“[T]he Bible teaches that men and women fulfill different roles in relation to each other, charging man with a unique leadership role [based] not on temporary cultural norms but on permanent facts of creation…. [T]here are roles that strain the personhood of man and woman too far to be appropriate…. Some roles would involve kinds of leadership and expectations of authority and forms of strength as to make it unfitting for a woman to fill the role….”
“We are persuaded that the Bible teaches that only men should be pastors and elders. That is, men should bear primary responsibility for Christian leadership and teaching in the church. So it is unbiblical, we believe, and therefore detrimental, for women to assume this role.”
John Piper, in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
“Because women are men’s equals spiritually and intellectually, they are also capable of the same spiritual and intellectual roles. This means that they are capable of fulfilling the same calls as men and can serve … as equal partners in … ministry.”
Craig Keener, in Paul, Women & Wives
The Two-Sided Modern Debate over Women in Ministry
Complementarians vs. Egalitarians
pejoratively known as pejoratively known as
“Traditionalists” “Evangelical Feminists”
“Hierarchialists” “Christian Liberationists”
“Subordinationists” “Secularized Christians”
“Patriarchialists” “Liberals”
Name-calling is unhelpful. It smears opponents with allegations that only contain grains of truth. Complementarians do emphasize male hierarchy and female subordination; Egalitarians do believe women should be liberated from effects of unfair prejudice. But name-calling brings guilt by association rather than examining the merits of each biblical position.
But in addition to the problem of “name calling,” another major issue hinders Christians from having a thoughtful, mutually respectful conversation about the issue of women serving in leadership in the church. And that is the matter of “bearing false witness” concerning those who disagree with our position. The ninth commandment says,
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” [Exodus 20:16, NASB]
In so many debates in the church, we straw-man our opponent's arguments and steel-man our own arguments. So, for example, egalitarians may accuse complementarians of denying the equal worth of women or denying the equal gifting or intelligence of women. The vast majority of thoughtful complementarians do no such thing. Their position would typically be expressed as,
“Equal in worth, and dignity; difference in ministry roles in the church.”
Similarly, complementarians may accuse egalitarians of rejecting gender differences or blurring gender lines - claiming that egalitarians don't acknowledge the impact of our created biology upon our God-given desires or interests or expressions. But the vast majority of evangelical egalitarians would state their position as,
“Full mutuality in ministry; full recognition of gender differences in personhood.
Equality does not mean that men and women are identical.”
So evangelical egalitarians would affirm that men and women are equally gifted and called by God to lead and teach in the church - no ceiling based upon sex - while also affirming that God created humanity as male and female.
One last obstacle to respectful, truthful dialogue between the two positions is, of course, the slippery slope argument. Wayne Grudem, a leading complementarian, argues that if you open the door to equal roles in the church between men and women, that inevitably leads to accepting homosexual conduct in committed relationships.
Egalitarianism → Approval of same-sex sexual relationships
Dr. Grudem's argument is echoed by many other complementarian writers and preachers. The counterexamples to Dr. Grudem's arguments are many. For example, the nearly 3,000,000-member Church of the Nazarene has been egalitarian for 118 years, and yet has held to a clear conviction that sexual relations are biblically restricted to a heterosexual married couple during that entire time. Similarly, the over 400,000-member Wesleyan Church has had an egalitarian position for 165 years, but has been non-affirming during that entire period. The 89 million member Assemblies of God Church has been egalitarian for over 110 years, and has a formal statement prohibiting sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriages. One can find the same position held by the Free Methodist Church for the past 160 plus years and the 900,000 member Church of God ( Anderson, Indiana) for the past 140 plus years. In short, denomination after denomination has been fully egalitarian for more than a century and has not gone down the slippery slope. Many of the most prominent evangelical advocates of women's full equality in the church such as Craig Keener, N.T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Preston Sprinkle, Philip Payne and William Webb also teach that same- sex sexual relationships are contrary to biblical teachings.
On the other side, egalitarians have accused complementarians of getting on the slippery slope of abuse.
