Note: This essay—the second of two devoted to interpreting 1 Timothy 2:11–15 and examining the text’s ethical claims upon the church—is a response to Andrew Errington’s The Logic and Practical Implications of 1 Timothy 2:11–15.
Blake Johnson
The interpretation and application 1 Timothy 2:11–15 turns on questions of context and authority. What is the historical context for Paul’s admonition? Was there something particular to the context of Ephesus that limits Paul’s restriction on women to that instance? How might we understand the authority of this text in our present context?
Andrew Errington addresses a host of complex issues around the context and authority of this highly disputed passage in his illuminating paper, “The Logic and Practical Implications of 1 Timothy 2:11–15.” Errington draws on Oliver O’Donovan’s approach to the relationship between interpretation and moral thinking. O’Donovan provides both a strong view of the authority of Scripture and a careful paradigm for how obedience to Scripture relates to our own day: “Obedience is a matter of how our own confession is to harmonize with the testimony of Scripture, and it is concerned to achieve a correspondence between the whole train of thought of the text from A to B and the whole train of our thought from X to Y.”1
Relating this framework to the passage at hand, Errington shows how 1 Timothy 2:11–15 is an example of such an argument that runs from A to B: “A practical conclusion is set out in verses 11–12, and then the sources from which it is derived are expressed in verses 13–15.” To understand the movement from A to B, however, does not necessarily tell us how to reason from X to Z, our contemporary situation. Errington lays out a careful and much needed approach to the authority of Scripture that slows us down and avoids reductionistic applications, observing that “to attempt simply to enact the conclusion with indifference to that argument that supports it would be a failure fully to respect the authority of the text.” Or, to put it as O’Donovan does: “Nothing will count as ‘biblical’ thinking but a careful correlation of the complexities of the one situation with the complexities of the other.”2
Following many contemporary interpreters, Errington argues that, in the end, Paul’s prohibition on women not teaching or having authority over men is specific to the situation in Ephesus and not meant to be a universal prohibition. For Errington, the text “tells us that Paul did not at this time permit women to teach or rule over men, for the reasons he gives, and so leaves us to ask, mindful of this example, what we will permit, and not permit.” Errington’s argument relies on a historical reconstruction that women in Ephesus were teaching heresy and therefore needed to be silenced. Further, Errington interprets the prohibition as Paul himself saying, “I, Paul, am not giving permission at this time.” On the latter point, the logical reasoning from the prohibition “I do not permit” to the reasoning in Paul’s appeal to creation (“For Adam . . .”) would seem to be an awkward way to make a timebound pronouncement. One wonders, if Paul did want to make a universal pronouncement, how else would he do it?
And this is where the tension comes in any discussion of this passage: we may find a particular historical reconstruction, like the supposed heretical teaching of women, convincing (and I think that this is quite possible) while at the same time seeing Paul make a universal pronouncement, grounding that pronouncement in the way things are. To use another category that O’Donovan has brilliantly developed in The Resurrection and Moral Order, it is the created order to which Paul draws our attention. The situational context of Ephesus is only corrected by the normative context of Genesis. Of course, this is still only dealing with the movement of A to B, but what I am suggesting here sets us on a different path than Errington, which will inevitably put us in a different place on X to Z.
Errington provides a challenging and helpful paradigm for understanding how the authority of Scripture operates in 1 Timothy 2:11–15. I would like to propose, however, there is another way to read Paul’s appeal to creation that provides an explanatory context for Paul’s prohibition in v. 12—a reading that helps us move from A to B—and gives us a context for moving from X to Y.
After laying down the prohibition in 1 Timothy 2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over man,” Paul appeals to the creation narrative in Genesis 1–3 to support his argument.3 How does creation function in Paul’s argument about the role of men and women in the church?4 The significance of Paul’s use of creation is not lost on interpreters, but most neglect the symbolic and liturgical dimension of creation and its possible implications for Paul’s argument in 1 Timothy 2.
Contemporary scholarship on the creation narrative, however, has brought much insight into its symbolic and sanctuary imagery. The garden is the first earthly sanctuary, the special dwelling place of God. God’s act of creation is itself a temple building project. The Lord builds His house, and He places humanity, male and female, in His sanctuary as His image. Within the sanctuary setting, there is also a marriage. God creates a bride for Adam, and the sanctuary itself is the marriage chamber of God and his people. On this reading, Genesis presents us with a liturgical and nuptial anthropology revealed in a sexually differentiated humanity.
I contend that the sanctuary setting of creation provides a neglected but important explanatory context for Paul’s appeal to creation in his prohibition on women in 1 Timothy 2:12. Further, I propose that in 1 Timothy, the church is the new sanctuary, the special dwelling place of God, in which, like the original sanctuary, engendered bodies have liturgical and nuptial significance. I believe this reading satisfies O’Donovan’s call for the sort of Scriptural engagement that attempts “a careful correlation of the complexities of the one situation with the complexities of the other,” even if it lands in different place than Errington.
