On the most recent episode of the Mortification of Spin, Carl, Aimee, and Todd had a disagreement about whether women can teach men in a Sunday School class. In the wake of the discussion both Aimee and Todd have published posts explaining their positions. You should read them as they model gracious, thoughtful, and intelligent interaction.

The Relative Novelty Of Sunday School

There is another approach to these questions, however: to question the validity of Sunday School. Aimee gives a helpful and brief account of the history of the Sunday School movement. In the history of the church it is a relative novelty. It was an ad hoc response, in the 19th century, to the social crisis created by the industrial revolution. It has, however, become institutionalized in many churches and it may be assumed that there has always been Sunday School or something like it. That is not exactly a sound assumption.

The church has long practiced Christian education but it has not always done it the way most churches do it now. There is no clear indication of exactly how Christian education was done in the apostolic church. There are hints that might be interpreted to suggest instruction outside the assembly for worship but they are ambiguous. E.g., When Paul speaks of the Episkopos (ἐπίσκοπον; Titus 1:7) or overseer being able “to exhort in sound teaching” (παρακαλεῖν ἐν τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ; Titus 1:9) is that in public worship or in some other setting? In Acts 20:20 Paul says that he taught in public (δημοσίᾳ) and “house to house” (κατ᾿ οἴκους).

We know that there was a school (ἐν τῇ σχολῇ) in Ephesus belonging to Tyrannus, in which Paul taught or disputed (διαλεγόμενος) daily (καθ᾿ ἡμέραν; Acts 9:9). This is one of the few clear instances, apart from Paul’s evangelistic preaching and teaching in the synagogue, of Christian instruction occurring outside the assembly of the visible church. There were schools prior to the NT period, of course, and there continued to be schools after the 1st century. Justin Martyr (c. 100–65 AD) was a trained, accredited philosopher who was converted to the Christian faith. He taught in schools before and after his conversion. Catechetical (instructional) schools certainly existed in the 3rd century. Origen (c.184–254) was master of a catechetical school in Alexandria. Those must have been some of the strangest catechism classes in Christian history.

In the middle ages, instruction of laity, elders, and the ministers declined fairly dramatically. The Reformation set about aggressively to reverse that pattern by instituting catechetical instruction of both ministers and laity. It was typically pastors who taught catechism to the young people and to the adults. For example, in Geneva, Calvin taught a Friday evening Bible study for the laity and he taught catechism to the children. The pattern of the Reformed churches was for ordained officers, usually ministers, to conduct authoritative instruction of the laity. Such instruction was not typically optional.

One of the discontinuities between the NT, the historic Christian pattern, and the modern practice is that the status of Sunday School is so ambiguous. In a rightly ordered Reformed congregation, were the laity (the people) to absent themselves from public worship repeatedly without excuse, they would find themselves giving an account of their actions to the elders and ministers (the consistory or the session). Should the pattern continue church discipline would begin.

We do not typically treat Sunday School the same way. Ministers and elders do teach Sunday School classes but so do laity. If Mom and Dad remove their child from Mrs Jones’ 3rd grade Sunday School class, it is not ordinarily a cause for discipline. This is in part because the Sunday School movement was an extra-ecclesiastical development that the church imported. Mrs Jones’ 3rd grade Sunday School has no ecclesiastical authority. The status of the pastor’s class or an elder’s class is more ambiguous but it would be unusual to find one’s self under discipline for not attending the class.

Against The Modern Democratic Assumption

If the reader paid close attention to the examples surveyed above he noticed that there is precious little evidence of unordained persons teaching in any public, ecclesiastical capacity. By precious little I mean none. As appears above the consistent pattern in the NT is that ordained men are to do the teaching in the church. E.g., in 1 Timothy 5:17 it is elders (πρεσβύτεροι), who rule well and who are “working in the Word and teaching” (κοπιῶντες ἐν λόγῳ καὶ διδασκαλίᾳ). In 1 Timothy 4:6, it is Timothy, a pastor, who is presumed to be teaching. In 4:13 it is he who is to devote himself to the (public) reading of Scripture, to exhortation (or encouragement; παρακλήσει) and to teaching (διδασκαλίᾳ).

