ABSTRACT
Communities belong to empirical contexts and are accordingly shaped by powerful cultural forces. In modern times community has occupied the attention of a number of disparate disciplines, including sociology, social anthropology and, more recently, moral philosophy and New Testament studies. Christian communities were themselves the crucible of Christian morality and ultimately of Christian ethics. An understanding of the moral dimension therefore presupposes an awareness of the cultural inheritances which helped to shape Christian community. For this purpose, we turn to Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish traditions relevant to the subject. The affinity between Christian churches and Graeco-Roman associations can be readily illustrated from an unsympathetic second-century pagan writer such as Galen and from Tertullian. The chapter is about the right ordering of worship. The prophets themselves are subject to the discipline of ordered worship. It is in this context that the women too must accept the discipline of the community; that is, they should be subordinate, as even the law says.
