Note: This essay is the first of two devoted to interpreting 1 Timothy 2:11–15 and examining the text’s ethical claims upon the church. See also the response essay from Rev. Blake Johnson, Reading and Applying 1 Timothy 2:11–15 from A to Z: A Liturgical Approach.
Andrew Errington
Among Christians concerned to respect the authority of Scripture, 1 Timothy 2.11–15 remains a highly contentious text. This passage is not the be all and end all of discussions about the roles of women in the leadership of the church. On the one hand, there are other key texts, such as the related passage in 1 Corinthians 14.33–35, references to female co-workers and prophets in Acts and the epistles (e.g., Acts 18.26; 21.9; Rom 16.1–16; 1 Cor 11.5), and Paul’s important words in Galatians 3.28. On the other hand, any sensible discussion must pay attention to wider considerations, such as the place and role of men and women in the broad sweep of the Bible and in the ministry of Jesus. But 1 Timothy 2.11–15 does command significant attention, partly because it often shapes the way this other evidence is interpreted.1
The literature relating to the exegesis of this passage is vast, and the purpose of this paper is not to cover it, though I hope not to miss contributions or insights of decisive significance. Rather, the purpose of this article is to situate the exegetical issues within a wider discussion of what respecting the authority of this passage in our day involves, and in so doing to draw attention to aspects of this question that are often overlooked.
The article begins by observing how in our time this passage raises questions about the authority of Scripture. The second section then draws attention, with the help of some thinking of Oliver O’Donovan, to what I believe is a neglected aspect of discussion of this passage, namely, what is actually involved in obedience to Scripture. From this point, the article moves to setting out some key exegetical considerations. Finally, it attempts to outline some of the most important questions to be asked in order to respond to the text in our time as well as the shapes that faithful responses might take.
1 Timothy 2.11–15 and the Authority of Scripture
Let me begin by highlighting some wider issues raised by the interpretation of this passage. There are those who lament that this passage commands the attention it does, feeling that it attracts too much focus and so skews our perspective. I think this is a valid complaint. There is indeed a spiritual danger in being preoccupied with non-central matters. And while the place of women in the life of the church is by no means a minor issue, the correct interpretation of 1 Timothy 2.11–15 certainly is. It is possible to give too much attention to intricate questions such as this and in doing so to ‘neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (Matt 23.23). Yet, valid though this complaint may be, and important to hear, it does not provide a solution to this problem. Once our attention has been fixed upon this passage and the questions have been raised, we cannot simply turn away from it as if we have seen nothing. For whenever we look closely at Holy Scripture, much will always be at stake. We are ‘naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account’ (Heb 4.13). For better or worse, the attention this passage has attracted now demands something of us. Furthermore, the fact remains that each church must have some kind of policy in place in relation to the role of women in leadership, whether open or restrictive. There is no getting around the practical issue!
We can see something of the spiritual stakes involved in the interpretation of this passage if we consider one significant contemporary commentator’s discussion of it. At the end of his exegetical discussion of this passage, Luke Timothy Johnson surveys the ‘hermeneutical options’ the modern Bible reader has.2 He begins by stating,
I agree that our growth in understanding of the human person, partly guided by the Holy Spirit, and partly driven by the resistance of brave women to these strictures, makes it impossible to regard the statements disqualifying women from public speech and roles of leadership as either true or normative. (pp. 208–9)
Having decided thus, Johnson then goes on to outline three options for the reception of the text within the life of the church. The first is ‘to remove the scandal posed by the passage by the denial of Pauline authorship’ (p. 209). This is a relatively common strategy adopted by New Testament scholars, but Johnson—rightly in my view—disputes its legitimacy or usefulness. On the one hand, he stresses that the evidence of 1 Corinthians 14.34–35 shows that ‘Paul is fully capable of making the statements in 1 Tim. 2.11–15’ (p. 209). On the other hand, he points out that the authority of the text is not established by its Pauline authorship but by its inclusion in the New Testament canon.
The second option Johnson discusses is ‘to suppress the passage by negating its authority’, drawing ‘a distinction between canonical and authoritative’ (p. 210). Johnson thinks that this is what is practically going on when, for example, editors of lectionaries deem that the passage will not be read in church. However, this policy is ‘fraught with peril’, because it raises the problem of where this ‘process of purgation’ will stop. It refuses to allow the biblical text to challenge us and risks assuming without question the validity of ‘a contemporary ethos or outlook’ (p. 210). Furthermore, Johnson says, this practice does not actually work: texts that are suppressed do not disappear, but may acquire greater power when kept in secret.
I think Johnson’s arguments on this point are acute. However, we might pause momentarily over the case of lectionary editors, or more locally those compiling a preaching calendar, who pass over texts such as these. Sometimes, when we make decisions such as these, we are not seeking actively to suppress such texts. It is more the case, rather, that we feel ambivalent. These texts present a problem for us and make us nervous. We do not know what to do with them and do not fully understand them. We may not want to deny their authority: we may firmly believe in it but just not understand or feel equipped to play our role alongside it. Johnson’s argument should, however, warn us at this point that by avoiding these texts we may end up functionally denying their authority.
The final option Johnson surveys is then to bring the text out into the open: ‘to engage the words of Paul in a dialectical process of criticism within the public discourse of the church, both academic and liturgical’ (p. 211). The teaching of the text will be carefully and respectfully rejected, but rejected in such a way that the limits and provisional nature of our own perspective are brought into view. Johnson regards this option as the ‘only truly viable hermeneutical option’ (p. 211). It is viable, for Johnson, because it is a way of allowing the text still to function as authoritative in some meaningful way without accepting its truth. It is authoritative in the sense that the church continues to give careful attention to this text and to seek to know God’s will in dialogue with it, even if it ultimately disagrees.
Now this is a serious position, and possibly the most adequate one for many people today. I think it is commendable for its honesty, its desire to maintain, in some sense, the authority of Scripture and to pay deliberate attention to the text. I also agree that the convictions about humanity, male and female, from which it arises, have to be taken with utmost seriousness. Yet we must observe what is set aside if this perspective is adopted. What is set aside is a commitment to the truth of Scripture. These words in 1 Timothy, at least, are no longer ‘trustworthy and true’ (Rev 22.6). At best, they are now only trustworthy or reliable in a much more restricted sense. These will be words that God has given us with which to dialogue. Our confidence will now lie not in the words themselves but in a process of dialogue and learning that they facilitate. This is certainly not what has traditionally been meant by the authority of Scripture, and we have to ask whether it is a sufficient account of it.
One problem with this position is that it also obviously attracts the objection Johnson raises to the second hermeneutical option. What will limit this process? What will prevent more and more of Scripture being accepted only as a fruitful source of dialogue, but not as teaching the truth? Johnson thinks there are criteria for such limitation. There are ‘peculiar features of the text that make it problematic as normative’, including its contextual gratuitousness, its reliance on Paul’s own authority rather than on a principle of the good news, and its problematic reading of Torah (p. 211; this is based on Johnson’s reading of vv. 11–15). We need to ask, though, whether these criteria will prevent the kind of slide away from believing in the truth of the Scriptural text described above. I doubt very much that they will. Is it not far more likely that we will, rather, readily and eagerly find equivalent reasons for seeing any text we dislike in the same light: as something to make us think, but not something to trust and obey?
Furthermore, although Johnson clearly wishes to retain the ability of the text to criticise our contemporary assumptions and outlook, I cannot see how this is actually possible on his view. For we no longer have a way to get purchase on such a critique. Our own assumptions will dictate what are seen as ‘the noblest Christian ideals’, to use Johnson’s phrase, and what counts as a ‘principle intrinsic to the good news’ (p. 211). Johnson’s idea that the authority of the text can be maintained through its functional role while the truth of its content is denied is, in my view, unsustainable in practice.
The British theologian and ethicist Oliver O’Donovan makes a similar argument in his book Church in Crisis when he considers a position very similar to that of Johnson.3 The Roman Catholic theologian Heinz Schürmann writes, ‘Here and there among the particular New Testament values and precepts…there are time-bound judgments of value and fact, and they show that the Holy Spirit has deepened moral sensitivity through the course of the Church’s history and the history of mankind’ (p. 60). O’Donovan responds first by highlighting that what is being demanded here
is a clear, though modest, right of repudiation in respect of some ‘judgments of value’, not on the ground that the situation has changed, which could cause no one any difficulty, but simply on the ground that we have made some moral progress since the days when the Holy Spirit spoke through the apostles, and can understand their judgments as immature. It asserts the superior right of our preunderstanding. (p. 61)
Drawing on the work of Jean-Yves Lacoste, O’Donovan goes on to argue that such a position actually forfeits the ability to learn anything genuinely new, anything that will challenge us deeply. According to Lacoste,
We can learn only to the extent that we can let the unanticipated put our expectations and our prejudices in question. Authentic discovery punches a hole in the [hermeneutic] circle, since only pseudo-questions carry their own answers ready and waiting in their bosoms. Pre-understanding without honest admission of non-understanding will hardly invite more than the most meagre discoveries. (Quoted on p. 62)
Learning is possible, O’Donovan argues, only if we are willing to risk genuine questions. To look to Scripture for answers to these questions, O’Donovan suggests, is what it means to treat Scripture as authoritative (p. 63).
Where does this leave us? As we saw, Johnson’s three options are premised on the conviction that ‘our growth in understanding of the human person’ means that Paul’s words cannot be regarded as ‘either true or normative’. In response to this, we should make two comments. The first is simply to point out that this is not the only conclusion that can be drawn upon the discovery that a passage of Scripture is incompatible with our understanding of things: the alternative is to call in question our understanding. To treat Scripture as normative means coming to it with an openness to revising our preunderstanding and an in-principle willingness to surrender certain assumptions and convictions if we must. Perhaps this will in the end be the case with this text. Perhaps this text, when read in the light of the whole of Scripture and in attentiveness to the Gospel will ask us to choose in some decisive sense between a way of seeing things we have learnt from elsewhere and the way of seeing things it sets forth.
The second comment, however, is to say that we should not rush to this conclusion, nor oversimplify it. There is no virtue in seeing a decisive choice between culture on the one hand and Scripture on the other when such a choice is not inevitable. When a choice is put only in broad-brush terms, as a choice between obedience to Scripture on the one hand, and modern understandings on the other, it can only be made on equally broad-brush and ideological terms. However, this cannot, in fact, be either a choice to believe and obey Scripture or even a choice to reject Scripture! For to believe and obey Scripture involves careful attention and discernment, not only to what it seems to have meant in its time but to how it might be obeyed in our time. Before we assume that we must simply choose between Scripture on the one hand and contemporary understandings on the other, we must make sure that we have understood the choice precisely. We must patiently ask again what it is that we ‘now know’, and whether we are actually right to see this Scripture as incompatible with this understanding of the human person.
