The Message of God's Kingdom: Foundational Equality

Luke 3:4-6 tells of how the ministry of Jesus began with the appearance of John the Baptist, preaching a message from Isaiah 40:4:

A voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
And all mankind will see God’s salvation.'

This passage speaks in terms of land, roads and paths as a metaphor for God's salvation. God will fill up the low places and bring down the high places, straighten the crooked and smooth the rough. It envisions the coming God's salvation (the coming of the Messiah which John was proclaiming) in terms of a great leveling. Applying the metaphor to humanity, then:  the message is that human differences in status, one higher and one lower, will no longer matter. Paul speaks of the same sort of thing in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29: "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him."

And this isn't just about everyone being the same in what we call "spiritual salvation" -- being saved by grace through faith. Joel prophesied this in Joel 2:28-29 (which Peter then preached in Acts 2:16-21 as having been fulfilled):

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

Not just in salvation, but in the pouring out of the Spirit, God promises to bless all His people.  "There is no favoritism with God," says Ephesians 6:9 (which, as Retha over at Biblical Personhood so beautifully points out, is the concluding sentence of Paul's household codes in Ephesians, showing us that Paul was teaching his readers how to work within a human system of favoritism, not God's).

In the Old Covenant, God set aside one people, then one family out of one tribe of those people for priesthood, and another family out of another tribe of those people for kingship.  But now we are in the New Covenant.  Members of every tribe and language and people and nation are made into "a kingdom and priests to serve our God."  Revelation 5:9-10.  Peter said in Acts 10:34, after God had poured out His Spirit on Gentiles, "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right."

Paul states this as a foundational truth of the Kingdom of God in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17: "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view [other translations say, "according to the flesh"].  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.  The old is gone, the new is here!"  Paul tells the Galatians that he "opposed [Peter] to his face. . . for before certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles.  But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles. . . ." (Galatians 2:11-12).  Peter was regarding both the Gentiles and himself from a worldly point of view, or according to the flesh.

But Paul explains later in the same letter, "So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. . . there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. . . . [W]hen the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship."  Galatians 3:28-4:5  A footnote in my Bible adds, "The Greek word for adoption to sonship is a legal term referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture."  Paul is saying that all who are in Christ Jesus-- Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female-- have received the same promise of the adoption to sonship.  No one who has faith in Christ has any lesser legal standing, powers or privileges than anyone else. 

This is why Paul counsels the believers in Philippians 2:3, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves." Jesus had taught in Matthew 18:2-4, Mark 10:15 and Luke 18:7 that everyone who wants to enter the Kingdom of God must do it as a little child.  Little children had no status, powers or privileges in that day, so Jesus' words amounted to a statement that we all must lay down our earthly status, powers and privileges in order to enter the new creation Kingdom.

The essence of the Kingdom message is this:  "Stop looking at yourself in terms of status, or lack thereof.  Stop regarding others in terms of their power or position.  Stop expecting to be treated with respect based on your status in the world, and learn to treat all others with respect-- regardless of their status in the world." Paul made it especially clear that he understood this when he refused to have followers who said, "I am of Paul," stating that those who insisted on distinguishing leaders or having jealousy of place or position were "mere infants" and "still worldly."  This idea is so pervasive throughout the entire New Testament that it must be regarded as one of its foundational teachings.

But many Christians believe that God, universally and timelessly, has chosen men to have leadership authority in the church and home, and women to be followers under that authority.   Some even consider it an essential tenet of Christianity that men are meant to lead and women are meant to follow-- so much so that they question whether those who disagree are truly committed to biblical Christianity.  They base this doctrine on a few short texts: 1 Timothy 2:12-15, 1 Corinthians 11:3, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:4-5 and 1 Peter 3:1-6.  They believe these seven texts create an exception to the Kingdom message of no favoritism: that in this one area, we are to view certain believers according to the flesh.   They say that Galatians 3:28 refers only to spiritual salvation.  They say that Joel 2:28-29 and Acts 2:16-21 restrict the outpouring of the Spirit to only what is mentioned in those verses: prophecy, visions and dreams.  They say that God does not and will not pour out any spiritual leadership gifts upon women, except so that they may lead other women.

Apparently the idea is that though we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom, the Kingdom itself then confers upon men, based on their maleness alone, new powers, privileges and status that women cannot have.

What we tend to forget is that we're in a completely different situation than the original readers of the New Testament.  We live in a society where men no longer are considered to have primacy and power, and where women are no longer relegated to the home and children.   It's easy, therefore, to read these verses as if they were against the mutuality of our culture: as if they were counter-cultural statements about God's divine plan for the Kingdom-- statements that place male authority firmly within the Kingdom, to be held against all modern cultural changes.

But how would these passages read if you had always lived in a society where women were required to be not just submissive, but obedient to their husbands?  Where freeborn little boys grew up knowing they would one day become masters of their homes, wives, children and slaves?  Where women were not only forbidden to teach (except in the temples of their goddesses), but viewed as less than fully virtuous if they spoke in public at all?

I think if we lived in those days, it would be much clearer that in light of the Kingdom principle that all believers have the same status before God, the New Testament writers were teaching believers to make necessary concessions for the sake of the church's reputation in the cultures they lived in, and yet without compromising new-creation mutuality.   If you were a new believer in the early 1st century, might you not be saying, "My husband/master has become a believer and has laid down his earthly status.  Does this mean I still have to follow the Emperor's law and obey him?"  Peter's words in 1 Peter 2:12-13 encapsulate the New Testament response: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds. . . Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human authority."  

As I look back upon history, it seems to me that the Kingdom principle of the equality of believers has had a profound effect, over time, on the notion of the equality of all human beings.  It is not that our modern culture, by insisting on the full, functional equality of women, has somehow corrupted the Kingdom message as it should be understood in the church.  On the contrary-- the church, ever since the passing of the first Apostles, has been finding ways to exclude women from Kingdom equality.  But our Western cultures today, having imbibed deeply of the Kingdom teaching of equality and applied it to all humanity, are now calling out the church on her hypocrisy.

Maybe it's time we listened.

Taking the Bible Seriously

From time to time I will be posting selections from things I have posted elsewhere.  This is from a piece I wrote for the Take Heart Project (which, due to trademark issues, will be changing its name to the No Longer Quivering Foundation).   The original essay can be found here.

There are those who will suggest that any method of interpretation that does not take each passage of the Bible at its "plain sense" or "face value" is not taking the Bible seriously, or is motivated by a desire to "weasel out" of certain scriptural requirements.  In response to this, I offer a modern-day parable. 

A certain company had been in business for 100 years. The founder of this company, before he retired, had written a letter to all employees, and had asked that this letter be read aloud every year, at the time of the annual picnic, so that all employees for years to come could know what the founder’s vision was. The letter contained a lot of things about the company’s vision and policies, as well as solemn requests never to lose sight of goals like customer service, quality of product, and so on. One of the policies in the letter was this: “Every employee who works here will be held to high standards as to the treatment of horses. Employees must stable their horses in the company stables and make sure the beasts are well rubbed-down and supplied with adequate food and water. Buggies are to be drawn up neatly in the stable-yard. Under no circumstances are horses to be left between the buggy shafts all day.” Because of this letter, the current leaders and employees of this company believed firmly that they were to travel to work by horse– that automobiles were against the founder’s intention, and therefore, the company policy was that if you were caught driving a car to work, you would be immediately fired. When asked by the city leaders why their company had never replaced its stables with a modern parking facility, the leaders pointed proudly to the plain text of the founder’s letter. “We are only maintaining the principles upon which this great company was founded,” they said. “We take our founder at his word, and we are against anyone who doesn‘t take his message seriously enough to follow exactly what it says.” 