Complementarianism → Abuse
So Michael Bird writes that some forms of complementarianism enable spiritual abuse, domestic violence, and even sexual exploitation. Perhaps so, but extremism in any position will be destructive. But I am unaware of any thoughtful complementarian who would not be completely opposed to all of these sins, in both practice and teaching. I need to add that Dr. Grudem, in one of his books, suggests that egalitarianism inevitably leads to abuse, because emasculated men become frustrated and are thus more prone to domestic violence. Of course, the counter-argument would be that there is simply no empirical evidence for the idea that egalitarianism leads to more domestic violence. One would only need to compare the domestic violence rates of egalitarian societies, such as Sweden or Israel, with the domestic violence rates of less egalitarian societies, such as India or Pakistan to refute the idea that egalitarian relationships lead to domestic violence.
I want to briefly discuss my own journey on this incredibly important issue. We all have our own stories, and they shape the way we see life and often the positions that we take. But here's my story. I was brought up in New York City in the 1960s and early 1970s. My background was almost entirely egalitarian. The girls in my class were never treated differently than the boys. Many of the brightest people in my honors classes were women. I just assumed that women were equally capable to men, and that no role would be denied to a woman.
When I went to college, I attended a school in Cleveland called Case Western Reserve University, where, through the woman who's now my wife, I came to know Christ as my savior. And when I got saved, Marlene and I were part of a college fellowship group known as InterVarsity. InterVarsity, in our experience, was thoroughly egalitarian. Our executive committee at our college in Cleveland had an equal number of men and women serving. We didn't draw a sharp distinction between the roles for men and the roles for women although, in general, the presidents of InterVarsity at the time, tended to be men and not women. But we didn't have a firm theological commitment that women could not have served as the chapter presidents, and many of the staff workers for InterVarsity at the time were women who helped to coach local chapters of IV.
Marlene and I moved to Columbus for me to attend law school in 1980. And we joined a little church of about 30 people that came under the teaching of a church movement that was strongly complementarian. In that church movement, women could not preach to men or serve as elders. In the 1980s, one thing that you need to know was that there was not a particularly robust literature coming from the evangelical camp that supported the egalitarian position. Certainly the mainline churches were moving towards egalitarianism and one after another, mainline churches ordained women. But, if you were an evangelical, and you were looking for evangelical egalitarian scholars, they were few and far between. So I was not reading any particularly persuasive biblical arguments in favor of the egalitarian position that women could serve in any position in the church that their gifts and callings permitted.
But, In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I began to be increasingly uneasy about the complementarian position as it was practiced in the evangelical church in America. There were churches that permitted women to “share” from the Bible for an hour, but forbade women from teaching. So women could “share” but not teach. Or women were permitted to teach on the subject of marriage or family life, but they were not allowed to preach doctrine, as if you could separate biblical teaching on marriage or family from doctrine. Or they could preach alongside their husbands, but never alone. Or they could teach at church conferences to a mixed audience of men and women, but not on Sundays. Or women were permitted to teach so long as they were “under the coverings of their husbands,” whatever that meant.
One of the most famous women Bible teachers in America, whose DVDs went into literally thousands of evangelical churches all across the country was supposedly teaching (I remember hearing her say this) “under the covering” of her husband, whose name no one knew. It's almost certainly the case that she was a far better Bible expositor than her husband.
Women were permitted to preach and lead on the mission field in Africa or South America or Asia in some of America's most conservative denominations, but they weren't permitted to do those things at home. This practice is particularly disturbing because it suggests more than a hint of racism - people on the mission field are somehow entitled to less than people at home. The simple truth is that in many conservative denominations, their missionary workforce would have been completely eviscerated, were it not for the work of single women missionaries.
In one particular denomination, a very prominent woman was permitted to preach from the floor of the convention hall, but wasn't permitted to stand on the stage. There is even one denomination that permits women to preach from the pulpit on the right side of the stage, but never from the pulpit on the left. One seminary prepared women to preach, but never to be ordained as pastors. Another denomination permitted women to be senior pastors, but never bishops. And some churches permit women to be pastors but not elders.
Now, if you can keep all of these different rules straight in your mind, you are a better person than I am. The most likely conclusion to draw from such differing and incoherent rules is that some churches set the standard for permissible roles for women based upon their congregations’ subjective feelings of comfort rather than a careful study of the scriptures.