Paul’s Rationale for the Prohibition
Scholars debate every detail of 1 Timothy 2:12 (διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός ἀλλʼ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ). The lexical meanings of διδάσκειν, ἐπιτρέπω, and αὐθεντεῖν, along with the syntactical relationship between διδάσκειν and αὐθεντεῖν, are all contested.5 The grammatical and contextual debates continue when we come to verses 13–15. In verse 13, even the conjunction γἀρ finds differing interpretations that lead to different conclusions. Some take γἀρ to have an illative force, such that Paul’s citation of creation provides an example for the prohibition. Others take the conjunction in an explanatory sense to mean that Paul is giving a reason for his prohibition.6
The explanatory use of γἀρ relies on an argument that sees women/wives inappropriately seeking to usurp their roles and potentially teaching heresy in the congregation. Philip Towner, representative of this view, suggests that wealthy women (likely the target of Paul’s corrective in 1 Tim 2:9–10) assumed a teaching role, disrespecting their husband’s authority. Further, these women promoted a false view of the creation story.7 So Paul responds to this specific situation by prohibiting these women from seeking to domineer men with their false teaching. Along these lines, Paul then corrects their misunderstanding of the creation story with the correct one, which turns out to show that the woman was deceived.
For Ben Witherington, the appeal to creation is an “illustrative paradigm (in this case a negative one)” that provides a fitting example for what has gone awry at Ephesus.8 Witherington argues that certain women were led astray and promulgated a false teaching, a potential proto-gnostic heresy.9 Because Paul is responding to a specific instance of disorder, then, Witherington cautions that an abuse does not constitute a rule. Paul does not intend a universal prohibition on women teaching but only a ban on certain women teaching and domineering men in Ephesus. So γἀρ is simply introducing an illustration. This position offers a reconstruction that makes sense of some of the material in 1 Timothy directed towards potentially ostentatious women or even those who may be teaching heresy, though such interpretations should be met with caution. According to S.M. Baugh it is anything but obvious from external evidence that Ephesus was somehow a unique Greco-Roman city in which Paul would need to give such a targeted prohibition.10
The primary use of γἀρ, however, is to give a reason or a cause. Paul could very well be giving reason for his argument and at the same time providing an illustration. This is the more common use of the conjunction in the New Testament and the Pastoral Epistles. According to William Mounce, in the Pastoral Epistles, thirty out of thirty-three uses express cause.11 Seeing γἀρ as only introducing an illustration relies on a certain historical reconstruction that is not explicit in the text. An either-or here, however, does not seem necessary. As I will contend below, Paul can primarily use creation to ground his argument, as the most prominent use of γἀρ would indicate, while at the same time using creation to provide an illustration of both a positive ideal and, in the case of the fall, a negative example.
If Paul, though, is indeed rooting his prohibition in the created order, then how exactly does the narrative support his argument? Whether commentators take the illustrative or the explanatory view, few seem to appreciate how the sanctuary context of creation might apply to Paul’s own context.12 The creation context, as I intend to show, provides both an explanatory reason for Paul’s prohibition and an illustration that might help us understand what was happening in Ephesus. In other words, while I take the γἀρ as giving the rationale, a look at the sanctuary context of creation will give us both the universal grounding for Paul’s argument and a specific illustration for Paul’s setting.
We now turn to the creation story itself, to offer what I call a liturgical reading of the narrative before turning back to see how such a reading may illuminate the situation in Ephesus.
The First Sanctuary in Creation
Many scholars have elucidated the sanctuary-themed aspects of the creation story.13 Such a view of creation has become so prevalent that Richard Davison asserts, “There is an emerging consensus among biblical scholars that the pre-Fall Garden of Eden (and its surroundings) is to be regarded as the original sanctuary on earth, a copy of the sanctuary/temple in heaven.”14 In this perspective, God creates his world with a garden sanctuary in the middle of it. In some versions of this reading, Genesis 1:1—2:4 is a temple building project, with Yahweh coming into his temple house on the seventh day.15 The creation story is liturgical and rhythmic in nature, and God creates humanity as the pinnacle of his creation to participate in the liturgy of creation. Scholars connect many details of the creation narrative with the later tabernacle and temple to show that at the center of creation is a sanctuary. For our purposes we will consider just two aspects: the garden sanctuary and the priestly role of Adam.
James B. Jordan argues that the created world exists in three zones:16 the land of Eden, the garden of Eden, and the outer lands (everywhere else). Within the land of Eden, there is a garden that exists on a mountain. The mountain itself becomes a symbol of an elevated place of worship and meeting with Yahweh that recurs in Scripture. On the sixth day of creation, Yahweh places man in this garden: “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen 2:8). If the garden is a sanctuary, as I and others contend, it is significant that man is placed first in the sanctuary and not outside of it. Man is created first for God and only second for his work in the wider world. Several details show that the garden is a sanctuary.
Hebrews speaks of a heavenly sanctuary of which we have an earthly counterpart (Heb 8:5). For the writer of Hebrews, the heavenly sanctuary preexists any earthly sanctuary copies. But we may understand the garden as the first earthly copy of the heavenly sanctuary.17 That the garden is in the east, explains the later eastward orientation of God’s holy places (cf. Exod 27:13–16; 1 Kgs 7:39).18 The garden is a verdant place, full of vegetation and growth, flowing rivers, fruitful trees, and precious jewels. The flowing waters of Eden are replaced by the water lavers of the temple. At the center of the garden is a tree of life (Gen 2:9), and in the tabernacle/temple there is a menorah maple that looks like a tree (Exod 25:31–36). When God sends Adam and Eve outside of the garden, a cherub is placed to guard the garden with a flaming sword, to make clear that no one is coming back here except through the sacrifice of a sword and an offering of fire (Gen 3:24). In the later sanctuary, cherubim are embroidered on the temple curtain separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (Exod 26:1, 31).