You may be shaking your head right now and saying, “I get the point of your parable, but that’s not how I read the Bible. I know some things in it were just for the people back in Bible times. But you can‘t just toss out whatever you don‘t like as being only cultural!” 

So I want to look for a minute at the things most Christians do take as “only cultural” in the sense of not following them as literal commandments to practice today. Some of the Apostle Paul’s letters end with what appears to be a direct command — “Greet one another with a holy kiss.“ But most of us don’t kiss other church members when we meet them. Are we “dismissing” the command as “only cultural”? Perhaps not. We do understand the spirit of love with which Christians are supposed to treat one another. We do greet one another with cordiality and even affection when it‘s appropriate. But we don’t feel that people need to kiss one another in church the way they did in Paul’s day. 

What about I Tim 2:8 — “I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”? Most of us will admit that the men in our churches do not lift their hands every time they pray. Or when I Peter 2:17 exhorts us to “honor the king,” we don’t feel it is against the will of God that we have a President and not a king– even though nowhere in the Bible is it ever mentioned that people should be allowed to vote. 

No one actually reads and follows all of the Bible according to its “plain sense” meaning, all the time. We all pick and choose what we read as meant to be literally practiced today, and what we don’t. Does this mean that no Christian takes the Bible seriously? No– it means that we all try our best to read the Bible in a way that honors what we feel it is truly teaching, without getting distracted by the way those teachings were practiced in Bible times. We may not lift our hands to pray, but we do try to be holy in our prayer lives. We may not have a king to honor, but we do try to honor our earthly leaders. The real question is, are the methods we use consistent? Are we certain we are understanding what the Bible is actually teaching as we read it, so that we don’t miss the actual meaning that God intended to impart? Are we consistently using good principles, principles supported by the Scriptures themselves, in reading the Bible? For it is in doing this that we are truly taking it seriously. 

The Scriptures do give us an actual example of a God-inspired apostle reading the Bible in terms of the truth being taught rather than the literal, plain-sense meaning. In I Corinthians 9:9-14, Paul begins, “For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written.” He goes on to talk about the labor he and the other apostles have labored in, as they spread the gospel, and concludes with, “Even so hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the gospel should live by the gospel.” If Paul, inspired by God, could interpret a passage of the Scriptures in terms of the timeless principle that a laborer is worthy of his wages, rather than strictly in terms of how oxen were treated when treading grain, how much more can we do so, in this age where we have tractors rather than oxen– but laborers in the gospel are still worthy of our support? 

So how do we do this? Do the Biblical writings themselves give any more clues as to how they are intended to be understood? 

First of all (as I have touched on here ), to understand the Bible as inspired by God is to understand it as one big story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration (both in terms of individual relationship with God, and in terms of community before God). Every book and passage in the Bible should be looked at as being, in some way, part of this story, with Jesus as the focal point. Jesus said in John 5:39-40, to Jews who were seeking to kill Him, “[You] search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me. And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” We must be careful not to think that eternal life is in the Scriptures; it is in Jesus, and in His redemption of mankind. Everything in the Bible has some part in that great story. 

Second, the Scriptures themselves gives us place-and-time markers to help us understand them. For example, the opening of the Book of Hosea reads like this: “The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. . . “ Similarly, the first verse of Philippeans: “Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi. . . “ Almost every book in the Bible begins with words along these lines, and these statements are there for a reason. They make it plain that books of the Bible were first of all God’s message to the specific people mentioned, in a specific location and culture, at a certain point in time. Those people, those places, times and cultures, need to be taken into account. Only after we understand how the message would have been understood by those people at those times, can we be certain we‘re not being distracted by things they took for granted. In the story we started with, the company employees needed to understand that the founder’s letter assumed certain things about the culture, and thus was not giving a command about those assumptions. In the same way, we need to see that often the writers whom God was inspiring to write a Biblical text, are assuming, and not commanding, things having to do with the cultures they were writing in. 

This means Christians should take the Bible seriously enough to study those ancient times and cultures, and the meanings of words in the original languages, in order to understand what the original audience was intended to understand. Bible handbooks and dictionaries can help with this. Christian leaders go to seminaries and consult Bible experts in order to help their congregations with this. But all of us, expert and layperson alike, are just human. We all have personal biases that we also need to take into account, to make sure we’re not reading our own preferences into the text as well. If we understand those biases, it can help us be aware of where we (or even a Bible expert!) might be missing important meanings. 

Most of us know to be careful of our own, 21st-century cultural biases when reading the Bible. But for evangelical Christians, we also need to be aware of the opposite: many Christians today have counter-cultural biases. There may be values in our own modern culture that are actually inspired by God’s truths. We must be careful not to allow prejudices against the “world” to make us disregard these without even considering them.

For example, Christians nearly universally read the Bible today with the understanding that our modern anti-slavery morality is good and comes from the overarching messages of scripture. All humans belong to their Creator and therefore cannot be owned by one another– even though it wasn’t very long ago that "face value" readings of the Bible were used to justify owning slaves. There may be other moral values of modern culture that are more in line with the Bible's teachings than we may realize. We must try to hold our biases in both directions, out of the way. 

In any event, the thing to remember is not to lift a Bible passage out of its original context and make it mean something that looks like “plain sense” to us, but would not have been understood that way by them. For example, in Genesis 38:8-10, where Onan “spilled his seed on the ground” to avoid raising children that would be considered his brother’s, the ancient Hebrew reader would have seen Onan’s crime as defrauding his brother’s widow of her rights in that culture, and then lying about it. He only pretended to fulfill his duty, by publicly taking her in marriage– but then privately refused to honor the obligations he had taken on. Their focus would not have been on birth control; they would have seen the story in terms of fraud, breach of covenant, and deceit. Onan used birth control as a means to defraud his wife and dishonor his deceased brother.  The passage does not actually say that God is against birth control. 

A third help to interpretation is this: the writers of the Bible often say things within the Scriptures themselves about their intentions and what we are to understand them as trying to do. For instance, John 20:31 says that the Book of John was “written that ye might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name.” And Paul, going on from his point about not muzzling the ox in I Corinthians 9, speaks at length of what he believes his apostolic calling is all about. In verse 17 he says it is all because “the dispensation of the gospel has been committed to me.” He goes on to say that “unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews . . . to them that are without law, as without law. . . I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” Just as we would be missing the point of the Book of John if we failed to see how everything in it points to Jesus being the Son of God through Whom we have life, so we would be missing the point of Paul’s letters if we didn’t understand that he intentionally adapted his message to the cultures he was ministering to. Paul’s teachings, therefore, about believers’ conduct in the church, in the home and in the outside world, must be viewed as practical advice for functioning in that culture, at that time, as a redeemed community (part of the great story of redemption) in such a way that they would be good witnesses of the gospel to the surrounding cultures in the time they were written. In the first century, for example, that would mean that slaves were advised not to harm the witness of Christ by rising up against their masters. But as we discussed earlier, this doesn’t mean Paul was setting forth God’s approval of the institution of slavery itself. 

Paul took certain cultural factors for granted in his letters, and assumed his readers would do the same. The message, after all, was first of all God’s message to them, not to us. What were the cultural understandings of his society? They included slavery, male domination, the rule of Caesars, circumcision as a religious practice of devout Jews only (and never, as is common today, by non-Jews as a simple medical procedure), and so on. These assumptions should not be turned into commands to us to follow the same cultural practices– any more than the company founder in our parable intended to communicate that his employees were always to use horses. Rather, within those cultural norms, the factory owner was giving principles of the right treatment of property and animals, as well as policies for order as employees were coming to work. Paul’s teachings regarding practical Christian living must also be viewed in terms of such principles as well. 