The Moral Authority of Scripture
To understand this point, we need to think more carefully about what is actually involved in Scripture’s authority over our conduct. To do this, we will turn again to O’Donovan’s reflections on these issues. In a useful discussion in his book Self, World, and Time,4 O’Donovan argues that our task when seeking to treat Scripture as authoritative in ethics is ‘to clarify the conditions of a faithful correspondence of action to text’. In a passage worth reproducing in full, he goes on to describe what this means:
A biblical story, command, or counsel presents us with a train of moral thought, a discursive argument that runs, though sometimes we need exegetical insight to make it explicit, from some A to some B, led by its practical question, grounding itself on some principles of action, observing some contextual constraints and reaching some resolution. That whole course of thinking, from A to B, is laid before our attention as we seek to fashion a course of thinking of our own, from some X to some Y, led by our own practical question, observing our own contextual restraints, and finally reaching our resolution of the matter that is in our view. Between the Bible’s course of thinking from A to B and our course of thinking from X to Y there is one great difference: the biblical story, command, or argument is closed, set firm within the text, not a matter for negotiation, argument, or contest; our course of moral thinking, on the other hand, is still open. Interpretation has to do with what is already the case about the meaning of Scripture; moral thinking is not about what is already the case, but about what is to be done next. Interpretative questions which bear upon the shaping of our testimony (for example, of how one passage should be read in relation to other passages, as when we read Jesus’ teaching on divorce in the light of the Deuteronomic law on which it comments and the various apostolic applications that interpret it) are assumed to have been answered with sufficient clarity. 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. We may express the relation in the formula [A -> B] -> [X -> Y]. Obeying the text’s authority is not simply a matter of taking up the conclusions which its thought has reached, as in the formula A -> B -> Y. Nor is it simply a matter of thinking from the same principles as the text, as in the formula A -> X -> Y, so that we overleap Scripture’s exposition of what its principles imply, lifting the loosest and most generalized expressions out of their argumentative embeddedness to employ them as we will. In thinking, for example, about the possibility of divorce and remarriage in obedience to Jesus’ teaching and the casuistic advice of Saint Paul, it will not be enough to shrink gratefully behind the complexity and variety of the textual witness, and improvise on the basis of some general principle which we claim to elicit from the Bible, such as, ‘God approves of lifelong marriage’. Neither will it be enough to say, ‘Divorce and remarriage is forbidden by Jesus, and that is an end of the matter’. Why it is forbidden, how it is forbidden, what is open and what closed by the prohibition — these are things the Bible would tell us within its own terms (which are those of the ancient world), in order that we may grapple with the tasks presented by our own pastoral situation. Nothing will count as ‘biblical’ thinking but a careful correlation of the complexities of the one situation with the complexities of the other.
The value of this passage lies in its drawing out the way more is involved in obedience to Scripture than we often assume. What we find in Scripture, O’Donovan suggests, is not merely one, flat kind of moral category such as, say, commands or principles. Rather, we find trains of thought that can involve various forms of moral speech, and that make an argument to a practical conclusion. And this is just what we must do in our time: to discern a train of thought that leads to a conclusion. O’Donovan’s argument, furthermore, is that this train of thought cannot be merely: Scripture teaches A or B, therefore we should do A or B. Because the whole point is that Scripture does not simply teach A or B. It teaches A -> B, and so our obedience to Scripture has to take the form of a movement of thought to a conclusion in our own time, a movement from X -> Y. Scripture’s authority over the conduct of our lives requires of us not just a work of simple obedience, but a work of thoughtful obedience, which O’Donovan describes in terms of achieving a correspondence between a train of thought in the text and a train of thought in our time.5
As O’Donovan clarifies in another place, not even the most straightforward commands in Scripture can be excluded from this need for thoughtfulness, for ‘to obey we need a context, and we need to relate ourself correctly to the context’.6 We need to understand, for example, our place in salvation history if we are to make sense of the difference between the commands given in Israel’s law and in the sermon on the mount. Similarly, we need to understand where we are in relation to Jesus and the apostles in order to know why the command to ‘maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph. 4.3) has a different claim on us to the command to ‘bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas’ (2 Tim. 4.13). Indeed, O’Donovan writes that, strictly speaking, ‘it is not the commands the Bible contains that we obey; it is the purposes of God that those commands reveal, taken in their context’.7 If we wish to be obedient, we have no choice but to try to discern how our action may correspond faithfully to the logic given in the commandments of Scriptures, which shows us the purposes of God. This is not to deny the validity—and indeed critical importance—of speaking of obedience to God’s commandments, only to seek to understand what such obedience actually entails.8
It may help to understand O’Donovan’s point if we illustrate it with some further examples. First, in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul addresses a particular pastoral issue in the church at Corinth: a man is living with his father’s wife (v. 1). Eventually, Paul reaches a particular conclusion: the congregation must drive him out (v. 13). However, Paul does not simply say this and leave it there. He gives reasons that make the issue much more complex, and interesting. He says the problem is not simply sexual immorality but their attitude to it, their ‘boasting’ about it (vv. 2, 6). It is the dissonance between the man’s profession of faith and his life that presents a particular risk to the community (vv. 9–11). What we can discern, then, in the course of this discussion is that the conclusion that the man should be driven out of the community arises not merely from the fact of his sexual immorality but from the attitude of the community to it: it is this attitude that produces the risk ‘that a little yeast’ will ‘leaven the whole dough’ (v. 6), thus jeopardising the character of the Christian community (vv. 7–8). The expulsion of the man is not only about him but also about the community: it is something the community must do to retain its integrity.
If we now consider how this text might be applied in our own time, we cannot simply say that sexually immoral persons of certain kinds must be driven out, even though that might appear to be the implication of v. 11 on its own. However, that conclusion would fail to do justice to the complexity of the moral argument set out in this Scripture. And yet, and this is O’Donovan’s point about not shrinking back to general principles, nor can we merely ignore this particular practical conclusion, as if it had nothing to teach us. For this is the conclusion reached in this instance. Instead, we must think about how our action may faithfully correspond to this train of reasoning. We must take seriously the rejection of sexual immorality, but also, and perhaps more importantly, pay attention to the issue of the community’s attitude to it. And we must acknowledge the gravity and decisiveness of the pastoral conclusions drawn in this case. Only when we do all of this will we be in a position to move towards pastoral discernments relating to church discipline in our own context.
Consider another example, this time from 2 Thessalonians. Towards the end of the letter, Paul addresses the issue of believers who were being ‘idle’ (3.6–13). There is a practical conclusion: keep away from believers living in idleness (v. 6). And there is an argument that supports it. The apostles’ example of working in order not to burden others illustrated something of spiritual significance: Christians are called to work (vv. 10–11), to seek not to burden others (v. 8), and not to weary in doing what is right (v. 13).
Again, we can see that to attempt simply to enact the conclusion with indifference to the argument that supports it would be a failure fully to respect the authority of the text. The context in which we live is importantly different to that of first century Thessalonica in relation to work. Paul’s argument does not appear to countenance a problem that is widespread in our time: of unemployment and underemployment. Paul appears to assume that the only thing preventing these people from working is their own attitude. This is not the case today, even though it may be the case for certain people. There are many people today who would like to work but are unable to. Here, attention to Paul’s wider argument will enrich our thinking and potentially help us to care for such people. For we will see that Paul’s concern about idleness was not simply pragmatic but was rooted in a spiritual conviction that Christian discipleship was an active affair, imperilled by ‘weariness’ in doing good. Recognition of this will perhaps motivate us to see unemployment and underemployment as spiritually significant, and potentially spiritually damaging experiences, which we ought to be concerned to alleviate.
Yet, it is also important that we not simply ignore the practical conclusion Paul reaches here and what it may have to teach us. The exhortation to keep away from these believers and the previous rule laid down that ‘anyone unwilling to work should not eat’ (v. 10) show us a seriousness of concern for the danger present in idleness that may represent a challenge to us today and a readiness to countenance certain kinds of concrete, costly practices in response. Obeying this text in our day, then, will be a complex business of seeking to discern the ways in which the danger of idleness manifests in contemporary church life, and of appropriate and sufficiently bold ways in which the Christian community can make clear its opposition to it, while also caring for those for whom idleness is an unwelcome affliction.
How does all this bear upon 1 Timothy 2.11–15? Let us first make an observation, which is that 1 Timothy 2.11–15 represents a clear example of ‘a discursive argument that runs…from some A to some B, led by its practical question, grounding itself on some principles of action, observing some contextual constraints and reaching some resolution’. A practical conclusion is set out in verses 11–12, and then the sources from which it is derived are expressed in verses 13–15.9 We may begin, then, by being clear that the task to which we must attend is not simply of discerning and applying the meaning of verses 11–12 but of understanding the logic of the movement of thought these verses display and then seeking to discern how our action, in our day, may faithfully correspond to this movement. That this is the task is not always adequately recognised. Instead, it is sometimes assumed that once we have understood, or think we have understood, the meaning of verses 11–12, or at least some of it, our task is basically accomplished—even if we do not fully understand the logic of verses 13–15. As long as we are clear that some kind of universally valid point is being made there, we can safely proceed to endorse the practical instructions. But that is no good. If we are to obey this Scripture, then we must respect the authority of both its conclusions and its arguments, and of their interconnection. We are tasked with applying these instructions for these reasons.