Into the first garden sanctuary, God places Adam “to work [עבד] it and guard [שׁמר] it” (Gen 2:15). These two verbs are associated with the priestly work of the Levites. They guard (שׁמר) all the furnishings of the tent of meeting and keep guard (שׁמר) over the people of Israel as they minister (עבד) at the tabernacle (Num 3:8). The original task given to Adam is a priestly vocation in the garden sanctuary. He is to serve the garden sanctuary; worship is an act of service to the Lord. He also must guard the sanctuary. Just like the priests were to keep unclean things out of the sanctuary, so Adam as a priest was to protect the garden sanctuary from intruders. In Ezekiel 28:13, the Edenic jewels cover a man who is presumably Adam. These are the same jewels listed in Exodus 28:17–21 as the covering for the high priest.19 The priest, then, is a new Adam in a new creation sanctuary in the sanctuary setting of the temple.
As we will see, this understanding of the liturgical character of creation and priestly vocation of Adam has a specific relevance to Paul’s argument in 1 Timothy 2:13–15. But first we should consider another important feature of this garden sanctuary.
The Nuptial Sanctuary of Creation
The relationship between men and women or husbands and wives in corporate prayer may very well be in view in 1 Timothy 2.20 If 1 Timothy presents something of a sanctuary setting in which men/husbands and women/wives come together in worship, it mirrors the original sanctuary of creation in which husband and wife first came together in the first sanctuary. The liturgical meaning of creation is primary. Creation is built with a garden sanctuary in its midst in which God dwells with humanity asmale and female—not an androgenous humanity. But within the liturgical setting is a nuptial setting, in which male and female come together. Paul reasons from Adam’s priority in creation as a ground for his prohibition. But how should we then understand this priority of Adam? Adam’s priority is not ontological. Such a conclusion would be reading against the Genesis account that male and female are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26). Rather, the Adamic priority in creation is priestly and nuptial, or liturgical and spousal.
The first person in the sanctuary is the priest Adam who is also the husband waiting for his bride. God brings Adam a wife in the context of this garden sanctuary. The sanctuary is a marriage chamber. That the garden sanctuary is associated with marriage between husband and a bride suggests God’s nuptial intentions with his people: in his sanctuary he intends to dwell with his people as a husband dwells with his bride. The liturgical-nuptial theme is built into the tabernacle and temple. God builds Adam a bride using his rib (צלע). The tabernacle and temple also have “ribs” (Exod 26:20, 26–27, 35; 1 Kgs 6:15–16). Taking the sanctuary as a bridal chamber, built with “ribs” and all, Peter Leithart presses the nuptial-sanctuary imagery: “Yahweh takes a masculine role by ‘entering’ and ‘dwelling in’ the temple, embraced by the feminine temple and city.”21 When Paul appeals to creation, he is appealing to a creation setting that is not just a sanctuary but a sanctuary where male and female are united.
God creates humanity as sexually differentiated in a liturgical-nuptial context. Pope John Paul II, in his magisterial Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, gives a rich reading of the creation of man and woman.22 The human body is a gift that comes from the love of God. But the body in creation is sexually differentiated: “Masculinity-femininity—namely, sex—is the original sign of a creative donation and at the same time the sign of a gift that man, male-female, becomes aware of as a gift lived so to speak in an original way.”23 The human body, as male and female, has a spousal meaning, the one sex ordered to the other: “the power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift.”24 Naked and unashamed, man and woman “find each other reciprocally” in such self-donation.25 Male and female are not categories added to the human person but intrinsic to them, revealed in the human body. The sexual difference of man and woman reveals their respective incompleteness and need for one another.
Adam’s priority is first liturgical. He is tasked with leadership in the sanctuary as a priest. But his priority is also nuptial: he is the husband who comes first temporally before he is completed with a bride. Just as the husband Adam waits on his bride so he can be complete, the priest Adam awaits a liturgical respondent—one who will be receptive to the divine word to which Yahweh entrusts him, and one who will be receptive to the permitted food of the sanctuary from the hand of an authorized priest.
This reading of creation and its possible implications for Paul’s argument becomes more compelling when we consider that the church, especially the gathered assembly, is a new sanctuary setting.
The Oikos of God
At the center of creation is a sanctuary, the dwelling place of God with his people. It is the first “house of God.” We now turn to the context of 1 Timothy. Paul states his purpose in writing to Timothy in 3:15: “so that…you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth” (ἵνα…εἰδῇς πῶς δεῖ ἐν οἴκῳ θεοῦ ἀναστρέφεσθαι, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἐκκλησία θεοῦ ζῶντος, στῦλος καὶ ἑδραίωμα τῆς ἀληθείας). The church is the “house of God” (οἴκῳ θεοῦ), and Paul is laying out in the epistle the house rules.