A woman named Rita wrote to me and said that from the moment she came to Christ, she believed she was called to ministry. The day after she received Christ she led someone else to Jesus. She went to a seminary and was trained, but the church she joined would not permit women to be pastors or elders. They strung her along for years allowing her to teach in youth ministry, to be an administrator, and to work with other women. They even gave her a ministry license, but they refused to give her the title of “pastor” or elder. She was a licensed minister of the gospel, but not a pastor. Rita said that the new pastor of her church says that he might permit women to have the title of “pastor,” but he is still deciding on that. She’s been waiting for the past year for him to make a decision. My heart breaks for women like Rita who are rejected from church leadership not because of any character defect or want of gifting or calling, but simply on the basis of gender.
I found that in many churches, women were children's ministry directors or Sunday school directors or adult ministry directors. They oversaw male leaders in those positions, but they weren't paid the same salaries as their male colleagues who had similar staff roles, nor were they given the title and status of male pastors on staff. These inconsistencies and the incoherence of the evangelical position bothered me, particularly my sense of justice.
Eventually, the incoherence of the typical early 1990s evangelical position troubled me to the point where I felt there had to be a better way forward. And by God's grace, there were more and more evangelical scholars in the mid-1990s who held to a very high view of the authority of scripture, and shared my orthodox convictions, but also offered a persuasive case (at least to me) for a different perspective on some of the seemingly more restrictive texts, such as 1Timothy 2:11-15. So what I'd like to do is actually begin with the seemingly most restrictive text regarding women's roles, the text that is most likely to give pause to many churches who are moving in an egalitarian direction, and that is 1 Timothy 2.
Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:8-15, NIV]
Many people who have read 1 Timothy 2 have concluded that Paul is not just speaking to a local situation in Ephesus and giving temporary local counsel to a church in crisis. Rather Paul is offering a universal rule that forbids every church for all time in every culture from allowing women to preach or lead in the church. We’ll get into the details of 1 Timothy 2 in just a moment – what I believe it actually teaches. But as a preliminary matter, let me offer just two reasons why 1 Timothy 2 should not and cannot be read as prohibiting women for all time from leading or teaching in the church.
If 1 Timothy 2 forbids women from teaching or leading men then it contradicts Old Testament examples
In other words, if God who inspired Holy Scripture is offended by women leading and teaching men then we should find no example in the Old Testament of God giving leadership to a woman. We find, for example, no positive example of God approving of homosexual sex in the Bible. After all, God doesn’t contradict himself. But here’s what we read regarding women in leadership:
I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. [Micah 6:4, NIV]
Miriam was sent by God to lead Israel! And then there’s Deborah. She was one of the judges who God raised up to lead all of Israel. Here’s what we read:
Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. 5 She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided. [Judges 4:4-5, NIV]
In fact, regarding Deborah - her jurisdiction went beyond any of the other single tribal judges. Unlike Samson, whose rule appears to be confined to one tribe, Deborah's authority transcended tribal divisions. And as a prophet, she appears to have greater authority than the priests of her day.
We certainly see the prestige given to a prophetess named Huldah when we consider the size and importance of the delegation that Huldah counseled. Huldah's function was authoritative and institutional. In fact, she delivered an authoritative message to the king concerning the whole nation, and she personally validated the newly rediscovered Book of the Law. So rather than having a private, charismatic moment, the royal delegation that sought Huldah out, implies that she must have had an established reputation as a genuine prophet of the Lord, and the scripture shows no hint that anyone thought it strange that Josiah's men would go to a woman for counsel.
So if Paul intended for his restriction to be universal and not particular to the Ephesian church of that time, he would have been contradicting the Old Testament. More importantly,
If Paul intended a universal rule that women should not teach or lead men in the church, then he contradicted his own teaching by his apostolic practice.
In other words, the Apostle Paul would be saying to the church, “Don’t do what I do, do what I teach.” He would be like the parent who has a cigarette in their mouth, telling their kids “smoking is bad, don’t smoke”. Where does Paul approve of women teaching men or leading in the church?