This principle of adaptation and change within changing cultures, is one that is repeated throughout the Bible. God spoke in one way to Abraham in Abraham’s time, another to Moses when He gave the Law, another to David as king, and another still to the Church. All the things God spoke fit together in the great story– but each message was adapted for the people who originally heard it, in the times that they heard it. 

God accommodates His message so that those He speaks to can understand it within their own frames of reference– and so that He may move them in the direction of the final, complete redemption that is the goal of the great story. Just because the writers of the Bible speak in terms of certain cultural understandings, does not make the cultures they found themselves within, “Biblical cultures,” in the sense of those cultural norms being God’s will for all cultures, for all people, or for all times. There will be no such culture until we attain final glory. But all cultures can be changed from within by the timeless truths of love and justice that are the core of the Scriptures. 

Finally, the Bible presents itself to us as a group of different kinds of writings. Some are historical narratives, some are letters, some are poems, some are prophecies. It’s important to read each kind of writing according to what it is. In the Psalms, the Book of Job, and the Song of Solomon, for example, we are reading poems or poetic narratives, filled with metaphorical, poetic language. We need to be sure to read these as poems, and not in the same way we read Paul‘s letters. Similarly, in the historical narratives, we are presented with people acting in certain ways. Some of their actions are meant to be examples for us to follow, and others are meant as warnings. We must follow the clues provided by the narrative voice in the story we are reading, to determine whether to approve or disapprove of the actions of the people in the stories– and we must not read our understandings from other texts into passages that in and of themselves, say nothing in terms of that understanding. Abigail, for instance, in I Samuel 25, is presented by the narrator as “a woman of good understanding and beautiful countenance (v. 3),” and David tells her that he believes “the Lord God of Israel . . . sent thee this day to meet me (v. 32).” There is not a hint anywhere in the story that Abigail is doing wrong in going against her husband’s wishes and taking matters into her own hands, when her husband’s wishes are selfish and sinful and will result in harm to the entire household. To see Abigail (as some Christian groups do today) as an ungodly, rebellious woman, is to read things into the story that simply are not there. 

Each part of the Bible needs to be read on its own, for what it itself says and not for what we think (or have been taught) it’s supposed to say. Though Christians can and should fit it into its place in the great story as a whole, it must fit as itself, and not as something it is not. When we read into a part of the Bible, something it doesn’t say, it can twist our idea of the great story as a whole– and the great story of the creation, fall, and redemption of all people of all races, male and female, in Christ, should be taken by Christians very seriously indeed. 

If we follow these principles, then we are indeed taking the Bible seriously– for its real message and not a false idea of it. We are not dismissing anything as “only cultural’ — but we are taking cultural assumptions into account. It may be harder, it may take more work, to understand it this way, but reading the Bible for what God meant it to say, is worth the extra effort. 

****************

For more information, see The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight and How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.


More information of my view on the Bible's "plain sense" meaning can be found here.

Does The New Testament Teach that Women Should Be Housekeepers?

Here’s Titus 2:3-5 in the NIV (1984) translation:

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be
slanderers or addicted to much wine,but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the
younger women to love their husbands and children,  to be self-controlled and pure, to
be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will
malign the word of God.

Here it is in the King James Version:

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false
accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the
young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet,
chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God
be not blasphemed.

And in the New American Standard:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips
nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good,  so that they may encourage the
young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible,
pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of
God will not be dishonored.

All three versions make it sound like what Paul asking Titus to do is make sure young
women learn to be homemakers, or housekeepers.  On the basis of this verse, many
Christians today say that a woman’s God-given special domain is the home-- that God’s
ideal is that women marry, stay home and keep house.   But the actual Greek word
there does not mean “busy at home” or “workers at home.  The KJV “keepers at home"
is much closer, but only if we understand that the word “keeper” in the age of King
James did not mean someone who stayed in a place and kept it clean.  

The actual word is “oikouros,” a combination of the word “oik,” meaning "house," and
the word “ouros,” meaning "guard."  The word for the "gardener" whom Mary Magdalene
thought she was speaking at the Resurrection (John 20:15) was that same word "ouros"
combined with the word for "garden."  Mary Magdalene asked the man if he had moved
the body.  Why?  Because he had the authority to do so!  Being the "ouros" of
something was a position of responsibility with accompanying authority.  The “keeper of
the garden” was not merely the man who pruned the shrubbery.   He had the power to
take bodies out of the tombs and put them back again.  He guarded and protected the
tombs and managed the interment of the bodies.  He was in charge of the garden.

“Oikouros" – “guard of the home” is not about being "domestic." The same word “guard”
in verb rather than noun construction, is part of "phroureo" in 1 Peter 1:5. "Phroureo"
combines "phr" ("before" or "above") with "oureo" ("to guard/watch") and means "to
watch over." 1 Pet 1:5 in the NIV translates, "shielded [phroureo] by God's power."  God
is our “Ouros.”  This is not a word that implies subordination.

The statement in Titus that women should "guard the home" was based on the
historical/cultural understanding shared between Paul and his readers (in this case,
Titus) that the home was considered the wife's special domain.  In the first-century
Greco-Roman culture, the pater familias (ruling father) was the chief authority in the
family—but when it came to the actual running of the domestic side of the household,
he deferred to his wife.  This understanding is also present when Paul says in 1 Timothy
5:14, “So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes
and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.”  (NIV 1984-- The New American
Standard renders it “keep house.”)  But the word translated “manage their homes”  or
“keep house” is actually that same word “oik” for house combined with “despotes,”
which means “to rule”!  Paul was telling Timothy that younger widows should marry and
rule their houses, which was the cultural expectation.

This cultural expectation is reflected in the repetition of the thought in both 1 Timothy
5:14 and Titus 2:5 that the purpose for Paul’s teaching  is “so that no one will malign the
word of God” or “to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.”  Paul expresses in both
verses this same basic idea, in light of which he counsels in Titus 2:5 that women
should be “subject to their husbands” (the word does not mean “be obedient,” as the
KJV translates it, but is the same word used in Ephesians 5:21-22 meaning “voluntarily
yield.”)  Paul, Timothy and Titus all understood that the surrounding culture expected
wives to be obedient to their husbands (although, as I said, the husband deferred to his
wife in the running of the house).  Paul was counseling that wives instead voluntarily yield to their husbands as a Christian act, for the sake of the good name of the Christian
community.

This is clearly seen when looking at Titus 2:3-5 in its immediate context. Paul goes on in
Titus 2 to talk about two more groups: young men and slaves. At the end of each
section he repeats, in slightly different words, the same concept: In verse 8 he says that
if the young men will be self-controlled, then "those who oppose you will be ashamed
because they have nothing bad to say about us." Then in verse 10 he says that if slaves
will please their masters and not steal, then "in every way they will make the teaching
about God our Savior attractive."

Paul was interested in how the gospel message appeared to the surrounding culture.
That's what he was telling Titus: to make sure everyone behaved themselves according to
the bounds of propriety. Otherwise, the young church in Crete might fail.

Some Christians, misreading the KJV where it says "so that the word be not
blasphemed," think the verse is saying that wives not being submissive is somehow
directly "blaspheming" the word of God. But the context shows that this is not what Paul
was talking about.  He meant that if wives were not submissive to their husbands, the
surrounding culture would think there was something wrong with Christianity.

In order to give no offense to the non-Christians surrounding the young churches, Paul
asked both Timothy and Titus to make sure that women were doing their culturally
mandated jobs.  This included authority to rule, protect and guard their homes.   He was
not saying that the cultural structure of pater familias and subordinate wife was God’s
own mandate for all time.   And he certainly was not saying that God’s divine plan and
design for all women in all ages was that they be housekeepers.