The real difficulty of 1 Timothy 2.11–15 is that neither the conclusions nor the arguments are easy to understand. Sometimes this is denied, but in my view, it is unavoidable. In particular, the unusual term used in v. 12 for ‘have authority’ (αὐθεντεῖν), and the difficulty of the argument about childbirth in v. 15 (on both of which, see below) make this text genuinely hard to interpret. This is important to recognise at the outset. It is not the case that all objections to the straightforward application of this text are sheer recalcitrance. Most of us are certainly capable of recalcitrance when we encounter teachings we dislike, but that is not all that is at work in this case. Moreover, the preceding argument highlights that the confusing aspects of this passage cannot be brushed aside as unimportant, as if, if we can understand some aspect of this passage—say that Paul prohibits women from ‘teaching’—then that is enough. It is not, because that is not how obedience to Scripture works. Obviously sometimes there will be elements of a text we do not understand, without it making the basic meaning of the text unclear. Yet the more significant these uncertainties, the more it compromises our ability to obey the text, for we lose our grip on the train of thought that gives it its reasonableness. Imagine, for example’s sake, that all the material relating to ‘boasting’ in 1 Corinthians 5 was obscure, so that we could not really understand what Paul was getting at there. In this case, our capacity to obey this text would be significantly impeded because it would not be true to it simply to try to implement the instruction to drive out the sexually immoral person. We need to understand the logic of a passage if we are to obey it; and that is precisely what it is hard to do in the case of 1 Timothy 2.11–15. This point should not be overstated. Partly on the basis of the significant scholarly attention given to this text, there is much about this passage that is clear, and much that we can say. Let us now, therefore, go on to note a number of important considerations about the text, in order to see where this leaves us in relation to the task of applying, or obeying, it today.
Exegetical Considerations
Background and Contextual Considerations
First, let us make some comments about the historical and social background to this passage, and how it may bear upon it. For many interpreters, awareness of the background is the key that unlocks the text. In particular, much focus is often given to the presence of false teachers in the churches with which the letter is concerned. I. H. Marshall, for example, argues that Paul is here arguing against specific aspects of a heresy, and that this text, therefore, ‘does not stand in the way of recognising the equality of men and women or of allowing teaching and other roles in a culture where these are no longer unacceptable’.10 What may we say about this?
There were indeed false teachers in the churches of Ephesus which Timothy oversaw. This is abundantly clear right from the beginning of the letter (1.3–7) and continues to be a significant factor throughout. Paul repeatedly urges Timothy to focus on right doctrine, to ignore and not get involved with various other ideas and teachings, and effectively to marginalise those who promote them (e.g., 1 Tim 1.3–7, 19–20; 4.1–7, 13, 16; 6.2–5, 11). The same can be said about the other pastoral epistles (e.g., 2 Tim 2.16–19, 23–26; Titus 1.11, 13; 3.10–11). It is important that we take seriously the frequency and centrality of this issue in the pastoral epistles: these are letters written to churches facing a real danger from disruptive false teaching.
There are good reasons to think that 1 Tim 2.11–15 is shaped in some or other ways by this issue, even though the passage itself does not make explicit reference to local and contextual concerns. However, the significance of this point should not be exaggerated. Simply on logical terms, the reality is that issues in the life of a community are interconnected. If there were false teachers in the community, that will have impacted upon all other aspects of community life in a range of ways. There is, however, more specific circumstantial evidence as well. In 2 Tim 3.6, we hear of ‘those who make their way into households and captivate silly women. . . .’ This is often thought to reveal a specific, problematic relationship between the false teachers in the community and certain women. A related dynamic appears to be at work in the instructions to younger widows in 1 Tim 5.11–15, some of whom, we are told, have turned away ‘to follow Satan’ (v. 15). This may have contributed to the emphasis on leadership of the household in instructions about qualifications for leadership (e.g., 1 Tim 3.4, 12). The mention of Eve being deceived (by Satan) could easily be read against this background—Paul was precisely worried about ‘deceitful spirits and teachings of demons’ (1 Tim. 4.1) around in the community. It is also interesting that there is a verbal link between Paul’s criticism of these women in 2 Tim 3.7, that they ‘are always being instructed (μανθάνοντα)’, and his instruction in 1 Tim 2.11: ‘Let a woman learn (μανθανέτω)’.
A significant substantive point of connection between what we are told about the false teaching in Ephesus and 1 Tim 2.11–15 relates to the mention of childbirth in v. 15. In 1 Tim 4.3–4 we discover that the false teaching with which Paul was concerned included ideas that ‘forbid marriage’ and involved a wider denial of good aspects of natural life such as food. It is highly plausible to think that if this teaching forbade marriage and renounced creaturely goods, it also involved a negative attitude to childbirth. Add to this the fact that Paul repeatedly emphasises the goodness of having and raising children (1 Tim 3.4, 12; 5.14; cf. Titus 2.4–5),11 and we have substantial evidence that childbirth and its spiritual legitimacy and value was a point of controversy.12
We are also told that the false teaching, on the one hand, involved claims about ‘the law’ (1 Tim 1.7) and on the other hand may have involved a claim ‘that the resurrection has already taken place’ (2 Tim 2.18). Although we cannot reconstruct the contours of this false teaching with confidence, the best guess is probably that it was some kind of ‘Gnosticizing form of Jewish Christianity’.13 ‘We know’, Moo comments, ‘that such heresies often deprecated “traditional” marriage and family values, often involving a confusion in male/female role relationships’.14 It is entirely likely that these kinds of ideas form part of the background to Paul’s instructions in 1 Tim 2.11–15, in which he affirms—perhaps against an over-realised eschatological enthusiasm à la 2 Tim 2.18, but in line with 1 Tim 4.3–5—the ongoing importance of creation through a discussion of ‘the law’, and in which he zeros in on the particular issue of the goodness of childbirth.
Two other aspects of the background to this text deserve notice, in my opinion. The first is that Paul’s appeal to the Genesis narrative to discuss men and women takes place in the context of a tradition of such interpretation, particularly amongst the rabbis. Such exegesis and discussion may be found in, for example, 2 Enoch 31.6; 2 Macc. 7.23; 4 Macc. 19.6–8; Yebamoth 103b; Gen. Rabba 18.6; Philo’s Questions on Genesis 1.33, 46; Perke Rabbi Eliezer 15a; Protoevangelium Jacobi 13.1.15 The point is simply that Paul was engaging with a tradition of exegesis he presumably learned as a Rabbi, and which was relatively common coin.
The second additional point to notice is that the difficulties in the churches appear to have had an economic component. When Paul urges ‘modesty’ (σωφροσύνη) in v. 15, this recalls his instruction in v. 9 that women dress with σωφροσύνη, rather than with ‘braided hair, gold, pearls, and expensive clothes’. It is, in part, an instruction necessitated by a display of wealth. Wealth appears to be a problem elsewhere in the letter also (1 Tim 6.5–10, 17–19). It is also possible, though neither provable nor certain, that there was a gendered element to this problem. We do know, for example, that Christianity had early success among ‘prominent’ and wealthy women (Acts 16.14; 17.4). What these considerations alert us to is the need to take seriously that the issues in view in 1 Tim 2.11–15 must have partly concerned power. Differences in wealth are a perennial factor in the power dynamics of churches. Paul’s words here appear to have been partly related to these. It is worth at least wondering whether this may partly explain Paul’s phrase ‘or have authority (οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν)’ in v. 12.
Men and Women, or Husbands and Wives?
We must next briefly consider the suggestion that in these verses, Paul is addressing not men and women but husbands and wives. It is indeed the case that the words used, ἀνήρ and γυνή, can mean husband and wife and do mean this elsewhere in the pastorals, including in the immediately following passage (see 1 Tim 3.2). Parallels between this passage and others in which marriage is indeed in view also support this suggestion (Titus 2.5; 1 Pet 3.1–7; 1 Cor 14.33–35). The parallel with 1 Cor. 14 is especially striking, given its other similarities with this passage. It also might allow us more easily to make sense of the reference to childbearing in v. 15.
Most commentators, however, from a range of perspectives, regard this restricted reference to husbands and wives as highly unlikely, mainly because it seems to them hard to make sense of the context and instructions in vv. 8–10, or of the links to the problems associated with widows (see 1 Tim 5.9–16) if it is specifically husbands and wives that are in view. They point out that the Greek words are ambiguous and that it is therefore common to indicate somehow that the marital relationship is in view, for example by the use of a possessive pronoun (see, e.g., 1 Cor 14.35); and these are lacking in 1 Timothy 2.16
I think, therefore, we do not have strong enough evidence for reading this passage as restricted in this way, although it is plausible that marriage relationships were a significant reality in Paul’s mind here. In fact, I think it very likely that Paul mainly had in view women who were or had been married and that he was not thinking of women who had never married, whom he elsewhere calls ‘virgins’ (1 Cor 7.25).
‘Saved through Childbearing’ (v. 15)
Let us next consider what is perhaps the most difficult part of the passage, the statement that ‘She will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty’. Much has been written on this verse, and there is no way for me to do it justice.17 This is, in Johnson’s words, ‘one of the great exegetical puzzles in 1 Timothy’ (p. 202). Instead, I will set out two ways of understanding this verse that seem to me to be plausible and then attempt to discern a way to interpret the statement in the light of both of them.
The two most plausible ways to understand verse 15 are, I think, as follows. The first is to see here an allusion to the promise in Gen. 3.15 that the offspring of the woman would ‘strike the head’ of the serpent. This was a reference that came to be understood Messianically, as a prophecy of the Messiah who would come to crush the serpent.18
Although this might seem far-fetched, on closer inspection it becomes less so. Such a reference follows on naturally from the discussion of Eve and Adam in vv. 13–14. It makes sense of the singular person ‘she’ with which the verse begins.19 It also allows the word ‘saved’ to be understood in its normal sense, which is by far the most likely in the context (compare v. 4),20 and for the preposition ‘through’ (διά) to be understood in its most common, instrumental, sense, without the implication that women are saved by having children. It also is arguably supported by the use of the article—τῆς τεκνογονίας.21 Recall also that reference to ‘Satan’ appears elsewhere in the letter (1 Tim 5.15; cf. 4.1). Paul is in this case continuing on from verse 14 and reminding us that Genesis also implies that Eve will be saved through childbirth, that is, through the birth of the Messiah. The emphasis in this case would be on the fact that Eve will be saved: Genesis tells us that the woman was deceived, yes; but she will be saved—through childbearing.22
The second major plausible way to understand v. 15 is to simply say that ‘saved through childbirth’ functions to single out and point to an activity that represents what is distinctive about women. In essence, this view understands ‘childbearing’ as a synecdoche for something like ‘natural female life’. Schreiner explains this view in the following terms:
This does not mean that all women must have children in order to be saved. Paul is hardly attempting to be comprehensive here. He has elsewhere commended the single state (1 Cor 7). He selects childbearing because it is the most notable example of the divinely intended difference in role between men and women, and most women throughout history have had children. . . .23
In this case, what Paul is doing is not primarily making a claim about the role of Eve referred to in Genesis 3 but making reference to a permanent, representative difference between men and women. We might positively paraphrase Paul’s argument on this reading as saying simply that women will be saved as women and do not need to be anything else. Paul is saying that women will be saved in the role of women, something that we know to have been denied at certain points in the early Christian period, including among the kinds of gnosticizing movements we have seen probably lie in the background.24
How are we to decide between these possibilities? It is important first to notice that they are not as distinct as might at first appear. It is possible, in fact, that Paul intends both a reference to Eve’s role in salvation history and an affirmation of the distinctive goodness of womanhood, manifest in childbirth. This ambiguity might partly explain the density and difficulty of the verse.