The Apostle Paul calls many women his synergoi, which we translate as “coworkers.” Coworkers is a term that the Apostle Paul applies to Timothy, Titus, and other male leaders. For example, we read about Prisca, Euodia, Syntyche, concerning whom Paul says “[they] labored by my side (or were coworkers) with me in the gospel,” Junia, and Phoebe, also were coworkers with Paul. In addition, the Apostle Paul seemed to have no problem with Prisca (also called by her diminutive name, Priscilla) teaching Apollos, “the way of God more accurately.” (Acts 18:26) Here is a clear, uncontested case of a woman instructing a man in doctrine, with Paul's approval. Again, she and her husband, Aquila are repeatedly called Paul's coworkers.
In Romans 16:1-16, Paul identifies 29 people to whom he gives a greeting or commendation. Of the 29, ten are women: Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, Julia, Rufus's mother, and Nereus's sister.
While Paul here greets twice as many men as women by raw count, he actually commends twice as many women as men in active ministry language. And that's a point that Craig Keener, the great New Testament scholar from Asbury Seminary underlines. He says we need to pay particular attention to the commendations in Romans 16.
I'll just point to just two of the commendations.
In Romans 16:1 Paul commends: “Our sister Phoebe, who is a deacon of the church in Cenchreae.” Some translations call Phoebe a servant of the church, but every other use of the Greek term diákonos in the book of Romans refers to a leader in the church, a deacon. This is further confirmed by verse 2 in Romans 16 which reads:
Receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and give her support in whatever matters she may have need from you, for she has been a leader [prostatis, which means “leader, chief, president or presiding officer”] of many and myself as well. [Romans 16:2, Philip Payne Version, (PPV)]
Many translations of the Bible obscure the leadership role that Phoebe had in the church. But this Greek word prostatis which literally means “to stand before,” is always used in the New Testament of a person who stands before a group to lead them.
And then there is Junia, a woman apostle in the New Testament. Romans 16:7 reads:
Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and became Christians before I did. [Romans 16:7, PPV]
John Chrysostom who is looked to by the Eastern Orthodox portion of the church as the greatest of the early church fathers said this back in the 4th century: “Even to be an apostle is great, but also to be prominent among them – consider how wonderful a song of praise that is. For they were prominent because of their works, because of their successes. Glory be! How great the wisdom of this woman that she was even deemed worthy of the apostle’s title.”
But in the 13th century, a man who was translating the Bible changed Junia’s name to Junias, a male name. Poor Junia - she went through a sex change operation by conservative male theologians after she was dead! And this sex change continues to be supported by some complementarian scholars to this day!
My own reading of church history suggests that whenever the Spirit of God is poured out in the church, women are liberated to be and do everything that God has called them to do. Whenever the activity of the Holy Spirit recedes and the church becomes more institutionalized, women are pushed into the background. The bottom line is this, nothing in the spiritual gifts passages that we read about in the New Testament – in 1 Corinthians 12, in Romans 12, in Ephesians 4, in 1 Peter 4 – ever restrict any spiritual gift, including gifts of teaching or leadership or apostleship or evangelism or prophet or pastor or teacher simply to men. The gifts of God and the call of God are not genderbased any more than they are race-based or age-based.
What I’d like to do is quickly ask and answer seven questions regarding 1 Timothy 2. Remember, 7 is the perfect number!
Here’s the first question:
Is the prohibition regarding women teaching or leading in a church universal or local?
The only verse in the Bible that allegedly prohibits women teaching or leading in the entire Bible – my study Bible at home has over 2,000 pages – there’s just this one verse in 2,000 pages that allegedly prohibits women from teaching or leading men and that is 1 Timothy 2:12.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;[b] she must be quiet. [1 Timothy 2:12, NIV]
Is this verse universal so that a seminary-trained woman in the 21st century in America or in China cannot teach or lead men? Or is Paul speaking to a particular situation in Ephesus in the first century where women were going from house church to house church spreading false teaching?
