Paul’s Principle of Accomodation

Quite a large percentage of Christian churches are not very open to winning the lost to Christ. They set up all sorts of barriers that put seekers off, including weird sub-cultural behaviors and even stranger theological interpretations based on non-understanding of ancient cultures, or worse, on just their own sub-cultures and ways of understanding the world. Rigidity of belief was a jewel in the crown of the Pharisees, just as it is in modern-day fundamentalists. Not so with the Apostle Paul.

In I Corinthians 9:19-23 Paul says this: “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” TNIV

Concerning this, theologian Walter L. Liefeld wrote in article, “A Plural Ministry View: Your Sons and Daughters Shall Prophesy,” in Women in Ministry: Four Views, eds. Bonnidell Clouse and Robert G. Clouse (Downers Grove, IL InterVarsity Press, 1989), p. 143, the following: “Paul’s principle, then, is not the wearing of veils or the silence of women, but rather conforming to Jewish and moralistic pagan norms for the sake of the gospel…. In biblical times even for a woman to speak publicly was considered a symbol of impropriety…. If a woman speaking in the first century was an offense to the people Paul sought to reach, today it is just the reverse. A society that accepts women as corporation executives and university presidents will find it difficult to listen to a church that silences them…. If some in Paul’s day considered it shameful for women to speak publicly, or to appear without a facial veil, or to have their hair flowing down, what are the implications of the fact that it is shameful in our society today to restrict women from full equality and opportunity? If Paul could accommodate principle without abandoning it, can we say something to those we seek to reach by the equality and opportunities given women in the church…? If not, we may be perpetuating form (the silence of women) while actually abandoning Paul’s principle of accomodation.” And thus severely warping God’s intent for the church today as revealed in the New Testament.