1 Cor 14: Keeping The Purpose Of Corinthians

Next, one should consider the Biblical context of these passages. 1 Cor 14 is about order and keeping the purpose of church assemblies as the building up of others. Within this chapter, an issue arises with the command that tongues speakers, who do not have an interpreter present, should “keep silent in church.” This would lead to a strange conclusion that a tongue speaker is not allowed to sing or pray in normal speech. This same problem applies to 1 Cor 14:34-35. There is an absolute application that would not fit with anything else in scripture. For example, a literal application would forbid women from praying or prophesying which would contradict 1 Cor 11:2-4. The context of Corinthians is dealing with specific problems, and this needs to be treated as an address of something specific. The Timothy passage is one that makes for some of the same contradictions when applied literally or even conservatively. For example, the book of Acts presents the story of a woman, Priscilla, and her husband teaching a Christian man. If Timothy is taken literally, there is no way that that should have been allowed, but this couple is later praised by Paul. It is clear that there was teaching men; because, Apollos learned “at least one …show more content…
It has been suggested that they are more different than similar. There is a second issue that arises in the combining of these two passages. If one uses the Timothy passage to translate the Corinthian passage, one finds that the question was about judging, an act of authority, the things said by the prophets. This does not mean that they should not be used together, but a person needs to exercise caution in assuming that the two are discussing an identical issue. They were written to different people at different times. One letter is to a colleague and the other to a congregation of people. One letter is corrective, while the other is