For even if we think that Paul does intend an allusion to Gen 3.15, he is not talking only about something that relates to one woman in the past. There is a movement in vv. 13–15 from Eve (Εὓα) to ‘the woman’ (ἡ γυνὴ), to ‘they’, implying, ‘women more generally’.25 Paul’s intention, therefore, by saying something about Eve, must be at least to say something about women generally. Not just Eve but ‘woman’ will be ‘saved through childbearing’, if ‘they’ continue in faith and love, etc. Paul’s argument assumes a connection and a sense of solidarity between Eve and all women.
If we now think about what Paul intends by making this connection, we might argue that he intends only a minimal point: this is a reminder that women—like, in fact, everyone—are saved through an act of childbearing, the birth of the Messiah.26 Arguably, however, this understanding of Paul’s argument is not strong enough. Is it not more likely that, by making this point here, Paul is aiming here to say something quite specifically about women, and to say something about childbirth, not just at one specific, significant moment, but in general? Alternatively, then, we might think that Paul intends something stronger here: by making a statement about Eve, he is making a specific claim about women and their role. He is saying that in some sense or other, childbearing has a representative significance: it is the role given to Eve, and so to woman, to play in the bringing about of salvation.27
This brings us back into the vicinity of the second perspective noted above. With this difference, however: on this reading, Paul is not simply saying something about woman as such. He is saying something about woman by way of reference to Eve. Without this reference to Eve, I think it makes it hard to explain why childbearing is linked here to salvation. Although Schreiner and others are clear that their reading does not imply that women must have children to be saved, a degree of discomfort along these lines is hard to avoid. Without any reference to Gen 3.15, it seems too much is being said here, even if we take διά as denoting an attendant circumstance (‘saved while bearing children’), and surely if it is taken instrumentally.28 We would at least need to have a clear and substantial account of what it means for someone to be ‘saved through childbearing’ who cannot or has not had children.29
Finally, I also think it is important to remember the background context discussed above at this point. If, as seems clear, Paul was writing into a context in which there was false teaching around that rejected marriage and normal human creatureliness (1 Tim 4.1–5), perhaps on eschatological grounds (2 Tim 2.18), making it necessary for him elsewhere to commend and affirm bearing and raising children (e.g., 1 Tim 5.13–15), then this context must surely have shaped this reference to childbearing in v. 15. I think we can therefore sum up what Paul is doing here as: affirming the goodness of natural womanhood by way of reference to the role of Eve’s bearing children in salvation history in a context in which the goodness of marriage and the natural realities of human life were being denied.
It may help to highlight the shape of this interpretation if I compare it to the somewhat similar conclusion of Stanley E. Porter in his discussion of this verse. Here is how Porter sums up what he believes is happening in this passage, in the context:
The author of 1 Timothy seems to be fighting against a group distinguished by several characteristics. They were promoting doctrine (1 Tim 1.3) that resulted in the telling of all sorts of silly myths and the emphasizing of genealogies (1.4), holding to stories about deceitful spirits and demons (4.1), and forbidding marriage and other practices (4.3). Consequently, they elicited his instructions concerning care of the home, the raising of children, and the marriage of widows (5.9–10, 13–16). Instead of being engaged in right behaviour, the women were habitually spending time gossiping in each other’s houses (5.13), giving opportunity for those outside the church to slander those in it (5.14; cf. 6.1). It is easy to conclude that the encouraging of ascetic practices, combined with shunning of the women’s domestic roles, resulted in sexual abstinence or similar practices which were considered by the author to have missed the mark (cf. 1.3–7; 6.20–21). In the light of this ascetic tendency, the author endorses the resumption of normal practices between men and women, including sexual relations that result in giving birth to children.30
With all this, I am in agreement. However, I disagree with Porter’s specific exegesis of v. 15. Porter dismisses a reference to Eve in the first part of v. 15 and does not attempt to see the mention of childbirth as symbolic or representative, instead arguing that the author ‘apparently believed that for the woman who abides in faith, love and holiness, her salvation will come by the bearing of children’.31 I think this fails to take the movement from Eve to ‘she’ and then to ‘they’ seriously, and is an intrinsically unlikely thing for Paul—or even one of his followers—to have said. It seems to me far more likely that Paul is here harnessing a weighty, theological argument, grounded in the creation story, to say something not primarily about the specific salvation of individual Christian women, but about the salvation of ‘womankind’ and the way it encompasses the natural goodness of female humanity.32
The Logic of vv. 13–15
Whether or not a reference to Eve is on view in v. 15, vv. 13–14 clearly do appeal to the story of Adam and Eve.33 Our next step must be to consider how we should understand this appeal. Consider one way of understanding the logic of vv. 13–14. This is that what Paul is doing in these verses is describing an ‘order’ that subsists through time. On this reading, Paul grounds his instructions in vv. 11–12 in an understanding of the nature and typical character of man and woman. In particular, in v. 14 Paul is implying that Eve’s being deceived in Genesis 3 illustrates her non-fitness to teach and to lead. On this reading, the story of the fall is important primarily for what it reveals about the God-given order of creation. Paul’s argument in vv. 13–14 is an argument about how things are with men and women.
Other Jewish texts give us clear examples of such an interpretation of the Genesis story. Philo, for instances, writes:
Why did the serpent accost the woman, and not the man? The serpent, having formed his estimate of virtue, devised a treacherous stratagem against them, for the sake of bringing mortality on them. But the woman was more accustomed to be deceived than the man. For his counsels as well as his body are of a masculine sort, and competent to disentangle the notions of seduction; but the mind of the woman is more effeminate, so that through her softness she easily yields and is easily caught by the persuasions of falsehood, which imitate the resemblance of truth.34
Johnson reads 1 Tim 2.13–14 as reflecting a similar way of thinking, and it partly explains why he rejects it: ‘the order of creation as expressed in the biblical account is used to support the ordering of the social unit of the family . . . the story of the first parents is taken as inscribing essential qualities: women are more easily deceived than men are’.35
It is striking, however, that the text does not actually say this. It certainly goes nowhere near the explanation Philo gives, but beyond that, it in fact refrains from making any explicit comment about the susceptibility of women generally to deception, for example. This interpretation reads into this text a way of thinking that may not be there at all. Other Jewish reflections on Genesis give greater emphasis to the historical aspect of the text: its significance not as illustrative of what is always the case but as recording events of decisive significance.
Sirach 25.24, for instance, says, ‘From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die’. This is not in the first instance a claim about how things are with women now (though that is the implication, in this case, in Sirach); it is a claim about what happened then. Paul’s words have the same historical cast.36 They record, in the first instance, a history, the history which is also therefore our history. But they do not proceed to any explicit claim about women as such. As Philip Payne writes, ‘Nothing in 1 Tim 2:12–15 extrapolates from Eve’s deception to the nature of women in general’.37 The text leaves this inference unspoken, and, therefore, to be wrestled with.38
Paul’s argument here is not primarily based on a claim about what ‘men’ and ‘women’ are like; it is based upon a recollection of the particular history they happen to have. It is in fact the case, says Paul, that Adam was created first, then Eve. And it is in fact the case that Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. That is the history we are all stuck with. (Note also that this is clearly not all there is to say about this history: Paul’s silence about Adam’s sin does not by any means imply that he thought Adam was innocent. Elsewhere, he lays all the blame of the fall on Adam [e.g., Rom 5.12–14], which suggests that Adam’s not being deceived, here, should not be taken positively but perhaps as an indictment.)
My point is not that there is no claim here about created order. The point is rather to clarify the kind of claim that is being made. That Adam was created first is indeed a claim about created order.39 But again, it is a historical claim: it is not a claim about intrinsic male superiority, but about the order of events. Adam was, in fact, created first, and that matters in some way.
The point is also that this claim does not exhaust the argument. Paul’s argument is not simply from creation, but from creation and fall. The fall is not important simply for the way it illuminates the character of created order; it is important because it happened. All of us, men and women, have to live downstream of these formative events. We cannot, says Paul, as yet be entirely free of them and their legacy.
Notice, finally, that on this reading, vv. 13–14 provide a rationale not only for the prohibition in v. 12 but also for the exhortation in v. 11 for women quietly to learn. We will discuss these verses below, but note here only that in this case, rather than telling a story that is meant to show a perpetual, unchanging nature of woman as unsuited to teach, vv. 13–14 would tell a story that warns of a mistake that should not be repeated; and one of the ways to avoid it is for women to learn. Women especially should learn because the first woman Eve was deceived. Before we think further about the implications of this today, however, we need to clarify this interpretation of vv. 11–12.
Concrete Instructions in vv. 11–12
There are at least three points to note about the concrete instructions in vv. 11–12. First, we should notice that, as indicated above, v. 11 may well be intended as a positive permission. The chief reason to think this is that the key terms used are essentially positive terms. ‘Silence’ (ἡσυχίᾳ) is also used, for example, in v. 2, to describe the kind of quiet, peaceable life that is desirable. It is elsewhere commended for men also (e.g., Acts 22.2; 2 Thess 3.12) and is better translated ‘quietness’.40 It is not, by contrast, the term used when Paul speaks of ‘silencing’ false teachers in Titus (ἐπιστομίζειν; Titus 1.11). This is an important point because the combination of the prohibition on ‘teaching’ and a command to ‘be in silence’ can give Paul’s instructions here a more forceful cast than they in fact have. But ἡσυχίᾳ does not stand opposed simply to ‘teaching’ but to ‘teach or have authority/rule over’; its emphasis is not on sound and speech, but on order.
