When I last wrote I planned this follow up for the next day. Please forgive the gap. I find anything requiring thought a major challenge for me and I wanted to get this right rather than doing it quickly. It is too important. I introduced today’s post with an explanation of how the time came when I needed to study the question of what roles are legitimate for a woman to take within the church and whether there are any that are not. I needed to know where to draw the line, what is the truth and not just what was I comfortable with or what had my church background instilled in me. Too often we can come to the Bible with our own ideas of what is and is not acceptable and when that is not in clear accordance with the words of Scripture we are tempted to either change those words to fit more easily or reject the Bible’s authority itself. I want to write on the subject of the authority of the Bible but that will need to be a separate post so for the purposes of today I am assuming the Bible to be the inerrant, infallible and authoritive Word of God in its original languages and that the form we have it today can be relied upon to guide us by the working of the Holy Spirit.
So the question is…what exactly DOES the Bible say on this issue? My first challenge was my participation in prison ministry. I had begun as a member of the music team but my passion for the ministry had led to more and more involvement until I was leading the team and putting together our presentations/services but still asking men to give the message. I don’t remember the exact circumstances where this changed but I know I wrestled with whether it would be OK for me to be the speaker. My conclusion at the time was to distinguish between the terms ‘preach’ and ‘teach’ and understood the term ‘preaching’ to be limited to telling the gospel message, to evangelising/witnessing to unbelievers in the hope/prayer that they may see the truth of their sinful condition, the peril that puts them in and the wonderful gift of salvation God offers through His sacrifice.
This is what the prison visits were all about and the Great Commission was given to all believers, male and female alike (Mark 16:15, Rom 10:14-15) and, as such, I concluded that this role was one that I was able to do under the authority of Christ and with His help. I was also taking part as a representative of the church I was a member of and considered what I was doing as being under the headship of the male leadership of that church. I also should note that preaching and teaching are often found together in Scripture with both Jesus and Paul considered preacher-teachers (Luke 20:1, 2 Tim 1:11), for example, but they are still listed as two different activities. Preaching has an unsaved audience and Teaching is to God’s children. Over the following few years it appeared that God blessed my attempts to serve Him in this way and while this is not a conclusive argument for the truth of anything, it was encouraging for me to see the way God worked through my obedience to serve Him in this way.
Having moved away from my comfort zone and background teaching in this area, did the same apply in the new circumstance of being asked to take a service? The key verse in question is 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet.” The context is found primarily (though not entirely) in the following 2 verses: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” The word ‘for’ at the beginning of verse 13 clearly links it as the reasoning for the instructions g iven in verse 12. I do not believe in treating the Bible as a ‘pick and mix’ sweet(candy) store. Either the whole thing is the Word of God or not and I cannot just take the bits I like and leave the bits I don’t like or don’t understand, although many people do exactly that!
For me there were several aspects of the verse I needed to research…1) “I do not permit”…does that mean it was a personal issue for Paul rather than an authoritive scriptural command? 2)Was this an example of a cultural based instruction where the principles still apply but not necessarily the specific command? and 3) What is meant by the word ‘teach’? This post is not intended to cover every possible objection raised to the traditional understanding of this verse so I am knowingly omitting those arguments I never found persuasive enough to challenge my understanding on this issue. I am trying to limit this to the research I did to learn what God wants me to do and not to do within my own context. After all, there are plenty of wiser folk than me who have written on the subject for anyone who wants to research further. I can give some resource suggestions if anyone wants them.
So my first question was whether the phrasing of the verse indicated it was a personal prohibition that Paul insisted on, probably due to the culture and/or education levels of the women of the time, or whether it was intended to stand as a command from God that would still apply to me today. One of the objections I didn’t wrestle with but is relevant is whether Paul’s writings are even Scripture. Was Paul being anti-women and not speaking with God’s authority here? I believe the evidence is strongly against these latter interpretations and they tend to represent ways to try and change teaching we find unpalatable. I do not want to be so arrogant as to sit above Scripture and judge it but rather to let it say what is says and change me accordingly. When I take my preconceived ideas and beliefs and force Scripture to be changed rather than my ideas and beliefs then I am stating that my limited knowledge and intellect is more superior to God’s! 1 Thess 4:8 confirms that rejecting what Paul says is not rejecting man but the word of God Himself. In Galatians 1:8-9 we learn that to change the message from God then we are cursed and in v11-12 Paul describes how he did not receive his words from any other man or his own learning but from Jesus Christ Himself.