The house motif is significant in 1 Timothy.26 Paul charges Timothy to correct those who teach false doctrine that is counter to God’s household management (οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ) (1:4). A steward is a household manager, and Timothy is entrusted with managing God’s house. Household management, then, becomes a qualification for church leadership. Elders and deacons must manage their households well because, as Paul quips, “if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (3:5). Even widows are to demonstrate godliness in their own households (πρῶτον τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον εὐσεβεῖν) and must manage their homes (οἰκοδεσποτεῖν). The household is testing ground for ministry and godliness, but it points to the greater household of the church.
That the church is the “household” of the “living God” (3:15) invites us to consider the house of God—the church—as the temple of God’s dwelling. This would certainly connect us with Paul’s temple-church theology outside of the Pastoral Epistles.27 More broadly, New Testament writers refer to the house of God as temple in several places.28 But there may be lexical hints that temple imagery is in view in Paul’s use in 1 Tim 3:15. The house of God is the church of the living God, “a pillar and buttress of truth” (στῦλος καὶ ἑδραίωμα τῆς ἀληθείας). Jesus promises to make the “one who conquers” in Revelation 3:12 “a pillar in the temple of my God” (στῦλον ἐν τῷ ναῷ τοῦ θεοῦ μου). God commands Moses to build the tabernacle with pillars (Exod 25). In Solomon’s temple, the pillars likewise uphold the temple, and two are named Jachin and Boaz, associating physical pillars of the temple with people.29 While “pillar” may evoke temple language, ἑδραίωμα is more difficult to discern because it is a hapax legomenon. Even here, however, there may be a faint echo in early Christian writings that use this word to refer to cherubic throne of God in the Holy of Holies.30 It seems very possible that in Paul’s linguistic and symbolic world the οἶκος θεοῦ is a referent for the temple, which is now the church, the special dwelling place of the living God.
God employs household stewards in the Old and New Testament into his service to manage his house. On the one hand, the entire creation may be seen as God’s house, and thus humanity is a household steward of creation, tasked with keeping it in good order. But the sanctuary-temple is God’s special dwelling place, and a special type of steward must keep that house in good order. In a discussion on the role of the priest (כהן) in the Old Covenant, Peter Leithart argues that the priest is a palace servant in the house of God.31 Priests “stand to serve” before Yaweh in the sanctuary house of the Lord (cf. Joel 1:9, 2:17; 1 Sam 2:11; Ezra 8:17). If the temple is God’s royal throne room, priests are royal attendants tasked with palace management. Humanity may have a stewardship with the wider creation, but priests have a special stewardship with house of God, a microcosm of the created world. Priests, then, are stewards of the sanctuary, household managers of God’s house.
The connection of “house of God” as temple with the priesthood comes up in an important connection in Jesus’s ministry. He comes into the temple with a strong rebuke, “It is written, ‘My house (οἶκος) shall be a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers” (Matt 21:13). Jesus, acting as a priest, the chief servant of God’s house, rebukes the abuse of God’s house. Jesus the priest comes to clean house, to cleanse the temple as its faithful priest.
Just like Old Covenant priests were tasked with managing God’s house, so now new covenant leaders, who are addressed in the Pastoral Epistles, will be entrusted with a household management of the church, the house of God, the dwelling place of the living God. Paul’s concern for household management in qualifications for elders and deacons become standards for service in the new house of God, the church, for a new covenant priesthood. With this proposed background of 1 Timothy, we now narrow our focus on 1 Timothy 2.
Paul has a special concern in 1 Timothy for what happens when the church comes together for worship. Paul charges Timothy, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to [the] exhortation, to [the] teaching” (4:13). William Mounce observes, “The definite article before each of these three words shows that all were ‘recognized items in the congregational meeting for worship,’” reflecting the pattern of Jewish synagogue worship.32 When we come to chapter 2, we see another facet of the church’s gathered worship: prayer. Paul writes, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people” (2:1). Whatever the nuances are in these words for prayer, what is clear is that the church is coming together to pray for all sorts of people through “the one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus” (2:5).33 From Acts 2:42 on, we see the church devoted to “the prayers,” as a part of the regular gathering. We find the same sort of corporate prayer when we come to 1 Timothy 2. While we cannot discern a full liturgical pattern for gathered worship in 1 Timothy, what we do see are different aspects of early Christian worship.
Paul goes on to instruct men “in every place” to pray, “lifting up holy hands without anger or quarrelling” (2:8). Commentators have acknowledged a possible connection here to Malachi 1:11 and Exodus 20:24, as the phrase “in every place” (ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ) occurs in each passage in a liturgical context.34 The Malachi connection is intriguing to consider, as Malachi is rebuking the priests for their corrupt liturgical conduct in God’s house. The prophet imagines a day when the Lord will be honored again by faithful priests: “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering” (Mal. 1:11). The connection is stronger when we consider how both passages have a universal dimension. If we take incense to symbolize the prayers of God’s people (Rev 8:4), what Malachi imagines happening “in every place,” is now beginning to happen as God’s “house” is being spread out among the nations—the very nations whom God desires to save and for whom the church is commanded to pray (1 Tim 2:1–4). It is worth noting that early Christian commentators from Irenaeus to Justin Martyr viewed Malachi 1:11 as anticipating the prayers associated with the Eucharist.35 The echo in 1 Timothy 2:9 extends, possibly, to Exodus 20:24, when the Lord instructs Moses concerning the altars on which offerings are made: “In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to bless you.” These echoes of Scripture bolster the case that the setting Paul has in view here is one of gathered, liturgical worship. The church is the house of God, and when the church comes together in the context of prayer, it comes together as a new sanctuary of God’s presence.