‘Learn’ (μανθανέτω) is also usually a positive term, related to discipleship, and is what appears to be malformed in 2 Tim 3.7 (cf. 1 Tim 1.7).41 Finally, ‘submission’ (ὑποταγῇ) is certainly a strong term, denoting, as Johnson rightly recognises, ‘not simply an attitude, but a structural placement of one person below another’ (2001, p. 201). Yet this is only a negative thing if we are already sure that such submission is problematic in this case. Furthermore, it is not clear, though we may guess, to whom this submission is meant to be offered. Is it simply a submission to what is being taught? It is not difficult, then, to read v. 11 as intended as a fundamentally positive permission, an affirmation of the learning and discipleship of women.42
Second, we have to confess a moderate lack of clarity about what precisely Paul prohibits women from doing in v. 12. Two words are used—‘teach’ (διδάσκειν) and ‘have authority’ (αὐθεντεῖν)—with a connective ‘nor’ (οὐδέ).43 Douglas Moo, following Filson, emphasises that ‘teaching’ had a particular meaning at this point of the church’s life: ‘“teaching” according to Paul involved the careful transmission of the tradition concerning Jesus Christ and His significance and the authoritative proclamation of God’s will to believers in light of that tradition’.44 John Dickson has stressed the importance of this point, and developed it in connection with the importance of oral tradition.45 However, these arguments are uncertain.46 Payne, by contrast, thinks it clear that, ‘Διδάσκειν in the NT is a general term which can apply to all sorts and levels of teaching’.47
The second word, αὐθεντεῖν, is notoriously difficult. A hapax legomenon, it is not well-attested before the New Testament period. Where it is attested in that period, it has a decidedly negative meaning.48 Marshall argues that this word is of decisive significance, strongly indicating that Paul’s instructions are a response to a highly specific context. ‘The fact that so unusual a word…is used here is surely significant and suggests that there is a nuance not conveyed by more common words’.49 Marshall also follows Köstenberger in arguing that the connective οὐδέ implies a common evaluation of both terms. Köstenberger uses this point to insist that because διδάσκειν is normally a positive term, αὐθεντεῖν must therefore be understood positively as well. Marshall, however, goes the opposite way, arguing that because αὐθεντεῖν has a clearly negative sense, the teaching in view here must have been coloured by the false teaching within the community.
I find it hard to evaluate these arguments. On the one hand, the argument that αὐθεντεῖν has a necessarily negative sense is contestable. After the New Testament period, there is accumulating evidence that it can have a more neutral sense, such that it can be argued, as Knight does, that it has a basic meaning of ‘have authority’.50 On the other hand, Marshall is surely right that it is a peculiar word in the New Testament period, and that this ought at least to invite questions. Furthermore, although the word clearly can mean ‘have authority’, it does not follow that this is its most natural meaning. There is also substantial evidence for the word being associated with a sense of autocratic, ‘overbearing authority’, to use Marshall’s phrase.51 The opposition to ὑποταγῇ may, as Johnson suggests, be an important guide in the context.52 However, Paul does not use this word positively to indicate, say, the shape of male responsibility. Words acquire shades of meaning through contexts and associations, and we cannot recover all of these. It seems entirely plausible that the background context and particular risks linked to the false teaching have contributed to Paul’s formulation here.53
Perhaps the best we can do is to translate it with a term that, while potentially unproblematic, usually has a worrying ring to it—perhaps a candidate might be ‘rule over’. Payne, I think, is right to point out, ‘In no other verse of Scripture is it stated that women are not to be in “authority” over men’, and that it is therefore ‘precarious indeed to deny that women should ever be in a position of authority over men based on the disputed meaning of the only occurrence of this word anywhere in the Bible’.54
Finally, and importantly, we must note the form in which Paul’s prohibition in v. 12 is made. Here there are two things to notice. First, it is made in the first person: ‘I do not permit’, says Paul. Second, the final contrasting phrase, ‘but to be in silence/quietness’, clearly recalls v. 11 and may give the whole of v. 12 an almost parenthetic quality. Although this may be pressing the point too far, it could be taken as if Paul is here clarifying a mistaken way his statement in v. 11 could be taken: it is not that he is permitting women to teach or αὐθεντεῖν, but to learn in quietness. If this is the case, it is striking that v. 11 could be taken in this way, as permission to teach and rule. In the context, then, Paul’s first person ‘I do not permit’ may have the sense of a particular, contingent judgment. Paul can use the first person to make strong, relatively binding statements (e.g., Rom 12.1; 1 Cor 4.16; 2 Cor 5.20; 1 Tim 2.8). However, it is also often used in relation to particular, context-determined situations.55 At the very least, the form makes it clear that this is Paul’s judgment, and it is therefore related to his authority as an apostle and his role in relation to these churches. The Jerusalem Bible’s translation, ‘I am not giving permission for a woman to teach’, is surely preferable to ‘I do not permit’, which more clearly implies a continuing state than the Greek verb.56
Summary
Drawing these exegetical threads together, I would summarise what Paul was doing in these verses (in the context of verses 8–10) as follows.
In a context in which there was false teaching, which Paul understood to be demonic deception, which risked significantly destabilising the life of the Christian community by promoting ideas that undermined marriage and some of the natural realities of human life, and apparently targeted women, Paul advised Timothy to seek peace and order. Men were to be called to cease from arguing and turn to common prayer. Women were to be urged to pursue modesty and good works and to turn away from ostentatious displays of wealth.
Women were also to be urged to pay attention to learning, to growth in faith through appropriate respect for their teachers. He would not, Paul advised Timothy, allow the women to teach or rule over the men but would require them to learn quietly. These instructions were appropriate because there are unavoidable differences between the way in which men and women are situated in the world arising from the primeval history of humanity. This history remains with all men and women today, and we are foolish if we neglect it or pretend it away.
On the one hand, Adam was the first created, and that gives him an inevitable and to some extent appropriate pre-eminence. On the other hand, in the primeval fall of humanity, Eve was the one who was deceived, and that means she must especially feel the weight of learning attentively. Yet, Eve, and womankind, were not lost in this moment. God promised Eve that she, through her offspring, would one day triumph over the one who had deceived her. For this reason, childbearing has a symbolic significance for the sanctification of womankind, and women participate in it through faith, love and holiness with modesty.
Submitting to the Authority of this Text Today
With these exegetical observations in mind, let us finally turn to what is in many ways the most difficult task, that of discerning how we may be obedient to this text here and now. Too often this task is treated as simple, or more easily accomplished. Porter, for instance, speaks in passing of ‘the all too clear implications of this passage’.57 The section on application that appends most commentaries on the passage tends to take up only a fraction of the space given over to exegesis. There is a risk here of badly underestimating what is involved in moving from interpretation to obedience.
Recall our observations about what the authority of Scripture in ethics involves. Our task is to discern how our action may correspond faithfully to the movement we see in this text, which we trust to disclose to us the good purposes of God. Our task is not, that is to say, simply to apply in our time either the principles we see here or the practical conclusions we see reached. It is to observe and seek to understand the logic of the movement from claims about how the world is to conclusions in practice, and then to seek to honour both these claims and these conclusions as we discern how to act in our own time.
Some fairly common lines of argument cut short this work involved in moving from interpretation to practical determinations. One is an argument which says that if we can establish that in vv. 13–15 Paul is making an argument that is grounded in creation and is therefore ‘universal’, then that entails that the instructions in vv. 11–12 ought to be applied today also. This oversimplifies. The question we must ask is not simply whether the arguments of vv. 13–15 are grounded in creation. That is an important question, and I think that on the whole the answer is yes. However, that is not the only question that needs to be asked.
The questions we must also ask are why these creational claims in vv. 13–15 lead to the practical conclusions in vv. 11–12 in this case, and whether these are the only practical conclusions that can or should be reached on the basis of these claims. These are important questions because it is entirely reasonable to think that, although the claims Paul makes in vv. 13–15 are, largely, claims about creation and salvation history, the specific deployment of them in this situation and the particular practical conclusions reached are shaped by the local, particular context to which he was writing. They bear more and less ambiguous evidence of the struggle over false teaching. They are addressed to a cultural context in which women occupied particular social roles and were afforded and not afforded certain opportunities. Although Paul’s arguments in vv. 13–15 may be, to a certain extent, transcultural, the movement from these arguments to these conclusions is not necessarily transcultural and must be carefully considered.58
By the same token, however, we also cannot ignore vv. 13–15 on the grounds that vv. 11–12 contain culturally conditioned material. Again, there most probably is culturally conditioned material in vv. 11–12. For instance, it surely is the case that ‘teaching’ must have had culturally distinct features in a much more oral world, in which the Christian Scriptures were not yet established.59 Likewise, it may well be that the word αὐθεντεῖν had particular connotations in Timothy’s context, as, I suspect, did the call for women to learn. However, these observations cannot entitle us to ignore the passage as a whole because they are not all there is to the passage. This text calls for these practical policies, whatever exactly they are, on the ground of wider and more fundamental considerations, and we are tasked with attending to these considerations even if some aspects of these practical policies appear to be deeply embedded in a world we do not share.60
The task before us, that is to say, is not merely to work out whether the passage ‘still applies’ or not, whether it ‘remains normative’. The critical question is not whether the passage still applies, but how it applies. We have to think through what it means in our time and place to be faithful to the movement we see in this text.
Let me draw out this point in dialogue with the significant arguments of Douglas Moo. At the end of his response to Philip Payne in his article, ‘The Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11–15: A Rejoinder’, Moo moves in a promising direction by seeking to distinguish between the ‘occasion’ and the ‘situation’ of a text—that is, between the circumstances that give rise to it and the conditions under which its instructions apply.61 His point is a valid one: that an instruction generated by a very particular set of circumstances may apply under much more general conditions. This is true. The problem, though, is that this is only the beginning of the question of ‘application’. I think Moo is right to think that 1 Tim 2.11–15, though occasioned by particular circumstances in Ephesus, ‘applies’ much more widely, because the conditions under which its instructions obtain are quite general. Where I think Moo’s argument falls short, though, is in the assumption that this makes matters simple, that if the text does still apply, we know what that means. But this is precisely what we do not know, and what we have to think about. We have to think about how this text applies in our own time: how we may move faithfully from acceptance of its claims about the world to conclusions in action.
We cannot hastily overleap the difficult work of thinking about our own context and jump to a particular practical policy—say, that women shall not be permitted to preach to mixed church gatherings—on the grounds that ‘this is what this text teaches’. For the text teaches us only as we attend to its logic and implications in our own time and place. We have to do justice to an irreducible ‘distance’ between the text and ourselves. This distance, as O’Donovan points out in a discussion of this issue, is not actually about a distance in time.62 The historical distance between the text and us is not necessarily a very important one. If we can learn to understand this text in its own time, it may be far less unfamiliar than many a modern text. No, what we mean by this distance is simply the gap between the text itself and us, and the questions and judgments we have and must make. The ‘great difference’, we saw O’Donovan say above, between ‘the Bible’s course of thinking from A to B and our course of thinking from X to Y’ is simply this: that ‘the biblical story, command, or argument is closed, set firm within the text, not a matter for negotiation, argument, or contest; our course of moral thinking, on the other hand, is still open’. If I am to be obedient to Scripture, I can only be obedient here and now, in my own decision and action, of which the text does not speak directly on its surface. Obedience requires careful attention to the reality and possibilities of our own context. As O’Donovan puts it, ‘To obey we need a context, and we need to relate ourself correctly to the context’.6
Lest the issues become overly complex, let me illustrate by considering the practical policy noted above. Why can we not simply say that the text teaches that women shall not be permitted to preach to mixed church gatherings?