The closest one comes, in the NT, to an example of laity teaching is the example of Priscilla and Aquila, who explained to Apollos some important truths about the history of redemption (Acts 18:26). It is not entirely clear what whether Aquila held a teaching office (minister or elder) in the church. What we know is that Paul met him and his wife Priscilla in Corinth and that Aquila was a tent maker (Acts 18:1–3). We next see the couple sailing with Paul for Syria (18:18). Paul mentions them as “co-workers” (συνεργούς; Rom 16:3) along with Phoebe (Rom 16:1), whom he calls a “servant of the church” (ESV; διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας), which presumably reflects some status in the church. Again, the evidence is so limited it is difficult to draw a firm conclusion. Paul mentions them in 1 Corinthians 16:19 as sending greetings and he greets them in 2 Timothy 4:19. Clearly they played a significant role in support of Paul’s apostolic ministry and they were learned enough to instruct Apollos but it is not entirely clear what was their status in the church.

One of the reasons we find ourselves in a quandary over whether females may teach men in Sunday School is because we have taken for granted a set of quite modern, democratic (egalitarian) assumptions about lay “ministry” in the church. There is very little evidence in the New Testament for lay ministry or what is often called “every-member ministry.” The passages to which people sometimes appeal to support lay ministry or lay evangelism (e.g., Acts 8:1–4), when read in context, according to original intent, do not teach it.

The bias in the early church was largely against lay teaching. One of the most outstanding examples of lay teaching in the early church, The Shepherd of Hermas, was a disaster and is an argument against lay teaching in the church. In the 7th century one synod issued a ruling against it.

Part of the solution to the Sunday School problem is to recover the distinction between teaching offices (e.g., ministers, elders) and laity, i.e., those who are not ordained (set apart and installed) to special, authoritative, teaching office. This distinction is particularly difficult for those of us reared in the American context. Since the early 19th century, American culture has become increasingly egalitarian. Class distinctions have never operated in our context the way they have in Europe. That is one of the features of American life that the rest of the world finds so attractive.

The impulse, however, to flatten out social distinctions has its liabilities. One of them is that there is a seemingly relentless pressure to obliterate all distinctions, even to wipe out distinctions between the sexes. Another liability is that it can be very difficult for Americans to leave their egalitarianism at the church door. This is one reason why congregational churches (even if they do not call themselves congregational) seem to flourish. Congregationalism plays to the American bias against authority. This is why many Presbyterian and some Reformed congregations are at pains to play down their polity, to make themselves appear to be congregational. I heard a story some years back about an elder of a congregation who stumbled upon their book of church order and discovered that his congregation was presbyterian in polity. The pastor had so obscured his congregation’s polity and denominational affiliation that even one of the elder’s had no idea that the congregation was presbyterian.

Scripture, however, is unembarrassed about distinguishing between ordained teaching offices and unordained people (laity) in the church. Teaching function and authority is reserved for those offices. Scripture speaks of elders (πρεσβύτεροι) and overseers (ἐπισκόπους), and pastors and teachers (ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους; Eph 4:11) as those ordained to teach authoritatively.

In the episode mentioned, Carl articulated a general rule, with some exceptions (e.g., a licensed seminary student who exhorts in public worship), that a female may do in the church what an unordained male may do. If we observe the distinction between authoritative and non-authoritative teaching, this rule seems sound. When Aimee writes books, she is clearly teaching. Does her teaching have binding authority? No. Does she do a good job in helping women and men think through issues? Certainly. Co-hosting a podcast with two ministers is teaching but it is not an exercise of ecclesiastical authority. Try as they may, Carl, Todd, and Aimee cannot discipline anyone who stops listening to The Mortification of Spin. Indeed, that would be true for all sorts of informal teaching (e.g., the Heidelblog, the Heidelcast, or Hodge’s Systematic Theology). All non-ecclesiastical or extra-ecclesiastical instruction is just that. It is has the status of opinion. The standard of discipline is not opinion but God’s Word as confessed by the churches. That has binding authority. A sermon, insofar as (quatenus) it is faithful to the Word, is authoritative. Sunday School and podcasts, helpful as they may be, do not meet that test.

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