture women were not allowed to speak in public forum gatherings. 2) We have elsewhere in Paul’s works, and the Acts, women mentioned as functioning as prophetesses, teaching, ministering, anointing, serving in roles such as deaconess, etc. Women definitely were active in the ministry — in homes, informal gatherings, person-to-person ministry for sure — except where it appears to function on meta leadership with the male Elders (even male Deacons don’t appear to be permitted to these leadership meetings) and large church gatherings of the local Body. 3) Plus, we don’t have this prohibition for women speaking appearing in epistles directed to non-Grecian faith communities, though we don’t have contradictory affirmation that they did speak publicly for such meetings elsewhere. This may have been only a Corinth-area community law. But, again, it may also have applied elsewhere. The record is not unequivocal.

While I admit it is problematic when all epistles are reconciled together to always form a unified picture of what that “entire Church” then did abide by, and what we, today, should abide by, especially where community “holiness laws” are concerned, it seems more practical to me to err on the side of the historical record. The apostolic church never was unified in the ideal way we sometimes wish it were, especially on matters of practice. It differed from community to community, culture to culture. I applaud the ideal unity for which the apostles and church fathers pursued, especially in foundational beliefs, but “denominationalism” appears to be a challenge (and a blessing?) the church encountered from its most early days. Some holiness laws like circumcision were very divisive in some communities.

Today, a unity of faith is a worthy ideal for us to keep pursuing, and denominational apartheid is hard to imagine as desirable to the Lord, but I don’t think we have to devolve to such blanket generalizations like Bill (2) did in order to try to reconcile debates and differences. There can be healthy reasons to be separate and have variety in worship and cultural manifestations of faith practice, especially since the New Testament is not unequivocal on all matters. Could the Lord have intended this for us?

Are you talking about the 1 Corinthians citations? I Cor is strongly considered one of Paul’s authentic epistles. There is some minor transposition of some verses between manuscripts, but from what I know there is not missing content between sources. 2 Corinthians, on the other hand, does have debate on Pauline authorship.

Isn’t that the truth. It was one of the reasons I tired of apologetics. All I saw were the same old chestnuts, over and over again.

Though I like what Hawkgrrrl is doing here.

Too bad Mormon Matters doesn’t end up being covered on talk shows.

Any of you in New York? I’ll be there tonight around 9:30 p.m., and free around lunch time on Wednesday when I’ll be eating breakfast before I fly out and back to Dallas.

Take this as a quick hello to all. I’ll be back for vacation and visiting later this year.

Anti-mormon Christian: “There isn’t any evidence that the events in the book of mormon actually happened”
Mormon apologist: “Almost all the events in the Bible lack any real evidence also”

The normal outcome is:

Anti-mormon Christian: “Yes, but the Bible is God’s word and Book of Mormon was fabricated by Joseph Smith.”
Mormon apologist: (Thinking to himself) “I really need to get into a new line of work–I can’t believe how dense these people can be.”

Perhaps after the Savior returns and the lamb and the lion are getting along, the conversation will change to:

Anti-mormon Christian: “You are right. They are both equally lacking in evidence.”
Mormon apologist: “They must both be false.” “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”