1 Timothy 2:11-15
Let a wife
learn in quietness with complete submission.
And I do not allow a wife to teach nor to lord over a husband, but to be
in quietness. For Adam was formed first,
then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but
the wife, because she was deceived, has come to be in transgression. But she will be saved through the act of
childbearing, if she remains in faith and love and holiness with sobriety.
_____________________
1 Timothy
is significantly different in several ways from Paul's other letters. This is
not just a matter of style, although it is true that the Greek vocabulary and
style of 1 Timothy and Titus are significantly different from Paul's other
letters. Luke Timothy Johnson suggests Paul may have used a different
amanuensis. Some hypothesis of this sort seems necessary to explain the
differences if Paul was in fact its author.
Of course the majority of scholars think these letters are pseudonymous and
thus written long after Paul was dead. We will not link our argument to that
interpretation for several reasons. And of course, even if 1 Timothy were
pseudonymous, it is in Scripture and therefore must be treated as authoritative
in the manner of Scripture all the same.
However, the differences are real whether we go with pseudonymity or not, and
they have bearing on how we integrate 1 Timothy with the rest of Paul's
writings. No single passage of Scripture holds unfiltered authority without
taking into account the rest of Scripture. It is easy to show that everyone does this in their appropriation
the Bible, no matter how conservative or literalistic one may claim to be in
interpretation.
1. The advice to widows in 1 Timothy 5 is a good example of changes from 1
Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians, Paul very clearly prefers that widows remain
single (1 Cor. 7:8-9, 39-40). Indeed, he puts his own singleness as the ideal
for ministry "because the time has been shortened" (1 Cor. 7:29). He
is living under the expectation that Christ will return shortly and marriage is
a distraction. In 1 Thessalonians 4, he plays catch up on the topic of
resurrection--apparently he focused so much on the coming of Christ that he did
not talk much about what happens to believers who die in the meantime.
Not so in 1 Timothy. In 1 Timothy, it is only widows over sixty who are to be
put on the list of those supported by the community as "true" widows
(5:9). Assuming Paul as author, he has apparently become very pessimistic about
the ability of widows to stay single. Now younger widows are counseled to
remarry so that they do not become gossips and busybodies (5:13-14). Married
women are urged to take care of younger widows until they remarry (5:16).
Again, assuming Paul as author, what has happened here since 1 Corinthians? For
one thing, Paul does not have the same heightened sense of Christ's immanent
return that he had in 1 Corinthians. He now can distinguish "later
times" when people leave "the faith" (4:1, here using faith in a
different way than he normally does in his earlier letters). Paul himself would
belong to the early times of the faith, so he is presumably thinking of a time
after he has passed from the scene. He talks of people forbidding marriage in
those later times--an interesting change of trajectory again from 1 Corinthians
7. In 1 Cor. 7 Paul's trajectory is away from marriage. In 1 Timothy it is
toward marriage.
Assuming Paul as author, 1 Timothy 5 has all the feel of someone who has been
burned by experience. No longer optimistic about widows staying single, he
pragmatically caves in to advise them to remarry. 1 Timothy 5 is thus highly
practical and, given its obvious shift from Paul's earlier writings, cannot be
taken as absolute in character. It is rather a very pragmatic application of
principles to a particular cultural situation.
2. What we are seeing here is a move toward institutionalization. Evangelicals
usually date 1 Timothy to a time after Paul's release from
Just to mention another difference between 1 Timothy and Paul's earlier letters,
1 Timothy 1 talks about the law in an unusual way for Paul. Here the law does
not show us our need for faith in order to be justified or saved (1 Timothy
does not seem to use any of these words in the typical Pauline ways). Rather
the law largely refers to the 10 commandments and is an ethical standard that
righteous people keep and criminals don't (1:9). It is a de-Judaized law that
amounts to a moral code of behavior. In a way, such an approach seems to fit
the institutionalization of Christianity, buckling down for the long haul of
history.
The structures that 1 Timothy 3 sets down fit into this basic feel to 1
Timothy. Now we need standards for leaders, here overseers and deacons. Those
against women in ministry often note that these lists are oriented around men.
We no longer have the pneumatic world of the early Paul, where women seem to be
part of the ministerial cadre (Priscilla,
But it is equally important to realize that this is a change from the earlier
Paul. Romans 16:1 refers to Phoebe as a diakonos
of the church at Cenchrea. This is a word with a masculine ending, the same
word as 1 Tim. 3:8 and the same word used of Timothy himself in 1 Tim. 4:6.
When we look at the big picture of Paul's writings, 1 Timothy is the departure
from the norm, not the other way around. The
person who uses 1 Timothy as the lens through which to understand the rest of
Paul does great violence to the rest of Paul.
3. When we now approach the passage on women in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, we should do
so with this sense that 1 Timothy as a whole is a different bird. Assuming Paul
as author, this is still a different Paul than we have seen before. He is
preparing the church for a time when he will not be there and he is probably
creating structures that will avoid pitfalls that he has experienced.
For those evangelicals who read 1 Timothy as a pseudonymous writing, it is a
presentation of Paul's authority to a later generation where the
characteristics of the "later times" are in fact the present (4:1ff).
It is a time when all the apostles have died and free wheeling charismatic
prophesy is a major source of false teaching. It is a world where itinerant
teachers are a major problem.