If you read 1st and 2nd Timothy, Paul's concern about false teaching spreading through the church becomes instantly apparent. In these two short books, there is an enormous concentration of vocabulary concerning the importance of truth and its transmission. The Apostle Paul was clearly contending with the spread of false teaching. So, we see the words for “teaching” and “doctrine” used ten times. The Greek word is didaskalia. “Truth” is mentioned seven times. The Greek word is aletheia. The word “teach” is mentioned four times, didasko. ”Teachers” are mentioned twice, didaskalos. “Instruction” is mentioned once, didache. And “the faith” is mentioned ten times, pistis. That's 34 occurrences of words associated with truth and teaching. If you add other closely related words like message, gospel, deposit, entrusted to someone, handing on, proclaiming, scripture, sound, healthy, faithful, trustworthy, it's really clear that what Paul is doing is urging Timothy to combat this false teaching that was spreading through the church, and to both guard the truth and pass on the truth to the next generation.
So combating a false teaching that was spread from house to house or perhaps from house church to house church by wealthy, prominent women forms the contextual background of 1st Timothy 2, especially verses 9 to 15.
Now, it may be, as Preston Sprinkle, points out in his recent book From Genesis to Junia, alongside of many other evangelical scholars, that the larger cultural context of Paul's restrictive comments regarding women's roles in 1st Timothy 2 were the result of the massive Artemis cults in Ephesus where Timothy was pastoring. This cult claimed that female deities were superior to male deities, that female deities were created first, and then male deities followed. The cult also taught that male figures were associated with deception while women figures were associated with truth. Further, Sprinkle argues, following previous writers, that Artemis was looked to by women in Ephesus to protect them through the dangers of childbirth and delivery.
All of this may be true, and it may be that Paul is answering the false teachings of the Artemis cult point by point in 1 Timothy 2:11-15. It may be, as many have argued, that this larger cultural setting was the reason Paul addresses all of these issues regarding women's roles, the way he does in 1st Timothy 2. Paul, therefore, is giving particular instructions for a particular cultural situation that the Ephesian Church was facing in the 1st century.
But I feel uncomfortable placing the entire weight of my biblical interpretation on something outside the text of scripture. Cultural background can and should assist us to properly interpret a text. But the starting point for biblical interpretation should be the text itself. Are there clues in the texts themselves from 1st and 2nd Timothy, that Paul was addressing a local situation and not intending for his comments to have universal application? I think the answer is absolutely, yes!
What is the context for Paul writing 1 Timothy 2? You may have heard the old saying that “a text without a context is a pretext”. What is the textual context of 1 Timothy 2? The context is the books of 1 and 2 Timothy. 1 Timothy 1 tells us that the central concern of 1 and 2 Timothy is the spread of false teaching in the church at Ephesus. This false teaching is of such concern to Paul that virtually every single paragraph in 1 Timothy is about the false teaching. If you read through 1 Timothy, women seem to have been deceived by false teachers, just as Eve was deceived by the serpent in the garden of Eden. And women were passing on this false teaching from house to house or perhaps, from house church to house church. We read in 1 Timothy 5:13 that undisciplined women were going from house to house spreading falsehoods that they were learning from false teachers “who oppose the truth and are of depraved minds” (2 Tim. 3:8).
So Paul writes 1 and 2 Timothy to combat false teaching that is being spread by women. This false teaching is leading many, many people to leave the Christian faith. That’s the context.
Here’s the second question:
Why are women commanded to learn?
Here’s what we read in verse 11:
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. [I Timothy 2:11, NIV]
There is only one actual command or Greek imperative in 1 Timothy 2:8-15 - the command for women to learn.
This command for women to learn contrasts with the absence of women on any list of students in Ephesian schools at the time. And it contrasts with the first century Jewish practice in which women were not allowed to study the Torah, rather only boys and men were permitted to study Torah. Rather than being a restrictive, super-conservative command, this command would be considered radical or at the very least, progressive in the 1st Century. But Paul gives one command in this text and he says “women learn”. In other words, don’t teach yet. You are not trained. First learn. Not in total silence, but in quietness, in peace. 1 Timothy 2 is all about creating peace in the church.
Paul wants men not to quarrel. He wants women to learn in peace and in submission. And note that Paul doesn’t say learn in submission to men, but in submission to the truth they are learning. In other words, “Women, don’t go around spreading false teaching. Instead, learn and submit yourself to the truth of God’s Word.”
Which leads to the third question, the most difficult verse in this whole text.
Are women permitted to teach men?
