Note: This is the concluding piece in a dialogue of essays devoted to interpreting 1 Timothy 2:11–15 and examining the text’s ethical claims upon the church. See Andrew Errington’s opening essay, “The Logic and Practical Implications of 1 Timothy 2:11–15,” and Blake Johnson’s response, “Reading and Applying 1 Timothy 2:11–15 from A to Z: A Liturgical Approach.”
Andrew Errington
Toward the end of Paul’s first letter to Timothy, the apostle urges his beloved co-worker to beware of those with ‘a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words’. For ‘from these’, he writes, ‘come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling’ (1 Tim 6.4 NRSV).
I am very grateful that Blake Johnson’s response to my essay on 1 Timothy 2 shows no signs of such craving but instead thoughtfully and graciously highlights how attention to the liturgical character of created order might set us on a ‘different path’ in interpreting and applying this text today. ‘Adam’s priority’, he suggests, ‘is liturgical’, and he goes on to conclude that Paul’s words must therefore be taken as requiring a permanent restriction of leadership to men within the context of gathered worship, specifically, ‘when the church comes together around the Eucharistic celebration’.
In some ways, the path Johnson takes is not as different from my own as he appears to suggest. Certainly we are not separated by a desire to take seriously the notion of created order. As I hope my original essay makes clear, I do think Paul appeals to created order, and I don’t think this appeal can be dismissed by an appeal to the specific situation. (I am not sure whether Johnson includes me among those ‘interpreters who tend to see the citation of creation as only an illustration of a local problem’; but I want to be clear that this is not my view!) The final section of my essay insists that faithfulness to this text involves bearing witness to Adam’s having been first-created.
My suspicion is that the kind of awareness of the liturgical character of created order that Johnson commends can enrich our understanding of this primacy of Adam. I am not yet convinced that this reference to Adam supports a conception of Christian ministry in priestly terms in the way Johnson outlines. Liturgical and cultic imagery is not prominent in the passage itself, or in the descriptions of elders and deacons in chapter three, and the New Testament problematises the category of ‘priest’ by seeing it as a role decisively fulfilled by Christ and therefore extended to all believers. Nevertheless, I find quite persuasive Johnson’s argument that Paul’s appeal to Adam’s being created first must carry with it a sense of Adam’s priestly role. I think that this may indeed fill out our understanding of why some form of male primacy is important; and I’m grateful to Johnson for this line of thinking.
The main aim of my essay, however, is to argue that the movement to practical conclusions and policies of action cannot be achieved merely by clarifying the nature of the principles involved. The task, I argued following O’Donovan, is not merely to work out whether the passage is grounded in creation and so remains normative but to discern how its normativity ought to function in our context.
I maintain that with this passage we are thrust into an unavoidable and tricky task of discerning how we may be faithful to the movement of thought we see here from convictions about creation and the fall to conclusions in practice. I think the form of Paul’s words, ‘I am not giving permission’ makes this all the more apparent. (In answer to Johnson’s initial question about how else, if Paul had wanted to make a universal pronouncement, he might have done so, I would say that he could easily have used an imperative: ‘Do not permit!’ or ‘You shall not permit!’ Even then, the task of discernment would still be necessary, though it would take a different form.)
For this reason, the recognition that Paul’s reference to Adam’s having been created first summons up a liturgically encoded created order is not sufficient to decide the questions we have to ask in seeking obedience to this text. We have to ask how this aspect of Paul’s argument works alongside its other aspects and why it leads to the conclusions it does in his context, and then how we may follow this train of thought in our own time.
It seems to me that the two biggest challenges in following these questions through are, first, to take stock of the range of complex factors Paul’s argument contains without prematurely seizing on one factor as decisive, and second, to take seriously the realities of our own time and how they may bear upon our obedience. Understandably, given the length of my essay and Johnson’s desire to set out his own account of how we should receive this text, his response engages with only some of my arguments on each front. Yet some of the other considerations in my essay are in my view quite critical. These include the nature of Paul’s arguments about the women being ‘saved through childbearing’, which are a key point of consideration when I turn to the question of application and the particularities of our context.
If I were to respond to the wise reminder at the end of Johnson’s paper that we should tread carefully when we begin to tread outside the ‘Great Tradition’, this is where I would begin. I have moved (far too cautiously for some!) towards a less traditional position because I am persuaded that in our time this is the direction that obedience to this Scripture as a whole ought to lead us.
Attempting to take in both the exegetical and hermeneutical questions made my essay ponderous. Yet I think that too often one or the other aspect is overlooked, and so I am very grateful to the Cateclesia Institute for making it possible. If this has indeed produced something that, as Johnson puts it, ‘slows us down and avoids reductionistic applications’, then I am very glad. I hope it will stimulate further discussion and look forward to learning from this, as the Lord permits.
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: Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man