We cannot say this, because the text does not straightforwardly teach this, in at least four respects. First, the text situates what it says about women not teaching alongside other instructions about women learning and not ‘ruling over’ men. To say that what the text teaches is that women should not preach to men is reductive, removing from view important accompanying comments. In fact, a particular interpretation of these accompanying comments can sometimes support the view that the passage ‘teaches’ a blanket prohibition on women speaking publicly in church. As I noted above, I think the appearance of definitiveness in Paul’s judgment at this point comes partly from the combination of the prohibition on teaching and the command to ‘be in silence’. But as I also noted, I think this appearance is misleading, because ‘silence/quietness’ should be taken fundamentally positively. Rather than seeing verses 11–12 as centred on the instruction about not teaching, we ought to see, as I have argued, a deliberate back-and-forth in these verses between an instruction to let a woman learn in quietness and the comment about not teaching or ‘having authority’. This complicates a simple understanding of the passage as about women not preaching.
Second, the text does not just say that women should not teach, but explicitly says it for a set of complex reasons. Again, the risk is one of reduction. The text we have does not simply give us a command about women in church, but invites us into a story about humanity and an understanding of men and women. It explicitly invites, that is to say, an intellectually expansive response to these practical questions. This is why the difficulties we have in understanding vv. 13–15 are so important, for they risk making the text unintelligible for us. And yet, an unintelligible practical approach is one thing Paul seems to have wanted to avoid. Our obedience to this text, therefore, ought to attempt to give an intelligible account of the arguments it makes.
Thirdly, and most simply, the text does not simply teach that women should not preach to mixed gatherings because what it actually talks about is teaching, not preaching. We may be right to think that contemporary preaching is encompassed by this prohibition of teaching, but this cannot be assumed. It cannot be assumed because it is obvious that there are numerous kinds of preaching in church life today, not all of which bear much resemblance to ‘the careful transmission of the tradition concerning Jesus Christ’, to use part of Moo’s description of teaching. This is a key point made by John Dickson, and it is valid at least to the extent that the overlap between contemporary preaching and ‘teaching’ in 1 Timothy 2 needs to be demonstrated. As Moo himself comments, ‘The contemporary Christian activities which are encompassed by the biblical sense of “teach” are not easy to specify’.63
Finally, 1 Tim 2.11–15 does not simply teach that women should not preach to mixed gatherings because what it records is Paul telling Timothy that he does not permit a woman to teach a man. This means there is an unavoidable task of discernment before us, just as there was before even Timothy. Having received Paul’s letter, he would have had to discern what particular courses of action he should take in the churches of Ephesus. Different kinds of meeting might have required different responses because of the different people and situations involved. The reality on the ground of not permitting things may have been less than straightforward, as, no doubt, Paul knew.
In our case, even if we think that Paul intended his first-person statement in a strong sense, as requiring that Timothy and all churches do likewise, we are left with work to do. We have, at least, to think about where authority lies in our own churches to permit and not permit things like this, and what that means for our own agency. We will also have to make decisions about what this position rules in and rules out. Does it rule women out of Sunday School teaching, of writing theological books or hymns, of leading public services and prayers though without preaching, of presiding at the Lord’s Supper?64 These are discernments that the text itself gives us little help with and that are complicated by the uncertainty of the word αὐθεντεῖν.
I think it is more likely, however, that the form of Paul’s words does give them a degree of contingency and provisionality, heightening the sense that this is a particular judgment for this time. He is explaining that this is something he does not and would not do, but by no means in the strongest or most binding terms that he could. ‘I am not giving permission. . .’ The position of this first-person comment, in my view, encourages us to view it as Paul’s particular judgment for that time. This, as I have emphasised, does not entitle us to ignore this judgment. It is his authoritative judgment as an apostle. But it does leave us with a greater sense of openness. The text does not teach that women must not preach; it 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, in our context.
How, then, may we move towards the kind of faithful correspondence between our own action and the logic of the text that obedience demands? A good next step is to articulate questions that will help us give the kind of attention to our own context that is needed. One such critical question, it seems to me, is this. On the basis of what we have discussed so far, it seems clear that Paul’s determination was that in his and Timothy’s context for women to teach or rule over men would be unwise in view of the shape of humanity’s creation and of the fall. Given this, is it the case in our context that the preaching of women to mixed gatherings or the exercise of other forms of church leadership, necessarily involves the kind of disregard for created order and forgetfulness of the history of the fall that Paul seems to be wary of?
It seems to me that the answer to this question is no, or at least, not necessarily. The chief reason to say this relates to changes in the possibilities open to women in our context. In the passage, as we have understood it, there is an implicit assumption that to allow women to teach and rule will involve a rejection of the natural goodness of womanhood. This, as we have seen, is why Paul insists that ‘she will be saved through childbearing’. His goal was to affirm, probably against those who wanted to say that marriage and the natural realities of human life were spiritually sub-standard (cf. 1 Tim 4.3; 5.14–16), that women will be saved as women, and do not need to be anything else. Salvation encompasses the natural realities of human life: woman will be saved as childbearer, that is, as woman. For most women in that context, as throughout much of human history, there would have been a relatively clear alternative between affirmation of the role of childbearing and rearing, and affirmation of a more active, leadership role. The few women who would have had the freedom to pursue both would have been able to do so only because they were wealthy, which, we have seen, was one of the factors in play here (v. 9).
Today this situation is importantly different. The widespread participation, in many places, of women in paid work, often accompanied by government support for this through assistance and childcare, and the development of affordable and widely available contraception, has made it possible for far more women to imagine life as both mother and worker. For many women, although it is often still extraordinarily difficult and in certain ways unjust, it is no longer the case that significant education, work, and leadership, necessarily stand opposed to marriage and motherhood. This, we should note, is a development that can reasonably be felt to find support in our text, with its clear affirmation that women ought to be enabled to learn. The significance of this is that women exercising leadership and teaching roles may no longer constitute the kind of symbolic threat to natural womanhood that it seems to have done in Paul’s context, in which, we must remember, there were false teachers explicitly advocating such rejection. In a context in which the participation of women in the workforce is normal, and often—however complexly—not an alternative to motherhood, the leadership of women in the church no longer has the same symbolic significance.
That said, it should also be acknowledged at this point that, although it may be the case that the leadership of women need not involve a symbolic rejection of the natural goodness of womanhood, it is also the case that it may. It is clearly possible to argue—and is argued—that for all its benefits, the overall effect of modernity has been to devalue motherhood and to drive women into forms of work organised around traditionally male roles, which produce impossible demands and enormous stress. Moreover, for many women, the opportunity to combine work and family is less a freeing opportunity and more a tiring and burdensome economic necessity. For women to exercise leadership roles within the church, it could be argued, represents a capitulation to this highly problematic modern, industrial consensus that should not be welcomed. Such a line of thought might also highlight the ongoing significance of economic inequalities. It is only in rich countries, it might be pointed out, that women are widely able to combine work in traditionally male roles and family life. Are we right to endorse this? Does it not risk a devaluation of traditionally feminine roles that is arguably something like what Paul works against in 1 Timothy 2?
It is also true that Paul’s comments about creation and fall in 1 Tim 2.13–15 are not limited to the issue of childbearing. The more important points he makes are arguably those about Adam’s being created first and the woman’s being deceived. These arguments should not be disconnected from Paul’s comment about childbirth. Verses 13–15 form an integrated whole, so that the changes to our cultural context described above do impact the way the overall argument is received today. However, the affirmations about creation and fall in vv. 13–14 still need to be reckoned with.
One could argue, as a result, that we ought at this point to exercise caution. Even if the form of Paul’s words in vv. 11–12 does allow us, as I think it does, room to arrive at different practical policies than he did, we should still continue to follow his example and not permit women to occupy leadership and teaching roles within the church because we feel that to do so does still risk the kinds of denial of created order he warns against.
Although this conclusion should not be lightly dismissed, I think it is a mistake for the following reasons. First, although the issue cannot be treated sufficiently here, I think the wider witness of the New Testament clearly leads us in the direction of empowering women for ministry. In the ministry of Jesus, women are constantly treated with respect, and their learning of Scripture is affirmed (e.g., Luke 10.38–42). Bold, symbolic actions or arguments are welcomed (e.g., Mark 7.24–30; 14.3–9). Although I agree with Moo and others that we do not have firm evidence of women engaging in public teaching in the references to Paul’s co-workers, what we do have remains striking. Paul clearly went out of his way to draw attention to and commend women exercising various significant roles within mission and ministry. There is no indication that he felt the need, generally, to keep women in their place. On the contrary, what evidence we have clearly suggests a commitment to encouraging the activity and ministry of women. All of this, we should add, fits with the interpretation we have given above of 1 Tim 2.11 as an affirmation of women’s learning.
All of this, of course, can be robustly affirmed by those who maintain that the public teaching ministry should be restricted to men. The issue becomes a little more complex, however, when we consider the issue of prophecy. It is clear that women did prophesy in the early church (Acts 21.9; 1 Cor 11.5). Exactly what was involved in prophecy, and its relation to other verbal ministries, seems somewhat unclear, and I have no wish to oversimplify. What is clear, however, is that we have here evidence of women engaging in a ministry of public speech of some kind.