Update: August 2012:


I must correct one point in the above.  It seems that many manuscripts do have “oikourgos,” “working at home.” According to Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, “oikourgos” is a combination of “oikos, (house) and a root of ergon (work).” Vines’ then goes on to say, “Some mss. have oikouros, watching or keeping the home (oikos and ouros, a keeper).” There is a slight textual variation, therefore, that can go either way.  But even if what Paul originally wrote was “working at home” (which is not certain), this does not erase the historical context and the immediate literary context of the passage. Nor does it fundamentally alter the meaning. Paul was telling Titus to advise people in different walks of life to do their culturally-perceived duty. For wives, this included both working in (or guarding/keeping) the home and being submissive to their husbands. As I went on to say, the immediate context proves this is the case, as Paul gives Titus the same advice in different words to give young men and to slaves– do your duty as society expects you to, and it will give the gospel and its followers a good name.

What Paul is certainly not doing is telling women that God designed them as cooks and house cleaners, and that’s what they should always do. If that’s what he had meant, he never would have sent Phoebe as his spokesperson to bear his letter to the Romans (Romans 16:1-2), or commended so many other women for working hard for the gospel. Nor do I believe he was advocating husband-rule as a divine mandate, any more than he was advocating slavery as a divine mandate.

Why Did Jesus Choose Twelve Men?

One of the main arguments used against the full participation of women in church leadership is that the twelve Apostles were all male. Jesus chose twelve males, it is said, because Jesus intended that the leaders of the church should be male.

But could there be other reasons why Jesus chose twelve male apostles?

Kay Bonikowsky, on her blog “The Happy Surprise,” has written a very good piece about the symbolic nature of Jesus’ choice: not just that they were male, but that there were twelve of them and that they were all Jews. Pointing out that Jesus’ choice was a fulfillment of Isaiah 1:26: “I will restore your judges as of days of old, your rulers as at the beginning,” she writes:

As twelve Jewish males, they were symbolic for the twelve tribes and their patriarchal heads. In this role, their number and gender is not an example for the new church to follow, but indicative of the closure of the Old Covenant.

Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:30 show that Jesus did this deliberately, so that the twelve Apostles were to “sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” This was the fulfillment of the Old Covenant even as it looked forward to the New Covenant. Jesus was not saying all church leaders afterwards had to be male any more than He was saying all church leaders afterwards had to be Jewish.

But there was also a very practical dynamic that we can easily overlook from our modern mindset. The twelve were the main witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Christ. In the Ancient Near East and Roman cultures, the testimony of women was considered invalid. It was not accepted in court; it was not legally binding in any way. The world was simply not going to listen to women, and Jesus knew it.

So here’s what He did. His very first act upon Resurrection was to appear to the women. In fact, John tells us that though Peter and John ran ahead of Mary Magdalene on the way to the tomb, they saw nothing. Then after they left, Mary Magdalene was the first to see the Resurrected Christ. John 20:3-14. Other women also saw Him shortly afterwards– but no male saw the Lord, revealed for who He was, until that evening, eight hours or more afterwards. He walked with the disciples on their way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-32), but they did not know that He was Jesus. Only Mary Magdalene and the other women knew.

The significance of this would not have been lost on the male disciples in that patriarchal culture. They knew that they themselves had refused to believe the women’s testimony that morning. Then when Jesus appeared to them, they realized the women had been telling the truth.

Jesus was communicating this very clearly (the fact that we miss it today is a product of our culture): “The world will not accept the testimony of your sisters, but I have just forced you to listen to it. My kingdom is to be different from the world. You are to listen to your women and allow them to testify of Me.”

And that’s just what they did. That’s why when Saul began persecuting the church, he “dragged away men and women” to prison. Acts 8:3. At the Crucifixion, the women were safe. They knew they didn’t need to hide like the male disciples, because the authorities considered them negligible. But what women began doing after the Resurrection proved they were no longer to be considered negligible. That’s why they began to be persecuted as well.

The world still did not believe the testimony of women. This shows clearly in the oral tradition that began to circulate immediately after the Resurrection, which Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred at the same time. . . .” The appearance of Jesus to 500 witnesses together was the evidence the disciples gave publicly, to prove Jesus was indeed risen. But they didn’t mention that He had appeared to the female disciples first. This would, in the eyes of the world of that time, have detracted from the weight of the message rather than added to it. In fact, there was only one reason why the writers of the Gospels would have put this embarrassing detail into their accounts: that it actually happened that way. This is one of the points that textual critics use to determine whether a story is factual or not: if it includes embarrassing details that would not have been put into a story if it were fictional. The appearance of Jesus to the women first, was an embarrassing detail in a factual account, which had to be included in the written text because that was what had happened.

But because Jesus had in fact appeared first to the women, the apostles simply could not just tell the women to be quiet, go home and serve their families. Jesus had made them witnesses, and so witnesses they had to be. The acceptance by the male apostles of the testimony of women, allowing them to actually preach (and to become a threat that persecutors took into account), was one of the first steps in the elevation of women that Jesus intended in His church.

Jesus chose twelve men as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant. But Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurated the New Covenant, in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is not male and female.” Gal. 3:28. If we are going to give weight to the maleness of the twelve Apostles, we must also give weight to the femaleness of the first witnesses. And we have to look at it the way the original readers would have seen it, in order to understand how very important that simple fact was.

The Bible and Human Authority, Part 1: Old Testament

I'd like to look a little further into this idea, so common among Christians, that "someone has to be in charge" in every area of life. Sometimes they speak in terms of "spheres of authority," saying that God has established different spheres, or realms, in which different authority structures hold sway, including the church, the family and society. But always there's this idea that hierarchical systems of authority extend top-down from God into each aspect of life, and that to operate without one or more of these authority systems is to invite chaos. It is even said that there is hierarchy in the Trinity: that because God the Son submitted to God the Father on earth, the Son functions in an eternal relationship of submission to the Father, even though they are equals. The idea of hierarchy in the Trinity is set forth as a justification for hierarchy in marriage, because if the Son's submission to the Father does not diminish the Son in terms of equality, the subordination of a wife to her husband would not diminish the wife's equality either.

It cannot be denied that human societies need some form of law, to protect people from being harmed by one another, among other things-- and that laws need someone with the power to enforce them, or they are useless. But is this idea that "someone has to be in charge," that there is a chain of command in every area of human life, actually taught in the Bible?

First of all, let’s define our terms. What is “authority”? How is the concept of authority treated in the Bible? Here is a definition from an online dictionary:

“The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge.”

For purposes of this study, I'd like to draw a distinction between "authority," or the power or right to command, and "leadership," which is the actual act of leading or commanding, or the state of being the one leading or commanding.

The first mention of authority or rule in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:26-28. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth. . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them. . . “[H]ave dominion over . . . every living thing that moveth on the earth.”

Notice first of all that the word “man” here includes “male and female.” The meaning is “human beings,” not “male humans.” Notice also that there is no hint here of an authority relationship between the male and the female; both are to have authority over the creatures, but nothing is said about either being in authority over the other. Neither is there any indication of an authority structure within the ranks of other creatures. God does not say, “the animals that are bigger shall rule over the smaller animals, all the way down to the insects,” or anything like that (this may seem like an unimportant point, but I'll get into why it’s important later in this series). In fact, other than the humans ruling together over the animals, there are no earthly authority structures in view in the first chapter of Genesis.

When do we see the first mention of humans ruling over one another? In Genesis 3:16, right after the Fall of Adam and Eve. God tells Eve then that the man will begin to rule over her, as part of the consequences of the wrong that has come into the world. Note that this was not part of God's divine plan from the beginning; nor does God tell the man to rule the woman. God simply informs the woman that this is going to happen, as part of the consequences of the Fall.