Now, if you say that 1 Timothy 2:12 is universal, there’s nothing in this text that restricts this verse to women teaching in church vs. teaching at a conference or teaching men in a seminary or teaching in a Bible college or an online Bible class or teaching by writing a book. There’s nothing in this verse that restricts its application to women teaching doctrine vs. teaching about marriage. There’s nothing in this verse that restricts this application to women teaching vs. sharing or preaching in a church vs. teaching through podcasts or substacks or magazine articles or teaching a man versus teaching a group of men. Again, Paul’s own apostolic practice was such that he did not have a problem with women teaching men. He did not restrict leadership or teaching gifts to men. Indeed, Paul encourages all believers to teach each other.
Here’s what we read in Colossians
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. [Colossians 3:16, NIV]
Teaching one another in the church is NOT gender-based. In 1 Corinthians 14, we read:
What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. [1 Corinthians 14:26, NIV]
Teaching in the church is based on gifting. It’s based on calling, which leads to the fourth question:
What kind of authority is forbidden to women?
Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:12:
12 I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly. [1 Timothy 2:12, NIV]
Paul is not prohibiting all leading by women. And I say this again, forgive me for the repetition, but so many churches take this one verse and build a mountain of doctrine from it and bury women under this one verse. Gifts of leading in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 – gifts like apostle and prophet and evangelist and pastor and teacher – are not gender-based. If they were, the Bible would have told us so. These gifts are given by the sovereign Holy Spirit as he wills, not as the culture wills or as our comfort level wills. The Spirit gives gifts of leadership to women and men as he wills.
The Greek word for "authority" in 1 Timothy 2:12 is authentein. Again, what kind of authority is forbidden to women? It may be that this word authentein, which appears only here in the New Testament, is best translated “to domineer or to exercise authority in a controlling way.” Preston Sprinkle, for example, argues that this rare Greek word authentein always carries a negative sense, rather than simply the neutral sense exercising authority. The typical word that's used for “authority” in the New Testament is exousia. Exousia is only used in male and female relationships one time in the New Testament, and that's in 1 Corinthians 7.
The Apostle Paul says in 1st Corinthians 7:4:
The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. [1 Corinthians 7:4, NIV]
That is the only time that the word “authority” is ever used in the entire New Testament regarding male-female relations. Again, it may be that the Apostle Paul is saying there's a certain kind of authority that is forbidden to women, and his prohibition may be about domineering or controlling authority. In other words, the women in Ephesus are forbidden from lording it over men in the same way that Jesus explicitly tells the disciples to not lord it over one another, like the Gentile rulers do. However, some scholars have persuasively argued that rather than domineering authority, this Greek word authentein might be better translated as “self-assumed authority.” So, the text would read, “I am not permitting a woman to teach with “self-assumed” authority.
Philip Payne painstakingly shows in his book, Men and Women, One in Christ, (in a 36-page detailed chapter) that this Greek word authentein which is used only here in the New Testament, is everywhere outside the Bible used to refer to self-assumed authority. In other words, Paul is prohibiting women who are not authorized by the church from assuming authority for themselves to teach.
Tish Warren, who is a female Anglican priest, wrote a fascinating article in Christianity Today a few years agoin which she says that in the cyber-age that we live in, authority no longer comes from the church, but from popularity. If your post goes viral, you get book deals, you get to speak on conference stages. If you’re clever, if you word things in a relatable way, if you have a compelling life experience, it no longer matters what your doctrine is or if you have any theological training. You are listened to by hundreds of thousands of people even though you are not in any way accountable to any church structures or any Christian community or any board or denomination. In many ways, 1 Timothy 2:12 about self-assumed authority has a very contemporary application to both women and men in the Twitterverse and the podcast world who spout their opinions without any check or any accountability to anyone else.
Brothers and sisters, it might be good to not follow the lead of some popular You Tuber who is not deeply rooted in and accountable to any local church community for what they say or what they teach. Let’s continue.
For Adam was formed first, then Eve. [1 Timothy 2:13, NIV]
Here’s the fifth question:
Does the fact that Adam was created before Eve mean that men always have authority over women?