In many churches today, prophecy is not the kind of identifiable, readily understandable phenomenon it appears to have been at certain times in the early church. This is not true in all churches, and this may affect the way the following comments are understood. Those churches, however, in which this is the case should recognise that in denying women the opportunity to preach they may be going further than the New Testament apparently did. If the affirmation of the ministry of women in the early church involved the recognition of women with the gift of prophecy, then what will take its place when prophecy no longer has a public presence in the life of the church? Although the relationship between prophecy and teaching is complex, it seems to me that the New Testament witness to women with the gift of prophecy is a reason to ensure there is space within the life of the church for women to speak.65
The second reason I maintain that it is a mistake to refuse the public teaching and leadership of women on the grounds of caution has to do with awareness of the history of misogyny both within and without the church. Here we may properly speak of what we have learned in the modern day. The point, however, is not that we have a superior moral standpoint than our biblical forebears but that the situation we are in has changed by virtue of our growth in understanding. We are in a situation now in which the tendency of men to misuse ideas such as those we find in this passage cannot responsibly be overlooked. To describe this history, for the moment, simply in terms of 1 Timothy 2: throughout long swathes of the church’s history, not only have women been silenced—they have not been permitted to learn. Without justification, the primacy of Adam has been constantly turned into an intrinsic superiority of male over female and the deception of Eve thought of in terms of an intrinsic susceptibility to deception. Women have been subordinated, marginalised, and denied opportunities to learn and grow. Alongside all this, motherhood and childbearing have been often devalued and degraded. It behoves us to make amends in whatever ways we are able to.
Let me be clear: this is not an argument for rejecting the text or its teaching but only for rejecting a particular practical response to this text made on the grounds of caution about the risks involved. We cannot refuse the text itself on this ground; but we can refuse one possible, though not inevitable, application of it on this ground. We ought not, I am arguing, refuse to admit women to positions of leadership on the grounds that there remain risks of denying or forgetting the created order in ways that are similar to those Paul describes if we do so. I think there are such risks, though they are not inevitable. But those risks need to be weighed against the clear and apparent distortions of the truth that have occurred and that endure in many ways. This, it seems to me, argues in favour of permitting women to exercise public ministries of teaching and leadership.
To summarise: the argument being made here is, first, that permitting women to exercise leadership and speak publicly within the church need not involve the same kinds of rejection of created order that Paul warned against, and, second, that there are also good reasons, in our time, to find ways for women to exercise leadership and speaking roles within the church. Is that the end of the matter? Not quite. The first point is not yet established and requires further attention. As we saw above, there are aspects of Paul’s argument in vv.13–15 that remain to be reckoned with. I think it is significant that the leadership of women no longer necessarily challenges the goodness of marriage and childbearing in the way that it once may have. But the apostle also draws our attention to the order of creation—Adam was created first—and the way the events of the fall unfolded—the woman was deceived. If we are to be faithful to this text in our time, we need to ask about how we may respect and bear witness to these things.
Is it possible to do so whilst also permitting women to preach and to exercise leadership? This seems to me to be a point at which discussion is needed, and various conclusions can be imagined. In general, however, I see no reason why it is not possible meaningfully to bear witness to the created order and to the history with which we are called to reckon without excluding women from all public teaching and leadership. For one thing, most churches have various kinds of leadership position, making it possible to imagine ways of symbolically indicating male primacy without a blanket prohibition on women preaching or occupying certain kinds of leadership role. Within my own Anglican system, for instance, it has been possible to imagine restricting the ordination to the priesthood, or the episcopate, to men, while allowing women to exercise a wide range of ministries, including preaching. Other possibilities might also be imagined. Even in churches with flatter leadership structures, it does not seem impossible to imagine ways of permitting women to exercise various kinds of leadership while trying to pay attention to and respect the logic of created order and the history of the fall, perplexing as these things may be.
Part of the difficulty at this point lies in Paul’s argument about the fall—his comment that the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Above, I have stressed that this should not be understood as implying something perennially true about women and their susceptibility to deception. Paul does not say this, nor does he clearly imply it. This is, rather, a comment about history, the history with which we all must reckon. The first step to bearing witness to it, therefore, is simply to confess it and to be willing to think about it. In the text, this comment relates not only to the prohibition on teaching but also, and perhaps primarily, to the command to let women learn. Women need to be allowed to learn because Eve was deceived. Perhaps we might think that the history of the fall places a special responsibility on women to ensure that they are learners first (though this is something that surely applies in some sense to everyone). I do not see, though, why there might not be ways in which precisely the learning of women could display a willingness to remember the events of the fall.
But why, some may ask, should we have to worry about this at all? Why should men and especially women have to continue to reckon with, and be in certain ways bound by, the events of the primeval history? Are not Christians free from these burdens and frustrations, having been born again into a new humanity in Christ, in which there is neither male nor female (Gal 3.28)? The answer to this must be both yes and no. While this new, free humanity has indeed been born, it is not yet fully formed. Though some in Ephesus had apparently forgotten this point, the resurrection has not yet taken place (2 Tim 2.18). We are still in this body, and in it ‘we groan’ (2 Cor 5.2, 4). There is, it seems to me, a groaning that we—and especially women—are called to at precisely this point, a frustrating history that we are called to live with, though in the hope that we will one day finally be free of it.
Conclusion
Further practical questions would need to be asked in order to move to certain kinds of action. There are always a range of considerations when we are talking about acting and coming to decisions not just as individuals but as communities. The New Testament has much to say, for example, about dealing with vexed disagreements (e.g., Rom 14–15). There are also questions to be asked about our agency. Not many of us are in a position to do any ‘permitting’ or not permitting in this area, though some are, and others might have a modest role to play. Many of us are also in contexts in which, practically speaking, this issue is closed and is not up for debate and in which the practical possibilities are very limited.
Even if it has little immediate practical impact, however, there is value in thinking through a question such as this. The authority of Scripture depends upon its intelligibility, for authority is a relation between those subject to authority and that which is authorised, not just a property of the latter. If we can discover or see afresh the intelligibility of Scripture at one point, that can help us expect to find it at other points.
Yet it is also important to consider such questions simply for themselves, even if we would rather not. Sometimes it is right to refuse to reopen practical questions that have been closed. For we have to get on with the task of acting and cannot be forever rethinking once we have decided. Nor can we, however, treat these decisions as final and sure them up against any criticism, rendering them impervious to the risk of having been mistakes. For that is to attempt to justify ourselves and our works. We must always have an in-principle willingness to re-open the questions we have decided, and to expose them to judgment. O’Donovan writes,
We must not in the supposed defence of a ‘biblical ethic’, try to close down moral discussion prescriptively, announcing that we already know what the Bible teaches and forbidding further examination. It is the characteristic ‘conservative’ temptation to erect a moment in scriptural interpretation into an unrevisable norm that will substitute, conveniently and less ambiguously, for Scripture itself. The word ‘authority’ means, quite simply, that we have to keep looking back to this source if we are to stay on the right track. Anything else is unbelief—a refusal to open ourselves to the question, What is God saying to us through his word?66
On this question, it is not only ‘conservatives’ who face this temptation. Many would rather not look again at this text and the questions that it raises. And perhaps in many places now is not the time for doing so. But that can only be a temporary judgment. For this word, too, is ‘breathed out by God’, and is ‘useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness’ (2 Tim. 3.16). We refuse to hear it and think it through afresh to our loss.
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Errington is the rector of Newtown-Erskineville Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia and the author of Every Good Path: Wisdom and Practical Reason in Christian Ethics and the Book of Proverbs (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Image: William Blake, Eve Tempted by the Serpent
- Contrast the different ways the evidence relating to named women is interpreted by Philip B. Payne and Douglas Moo in Philip B. Payne, ‘Libertarian women in Ephesus: A response to Douglas J. Moo’s article “1 Timothy 2:11–15: Meaning and Significance”’, Trinity Journal 2 (1981), pp. 190–7 and Douglas J. Moo, ‘The interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11–15: A rejoinder’, Trinity Journal 2 (1981), pp. 206–15.[↩]
- Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy (Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 2001), pp. 208–11. Page references in this section are given in parentheses.[↩]
- Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (Cascade, 2008), pp. 60–68.[↩]
- Oliver O’Donovan, Self, World, and Time, vol. 1 of Ethics as Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 78–80.[↩]
- For a similar argument, developed in slightly different ways, see also O’Donovan, Church in Crisis, pp. 69–80.[↩]
- O’Donovan, Church in Crisis, p. 71.[↩][↩]
- O’Donovan, Church in Crisis, p. 75.[↩]
- O’Donovan has expressed this point in the following way in personal correspondence:
‘The question, how may we in our context obey the injunction, is always a second question, not a question of interpreting the text, but a question of practical discipleship that follows from interpreting it. And it is for that second question that we also need some understanding of how the society we live in is formed and operates, in order to fit our obedience to it. None of this rules out the possibility that sometimes we should follow an injunction au pied de la letter. But we come to that decision on the basis of an understanding—first, of the original purpose of the injunction within the preaching of the Gospel, secondly, of our own situation and its practical possibilities. If we honour the letter of the command, it is not for the letter’s sake, but for the sake of the spirit, the evangelical intelligibility, that has been expressed by that letter and still is.‘[↩] - Philip B. Payne disagrees with this point, arguing that the relationship between vv. 11–12 and vv. 13–15 is not ‘illative’ but ‘explanatory’ (‘Libertarian women’, pp. 175–7). Verses 13–14, he argues, provide a ‘powerful illustration of how serious the consequences can be when a woman deceived by false teaching conveys it to others’ (p. 176). ‘The actual reason Paul was prohibiting women in Ephesus from teaching is not that Eve was formed after Adam or that she was deceived by Satan, but that some women in Ephesus were (or were on the verge of becoming) engaged in false teaching’ (p. 176). Although I agree with several aspects of Payne’s account, and with some of his criticisms of Moo, I do not find this argument persuasive, because it does not seem to me to do justice to the mention of Adam’s being created first, nor to the ensuing movement to verse 15. On these points, see Moo’s rejoinder: Moo, ‘The interpretation’, pp. 202–4.[↩]