Some Christians teach that because Eve was not yet created when God gave the command not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that Adam had to convey God’s words to Eve, and that automatically put him in charge of her and made him an intermediary between her and God. But those are assumptions that are read into the text. The Bible never actually says anything like that. Instead, it says that God made Eve out of Adam’s own flesh, so that there was no way he could say, “this is a different/lesser sort of being than I am.” It says Eve was his “face-to-face strong aid,” which is a literal translation of “help meet for him” (Gen 2:20).* The Bible is actually silent on whether God spoke directly to Eve about the forbidden tree (though it does show Him speaking directly to both man and woman in Genesis 1:27), or whether Adam told Eve about the tree. It does not tell us one way or the other. Eve knows about the tree in Gen. 3:2, but how she came to know is simply not told. It’s important, if we make assumptions about what a biblical text is telling us, that we know the difference between what we are assuming, and what the text actually does or doesn’t say.

What else does the Old Testament say about human authority structures? The next few chapters of Genesis after the Fall of humanity say nothing whatsoever about anyone being a ruler or leader over anyone else, by God’s plan or otherwise. Babel is set out as a story of human organization and structure, but no specific leaders are mentioned, and God deliberately scatters the people there. Abraham, of course, becomes a tribal leader with servants under his authority, but God seems curiously uninterested in that aspect of the matter, being more concerned with the covenant under which Isaac will be born.

God is shown as choosing individuals to further His purpose of preparing a people through which to bring the Messiah; but an interesting dynamic runs though this entire process: God almost always chooses a younger son over the older ones. Primogeniture, the idea that the oldest son is to rule, was a basic assumption of Ancient Near East societies, but God turns primogeniture on its head over and over again. He chooses Jacob over Esau, Joseph over 10 older brothers, David the youngest of eight, and so on.

We do see a couple of systems of governmental hierarchy set up in Genesis 41 and Exodus 18. In Genesis 41:31-35, Joseph suggests that the Pharoah set up an agent, with officers under him, to gather surplus food in preparation for a coming famine. In Exodus 18:13-27, after Moses had led the Hebrews out of Egypt, the people began coming to him to judge disputes between them. Moses was getting worn out, being the sole judge, so his father-in-law Jethro advised him to set up rulers over groups of 10, 50, 100 and 1000, to judge disputes between the people. In both these cases, there is no mention of God having directly instructed the setting up of these hierarchies. It is Joseph who requests the system of officers in Genesis 41:33. In Exodus 18:23 Jethro advises Moses to be sure God agrees, but the idea is shown to be Jethro’s.

In fact, God appears to make no direct law establishing any hierarchical authority structure in the Old Testament except for the priest/Levite orders, in which neither priests nor Levites are given any governmental authority. They are to run the tabernacle/temple and administer the sacrifices and holidays, and that is all. It would have been so easy to make the priestly class into the ruling class—but the Law simply does not go there.

Israel’s actual governmental systems reveal other interesting dynamics. First, although Deuteronomy 17:14 anticipates that Israel will decide to set a king over itself, God does not seem to actually desire them to do so. God does not give them a king, but rather raises up judges (often from the most unlikely sources!) until the people of Israel actually voice a desire for a king. And in 1 Samuel 8:7 God says that in desiring a king, Israel is actually rejecting God as their ruler. God tells Samuel to tell the people that the king will use his power to oppress them— and though the people say they want a king anyway, it seems to be a concession on God’s part to give them what they want. God also limits the power of the king by making him subject to the law and forbidding him priestly powers. 1 Samuel 13:10-14.

There is a consistent theme in the Old Testament of the sovereignty of God over human authority. Daniel 4:32 says, “The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whosoever he will.” However, the context here is God restraining a king’s self-glorification. God is depicted in many texts as having power over what authorities exist and who gets to be in authority. But often—and certainly here in Daniel 4 as in 1 Samuel 13— God seems more interested in restraining human authority than He is in creating it.

In fact, God's plan seems to be more about raising up individual leaders than setting up structures of authority (please keep in mind the definitions set forth earlier). The leaders God does raise up act in accordance with God’s authority, rather than being given some inherent right or power of their own to command— with the exception of the kings, which God apparently would rather not have given Israel at all.

It is interesting, if the Bible teaches that God is so concerned with making sure there are authority structures in every area of life— if having someone “in charge” in every sphere of human relations is such a vital part of His divine plan— that God in the Old Testament seems so reluctant to establish authority structures in Israel, so careful to limit the ones He does establish, and so ready to overturn human assumptions about who should be in authority.

I will look into how the concept of authority is treated in the New Testament, as well as how Jesus teaches that the kingdom of God differs from natural, earthly human societies in the area of authority, in Part 2.

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*I have written elsewhere a piece called "The Bible and the Nature of Woman." More information about "help meet" and my views regarding other aspects of woman's relationship to man can be found there.

What Galatians 3:28 Cannot Mean

(NOTE: I'm going to write today in terms of blunt logic. If I come across as harsh or "unwomanly," please remember that it was Aristotle, and not Christ, who denied logic to women. Nothing I say is to be construed as an attack on anyone. I am merely taking a certain reading of a certain portion of Scripture to its inherent conclusions, to see if it makes sense.
- KR Wordgazer)
Galatians 3:28 reads: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Many Christians read this verse in a very limited sense, saying that in order to reconcile it with such “clear” restrictive passages as 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, we have to understand the above verse as applying only to our standing before God in salvation. We are all the same at the foot of the cross, the saying goes, but in the church and in the home, God has set forth male authority.

Galatians 3:28 cannot mean that gender is not important to what men and women can do in the church. So they say.
A man involved in a conversation on a blog I was reading put it this way: being “in Christ” is one thing, but in our everyday living, in our homes and church congregations, male and female roles are defined by God as separate. Only men may lead the congregation. Only men may lead their homes. Women may teach other women or children, but they may not lead or teach men. And yet, he assured me, these “separate roles” are still “equal.” Men are not superior to women, and women are not inferior. They are equal. They only have different “roles.” Somehow it escaped him that the “roles” are completely, irrevocably and unchangingly unequal, and that being permanent and tied to one’s personhood at birth, they are not really “roles” at all. They are castes.

I keep asking myself this question: why do Christians who believe like this have to keep insisting that they do not believe men are superior and women are inferior? Is it not because everything they teach and practice contradicts this idea? Men are not superior– but they are leaders and in authority by divine right. Women are not inferior– but they are to be subordinate to men without escape. Where is the equality, then? In name only. It’s a word to make us all feel better, and nothing more.
Did Paul really mean that in Christ there is not male and female, but in the church male authority and female subordination is to be carefully observed? So does that mean the church is in Christ? Or not? Does being in Christ only happen when we get to heaven?

What, then, do we do with verses like this one?

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10; Emphasis added.)
The “good works” must be spiritual, heavenly works only, and we are exempted from such earthly good works as feeding the poor or visiting the sick. If being “in Christ” when it comes to “there is not male and female” has no practical bearing on what males and females can or can't do every day in their churches, then how can being “in Christ” have any practical bearing on what Christians do in any part of their lives?

And if this earthly-heavenly split applies to male and female, does it not also apply to Jew and Greek and to slave and free? Paul mentions them all in the same passage. Was Paul saying, “In Christ there are no racial distinctions, but in the church we’d better make sure the races stay properly separated”? Was Paul saying, “In Christ there is neither slave nor free, but in the church we’d better keep class distinctions intact and make sure everyone knows their proper place”? If this is what Paul really meant, then earlier in Galatians 2:11, why did he rebuke Peter for not eating with the Gentiles? Peter was only observing the distinctions he had learned, in a gathering of the church.

But if this is not what Paul meant, then how could he have meant the opposite when it comes to race and economic status, from what he meant when it comes to gender? No racial distinctions in the church, and no economic distinctions either– but we must keep the gender distinctions as long as we live on earth!