Before we get to the reason Paul gives his prohibition, we should note that this prohibition comes in a particular context of the church’s liturgical gathering. As mentioned earlier, many contend this prohibition has a specific cultural context in which certain women were inappropriately exercising a newfound freedom. This culturally specific context, then, would mean that Paul does not intend for this prohibition to apply beyond the situation he addresses at Ephesus. But my contention is that this prohibition has a particular liturgical context in which it must be understood. It is not simply a universal prohibition per se, nor is it a culturally bound prohibition. Rather, it is a liturgical prohibition, and Paul’s appeal to creation invites us to consider the liturgical character of creation.
Ἀδὰμ γὰρ πρῶτος ἐπλάσθη, εἶτα Εὕα. καὶ Ἀδὰμ οὐκ ἠπατήθη, ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἐξαπατηθεῖσα ἐν παραβάσει γέγονεν· σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας, ἐὰν μείνωσιν ἐν πίστει καὶ ἀγάπῃ καὶ ἁγιασμῷ μετὰ σωφροσύνης.
For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Tim 2:13–15)
While all early Christian letters have an occasional nature and address specific historical realities, Paul’s use of the creation story for his prohibition complicates the view that this injunction was not meant to be somehow binding outside of Ephesus. Lots of assumptions must be made about the background at Ephesus in reading Paul’s use of creation as an illustration of a problem and not a rationale for a universal practice. Whatever else he is doing with his appeal to creation, Paul grounds his rule for the sexes in worship in creation to say specifically that this injunction is not just a temporary correction to a local problem but, more positively, reflects the way God created man and woman.36
But we must ask: if Paul has in mind the liturgical gathering of the church in 1 Timothy 2, why would he go back to the opening scenes of Genesis to illustrate his point? It is here that a fuller engagement with Paul’s appeal to Genesis illuminates the specific context for Paul’s prohibition and its grounding in the created order. We have already argued for a sanctuary motif in 1 Timothy in which Timothy is charged with a priestly stewardship in God’s house. We have also seen that the original creation, to which Paul appeals, is God’s first house and that in that first house he gives the first priestly stewardship to Adam. Paul’s point, on one level, may seem clear enough: the order of creation (man being created first) and the fall (Eve’s deception) establishes his rule. But is there something more to consider here? Ben Witherington writes, “I suggest that the reason why Paul mentions that Adam was formed first, before he speaks about Eve, is to remind the audience of the context of the story in Genesis 2.”37 Though Witherington takes a different reading of Genesis 2, he is right to insist on the context of the story. The often-missed liturgical context of Genesis, in which the embodiment of male and female matters, is perhaps the best context for understanding Paul’s argument.
A Liturgical Reading of 1 Timothy 2:13–1438
A mirror reading of 1 Timothy 2:1–8 will lead us to believe that men were prone to quarrelling and anger when coming to prayer, and thus Paul directs them not to do so. Likewise, women were coming to the assembly with immodest dress and potentially breaking ranks with their husbands (for the ones who were married). So, Paul urges the women to dress modestly and “learn quietly with all submissiveness” (2:11). It is noted here that the women are commanded to learn, even if not permitted to teach or have authority over a man. But does this mean that a woman is never allowed to teach when men are around? Does Paul mean that a woman cannot exercise authority over a man universally? To what extent is she to remain quiet? It is here where the fruit of our liturgical reading of creation gives us a context for our reading of Paul’s prohibition.
In the garden sanctuary, Adam the priest is given the word of God and the administration of the sacramental trees.39 Adam was the liturgical leader in word and sacrament. In the sanctuary, Adam as man has a liturgical priority and authority: “For Adam was formed first.” In the sanctuary of the church, then, the man who stands in place of Adam and the New Adam likewise is a priestly representative entrusted with the word of God and food of God.
In the Catholic Tradition, a male-only priesthood is grounded in the priest’s representative role in persona Christi. The priestly role is inherently masculine because it goes back to the priority of Adam, who failed in his priesthood, but finds its fulfillment in Christ, who as the New Adam succeeded in his priesthood. In 1 Timothy, Paul assumes that overseers (3:1) and deacons (3:8), the ministers of the church, are men who are “husbands of one wife” (3:2, 12). It is the overseer/bishops and the elders who are tasked with authoritative teaching, presumably in the sanctuary assembly (3:2; 5:17). These men, in their role in the church, in the official gathered assembly, the sanctuary of the church, carry out the priestly, Adamic role. No one person can represent another person perfectly or in all respects, but the category of sacramental representation works on different levels. As Pope Paul VI argues in Inter Signiores: “The whole sacramental economy is in fact based upon natural signs, on symbols imprinted on the human psychology: ‘Sacramental signs,’ says Saint Thomas, ‘represent what they signify by natural resemblance.’”40 The male minister bears a natural and sacramental resemblance to the first and second Adam. For Paul, the priority of Adam is indeed established in the created order. Adam’s priority, as we have argued, is liturgical. For Paul, male leadership and authority over the assembly is not a corrective to a local abuse but an essential feature of the created order.