- I. H. Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles (T & T Clark, 1999), p. 442.[↩]
- 1 Timothy 5.14 notably uses the cognate verb to the word in 2.15 for childbirth. Amy J. Erickson, ‘Difficult Texts: I Timothy 2:11–15’, Theology 122/3 (2019), pp. 200–3 suggests that Paul’s affirmation of childbirth here may actually have been in keeping with false teaching inspired particularly by the Artemis cult of Ephesus. However, I think this overlooks the evidence elsewhere in the epistles that suggests a negative attitude to childbirth is more likely. This position is supported by Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles (Fortress, 1972), p. 49; Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, pp. 437–43.[↩]
- I think this destabilises somewhat, though not entirely, Schreiner’s claim that for Paul ‘to select childbearing is another indication that the argument is transcultural, for childbearing is not limited to a particular culture, but is a permanent and ongoing difference between men and women’. Quoted in William B. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (Word Biblical Commentary 46, Thomas Nelson, 2000), p. 147. Childbearing is indeed transcultural, but it is not transculturally controversial.[↩]
- Kelly, quoted in Moo, ‘The interpretation’, p. 216. I largely agree with Moo’s comments about the background of this passage (though not with all his conclusions—see below) over against Payne’s complex reconstruction of the Ephesian context. See Moo, ‘The interpretation’, pp. 215–18; Payne, ‘Libertarian women’, pp. 185–90.[↩]
- Moo, ‘The Interpretation’, p. 218.[↩]
- This list is compiled from Thomas C. Oden, First and Second Timothy and Titus (Interpretation, John Knox, 1989), p. 100; Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles (Fortress, 1972), pp. 47–8; and Johnson (2001), pp. 201–2. [↩]
- See, e.g., Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, p. 444; Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, p. 112.[↩]
- For a survey of literature and other approaches than those discussed here, see Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, pp. 94–102, 143–9.[↩]
- See e.g. Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, pp. 177–81; Oden, First and Second, pp. 100–1; George W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), pp. 146–7. Marshall finds this possibility unlikely on the grounds that such an allusion would be ‘highly cryptic’ (The Pastoral Epistles, p. 469). However, his own solution seems to me equally complex, and in the context, I do not think this reference is any more cryptic than might be expected.[↩]
- Though this is contested, e.g. by Stanley E. Porter, ‘What Does It Mean to Be “Saved by Childbirth” (1 Timothy 2.15)’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 49 (1993), pp. 90–3.[↩]
- See Porter, ‘What Does It Mean’, pp. 94–5.[↩]
- See Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, p. 181. It should be noted, however, that the there are no other examples of the term τεκνογονίας being used to refer to Genesis 3.[↩]
- For a solid discussion of this interpretation, see Payne, ‘Libertarian women’, pp. 177–81. Payne sees Paul’s concern in this verse as to ‘highlight the role of woman both in the fall and in salvation’ (p. 178).[↩]
- Quoted in Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, p. 147.[↩]
- See, for example, the final saying of the Gospel of Thomas (§114): ‘Every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’ (in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library [Harper Collins, 1990], p. 138.[↩]
- For a discussion of this movement and other options for interpretation see Porter, ‘What Does It Mean’, pp. 98–9. With Porter, I do not think that ‘they’ refers to ‘her’ children.[↩]
- Compare Revelation 12.1–5 for a similar way of thinking within the Bible.[↩]
- At this point, I am parting ways with Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, who sees the significance of this verse wholly in the affirmation that women, too, will be saved, through ‘the childbirth’, i.e. the birth of the Messiah. I do not think this does justice to the specific connection between women and childbirth. It is notable that in his extensive attention to the Ephesian context, Payne gives no attention to the potential rejection of marriage and, as I have argued, childbirth.[↩]
- The instrumental sense is more likely. See Porter, ‘What Does It Mean’, pp. 96–7.[↩]
- Another possibility, less common in the literature but worthy of consideration, is that Paul intends in v. 15 an allusion not to Gen 3.15 but to Gen 3.16, with its reference to pain in childbirth. In this case, Paul would be using the phrase ‘saved through’ to refer to spiritual preservation using the imagery provided by Gen 3.16. Genesis 3.16 would be being taken as a promise, fulfilled in Christ, of how women will be saved despite the dangers and sufferings of the fallen world, epitomised by childbirth. The preposition διά clearly can have this sense of attendant circumstance, as it does in the similar phrase ‘saved…as through fire’ in 1 Cor 3.15. This reading fits fairly straightforwardly with the second major interpretative possibility discussed above and may help to address some of the objections to it, though it does need to argue its case for why Gen 3.16 generates the language of ‘salvation’ in this case. I am grateful to David Starling for bringing this possibility to my attention.[↩]
- Porter, ‘What Does It Mean’, pp. 101–2.[↩]
- Porter, ‘What Does It Mean’, pp. 102.[↩]
- Porter argues that the grammatical structure of the conditional sentence in v. 15 ought to lead us to give greater weight to the protasis, the reference to ‘they’. This may well be right; however, it seems to me that Porter under-rates the significance of the flow from v. 13–14 to v. 15 and its importance for the interpretation of the subject of σωθήσεται.[↩]
- Note the verbal links to LXX Genesis: πλάσσω, ‘formed’ is used in Gen 2.7–8, 15, 19; and both ἡ γυνὴ and ἀπατάω, ‘deceived’ are used in Gen 3.13. Moo is right, in my view, to say that, ‘What does seem clear is that Paul pays close attention to the actual wording of Genesis 3’ (‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, p. 69). Cf. Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, p. 180.[↩]
- Philo, ‘Questions and Answers on Genesis’, I.33, in The Works of Philo, trans. C. D. Yonge (Hendrickson, 1993), p. 798.[↩]
- Johnson, The First and Second, pp. 201–2.[↩]
- Though without the same ascription of blame, as Paul elsewhere ascribes blame solely to Adam; e.g., Romans 5.[↩]
- Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, p. 177.[↩]
- In my view, therefore, Moo is too confident in saying that ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Paul cites Eve’s failures as exemplary and perhaps causative of the nature of women in general and that this susceptibility to deception bars them from engaging in public teaching’ (‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, p. 70). I do not think Paul says this much. Payne criticises Moo strongly at this point, arguing, ‘If Paul intended 2:13–14 as a reason at all, it would seem to be more naturally understood as something like, “For consider what happened when Eve was deceived” than as an anthropological norm since nothing in 1 Tim 2:12–15 extrapolates from Eve’s deception to the nature of women in general’ (‘Libertarian women’, p. 176–7). In his rejoinder to Payne’s response, Moo retracts at this point, suggesting a line of interpretation more closely related to the event of the fall on the basis that ‘the difficulties with viewing v 14 as a statement about the nature of women are real’ (‘The Interpretation’, p. 204).[↩]
- Some (e.g. Johnson) think that this is a silly argument, because if priority is what matters, then the animals have priority over humans. However, I think this is ungenerous. It does not take much imagination to think that Paul must have thought that the order in which creation occurred had a specific importance in the case of the man and the woman, given the way Genesis 2 draws this out.[↩]
- Against Moo, ‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, p. 64, and ‘The Interpretation’, pp. 198–9, in which the meaning ‘silence’ is urged largely on the basis of context. I find this unpersuasive.[↩]
- On this point, see Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, pp. 177, 182, 187, 191.[↩]
- This point is acknowledged by Moo, ‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, p. 77, who notes the Talmudic contrast: ‘May the words of the Torah be burned, they should not be handed over to women’. Erickson also highlights the contrast: ‘Consider these words by the first century Rabbi Eliezer, which puts the gospel’s revolutionary perspective on the theological education of women in stark relief: “Rather should the words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman…Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her obscenity.”’ ‘Difficult Texts’, p. 203, n. 9.[↩]
- It seems unlikely that this construction constitutes a hendiadys. Cf. Moo, ‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, p. 68, n. 41.[↩]
- Moo, ‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, p. 65. Moo goes on to highlight the difference between ‘teaching’ and ‘prophecy’, pp. 74–5. See also Moo, ‘The interpretation’, pp. 200–2, 207.[↩]
- John Dickson, Hearing Her Voice: A Case for Women Giving Sermons (Zondervan, 2013).[↩]
- Dickson stresses the differences between NT teaching and contemporary preaching. Moo, by contrast, develops this point to conclude that ‘the teaching God has ordained to be done in the church remains the same’ (‘The Interpretation’, p. 220).[↩]
- Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, p. 174.[↩]
- For a survey, see Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, pp. 456–60.[↩]
- Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, p. 458.[↩]
- Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, pp. 141–2. See also Moo, ‘The Interpretation’, p. 202.[↩]
- Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, p. 459.[↩]
- Johnson, The First and Second, p. 201.[↩]
- Erickson, ‘Difficult texts’, goes much further, arguing that the construction implies that διδάσκειν and αὐθεντεῖν mutually interpret one another, so that a strong reference to false teaching is intended: ‘the situation Paul seems to address here is one in which women were weaponizing false doctrines in a misandrous manner—a situation which makes much sense given its Ephesian setting’ (p. 201).[↩]
- Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, p. 175.[↩]
- On this point, see Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, pp. 170–3, 190. Payne states, ‘Every occurrence of this verb in the LXX refers to permission for a specific situation, never for a universally applicable permission; and in the NT it very rarely occurs with reference to a continuing state and never elsewhere does so in the first person’ (p. 190). I think that Moo (‘The Interpretation’, pp. 199–200) is right that Payne overstates his argument here, but this does not make the point unimportant. As Moo states, ‘the first person present of ἐπιτρέπω allows for a limited application but does not constitute clear evidence for it’ (p. 200).[↩]
- With Payne, ‘Libertarian Women’, p. 172.[↩]
- Porter, ‘What Does It Mean’, pp. 88–89.[↩]
- A serious example of this kind of argument is found in Moo, ‘1 Timothy 2:11–15’, where the argument proceeds in two stages, attending to the ‘meaning’ and ‘significance’ of the passage. Under the heading of ‘significance’, however, the only question asked is whether there is anything ‘which would have the effect of restricting the application of Paul’s advice in 1 Timothy 2:11–15 to a particular time and place’ (p. 82). I think Moo is right to say that there is nothing that wholly restricts the relevance of the passage in this way (though I think he does underrate some of the contextual features of the passage); but I do not think this is all the work that needs to be done. We also, as O’Donovan points out, have to ask about our own time and context, and what it means to follow this train of thought in it. It is not enough to establish that the passage still applies. We also need to consider how it applies.[↩]
- See Dickson, Hearing Her Voice, chapters 1 and 2.[↩]
- Payne, I think, does not do justice to this point in his argument that the whole passage is deeply shaped by the situation in Ephesus (‘Libertarian Women’). As I have indicated above, with much of this argument I am in agreement; however, I do not think Payne succeeds in making a case that there are no wider implications in this passage for women and men. To be sure, this is in large part due to Payne’s understanding of the relationship between vv. 11–12 and vv. 13–14, on which see above.[↩]
- Moo, ‘The Interpretation’, pp. 218–21.[↩]
- O’Donovan, Church in Crisis, pp. 78–80.[↩]
- Moo, ‘1 Timothy 1:11–15’, p. 201.[↩]
- Compare Moo’s comment that hymn and theological book-writing are not included in the prohibition on ‘teaching’ (‘The Interpretation’, p. 201).[↩]
- Arguably, this point has special relevance to academic work, which can be a location from which we may hope to hear prophetic voices of various kinds.[↩]
- O’Donovan, Church in Crisis, p. 79.[↩]