Does that make any sense?

Unless that makes sense-- then that is what Galatians 3:28 cannot mean.

5-Step Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 - Conclusion

In Part 3 we did the first half of Step Five of my analysis: an examination of the meaning of the original Greek words and grammar. Finally, now, we come to the conclusion-- my interpretation, in which I will go phrase by phrase from the Concordant Literal translation used at the end of Part 3.

“Let a woman be learning in quietness with all subjection.”
There is a question at this point as to whether Paul is referring to “woman” as a collective or as singular. The switch from the plural “women” in the preceding verse to the indefinite singular “woman” in this verse appears to indicate a change of subject. Paul therefore may be no longer talking about "women" in general, but about "a woman" in particular. If so, he does not name this particular woman, so whether he means women in general, or one specific woman, cannot be conclusively stated. However, there are very good reasons to think he might be talking about just one woman, which I will detail below.

In any event, since “Let be learning” is the only verb form in the entire passage which is in the command form, I believe this sentence is the controlling sentence of this passage. Whatever else Paul says, he says in view of the need for “a woman” to "learn." In a society where women were largely denied education, Paul’s command that she is to learn sounds a clear counter-cultural note. “Quietness” and "subjection," according to their Greek meanings, do not denote silence and subordination, but rather that she should have an attitude of receptivity and willingness to yield, as is fitting for any student.

“Now I am not permitting a woman to be teaching nor yet to be domineering over a man, but to be in quietness.”
Notice that Paul does not say, “Timothy, do not permit a woman.” Nor does he say, "A woman is forbidden." Instead, Paul uses the word “I” and puts the verb in present tense, indicating a current action. Since Paul looked upon the church at Ephesus as uniquely his church, and since Timothy’s ministry there is a temporary measure during Paul’s absence-- and since Timothy’s main role was to stop false teaching-- I believe Paul is giving Timothy Paul’s own authority to act for Paul in a specific situation of false teaching by “a woman,” the effect of which is to domineer over “a man” (indefinite noun again). It is unlikely Paul is making any kind of policy about all women being forbidden to teach, or to teach in church meetings, because the facts are on the table that Paul did indeed permit women to teach and commended them for teaching. Junia was “outstanding among the apostles,” and it would be impossible to be an apostle (one who has the role of planting churches) without teaching church groups about Christ. And Paul simply cannot be forbidding women to “have authority” because that is not what the word “authenteo” means. What is clear is that false teaching is a real problem in the church at Ephesus and that Paul’s main purpose in writing to Timothy was to deal with this issue.

As I mentioned, it is the norm in Koine Greek, when one refers to “woman” and “man” together, that they are married to one another. Given the Greek construction, Paul could be saying, “Now I am not permitting this certain woman to be teaching-and-domineering over her husband, but to be learning in quietness.” If Paul is talking about women in general, and not a particular woman, it is a puzzle as to why he switches from the plural “women” in verses 9 and 10, to the singular “a woman” in verse 11. Be that as it may, I will also take into account that Paul might be speaking of “woman” in a generic sense, meaning “all the women in the church.”

“For Adam was first molded, thereafter Eve, and Adam was not seduced.”
As I stated in Part 3, I believe Paul is using Adam and Eve an example. The word “for” in the Greek includes the meaning “for example.“ Also, Paul specifically states in 1 Cor. 10:11 that he considers the Old Testament stories to be “for an example” and “for instruction” to the Christian churches. He says nothing about using them to “ground” a teaching of his, in order to render that teaching timeless and universal. In 2 Cor. 11:3 Paul specifically refers to Eve as an example, in a situation having to do with a particular circumstance of false teaching that he was afraid would deceive the Corinthian church. His reference to Eve there has nothing to do with “grounding” anything Paul is saying in order to make it timeless and universal.

It is most likely here in 1 Timothy 2 as well, that the reference to Adam and Eve is being used as an example only. There is no particular reason to believe that the Creation order set up a pre-Fall authority hierarchy of Adam over Eve, which Paul is claiming should be followed in this letter to Timothy. There is nothing in the actual Creation texts that says so. The only real way to read a Creation-order based hierarchy in Genesis 1 and 2 is to read it in from 1 Timothy 2:11-15. To then use the Creation-order hierarchy you have read into Genesis, as a “grounding” of hierarchy in 1 Timothy 2, is circular reasoning: Genesis 1 and 2 say there’s a hierarchy because 1 Timothy 2 says so, and 1 Timothy 2 says there’s a hierarchy because Genesis 1and 2 say so. But that only works as long as you stay inside the circle.

The emphasis on Adam being “first molded” is more significant in light of the fact that “Adam was not seduced.” That is what the actual text of 1 Timothy 2:13-14 says. If we then look at this in light of the controlling idea “let a woman learn,“ the most likely idea is that since Adam was made before Eve, he had learning (experience in naming the animals, for example) that Eve was lacking. Adam, unlike Eve, had seen the serpent before, because he had named it. Because of this, he was "not seduced" (or "deceived"). He still sinned, but not through deception.

The situation is probably similar in the problem Paul is addressing. An unlearned woman or women are teaching deception because she/they have not had adequate learning before beginning to teach.

I don’t believe Paul’s idea here is to blame Eve for the first sin, because in his letter to the Romans he places the responsibility squarely on Adam. Here he says that Eve sinned because she was deceived, but Adam sinned even though he knew better. The situation for women in Ephesus parallels this. They have not been permitted to learn and therefore, like Eve, they have become deceived.

(Paul may also, as a side note, be asserting this orthodox idea of the order of creation in refutation of the proto-Gnostic teaching that Eve was created first, that the Fall was a good thing, and that Eve was the wise one who led Adam into enlightenment. But in any case, it all appears related to the “teaching-and-domineering” of an unlearned woman or women.)

“. . . yet the woman, being deluded, has come to be in the transgression.”
Here is the phrase that supports the notion that Paul is talking about one woman in a current situation. Since Paul was a teacher and a scholar, we must believe that he chose the exact verb form he meant to use. This verb form refers to an ongoing state of affairs that continues into the present. But how can he say of Eve, “she has come to be, and still is, in the transgression”? And why does he first speak of Adam and Eve by name, but then switch to “Adam” and “the woman”?

There is a common grammar structure in Koine Greek where a statement will begin with an indefinite singular noun (such as “a woman”), and then the noun will be repeated with a definite article later on. When this happens, both nouns are to be construed as referring to the same person or thing. An example of this occurs in John 4:7-9: “A woman of Samaria” in verse 7 is the same person as “the woman of Samaria” in verse 9. So when Paul says “the woman” instead of “Eve,” the grammatical construction refers back to “a woman” in the preceding sentence.

The only way Paul could be speaking of Eve as still being in transgression, is if he is referring to Eve in a typological sense as representing all women, with Eve’s sin as a type for all women’s sin. He does do something like this with Adam in Romans 5. So it may be possible that he is doing that with Eve here. But it’s also possible that he is talking about a particular woman but not referring to her by name, out of grace, in order to protect her.

“Yet she shall be saved through the child bearing, if ever they should be remaining in faith and love and holiness with sanity.”
We can only assume Paul knew what he was doing in switching from “she” to “they” in the same phrase. The two pronouns could not both be referring to "women in general."

“She” can mean either Eve, or a particular woman who is practicing false teaching and domineering over her husband. “The childbearing” (or "the chilbirth") refers to the bearing of the “seed of woman” as referred to in the Adam and Eve story-- ie., the Christ. So-- if this is about one particular woman who is in transgression, “they” probably means she and her husband together. If this woman will join with her husband in faith, love and holiness with clear-headedness (rejecting the false teaching), she will be saved by Christ, out of her current transgression.