As many scholars have pointed out, the specific content of a popular 1st Century gnostic teaching was that Eve was created before Adam and therefore women are superior to men! This gnostic teaching may have been the teaching that Paul was refuting in verse 13. But if we say that Paul’s correction that Adam was formed before Eve gives men a creation mandate to always have authority over women then we ought not restrict this mandate, as some Christian teachers do, to the church or the home. If this authority is a matter of the creation order, then logically, one ought to say that women should not lead men anywhere at any time. Women should not be CEOs of companies or run their own businesses that hire men.
For logical consistency, some complementarians do make this argument. For example, in John Piper's essay, “A Vision of Biblical Complementarity,” Piper writes,
“The God-given responsibility for leadership in a mature man will not generally allow him to flourish long under personal, directive leadership of a female superior.” [John Piper, A Vision of Biblical Complementarity]
J.I. Packer suggests that,
“A situation in which a female boss has a male secretary puts strain on the humanity of both. I think this would be true in other situations as well. Some of the more obvious ones would be in military combat settings, if women were positioned so as to deploy and command men; or in professional baseball, if a woman is made the umpire to call balls and strikes. And I would stress this is not necessarily owing to male egotism, but to a natural and good penchant given by God.” [J.I. Packer]
By the same token, if Adam being created first is a creation mandate of the superior authority of all men over all women, then women ought not to be elected officials in government or school principals or be ministry directors over men in the church because men were formed first and this truth should govern all male-female relationships. And, logically, if being created first gives someone authority, then animals should have authority over people because in the creation account, animals were created before human beings. But few complementarians are willing to extend the creation mandate argument to its logical conclusion outside of church and home.
There are two more questions. This is really tough text and we’re asking and trying to quickly answer all the hard questions the text presents today. Question 6:
Are women more deceivable than men?
Here’s what Paul writes in verse 14: 1
And Adam was not deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a transgressor. [1 Timothy 2:14, NIV]
In other words, is Paul saying that the way women are created renders them more open to false teaching? Is Paul saying “Women, don’t teach only because you have an inborn tendency to believe all kinds of lies? You are just really gullible.” That’s how many people have read this text. Dr. Wayne Grudem, a well-known and highly influential complementarian (especially in the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church of America) , makes this exact point in his exposition of 1 Timothy 2:14 this way:
“Paul was saying something about the nature of men and women as God created them. Men have some strengths that are generally lacking in women. God gave men, in general, a disposition that is better suited to teaching and governing in the church, a disposition that inclines more to rational, logical analysis of doctrine and a desire to protect the doctrinal purity of the church. Paul understands the kinder, gentler, more relational nature of women as something that made Eve less inclined to oppose the deceptive serpent.”
Grudem takes women’s more gullible nature to be a universal truth. But if women are in fact, by nature, more deceivable than men, then logically, women shouldn’t be simply excluded from teaching men. Women should be barred from teaching women. Women should be especially barred from teaching children. But Paul doesn’t argue this. He’s not saying something about the nature of women. Paul is correcting a local situation using an ad hoc illustration from Genesis about a woman being used to spread deception. He’s restricting women who are spreading false doctrine in this particular situation. Indeed, the Apostle Paul says in the same pastoral letters that both men and women are subject to being deceivers and to self-deception. In 2 Timothy 3:13 he writes:
While evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. [2 Timothy 3:13, NIV]
He says the same thing in Titus 3:3. There’s nothing about a woman’s constitution that makes her more deceivable. Indeed, the vast majority of heresies by far in the history of the church were introduced by men.
What does this verse mean? Here’s what Philip Payne writes in explaining 1 Timothy 2:14
“The text of 1 Timothy 2:14 emphasizes the deception of Eve, providing a warning to Eves in Ephesus not to be similarly deceived by the false teachers or to spread the deception. As Satan deceived the woman leading to the Fall, so Satan had already deceived some women in the Ephesian church (1 Timothy 5:15). The example of Eve provides an excellent explanation and appropriate support for the command in verse 11 that women learn lest their deception lead to their fall from the faith. It directly supports the prohibition in verse 12 warning, lest women teach their deception to the assembled church and threaten its fall.”
