I know this is too long for a blog post, but when has that stopped me before? Some recent thoughts on the importance of 1 Tim. 2 and women in ministry:
First Timothy 2:9-15 is the lynchpin passage for the position that leadership and teaching in the church are charges entrusted to men alone. At the seminary where I received my masters degree, the lecture on women in the church began with a serial elimination of the relevance of all other passages in the New Testament, imploring us to recognize that 1 Timothy 2 is the decisive statement of the issue. The passage in question reads as follows:
8I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; 9also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, 10but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. 11Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. 12I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. (NRSV)
The heart of this passage is v. 12: “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” As to this prohibition, we should be clear as to how absolute it is. Some, feeling the tensions between this passage and others, have suggested that women may teach in public worship (for example), so long as they are not teaching under their own authority but rather under the authority of the men who comprise the church’s leadership. They combine “teach or exercise authority” such that it now means “authoritative teaching” or “teaching on her own authority.” But this is not what the passage states. The contrast the passage establishes is between teaching or remaining silent, not between teaching authoritatively or teaching non-authoritatively.
The next important element to explore is the way that this restriction is tied to the narrative of creation and fall from Genesis 2-3. It seems to imply that what went wrong in humanity’s rebellion against God was an upending of the order of creation. Adam was created first, but the woman chose to listen to someone else. The priority of Adam in creation seems to imply that his superiority to Eve includes being less prone to deception: “the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” The implication is clear: women should not teach now in the church because, being more prone to deception, their teaching would lead not only themselves but the entire church into transgression. This reinforces the point that the mandate of this passage is not simply to keep women from “authoritative teaching”, but from all teaching.
It is important to paint this passage with the stark colors that it demands because it is only then that we can see that it stands in direct tension with the actual practice of the early church as evidenced in numerous places, including Paul’s own letters. Once we allow for the softening of its force such that teaching is o.k., so long as it is under the authority of the male leadership, we blind ourselves to the contradiction it presents to the presumption of women’s full participation in worship and the life of the church visible in passages such as 1 Corinthians 11 and Romans 16. It is, in fact, counter-evidence which, if vindicated, would call not only modern ordination of women into question but also the ancient practice of the apostles’ churches and fellow workers.
But we need to say more about this passage as well. Because not only does the ancient church serve as a living counter-point to this passage of scripture, almost every modern-day church does as well—even those who cling to the prohibition of women teaching on the basis of a commitment to the Bible as the inerrant word of God. To see how this is so, let’s broaden our vision to the other commands contained in this paragraph.
The first command mandates that women dress simply, adorning themselves with good works rather than external adornment: “women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God” (verses 9-10). My question for those who base their views of women in church leadership on verses 11-14 is whether or not they also enforce verses 9-10: Do you forbid people from dressing up to come to church on Sunday? Do you forbid your women from braiding or otherwise styling their hair? Do you forbid women from wearing a gold necklace or a diamond ring? With rare exception (such as Amish communities), the answers are no. We recognize that these are culturally or temporally bound restrictions, and that there might be other considerations (such as honoring God in worship) that might pull a community in a very different direction. But such concessions to our own cultural context begin to peel away the veneer of “obeying the Bible” as the reason for enforcing the subsequent verses. Are the mandates about dress not in the very same paragraph? Are they not set down to regulate the very same ecclesiastical context of worship? Why are we happy to enforce restrictions on teaching but not on dress?
Another set of related questions arises when we keep reading beyond the Adam and Eve allusion. The final verse of the paragraph states that the woman (Eve? all women?) will be saved through childbearing if they (all women?) continue in faith and love and holiness. The typical meaning of “through” in the Greek is “by means of.” Again we are face-to-face with a verse that not even the most biblically-adherent incorporate into their theology. Nobody, in short, thinks that women will be saved only if they add “having babies” to the standard markers of faith, love, and holiness.
Some have attempted to find in this verse a continuing allusion to the fall narrative, in which Eve is told that her seed will bruise the head of the serpent. This is unlikely, however. The verse in 1 Timothy looks at the action of women in the present day church (“they continue in faith…”), and “childbearing” is not well-suited to evoke an allusion to “see” from Genesis 3.
A more likely possibility is that the verse evokes the curse of pain in childbirth (Genesis 3:16). It is possible that “saved through childbearing” means something akin to “preserved through the act of bearing of children.” But again, this is unlikely both due to the translational difficulties and due to the context of 1 Timothy 2.
Reading through various commentators’ attempts to make sense of this admittedly difficult verse, I am struck by the irony that conservative scholars (e.g., Moo) reject the idea that the verse refers to how women obtain salvation simply due to the fact that this would contradict other passages of scripture. And yet, they are not willing to apply the same logic to verses 11-14!
1 Timothy 2:9-15 contains three statements about the activities of women in the church: (1) they are to dress plainly; (2) they are to remain silent; and (3) they will be saved by having children. The vast preponderance of the church has, rightly, rejected (1). The near entirety of the church has rejected (3). And they were right to do both of these. But having done so, it has evacuated any appeal to “submitting to scripture” as the reason for continuing to enforce (2).