If “she” means Eve, then “they” probably means the women of the church-- her daughters, who, if they continue in faith, love and holiness with clear-headedness, will bring the salvation that comes through the birth of Christ, to Eve (as a metaphor for womankind).

But in any event, there is no compelling reason to interpret these verses as saying, "Let women keep quiet, for God forbids them to ever teach or have any authority over men in the church. Women's role is to learn and to teach other women, but they can never teach men, because they were created second and moreover became deceived. But they will be saved from deception if they will accept their place and have babies in submission and holiness." This is simply not what the passage says.

The question that remains is, why did more accurate readings become so obscured? I think there is a reason for that.

Recent research indicates that during the earliest years of the church, when believers were meeting in houses, women had prominent roles in house leadership. The house was, after all, the woman’s particular domain. 1 Corinthians 1:11 refers to “those of Chloe’s household.” And Colossians 4:15 says “Greet Nympha, and the church that meets at her house.” These women were almost certainly leaders of house churches. If not, Paul would have been extremely remiss in greeting only the hostess of a church that met at her house, but neglecting to greet the actual leader!

But over the years, churches began to grow too large to meet in homes, and at the same time, as Christianity became more accepted, it also became more organized and structured. The idea of women doing anything in public was still shameful in much of the culture. Desiring to spread the gospel, churches followed the advice of Paul in fitting in with the surrounding cultures except in areas of conscience. “What shall we do with our woman leaders?” was the thought on the mind of the church as a whole. It became convenient to find a Scriptural basis for women not teaching-- and by this time, Paul’s letters had been around long enough for the situations in which he wrote to begin to be forgotten.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So. . . Having interpreted the Scriptures in this way, it still remains to find its application for us as part of the New Creation kingdom of God, living in the modern world. Even though Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 are most likely a situational mandate referring to a particular policy he set for a particular church at one particular time, this is still part of the God-inspired canon of Scripture, and there is still something we can learn from it today.

I believe there are timeless principles that are being conveyed even within this time-bound passage. Once we understand what Paul was probably really saying to Timothy, and what Paul probably wasn’t really saying-- then we can then figure out how Paul’s words might apply to us.

Here are the principles that I think we can deduce from this passage, which can be applied today:

1. All Christians, male and female, are to be taught the basic doctrines of their faith.

2. The doctrines of the faith are to be received in a quiet, receptive, yielding state of mind.

3. It’s important that a Christian learn the basics of the faith before attempting to become a teacher of others.

4. Teaching that domineers over others is not acceptable.

5. A person who is “deluded” or “deceived” can still be saved by Christ.

What I cannot see in this passage is any reason to restrict all women in the church today, as Paul restricted women (or a woman) in first-century Ephesus. The situations that existed in first-century Ephesus do not exist today. Christian women today are not uneducated; they are not influenced by the worship of Artemis, and they are not imbibing the teachings of gnosticism.

Which brings us to principle #6: Church leaders can set policies for their individual churches, to deal with specific situations there at specific times, which need not apply to all churches everywhere.

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I am indepted to Cheryl Schatz's website, Women in Ministry, for her insights into this passage.

5-Step Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 - Part 3

This series continues here with Step 5: Determine the most likely meaning of the passage in question, with a view towards the meaning of the words in their original language, along with grammar and construction.

I'll start with the word meanings, grammar and construction. This gets pretty detailed, so if you get bored, feel free to wait for Part 4, where I'll do the "determine the most likely meaning" part.

I'm not a Greek scholar myself, so I'm indebted to Suzanne McCarthy and Philip Payne for their information on the words and grammar of this passage of Scripture.

But the place to start is with English translations. Here is the passage in the KJV:

11. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
15. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

Here is the passage in the TNIV:

11. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.
12. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. 13. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
14. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.
15. But women will be saved through childbearing-- if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

How close are either of these versions to the wording in the actual Greek?

In verse 11 the KJV says “in silence,“ but the Greek words do not denote absolute silence, but means something more like “in quietness” or “in peace.“ The KJV also uses the definite article “the” before “woman” in verse 11, and before “man” in the second sentence. In the original, there is no definite article here before either “woman” or “man.” In the absence of a definite article, a noun can mean one general thing (“a woman”) or a collective set of things (“womankind”) or a particular thing (“this certain woman”). The grammatical construction of a particular passage will give additional clues as to which is meant.

The TNIV uses the indefinite article “a” to denote this, and renders “silence” more accurately as “quietness.”

It’s also important to notice that the word “learn” is the only word in this passage that is in the imperative (command) tense.

In verse 12, the word translated “suffer” or “permit,“ is a Greek word that usually connoted a temporary state of affairs. In the tense Paul uses, it does not imply “I never permit” so much as “I am not giving permission.” It is not worded as a command, but as a statement of what “I” -- Paul-- does.

Both these translations avoid “exercise authority” in verse 12. Some translations render it this way, as I mentioned in Part 2-- but the Greek word for the normal use of authority is not used here. The Greek verb is “authentein” (authenteo in the verb conjugation). This word appears only once in the New Testament, in this verse. No Greek dictionary or lexicon gives “have authority” or “exercise authority” as a possible translation of this word. Here are the possible definitions from a well-known lexicon:

1) one who with his own hands kills another or himself
2) one who acts on his own authority, autocratic
3) an absolute master
4) to govern, exercise dominion over one

Clearly what “a woman” is forbidden to do is not simply to “have authority.” The TNIV renders it “assume authority over” and the KJV says “usurp authority over” -- both of which are closer to the actual verb meaning-- to seize authority that has not been granted, to domineer. Also, that conjunction word between “teach” and “usurp authority” in the original is a is a word that links the two verbs together, giving them the same weight in the sentence. “Teach” by itself is not what is being addressed here. It is “teach-and-domineer,” as a unit.

Verse 13 is fairly terse and simple. Adam was formed first, then Eve. The issue is not what this verse says, but how Paul is using this information.

In verse 14, Neither version above accurately renders the verb tense in “was in the transgression” or “became a sinner.” Both of these are past tense, denoting something that happened in the past. But the actual verb tense is the perfect tense, and is better rendered “has come to be in sin.” The perfect tense refers to a present, ongoing state of affairs-- implying not only that “the woman” (and the definite article does appear in the original this time) not only was in sin, but still is. Note also that while both Adam and Eve are referred to in one sentence, in the following sentence it switches to “Adam” and “the woman.”

In verse 15 the TNIV takes what in the last sentence are actually two distinct pronouns (“she“ and “they“), and puts in the word “women” for “she,” obscuring the difference which is clear in the original. The KJV does accurately show the Greek pronouns here: “she” shall be saved if “they” continue in faith, etc. It is not common in Greek any more than in English to switch from a singular to a plural pronoun in the middle of sentence when referring to the same noun. Paul was an educated man and a scholar. It is very unlikely that he would have made such an amateur mistake. Since the original says first “she” and then “they,” Paul is almost certainly referring to two different nouns from earlier in the text-- not the same one.

The Greek also includes the definite article “the” before the word “childbearing.”
“Childbearing” can also be rendered “childbirth.” “The childbearing” is most likely to mean not just childbearing in general, but a specific childbearing or childbirth. In fact, since the passage makes reference to Eve, whose “seed” was to “crush the serpent’s head,” it is quite likely that Paul is referring to “the childbearing” in terms of this “seed”-- that is, the birth of the Christ. The word “saved” here is a word that means “spiritual salvation.” It is the word commonly used when speaking of what Christ came to do for humanity. Having a baby cannot save anyone. But the birth of the Child can save everyone.

