For our “Women, the Bible, and the Church” course, Dr. David Scholer has a fantastic resource in a collection of many of his essays on the issue of women and ministry. If you’re interested in the issue, I’m not sure there is a better book covering the significant biblical texts along with some of the history and contemporary issues. Even though it’s not published widely, it is available if you go through the Fuller Seminary Bookstore and search for “Scholer” under author. The work is entitled “Selected Articles on Hermeneutics and Women and Ministry in the New Testament” (a mouthful) and the current ISBN is “0000599719″ (although I imagine that might change as new editions get printed for future classes at Fuller). My version is the fifteenth printing from December 2005. In its introduction, Dr. Scholer says:

This is a collection of twenty-one articles of mine, two on hermeneutics in general (Chapters 1-2), one on early church organization and governance (Chapter 3), sixteen on women in the New Testament (Chapters 4-18), one on women in early church history (Chapter 19), and two on the NIV inclusive language controversy (Chapters 20-21). The articles included here are those I deem most helpful out of my writings for my teaching and lecturing on women and ministry in the New Testament. I regret the fact that I have no articles here on the two crucial texts in 1 Corinthians (11.2-16; 14:34-35); I hope to remedy this in the not-too-distant future.

All of these articles were previously published except for Chapter 14 ["Euodia and Synthyche: Bishops at Philippi?"]. The original publication date is given at the beginning of each chapter and is also found in the list of my publications on women in the New Testament (pages 1-6). Permission has been obtained in every case for reproduction of these articles in this form for use in my teaching.

I hope that this collection makes it into a bona fide published book by a major publisher because it is a phenomenal resource. One more recent article that is a general overview of Dr. Scholer’s history with the issue from the last fifty years was published in Christian Feminism Today, formerly known as the EEWC Update: “My Fifty Year Journey with Women and Ministry in the New Testament and in the Church Today.” That gives you a sense of why a man, this man in particular, is teaching a class on “Women, the Bible, and the Church.” If you’re interested in more of his personal story, you can read it in the LA Times story that was done on his battle with cancer: “Living With Cancer, a Scholar Inspires Students” (reproduced on Fuller Seminary’s website).