Poop poop🥸
I wrote circular reasoning! Spell check changed it to something different, I didn't catch it during the edit. My apologies!
Your problem is that you are stuck on bad translations. The original Greek is gender neutral. Paul wanted to include women and men. It's why he introduces Phoebe as a deacon at the church in Cenchrea. The rest of Romans 16 mentions many women he worked with in ministry. Including Junia, whom he calls "an apostle!" Did you know the Catholic Church changed Junia's name in the Midfle Ages to the masculine gender, because they refused to believe Paul called a woman to be an apostle, even though all the earliest texts show her name as feminine. So yes, Paul encouraged and commended women in leadership and ministry!
It's called "preconceived notions." You already believe something, you use the text to read into it what you already believed. If I had been born a man, I probably wouldn't have cared about women in ministry. Instead, God made me a woman, called me, twice. I went to seminary, earned my MDiv with honours. But during that time, I remember reading 1 Tim one night, and wondering why God even called me, if I wasn't allowed to do anything. I cried out to God to tell me why! Then next day, I walked into a used bookstore. I looked at the religion books, and there were 3 books on women pastors. Why it was right, what the Greek said, etc. I was stunned! God answered my prayer in one day. It got me studying the Bible, and learning Greek well! God didn't call me to be a pastor. I do preach in my church, but my calling is to work expanding the field of disability theology. But if I had been convinced women could not be pastors, I might have dropped out of seminary. Women are discouraged by weighty, Pharisaical non-Biblical rules that keep them out of ministry. So, I am going to defend the right of every woman to pursue their calling. I'm going to make sure the truth is known.
Some people will cling to their preconceived notions, even when given overwhelming evidence that the Y chromosome is not the entrance requirement to minister and teach the gospel. Or to be a pastor!
I am not looking for ordination, even though my Baptist Conference has been ordaining women since the 1950s. I was going to get it done, then my RA meds failed, and I faced the fact that I personally am too disabled to lead a church. But for all those women who are called by God, they have the right to be pastors, because there is not one place in the Bible it says women cannot be pastors, nor any place where it says only men can be pastors, deacons or bishops.