In fact, we should see such false teachers as an element in the equation even
when we assume Pauline authorship (cf. 1 Tim. 6:3-10). 2 Timothy 3:6 speaks of
"weak willed women" who serve as conduits for false teaching. Perhaps
this is the type of widow that 1 Timothy 5 has in mind. A connection between
women being easily deceived (1 Tim. 2:14) and false teachers would be natural.
One might hypothesize a situation at
1 Corinthians 7 and 11 may already deal with certain wives who were causing
tensions in the Christian community because of their new found empowerment in
Christ. Were some of them wanting to use Christianity as an excuse to leave
their husbands (1 Cor. 7:10-11) or at least to stop having sex with them (1
Cor. 7:4)? Were some of them taking their veils off in worship (1 Cor. 11:5)?
The importance of wives being in subordination to their husbands becomes
institutionalized in 1 Tim. 2:9-15. These verses are usually translated as
"women" rather than "wives," but the overall sense of 1
Timothy pushes us to see wives primarily in view. Their primary identity in the
world of 1 Timothy is formulated in relation to a husband. The word gyne can mean either, but the cultural
assumption here clearly pushes us away from seeing a woman having significant
identity independent of a man.
Further, the argument of 2:13-15 presupposes a married woman. A wife is not to
teach a husband because of the relationship between Adam and Eve--a
husband-wife pair. And the woman will be saved from transgression through
childbearing--obviously a wife in view here. I therefore believe the current
majority skews this passage when they treat it primarily in terms of
male-female relationships in general. It is woman-as-wifed who is primarily in
view, since this is how 1 Timothy conceptualizes woman.
The proper woman/wife thus looks like the person of 1:9-10. The proper woman/wife
learns in quietness and submission. And the proper woman/wife does not teach
her husband. She certainly does not take the authoritative role. Apparently
gone are the days when a Priscilla might teach an Apollos (Acts 18:26).
Assuming Pauline authorship, Paul has apparently learned better. But the variance between Paul's earlier context and 1
Timothy shows that these structures cannot be timeless--Paul himself apparently
has not always followed them. They have to be a concession to
pragmatics.
4. The arguments used to substantiate these roles for husband and wife are the
creational order of Adam and Eve and Eve's propensity to be deceived. Here we
should note that biblical arguments are often as inculturated as biblical
injunctions are. Who today would put speckled rods in front of animals in the
process of giving birth to try to result in speckled offspring (Gen. 30:37-43)?
And how does the fact that God is one imply that the mediation of angels makes
the law inferior to Christ (Gal. 3:19-20)?
But we do not wish to link the women in ministry issue with the question of
male-headship. Is it possible for a wife to be a minister without "taking
authority over her husband"? Certainly--especially in our culture even if
it was far more difficult in theirs! The priority of Adam over Eve can be
retained with a female minister even if one does not see husband-headship as a
cultural matter.
The question of wives teaching is slightly different. Here 1 Timothy 2:14
argues from the fact that Eve rather than Adam was the one deceived. The logic
seems to be that women are more easily deceived than men and thus that they
should not instruct men.
But clearly this is not always
true. We mentioned in our post on 1 Corinthians that patriarchal
cultures--including the biblical culture--generally had room for the woman who
was "male-like" in her leadership. We would thus go against the
precedent of the rest of Scripture to make this an exceptionless principle
anyway.
Also, the argument in 1 Tim. 2:14-15 is blasphemous if we take it too strongly.
"The woman, having been deceived, has come to be in transgression. But she will be saved through childbearing if
they remain in faith and love
and holiness with sobriety." The picture is one of all women being in a state
of transgression entered into by Eve (perfect tense), a state from which
childbearing "saves" them.
Clearly this is an allusion to the consequences of Eve's sin in Genesis 3:16,
which included subordination to her husband and painful childbirth. Painful
childbirth is obviously here to stay until the eschaton, and we can lightly
take 1 Timothy 2:14-15 as an allusion to it. But we cannot take the continuance in transgression very strongly at all,
for Christ atoned for all sins,
including the sins of Eve. To suggest anything otherwise is blasphemy! It is an
offence to Christ to locate women in any particular role as a result of Eve's
transgression!
Assuming Pauline authorship, here we might note that Hebrews goes one step
further than the rest of the NT in the way it considers Christ's atonement to
be universal and trans-temporal. Acts depicts Paul going to offer a sacrifice
even near the end of his ministry (Acts 21:26). To the degree to which the
transgression of Eve might stand behind the logic of 1 Tim. 2:14-15, to that
extent this injunction is not as far along in the flow of revelation as
Hebrews.
And the deceivability of Eve seems to
be the primary typos behind women/wives not teaching. This fact
seriously locates this particular structure before Christ. Women cannot be held
accountable for the sins of Eve ("the soul that sinneth, it shall die"--not the soul of all
her descendants). To the extent to which women are not easily deceived, to that
extent there is no reasonable prohibition against them being teachers. And
clearly women are far more educated today than they were in the time of Paul.
In that light, the argument of 1 Timothy 2 appears strongly like a number of
other arguments in Scripture with clear cultural characteristics. As speckled
rods don't make cows have speckled calves, Eve's gullibility does not make all
women gullible. Those who mindlessly apply this Scripture to today would appear
to be the ones who easily misunderstand and shouldn't be teachers!
Conclusion
The purpose of this page has primarily been to interpret and locate 1 Timothy.
The picture that emerges is one in which Paul (or the heirs of Paul) is
shifting from a more charismatic and pneumatic environment where women have few
spiritual boundaries to one where the church is buckling down for the long
haul. 1 Timothy is a departure in several ways from the
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