I PERMIT NO WOMAN is a book about the women God calls into ministry, and the ways church and society invent to keep them out of ministry, usually by claiming the Bible prohibits any woman from preaching. 1 Timothy 2:12 is the verse cited. But that verse only mentions one particular woman who is not named. That woman should not be permitted to teach for a reason – because she is not teaching the Bible, but some other belief system that is leading church members away from the true word of God. Furthermore, the passage says nothing about preaching, only teaching an unknown subject matter represented by the infinitive verb authentein.
Join the author on a journey into the secrets of ancient Ephesus and delve deeper into the Gnostic ideas that were the likely cause of Christians abandoning their faith in Jesus, due to false teachings.
The author believes that God was doing a new thing in the first century Church, something so radical it turned the social divisions of their time upside down. Men and women worshiped together in house churches, as did Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free. Each believer was encouraged to use their gifts of the Spirit for the upbuilding of the church in love. What happened to the equality those first Christians enjoyed? Today's church is in sore need of recovering that equality.