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1 Timothy 2:12-15
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When all is said and done, opposition to women in ministry and leadership basically reduces to the interpretation of one passage, 1 Timothy 2:12-15. For those who oppose women in ministry, these verses are the lens through which all the rest of Scripture is viewed. Those other Scriptures – the whole of Scripture – are not allowed to speak for themselves because an interpretation of these verses is used to trump them.
In itself, this situation should alarm us. No theology should be based on a single verse, as the Mormons do with the verse about baptizing for the dead (1 Cor. 15:29). Women lead throughout Scripture. Women teach. Women minister. Women testify to the resurrection. The structure of ministry in the early church was already somewhat charismatic and loose. Women led where the Spirit placed them, just as men did. The Bible thus does not indicate we should have rigid prescriptions on what women can or cannot do today.
No theology should be based on a single verse, especially a verse as difficult to interpret as this one.
Further, these are difficult verses. For example, are they about the husband-wife relationship? If they are, then they have to do with the household rather than ministry or leadership in general. What does it mean to “exert authority” over a wife? If it is a matter of domination, then neither the husband nor the wife should do it. What does it mean to be saved through childbearing? Aren’t we saved through the blood of Jesus Christ?
The interpretation of the verses also depends a lot on the context of 1 Timothy as well. Many interpreters read it against the backdrop of the nearby Temple of Artemis. Did the temple model the domination of men by women? Was Paul primarily concerned with the education of the women in the church? Were women at Ephesus serving as conduits for false teaching? Did Paul even write this letter? Outside evangelical circles, most scholars think the letter dates to a time several decades after Paul’s death.
We’ll take a stab at these questions, but it reinforces what was said above. 1 Timothy 2:12 is a dubious verse to make the center of a theology of women! It has every right to be considered an unclear passage. Even within Paul’s writings it sounds strange. After all, this is the Paul who said that in Christ there is not “male and female” and the Paul who mentions Priscilla ahead of her husband Aquila. Something else must surely be going on beneath the surface.
A strong argument can be made that 1 Timothy 2:12-15 is primarily about the husband-wife relationship rather than some general male-female relationship in the church. For one thing, although men could be thought of in that culture independently of their wives, a woman’s identity was always defined in relation to some man. This could be her father, her living husband, or even her dead husband.
So even when 1 Timothy 2:9-10 talks about women dressing modestly, it is talking about wives. It is common to read this whole chapter in terms of the worship service. After all, men are raising hands in 2:8. However, prayers were made outside of church, and wives were expected to be modest anywhere they went in public.
“A wife should learn quietly with complete submission. I don’t allow a wife to teach or to control her husband. Instead, she should be a quiet listener. Adam was formed first, and then Eve. Adam wasn’t deceived, but rather his wife became the one who stepped over the line because she was completely deceived. But a wife will be brought safely through childbirth, if they both continue in faith, love, and holiness, together with self-control.”
1 Timothy 2:11-15, CEB
As we get to 2:12-15, the discussion seems to narrow especially to the household. The words aner and gyne did not only mean “man” and “woman.” They meant “husband” and “wife,” especially when in close proximity to each other as here.
The explanation why wives should not dominate or instruct their husbands thoroughly alludes to family relationships. For example, Adam and Eve were husband and wife (2:13) – in fact the prototypical husband and wife. Similarly, childbearing is not an activity normally performed in a worship service. These verses are alluding to Genesis 3:16 where painful childbearing is a consequence of Eve’s sin. She was deceived by the serpent.
If these verses are indeed about the husband-wife relationship, then we can stop right here with objections to women in ministry or leadership. This passage turns out to be about husband headship. The Bible never connects this issue to women in ministry or leadership. We have already seen that Deborah and Huldah both presented authoritative leadership over men even though they were married.
Women are thus free to follow any call that God might give on their lives, and this call includes calls to all forms and levels of ministry as well as leadership.
The wife is not to teach or dominate her husband. The verb to dominate is authentein. It only occurs here in the New Testament and is rare elsewhere in Greek literature as well. It is frequently argued that it implies a domineering kind of control. In that sense, it would be deeply inappropriate for a Christian whether someone was a husband or a wife.
It is here that the background of the Temple of Artemis is often brought in, as Pastor Working mentioned. It is thought that the temple modeled women as dominating authorities over men. If this model had carried over to the wives of the church, it would be a problem that needed to be addressed.
The counterargument is the “birth order” of Adam and Eve. Adam was created first and so would naturally have more authority as the firstborn. In part, this is arguably a cultural argument to make a point. Scripture does not uniformly hold to birth order as a criterion of authority, as we see in teachings like “the last will be first” (Matt. 20:16) or God choosing Jacob over Esau (Rom. 9:12). Pastor Working also notes the possible connection to the Artemis cult on this point.
Further, there is the concern that uneducated wives will mislead their husbands. As Pastor Working indicates in the video, women were not generally well-educated at this time. Paul mentions the fact that Eve was deceived in the Garden as a warning about what can happen when a person is not discerning about false teaching. Indeed, 2 Timothy 3:6 may suggest that false teachers were using some of the women at Ephesus as a conduit for false teaching in the church.
The final statement that wives will be “saved through childbearing” is also somewhat puzzling. Clearly, we are all saved – men and women – through the blood of Jesus Christ. Christ has redeemed women from the Fall, so any attempt to hold the Garden of Eden over their heads would be a slap in the face of Christ.
A couple of interesting suggestions have been made about the interpretation of this verse. One is that it is a reference to Mary giving birth to Jesus. In other words, this becomes a powerful statement of the undoing of the very instruction Paul has just given. Christ is the pathway to wisdom and discernment. Christ is the servant leader who de-escalates the fallen impulse to “Lord over” others. The path to teaching and leadership is through the childbearing of Jesus.
Another option, used by the CEB translation, is that the question is one of safe childbearing. Rather than the Temple of Artemis guaranteeing safe childbirth, God is said to bring women safely through childbearing if wives will serve him. A recent book by Sandra Glahn called, Nobody’s Mother has recently explored this possibility in depth.
Whatever the cause, our sense that something deeper is going on makes us think that Paul is dealing with a concrete issue at Ephesus. Whatever the cause, there must be women in the congregations who are causing problems. Paul’s solution is to get them in line using the imagery of Genesis 3:16.
But just as Paul’s letters vary their arguments and instructions depending on the situation, Paul’s argument here is unique in comparison to his practices and instructions elsewhere. The Galatians need to know they are free in the Lord, so he emphasizes that they are not under the Law. The Corinthians need to tighten up their moral ship, so he emphasizes that they must not behave in certain behaviors. The Ephesian women are out of control, so he uses Genesis 3:16 to bring order in the congregation.
The above discussion should make it clear that 1 Timothy 2:12-15 is a highly contested passage with many different interpretive debates. We have argued that it is primarily about the husband-wife relationship, which makes it irrelevant to the question of women in general ministry or leadership. In any case, it is far too ambiguous, unusual, and quite possibly situational to use as the central text in a theology of women. It makes much more sense to start with the clear example of ministry and leadership that women demonstrate throughout the whole of Scripture rather than in a single verse.