Verses like 1 Corinthians 2:13 (“and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual”), 1 Corinthians 14:37 (“…the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.”) and 1 Thessalonians 2:13 (“…when you received the word of God, which you heard from us (Paul & companions), you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”) all demonstrate that Paul was speaking with the authority of God. Paul was not alone in claiming his words were from God and carried the weight of the Almighty’s authority behind them. The apostle Peter, for example, in 2 Pet 3:16, called Paul’s writing as “Scripture”.
So, I concluded that Paul’s words were intended to be taken with the authority of God and not his own personal opinion so the question becomes whether it was a temporary cultural restriction or a longer term one and this is where the reasons given are so important. As I read it in context and researched about it, it became clear to me that Paul was not limiting this restriction in any way but instead based it on the creation and the fall, both of which could not be less culturally-conditioned. There was no culture yet at creation and what culture existed by the fall had been perfect! If it had been a personal prohibition or one based on local circumstances then there would be some indication of this in the reason given or maybe no reason would have been given at all.
It is often wrongly assumed that women in the ancient world were all uneducated and ignorant. This is not true. The skills of literacy and therefore the ability to read and study Scripture were available to both men and women. Ephesus, the church the letter to Timothy was first written to, was a cultural centre with many very well-educated women. One such example, Priscilla, knew scripture well enough to help instruct Apollos in A.D.51 (see Acts 18:26) and then sat under a further 3 years of Paul’s direct teaching along with the rest of the Ephesus church (Acts20:27; onwards from v31 and 1 Corinthians 16:19). It is almost certain she would not have been the only woman to be equally or even more educated in that church at that time. 1 Timothy was written about 14 years after Priscilla had helped educate Apollos but Paul does not make any exceptions to allow her or any of the educated women to teach men in the public assembly of the church. The reason being that the prohibition had nothing to do with women’s abilities or her education or her value. Paul was clear elsewhere of the equality of women, something very counter the culture of the time so the argument he was anti-women does not hold up to any kind of scrutiny either (Gal 3:28). The reason stated was the order of creation and that has not and cannot ever change.
So it seems clear that Paul intended the command to be applied throughout the church and was not limited to his era but exactly what is being restricted? What does he mean by the word ‘teach’? In English we can often misunderstand what is meant by a particular phrase (or verse) because of the diverse meanings associated with many words. It is often that by going back to the original language that a whole new dimension of meaning can be added and sometimes the entire meaning can be understood differently. Teaching, in it’s general form means the imparting of knowledge to another. I am ‘teaching’ my carer when I explain how to change over the oxygen concentrator batteries or anything else and in this way teaching happens in communication between us all of the time. It would not be practical to limit this even if Paul had wanted to. I will cover what he meant by women remaining “quiet” at the end of 1 Tim 2:12 in a separate shorter post very soon. For now it is worth noting that verses like 1 Corinthians 11:5 demonstrate that Paul clearly did not object to women taking an active part in non-authority related activities in the church services including praying and prophesying (what we would call giving a ‘testimony’ in today’s church life).
Paul not only allowed women to participate in services but actively encouraged women to teach! (Jer 9:20; Titus 2:3). So if teaching in it’s broad sense was not intended here, what DID Paul mean? The Greek word translated as ‘teach’ here is (didaskelv) and together with its “cognate nouns teaching (didaskalia) and teacher (didaskalos) are used in the New Testament mainly to denote the careful transmission of the tradition concerning Jesus Christ and the authoritative proclamation of God’s will to believers in light of that tradition (see especially 1 Tim 4:11 “Command and teach these things;” 2 Tim 2:2; Acts 2:42; Rom 12:7)…In the pastoral epistles, teaching always has this restricted sense of authoritative doctrinal instruction.”*1
Paul gave this instruction within the context of directions for the assembled church (see verses 8-9) and lead into the qualifications for church leadership. The authoritive teaching and any activity exercising authority in the assembled church “are the functions that are carried out by the elders of the church, and especially by what we know as a pastor in contemporary church situations. It is specifically these functions unique to elders that Paul prohibits for women in the church.”*2. The issue is consistently presented in Scripture as an issue of authority not of equality, education, culture or value. Historically too many men individually and churches as communities have at best misunderstood the issues of authority and submission and at times this has even been abusive. There have also been many times when women have stepped forward or even been pushed forward because of the lack of men stepping up. As a result this whole concept has a bad taste for a lot of people. However, the fact sinful humans have corrupted what God intends as a good thing is a common issue and does not change the essential rightness of the original design.