Closely related to Adam’s liturgical priority is his nuptial priority. The priest is also a husband who joins with his bride in the garden sanctuary. Adam abdicates his role as priest and at the same time surrenders his role as husband when he allows the serpent in the garden sanctuary, the garden marriage chamber. The New Adam is not just the new priest but the groom who deals with the serpent once and for all. The priest-husband theme of Genesis 2 provides context for Adamic priority and the symbolic ground for a male-only liturgical leadership in the assembly.
But what do we make of Eve’s deception? Paul moves from creation to fall, and here I do suspect it is important to see something of an illustration of what may be occurring in Ephesus. Discussion on Eve’s deception tends to turn on her culpability or susceptibility (and thus that of women in general) to such deceit.41 How might a liturgical reading of the creation narrative address the issue of Eve’s deception?
In our liturgical reading of Genesis 1–3, Adam the priest is given the word regarding the sacramental trees of the garden sanctuary. Adam is the priestly minister of word and sacrament. The serpent does not approach Adam, but he goes after the bride. Rather than intervening as the priest of the sanctuary (and faithful husband), he allows things to play out and takes the food from his wife (Gen 3:6). In an inversion of roles, then, Eve becomes the false priest of the sanctuary, taking charge of the food (she takes the forbidden fruit and distributes it) and charge over the word (she believes the serpent’s word over the divine word). So, it may be the case that the sin of Eve—taking authority where she was not permitted—is being replicated in the sanctuary of the Ephesian church. This deception is played out in the sanctuary. But this would not be a specific instance which Paul needs to put down only in Ephesus; it would be a repeating of a primal sin that disrupts the created roles for male and female in the sanctuary of the church.
So how does this reading answer the questions about the extent to which Paul’s prohibition applies? If the liturgical reading of creation provides a guide, Paul’s prohibition on woman not teaching or having authority over man applies to the sanctuary context of the church. The setting of 1 Timothy 2, when the church comes together in an official assembly, reconstitutes the sanctuary setting in which the liturgical priority of Adam as male warrants a male representative providing authoritative teaching in such a context. This reading, however, would not seem to apply to other “unofficial” contexts of the church in which a woman may teach.
The strength of James B. Jordan’s argument, which I have relied on and expanded, is that it makes sense of both the rationale for Paul’s argument in a contextual way—e.g., Paul’s setting is a “sanctuary” of the church, and creation is the original sanctuary—and it provides an example of how things can go wrong in the case of Eve’s deception. So, interpreters who tend to see the citation of creation as only an illustration of a local problem may have a point in that Eve’s usurpation of authority is the sort of thing that may have been happening at Ephesus. This illustration however does not negate the fact that Paul appeals to the created ideal in which Adam as male is the liturgical leader.
This reading also provides a robust understanding of embodiment in Christian worship. James K.A. Smith writes that we are not first “homo rationale or homo faber or homo economicus; we are not even generically homo religiosis. We are most concretely homo liturgicus.”42 As liturgical beings, we are embodied lovers created to love, to worship. We are formed by bodily actions and practices by what we ultimately love. Smith’s emphasis on the importance of the body for worship and that we are fundamentally created as liturgical beings is an important recovery.
To build on Smith’s insight, the human body that is a worshipping body in the liturgy of the sanctuary, though, is never androgynous. It is embodied as male or female. In the first sanctuary, the male and female bodies were not incidental to the purpose of worship; they were integral to it. For the male and female body has liturgical and nuptial significance. The male and female body are part of the good, created order and are meant to relate harmoniously together before God. The maleness of the liturgical leader or teacher or presider at the Lord’s Supper is not simply a requirement of good order but is a symbol established in the first sanctuary.
Conclusion
Errington poses a question in his conclusion: “Why can we not simply say that the text teaches that women shall not be permitted to preach to mixed gatherings?” He gives four reasons, each of which raises valid points and shows that such a blanket prohibition on women teaching in the church cannot hold.
But perhaps there is another question we might raise that stems more directly from the moral train of thought from A to B: Is there a particular context in which Paul does universally prohibit a woman teaching or having authority over a man based on his appeal to creation? Going back to the questions on context and authority that opened this paper, it seems to me that if creation presents a sanctuary context with Adam as the male-prototypical priest, teacher, and liturgical leader, and if Paul is addressing the official gathering of the church when the sanctuary of the new creation is symbolically constituted, then Paul’s prohibition applies only to such official gatherings of the assembly. And since the original sanctuary, as I have contended, is centered on sacramental food, then, we may apply this prohibition narrowly to the sacramental context of the church—when the church comes together around the Eucharistic celebration. May women teach to mixed settings outside of that gathering? I do not see any reason why not; it seems likely to me that Paul was addressing a specific context when the church gathers.