There are so many times in the Bible, where a biblical author uses a scriptural analogy or precedent to address a local problem. And to treat the analogy as a timeless, universal rule would produce absurd conclusions. Let me offer just two illustrations. In 1 Corinthians 9:9-10, the Apostle Paul says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it’s treading out the grain.” Paul is citing Deuteronomy 25:4 to defend his right to material support as an apostle. Paul explicitly tells us his citation is an analogy. “Is it for oxen that God is concerned, or does he not, does he not speak entirely for our sake?" But read as a universal principle about God's priorities, it would mean that God doesn't really care about an animal's welfare, which contradicts the plain sense of the Deuteronomic law. Paul was applying this analogy to a specific dispute about the right of an apostle to receive money. He is not deriving a universal timeless statement about oxen or the treatment of animals.
In 1 Peter 3:5-6, we read about Sarah calling Abraham “Lord.” Peter is citing Sarah's obedience to encourage wives in Rome who were living with unbelieving husbands to win them over through their conduct. But if we universalized Peter's statement, it would obligate every wife to address her husband as “Lord.” I don't know many wives today, living in America, who follow this example of Sarah. Again, the fact that a biblical author uses an ad hoc illustration as an analogy for their local situation does not mean that ad hoc illustrations should be universalized to cover all people at all times in all cultures.
Finally, the last question:
Are women saved through childbearing?
Some translations of 1 Timothy 2:15 translate the verse this way:
But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:15, NIV]
Is Paul saying, “Women, unless you have a child you can’t be eternally saved”? That would contradict everything Paul teaches elsewhere. A person is saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
This is one of the most difficult texts in the New Testament to interpret. It is possible that the Apostle Paul is countering an ascetic anti-marriage heresy. Craig Keener reads this statement about childbearing alongside 1 Timothy 4:3 where false teachers were explicitly forbidding marriage. It could be that Ephesian ascetics were teaching that marriage and child-bearing were spiritually inferior or even spiritually damaging. Paul's point is to offer pastoral reassurance that ordinary married life, including childbearing, is not a barrier to salvation or holiness. Women don't need to renounce marriage and motherhood to be spiritually committed to Christ. They'll be kept safe spiritually in their calling if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control. Several other New Testament scholars agree with Keener. Gordon Fee seems to read 1 Timothy 2:15 the same way.
But another possible translation of 1 Timothy 2:15 offers a different possibility:
But she will be saved through the Childbirth—if she continues in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:15, PPV]
We often read this translation as a footnoted alternative at the bottom of the page in our Bibles. Paul, according to this alternative translation, is saying that a woman is eternally saved through the Childbirth. That’s what the text might read in the original. She will be eternally saved through THE Childbirth (the definite article is there in the original). Whose childbirth do you think a woman’s salvation hinges on? Of course, Paul is referring to the birth of Christ. Through faith in Christ women and men will be saved. This is a possible and I think reasonable understanding of verse 15.
Conclusion
If it is never the will of God that women become elders, pastors or teach men, then the multitude of women who believe they are called by God to become elders in the church, preach, teach at a Bible college, or church plant are in serious error. According to the complementarian argument, the source of their error must either be the world, the flesh, the devil, or some combination thereof. In other words, although a woman may believe that she is called and despite the fact that many mature followers of Jesus may have confirmed her calling or that she has experienced abundant fruit via conversions and transformed lives, her so-called “calling” must be a product either of a society in rebellion against God, her own over-active imagination or unchecked ego, or the devil's deception.
I want to make an appeal to fellow leaders. Do not allow women in your church to spend years second-guessing themselves, wondering whether they are full of pride and selfish ambition, because they feel called to overall leadership in the church, or to a teaching ministry for the whole church. If you believe that the Bible does not prohibit women from leading or teaching, then boldly say so. Bless women in your group or congregation. Affirm their gifts. Actively work to promote them in various roles. In your teachings, use women as examples of leaders. In other words, don't just wait for a courageous woman to emerge. Look around for women who can be promoted. In so doing, you will be following the path of the Lord, about whom Dorothy Sayers wrote in her book titled Are Women Human? “Perhaps it was no wonder that women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man. There has never been such another.” Two millennia is enough time for women to meet other men who are like that Man.
A brief addendum regarding 1 Timothy 3.
This is a summary of Philip B. Payne’s argument in his book, Man and Woman: One in Christ.
A brief addendum regarding 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35
These verses are admittedly notoriously difficult to interpret. Here are some major egalitarian arguments: