You just have to love Paul sometimes. In the middle of a letter to Timothy, he just lays down a seriously difficult passage to interpret. It isn’t even the main point of that part of the letter. He wants to give Timothy qualifications for church leaders, and so he begins to describe the type of man Timothy should be looking for. As almost an aside, he says, “By the way, I don’t allow women to teach or have authority over men.” (Sean Ellis paraphrase version) As if that weren’t enough fun, he throws in “Adam was not deceived but Eve was”. What??!! That’s right, for Top Real Bible Questions, we have two doozies: should women be allowed to teach in the church, followed up by headship in marriage.
I would rather talk about Israel, end times, or perhaps gnaw my hand off to escape a bear trap rather than address women’s issues on a public blog. However, these are top issues, so to avoid them would only be preparing me to run for president of the United States (I can explain that later). As always, I will try to present main views and at least expose you to key Scriptures used to support them. Let me say this first though, that throughout church history, the treatment of women has been overall a seriously poor example of the life and teachings of Jesus. Many of the advances and revolutionary ideas put forth by Jesus and carried out by the early church, were reversed by church leaders (aka men) over the following centuries. Only in modern times have we seen the reversal of this in western culture, and hopefully a global trend toward equal rights and treatment for all women. In other words, I know I am not speaking into a vacuum, but there is much emotion attached to these issues.
What we must be careful of is not swinging to far to the other side of the issue because of this pathetic past. It isn’t that I am looking for “balance” in women’s issues, but rather for Biblical truth. There such a thing as radical feminism, that shouldn’t be a shock to you, and it isn’t always Biblically based. In trying to correct the doctrine of the church, some denominations have overshot the Biblical foundations all the way to stating that there are absolutely no difference in the way God has made man and woman (physiology excluded obviously!).
We will start by looking at 1 Timothy 2:8-15, where Paul begins by encouraging men to pray and for women to be modest and focused on good works instead of good looks. So far, we are with Paul. Then, Paul says in verse 11, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.” All the men said, “Amen”, until their wives or girlfriends slapped them in the head, and then they said, “Uh, hey Paul, what do you mean by that?” To us in modern times, we debate on the “how” women are to learn, “quietly with all submissiveness” and miss the cultural context. In New Testament times, most women weren’t educated. Men saw that as a waste of time and effort. Women were to produce children, care for children, or worse were seen as merely possessions to show off or have sex with. This was not just the view in Gentile culture, but in Jewish culture as well.
A famous Rabbinical quote of this time is a prayer that Jewish men would say each morning. “Thank you God that I am not a dog, a Gentile, or a woman.” As to educating woman in the Torah, another Rabbi stated, “Better that the law be burned than to be taught to a woman.” Romans and Greeks weren’t any different in their mindset. Socrates stated that women were halfway between men and animals. Lucius Valerius said, “Why should men grudge women their ornaments and dress? Women cannot hold positions of office or priesthood, or gain triumphs; they have no public occupations. What can they do but devote their time to adornment and dress?” From this understanding, Paul’s view was radical, and the part of his sentence they would have been stuck on was “Let a woman learn”, not the “how” part. Paul is bringing the revolution of the Gospel into their views on educating women AT ALL.
This is a classic example of the power of historical background in understanding Scripture. What could be seen as offensive by women in modern times, was seen as a huge blessing and revolution to women in Paul’s day. By adding “quietly in submission”, I believe Paul was encouraging women not to “go crazy” with their new freedoms, but to use them within their marital relationship as set forth in other passages (which we will look at in the headship posts). You can imagine that with increased freedom, Christian women could be tempted to go in the direction that we saw in the 1970’s radical feminism, which part of eventually brought harm into marriage and the family structure.
In our next post, we will get into the meat of the passage and deal with Paul’s statement on teaching, authority, and his interesting take on the Fall. Our first Biblical principle is now clear, women have the right and should be educated in Christianity, immediately creating a contrast with Islam and other religions. Maybe I should stop here where I am relatively safe? Nah.
The Bible Nerd 