As I have mentioned in a previous post “Who Is My Manager?” it would be chaos if every player on a football team decided to trust their own desires and understanding rather than to submit to the direction of a Manager who could see the whole picture. Some kind of authority structure is necessary to prevent anarchy and a total breakdown of society. In secular society we have rules/laws and people to enforce them who are in authority over us. It is no coincidence that as the authority of teaching staff has been eroded in our schools that the behaviour and achievement levels have plummeted. We need rules and we need an authority structure in order to function as any kind of community.
It is equally vital that we have this authority structure within our churches but we can follow God’s modelling of how to do this to the benefit of all not just one particular group, male or female. In His infinite wisdom God chose to create Adam first and to take Eve from his side to be his equal companion but in a supportive role with Adam in the leadership position. He chose to make this a pattern throughout His word that man would be the head of the home with women submitting to his servant leadership and the local church would be an extension of this with male leaders but those leaders, just as the man within the home, are subject themselves to submission to Jesus the Head of the Church.
As already mentioned, submission (in particular) has gained a bad name in our time for a number of reasons including so many abuses of their authority by male leaders. However, submission no more means becoming a doormat than being the ‘head’ means man can become a dictator. I’m tempted to divert more on this subject but will save for another (shorter!) post. For now I want to conclude by summarising what I believe all this means for the original question.
Paul was supportive of women’s education and valued the roles of a number of women in his time that, together with His other writing encouraging women to participate in services and even to teach, show this was not Paul being ‘anti-women’. There is also ample evidence that Paul was writing under the direction and with the authority of Almighty God Himself. So whatever He is saying, it applies just as much to me in 2016 as it did to Priscilla in about A.D.67. The instruction is given in the context of what is permitted for the gathering of the church assembly (what most of us would now consider Sunday Services) and I see no reason to expand the limitation to other times when men and women meet together and the Bible is discussed unless it contravenes the second part of the prohibition.
The meaning of ‘teach’ here seems to be a very specific type of authoritive teaching rather than general imparting of information. It is being God’s mouthpiece declaring what His Word says and what God wants that congregation to do about it. It refers to what is most commonly known as expository teaching…taking a portion of a Scripture and delivering it to the church with the authority of the One who wrote it. It is an example, as are the restrictions on women being elders and pastors that carry on from this section in chapter 3 of the first letter to Timothy, of the order of authority established in Genesis being worked out for the new local churches that were being established with young Timothy being in charge of one of these. It was this authority structure that some women wanted to undermine and that Paul was speaking out about.
So, my view is that God created men and women equal. Both genders are capable, have numerous gifts and talents as well\ as wisdom and understanding and both are sinners. Being created equal is not equal to being created the same! We are incredibly diverse as a human race and this is one of the ways we reflect an Almighty God. It has been said that I have a gift for teaching but God gives His children gifts for the building up of the church and never for undermining anything He said in His Word. So my teaching gift is for use in the church but does not have to imply I should be a pastor or stand in the role of teaching Sunday services. There are a number of other ways my teaching gift can be used from teaching women’s Bible studies and children’s Sunday school through to counselling.
I believe God has established the authority structure as man is head of woman and God is head of man and I believe that I, as a woman, should not do (or covet!) anything that undermines this in any way. This means that I do not believe Scripture supports women as elders or pastors (and the equivalent in other forms of church government) and that expository teaching in a Sunday service (or equivalent gathering of the full congregation for communal worship and teaching) is also forbidden. However I also believe that there have been many roles denied women in a number of churches where there is no biblical justification for the limitations. More on several of these issues in the coming days and weeks as I have the ability to write. However, ultimately, male or female we are called to work together in love, seeking not our own glory or position but to bring glory to God.
“Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honour.” Romans 12:10 (ESV)
*1. p188 in ‘Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood – A Response To Evangelical Feminism’ edited by John Piper & Wayne Grudem. Quote is from the essay by Douglas Moo entitled, ‘What does it mean not to teach or to have authority over men?’ Published by Crossway Books
*2. p938 in ‘Systematic Theology’ by Wayne Grudem, published by Zondervan
Choosing 2 Praise 