Complementarian brothers and sisters, I love you and this isn't meant as a personal attack. But if I'm being totally honest, I think your stance is riddled with serious exegetical and hermeneutical inconsistencies.

A thread:

First, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 does not say women may not preach or serve as pastors. It says women may not speak in church *at all.* Assuming these two verses are not a later interpolation which Paul did not actually write, Paul's words in these verses would seem...

...to completely contradict what he says just a few chapters earlier in 1 Corinthians 11, in which he is clearly okay with women praying and prophesying publicly in the mixed assembly of local church worship. 14:34-35 is a notoriously difficult passage...

...and it requires some serious special pleading to claim it is "clear" this text teaches that women cannot preach or serve as pastors. Second, the lists of qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 cannot be used to restrict eldership to men...

...unless you restrict eldership to *married* men with *multiple children.* You can't use the qualification lists to absolutely restrict women from eldership but then make exceptions for single and/or childless men. That's pure hermeneutical hypocrisy. Furthermore...

...Paul almost certainly was himself single and childless (just like Jesus). Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he prefers celibate singleness and encourages his readers to embrace it. It would be absurd for Paul to then require both marriage and children for elders.

Third, we finally come to 1 Timothy 2. This seems to be the text upon which complementarianism stands or falls. If I may, I'd like to summarize the standard complementarian reading of 1 Timothy 2:

"Because God created men before women, men are to exercise 'headship' over women. Women teaching and serving as leaders over men in the local church would violate this 'male headship principle,' so that is out of bounds."

Here's the thing, though. The NT is very clear that women may serve as prophets, and their prophetic authority is not limited only to other women.

"But prophecy is different than teaching! Paul is talking about teaching and pastoring, not prophecy!"

Yes, prophecy is different than teaching. But being a prophet is actually *more* authoritative than being a pastor/teacher (1 Corinthians 14:1-19, Ephesians 4:11). If women pastors/teachers violate the "male headship principle," then women prophets violate it even more!

You could argue that 1 Corinthians 11 solves this difficulty because it teaches that women who prophesy in church must do so in a way that symbolically honors male headship. That *might* be a viable solution, and that is the main reason I don't see complementarianism...

...as hopelessly dishonest and inconsistent. But I think that interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 is very problematic for a number of reasons. I don't have space or time to unpack that here; maybe that's another thread for another time.

At the end of the day, I think complementarianism has too many exegetical and hermeneutical inconsistencies for me to accept it. I understand why others disagree with me, but it's ignorant at best and intellectually dishonest at worst to insist that complementarianism...

...is the "clear," "obvious" teaching of Scripture. The end.