If we only had 1 Timothy and not Paul’s letters or Acts, we would have a very different view of whether women should be teachers or not. As you read 1 Timothy, Paul doesn’t mix his words or seem unclear when he talks about women not teaching or having authority. I have heard some fancy explanations to try to take the force of the words away, but to be honest, they are pretty lame. You have to stretch and contort so much to explain it away, that Ockham’s razor cuts you to pieces. Luckily, Paul wrote quite a few other letters, and we know more about his life from Acts.
To answer the question on women teachers, we must begin by looking at these other passages first. Did Paul have female coworkers in missions? Absolutely. In Romans 16:1-2, Paul introduces the Romans to a woman named Phoebe, as she is likely the one who carried the letter from Paul to Rome. Once there, Paul urges them to “welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well”. In verse 1, he calls her a “deaconess”, although a few male dominated translations try to just use the Greek definition of the title and call her merely a “servant”. This sounds like more than just a dish washer or letter carrier, but a coworker of Paul’s who was active in ministry. A few verses down in 16:3, Paul greets “Prisca and Aquila” (known elsewhere as Priscilla) and says “all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks for them”. In Acts 18:26, BOTH Priscilla and Aquila take Apollos aside and TEACH him more about Christianity.
We haven’t even exhausted the examples of Romans yet as in verse 7, Paul mentions “Adronicus and Junia” and then seems to imply they are both known as “apostles” (wording is unclear, but their ministry is not). I think you get the point of where I am going, that Paul’s letters and Acts show women in ministry and teaching, even though this was unheard of in Judaism, and rare outside of goddess worship among the Gentiles. True, many of the women he mentions are married, and some might argue they are doing ministry under the covering of their husbands, but that doesn’t explain Phoebe, Euodia and Syntyche (Philip. 4:2), or Nympha (Col. 4:15). We have no listing of their husband’s names or whether they even had one. Whatever we say about 1 Timothy, it must fit with all these other examples somehow.
The easiest way to bring these passage in line with Paul’s other writings is to say that Paul’s rule on women not teaching was only for this specific church that Timothy was working at (there may have been other churches he gave this rule to, but this is the only one we know about). Why would Paul do that to this one church? Timothy was over the church of Ephesus when Paul writes to him (1 Timothy 1:3). The main divinity of the city was the goddess of fertility and love known as Artemis (a mother earth goddess). Women were the primary ones working as priestesses in this temple, and their beliefs about religion and women were skewed because of this. Women were seen as a way to connect to the gods through having sex with them or hearing them speak in tongues while in an ecstatic state. Therefore, women were the source of revelation and knowledge from the goddess. Recall also that women were not educated, and we begin to understand why Paul is barring them from teaching at this point.
He does start the process of moving them away from this by allowing them to “learn at home”, studying the Scriptures to erase these wrong concepts of their place in religion. This background also explains why Paul bring up the story of the Fall. Women and the mother earth goddess are NOT the sources of all wisdom and spiritual revelation. Paul reminds them that the true story of the Fall began with Eve listening to the serpent and then attempting to persuade Adam to eat. This is NOT absolving Adam of guilt, as Romans 5 uses Adam, not Eve, as the one to contrast with Jesus. BOTH are guilty, but Paul had to correct the notion that women were the to “righteous” ones who gave out knowledge. The ugly truth is that Eve craved knowledge for herself and ate of the fruit, as did Adam. (a Gnostic writing has been discovered dating to the 2nd century in which Eve is described as the hero who gave Adam knowledge and freed him from the ignorance of the creator God)
In verse 15, when Paul says that women are “saved through childbirth”, we again interpret the difficult passage with other clear ones. Paul maintains that we are all saved by FAITH alone (Galatians 3:26-29) and you don’t have to have faith and crank out a baby just because you are female. Paul instead is continuing with the story of the Fall and God’s redemptive plan in Genesis 3:15, as the “offspring” of the woman will “crush the head of the serpent”. In Galatians 3:16, Paul explains that the offspring is Jesus, and that means His death crushed the serpent (Satan, sin, and death).
Where does this leave us with the authority issue then? Are there other passages where Paul allows a woman to have authority over a man? what about women pastors? I think we have had enough excitement for one post. I also can’t really answer that question without answering the next Top Real Bible Question: is there headship in marriage? what is headship anyway???
The Bible Nerd 