We must also note that the words for “woman” and “man” in the Greek could also mean “wife” and “husband.” There are no separate words for “wife” or “husband” in the Greek. In fact, some English translations say, “I do not permit a wife to teach . . . a husband.” It is actually the norm in Koine Greek, when a man and a woman are being discussed together in the same passage, for the reader to consider them related by marriage (since there are no separate words for “husband” and “wife” in the Greek.) The translators must do their best with the context, to figure out which is meant. But when a the context is ambiguous (as this one manifestly is!) it’s hard to be sure.

Finally, there is the word “subjection,” which is the noun form of the verb “hupotasso,“ meaning “to yield, give in to, cooperate with.“ In the voice in which it is used here, it carries a connation of voluntary yielding. Twice in the Epistles it is used in this voice to denote an attitude all Christians should have towards one another (Eph. 5:21, 1 Peter 5:5). The word does not mean “obedience” -- there is another Greek word for that which Paul distinguishes from this word. He never uses the Greek word for “obey” as an instruction to wives or women about husbands or men.

Now, to bring this all together, here is a translation from the Concordant Literal New Testament, which closely follows the Greek in terms of singular and plural pronouns, actual verb tenses, etc.

Let a woman be learning in quietness with all subjection. Now I am not permitting a woman to be teaching nor yet to be domineering over a man, but to be in quietness. For Adam was first molded, thereafter Eve, and Adam was not seduced, yet the woman, being deluded, has come to be in the transgression Yet she shall be saved through the child bearing, if ever they should be remaining in faith and love and holiness with sanity.
　
So-- having looked closely at the original Greek, what is the most likely meaning of this passage? That will be covered in Part 4.

5-Step Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 - Part 2

Part 2 of my analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 focuses on Step 4 of a five-step process that takes literary and historical context into account before honing in on a reading of the actual passage in question. Afterwards, before proceeding to the last step, I will talk a little bit about how this process casts in doubt the traditional, restrictionist view of this passage as being Paul's actual, intended meaning.

So on to Step 4: Determine the place of the passage in question within the purpose and literary context of this particular book of the Bible.

This book is a personal letter written by Paul to his "true son in the faith," Timothy. It is not intended, therefore, to function in the same way the "general" letters do, as exhortations to whole congregations. Timothy was Paul's most trusted delegate in his mission. Paul's purpose in writing this particular letter to Timothy is given in chapter 1, verse 3: "as I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain persons not to teach false doctrines any longer." Later, Paul expands upon this purpose in chapter 3, verses 14-15: "Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household." The church is being viewed as a "household," which in those days meant a large family unit that functioned as both a family and an economic enterprise. Paul's purpose, then, is to instruct Timothy in a temporary mission while Paul is away: to stop the spread of false doctrine and to make sure the church is acting in such a way as to be a healthy family unit and a productive center for the spread of the gospel. (Note that though this letter has been denoted as a "pastoral" epistle, for the purpose of instruction to a young pastor-- that is not Timothy's actual function or mission at the time of this letter. Paul is clearly intending to return to a church he considers a special charge of his own. He is not turning over leadership of this church to Timothy; in fact, there are already local leaders in place. But Paul wants Timothy to make sure the local leadership of this church, in the form of "overseers" and "deacons," is are properly qualified and functioning as they should. There was no such thing as a "senior pastor" at this stage in church development. Churches were run by groups of leaders, checked in on by an apostle like Paul. But Timothy will not be this church's "overseer." Timothy's mission is temporary.

Paul's letter is set up as follows:

Greeting and purpose statement: false doctrine
Paul's view of his own former errors and God's mercy
Charge to Timothy to hold onto faith and a good conscience
Instructions regarding prayer and worship with an eye to the community being allowed to "live peaceful and quiet lives," and with an eye to the desire of God that all people "be saved and come to knowledge of the truth."
The verses in question (I'll get back to those in Step 5)
Qualifications for overseers and deacons
Reiteration and expansion of purpose statement
A quotation of an oral tradition regarding the nature of the Christ (true doctrine)
Description of false doctrines that are a problem at Ephesus with exhortation to Timothy to repudiate them and teach true doctrine
Treatment of elders, and the maintaining of a "list" of widows to receive care
Exhortation that everyone take care of their own dependents "so that no one may be open to blame."
The problem of younger widows
Instructions to Timothy to give honor to the local leaders who are doing right and to rebuke those who are sinning.
A brief aside about Timothy's own health
Instructions to give to slaves
A warning to be on watch for money-loving as a motivation for false teachers
A command to Timothy to keep himself pure and to exhort the rich not to put their trust in money
A final exhortation about guarding against false teaching

So that's the letter as a whole, and where the passage fits into it. And here's the main areas where I think the traditional reading is incorrect.

The traditional/restrictionist reading is inconsistent in its interpretational methods. While insisting on the timelessness of "I do not permit a woman to teach," the traditional reading treats the verses immediately preceding, about men lifting their hands when they pray and women not wearing gold and pearls, as cultural and temporary. The traditional interpretation extracts the principles of these verses (men should pray in a holy manner and women should dress modestly), and keeps those, but not the “plain meaning,” which involves the lifting of hands and a prohibition against certain kinds of clothing and hairstyles.

The restrictionist reading then insists that in spite of the culturally-bound nature of the preceding verses, the prohibition against women teaching is not cultural and temporary, but timeless. The reason given for this is that Paul “grounds” the prohibition in the creation order by citing the Adam and Eve story. This is done without adequate justification as to how the creation story makes the prohibition timeless. Readings such as “Adam was in authority over Eve even before the Fall” or “because Eve was deceived, all women are easily deceived” involves reading meanings into Paul‘s words, and into the Genesis account, that are not supported by the actual texts.

Second, the traditional reading is inconsistent in that it discounts the "plain meaning" of the verses immediately following, which (if read according to "plain meaning") say that women are saved by having babies. It then insists that the “plain meaning“ of "I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority* over a man" is: "no woman shall be a pastor or an elder," or "no woman shall give a teaching 'from the pulpit' during a church service.“ These are actually not “plain” readings of the text at all-- but even if they were, it is problematic to insist that we have to take these verses for exactly what the restrictionists claim they say, when the restrictionists themselves do not follow the plain meaning a few verses later. Instead, they say women will be "saved" from being deceived if they accept their role as child-bearers. They are unwilling to contradict the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone, even for women-- so they change the meaning of "saved" and "through" and "child-bearing."

The traditional/restrictionist reading, through these inconsistencies, reveals an ongoing cultural bias against women having power in the church, which bias colors the interpretation. Women are allowed the benefit of the doubt when a passage's "plain reading" might appear to rob them of salvation by grace, but when a passage appears to rob them of full participation in the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit, who was "poured out on all flesh, on your sons and daughters" in the New Covenant-- this reading flatly denies women.

There is no place in this restrictionist reading to question whether Paul, who considered the church at Ephesus his church and was giving Timothy instructions for managing it in his absence, might actually have been saying, "This is the course of action I'm taking at this time to deal with these problems in my church. Please follow them while I'm gone." There is no room to take into account that Paul's own perceived mission was to present true doctrine, and to make sure the gospel message did not become distasteful to the surrounding culture-- which might have resulted in particular procedures, specifically for this church at that time, designed to make sure uneducated women learned correct doctrine and did not embarrass the men in an honor-shame culture. The restrictionist reading refuses to take into account that Paul did not give these instructions in a general letter to all churches, but in a personal letter to his closest right-hand man-- and that if he'd really wanted to restrict women from any authoritative or teaching roles, he should have rebuked the women that he mentions in Romans 16, rather than commending them!

But this five-step method is set up to take all those things into account, before proceeding to determine the most likely, author-intended meaning of the passage in question. Stay tuned.

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*The translation "exercise authority" is also problematic; but that's an issue for Step 5.