Errington’s paper is a serious and commendable engagement with the issue of Scriptural authority and application on a difficult passage and fraught issue in the church. We would do well to heed the principles he offers, via Oliver O’Donovan, in our work moving from A to B and from X to Z. But I would suggest another movement to add to this attentive hermeneutical process.
We may call it the move from C to W. This gap represents the Great Tradition of the Church, the history not only of interpretation but of the ecclesial practice of the church. While C to W, the Great Tradition, is by no means univocal, nor is it authoritative in the same way as Scripture, on such a contested issue like the one under consideration here, we should pay attention to when our conclusions on X to Z are at odds with where the Church—even outside of my and Errington’s own Anglican tradition—has spoken authoritatively. This is not to say that tradition trumps Scripture. It is only to say that if we are to be as careful as Errington is calling us to be in our discerning a moral train of thought, we would do well to see how the tradition has discerned similar questions. We may encounter fresh insights in our exegesis of A to B, and therefore the enterprise of biblical studies should continue! But when we discern a train of thought from A to B that leads to a practice in X to Z that is out of accord with the Great Tradition, perhaps there is more work to be done.
If we are carefully to discern “trains of thought,” as Errington rightly says we should do in both A to B and X to Z, a similar work of discerning a train of thought in the Church’s practice throughout the ages would only strengthen our practical conclusions. We may still conclude that our conclusions, though a departure from the tradition, are more faithful to the scriptural witness, thus correcting the tradition. But reading such contested passages with the Great Tradition provides another layer of careful discernment of a train of thought, giving us a full-orbed reading and application of a passage—from A to Z.
The Rev. Blake Johnson is the rector of Church of the Holy Cross in Crozet, Virginia.
Image: Johann Wenzel Peter, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
- As cited by Errington, Oliver O’Donovan, Self, World, and Time, 78–80.[↩]
- Ibid.[↩]
- Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version, (ESV) (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles, 2016).[↩]
- On the case for Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, see William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 10. print, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Nelson, 2009), cxviii ff.[↩]
- While an analysis of 1 Tim 2:12 is outside the scope of this paper, for an overview of the issues at hand see Andreas J. Köstenberger, “A Complex Sentence: The Syntax of 1 Timothy 2:12,” in Women in the Church: An Interpretation and Application of 1 Timothy 2:9–15, 3rd ed., ed. Andreas J. Köstenberger and Thomas R. Schreiner (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2016), 117–62.[↩]
- William Ardnt, Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. γἀρ. For a discussion of the explanatory and causal uses of γἀρ, see Herbert Weir Smyth and Gordon M. Messing, Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984), 639.[↩]
- Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2006), 232–3.[↩]
- Ben Witherington, A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1–2 Timothy and 1–3 John, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2006), 228.[↩]
- Ben Witherington, Women in the Earliest Churches, SNTS 59 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 118–26.[↩]
- S.M. Baugh, “A Foreign World: Ephesus in the First Century” in Women in the Church,61. Baugh cautions against seeing the situation at Ephesus as utterly unique with regard to women such that Paul would need to issue a temporary or local prohibition that would not apply elsewhere.[↩]
- William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC (Nashville: Nelson, 2009), 131.[↩]
- For example, Mounce, Knight, and Schreiner, who all correctly, in my view, see Paul’s use of creation as providing a rationale, do not consider how a possible liturgical or sanctuary reading of creation might play into Paul’s argument. William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles; George W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NICGNT (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1992); Thomas R. Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:9–15,” in Women in the Church.[↩]
- See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT 17 (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004); James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999); Jon Douglas Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1994); Richard M. Davidson, “Earth’s First Sanctuary: Genesis 1–3 and Parallel Creation Accounts,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 53, no. 1 (2015): 65–89.[↩]
- Davidson, “Earth’s First Sanctuary,” 65.[↩]
- Jon Douglas Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 78–120. See also John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2009).[↩]
- Jordan, Through New Eyes, 152–5.[↩]
- Davidson, Earth’s First Sanctuary, 68.[↩]
- Ibid., 69.[↩]
- G. K. Beale, “Adam as the First Priest in Eden as the Garden Temple,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 22, no. 2 (2018): 9–24.[↩]
- See A. B. Spurgeon in “1 Timothy 2:13–15: Paul’s Retelling of Genesis 2:2-4:1,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56, no. 3 (2013): 543–56. Spurgeon argues that Paul’s appeal to creation retells the restoration story of Eve and Adam. Though Eve was deceived, she will be saved through bearing a child, but Adam and Eve both must “continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control” (1 Tim 2:15). For Spurgeon, Adam and Eve are the subject of “they” in 2:15b, rather than women in general as is often glossed. While reading Adam into the subject of “they” is unconvincing, Spurgeon’s reading is properly attuned to the husband-wife/man-woman dynamics in place in Ephesus. Paul, then, is citing creation as an ideal of husband-and-wife dynamics, in response to abuses in Ephesus. When husband and wife come together to pray, it should be marked by the unity found in creation. That unity between man and woman is first found in marriage in a sanctuary context.[↩]
- Peter Leithart, “My Temple, My Bride,” Leithart, Patheos, November 7, 2017, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2017/11/my-temple-my-bride/.[↩]
- John Paul II and Michael Waldstein, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media, 2006).[↩]
- Ibid., 183.[↩]
- Ibid., 185–6.[↩]
- Ibid., 187.[↩]
- See David C. Verner, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles, (Chico, Calif: Scholars Press, 1983).[↩]
- In 1 Corinthians, individual believers and the church are the ναὸς θεοῦ in 1 Cor 3:16–17, 6:19. Korinna Zamfir, “Is the Ekklēsia a Household (of God)?: Reassessing the Notion of Οι̂κος Θεοû in 1 Tim 3.15,” New Testament Studies 60, no. 4 (October 2014): 511–28, exploring the background of oikos in 1 Timothy, dismisses the temple background for Paul’s use of house of God in 1 Tim 3:15. Admitting the οἶκος θεοῦ often refers to the temple in in the LXX, she argues that the temple does not refer to the community of Israel but only to the special dwelling place of God. So, similarly Paul “never uses oἶκος θεοῦ for the ekklesia” (518). But Zamfir seems to drive a wedge unnaturally between the community of God’s people and its institutional form. While there may be such a distinction the OT, it is very clear that God’s special dwelling place comes amidst his people. Thus, it would seem completely in keeping with Pauline theology and OT typology that the church is indeed the temple, the new household of God. Further, as will be argued, the temple theme in creation sets up a relationship between God’s dwelling place and his people—the sanctuary is the place God intends to cover his bride.[↩]
- Matt 12:4; Mark 2:26; Luke 6:4; Heb 10:21; 1 Pet 4:7.[↩]
- In 1 Kgs 7:20–22, the LXX uses στῦλος for pillar. In Exodus, στῦλος refers to both the pillars of the tabernacle and the pillar of cloud and fire (e.g., Exod 13:21–22, 27:10–17).[↩]
- G. W. H. Lampe, ed., “Ἑδραίωμα,” in A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 406. Eusebius, referring to the church as the στῦλος καὶ ἑδραίωμα τῆς ἀληθείας, makes a poetic connection with the church and temple: “He who compasseth the whole world hath bestowed the especial honour of building His house upon earth, and restoring it for Christ His only-begotten and firstborn Word and for Christ’s holy and reverend Bride—whether one should call thee a new Bezalel the architect of a divine tabernacle, or Solomon the king of a new and far goodlier Jerusalem or even a new Zerubbabel who bestowed upon the temple of God that glory which greatly exceeded the former . . . .” Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. T. E. Page et al., trans. Kirsopp Lake and J. E. L. Oulton, vol. 2, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926–1932), 399.[↩]
- Peter J. Leithart, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003), 64–70.[↩]
- William B. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 260.[↩]
- See Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, 114–5.[↩]
- Though Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 108 writes off any connection: “The parallel is nothing more than a coincidence, as the occurrences of the same phrase elsewhere in Paul illustrate (1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 2:14; 1 Thess 1:8).” Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, 128, leaves open the possibility of some intertextual echo but does not explore it. Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 45, see Mal 1:11 as the background for the gathered assembly of the church.[↩]
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.17.5; Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 41. Though the Lord’s Supper is not mentioned in 1 Timothy 2, this does not necessarily mean it was not happening. Had there been no pastoral issue to address, for example, in 1 Corinthians regarding the Lord’s Supper, would Paul have felt the need to mention it?[↩]
- Paul routinely appeals to the opening chapters of Genesis when discussing gender roles in the church or family (cf. 1 Cor 11:2–16; Eph 5:22–33). Relevant to this discussion is the situation Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 11, in which Paul directs women to cover their heads while praying. Paul grounds his reasoning in creation, just as he does in 1 Timothy 2:13. Benjamin L. Merkle argues that in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul “shows that creation affirms gender and role distinctions,” in which head coverings were a cultural marker of such distinctions. In 1 Timothy 2, there is no such culturally bound practice in view, so the transcultural truth of creation grounds the prohibition. B. L. Merkle, “Paul’s Arguments from Creation in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 and 1 Timothy 2:13-14: An Apparent Inconsistency Answered,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 3: 527–48.[↩]
- Witherington, Titus, 1-2 Timothy and 1-3 John, 229.[↩]
- My reading of Genesis 1–3 follows closely James B. Jordan’s essays “Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman, Part 1,” Theopolis Institute, April 3, 2018, https://theopolisinstitute.com/liturgical-man-liturgical-women-part-1/; “Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman, Part 2,” Theopolis Institute, April 5, 2018, https://theopolisinstitute.com/liturgical-man-liturgical-woman-part-ii/.[↩]
- The Garden is full of fruit, and Adam is told to eat of all the trees save one. Eating in the sanctuary in the Lord’s presence is a theme that begins in the garden, traces through the sacrificial system, the festal meals of the Old Testament, the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the eschatological banquet. To call the trees in the garden “sacramental” is not a metaphysical claim but to say that the trees that were good for food represent more than mere eating; they represent the gift of God and his desire to commune with us.[↩]
- Pope Paul VI, “Inter Insigniores:On the Question of Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, The Vatican, October 15, 1976, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19761015_inter-insigniores_en.html.[↩]
- For discussion on various interpretive options, see Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, 228–30 and Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:9–15,” 210–12.[↩]
- James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Cultural Liturgies (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 40.[↩]