I Want to be an Egalitarian, But What about I Timothy 2:8-15?

There are two major camps in Evangelical Christianity right now when it comes to the way women are treated. Complementarians believe men and women are equal before God and humanity, but because of gender must adhere to complementary roles, in order to uphold the image of God on this planet. Egalitarians believe men and women are equal and aren’t required to do anything in particular to uphold the image of God. Men and women are made in God’s image. Full stop.

This debate is thousands of years old, and gets renamed every fifty years or so. The basics stay the same. The questions stay the same. Do men get to tell women who they are, and what to do, or do women get to make up their own minds about these matters?

Does God have a say in women’s lives, or do the men in a woman’s life have to sign off on these matters?

Historically, men had to sign off. Women could not vote, could not open a bank account, could not get divorced, could not own land without permission from father, brother, husband. This is bad, evil, controlling, and horrifying. And yet it is our history. Sadly, the church plays its hand in all of it and makes it worse because the church brings in God. It can feel as if it’s not only certain men who’d like women to be silent, it’s also God. And if God says be silent, what choice do women have?

Turns out, we have a great deal of choice in the matter.

This issue though is complicated because of the Bible. In matters of the Christian faith, the Bible is important. We hold ourselves bound to this compilation of books. We believe the Bible is God’s Word and it’s sacred. It is God breathed, as in somehow or another, across time and history and authorship, God breathes into these words and they come to life. They have authority and beauty and can mysteriously lead us into right-living before God and people in every single generation.

However, we also believe that right interpretation is a big deal. Because the Bible is set in ancient culture, spans thousands of years of times, and addresses issues specific to time and place, we must learn to read it aright. As James V. Brownson says, “We do not interpret rightly any single passage of Scripture until we locate the text within this larger fabric of meaning in Scripture as a whole.” It is important to interpret the difference between what a text says and what it means. One only has to look about ten pages into the narrative of Genesis to start making interpretation decisions. Abraham slept with his wife’s handmaid, Hagar. They had a son and named him Ishmael. Does this give us the right to sleep with our servants when we can’t get our wife pregnant? Of course not. We recognize, we interpret the text, and realize that what Abraham and Sarah did in abusing Hagar was not good or holy or righteous. But it was culturally acceptable.

One of the most infamous passages of Scripture used to justify the silencing women and withhold church leadership from us, is 1 Timothy 2:8-15.

Timothy was a young pastor Paul started mentoring. He was both Greek and Jewish. He learned his Hebrew Faith from his mother and grandmother, as his father was not a religious man. (The irony of this is astounding.) There was some debate early on in his ministerial life if he should get circumcised and because he was Jewish by his mother’s side of the family, Paul insisted on it. (That must have been a few sorry days for Timothy.)

When Paul wrote Timothy the letters we now call the Pastoral Epistles, Paul was in prison, and Timothy was in Ephesus. The overarching theme of these letters has to do with order and right structure of worship and to oppose false teaching, which is why Paul was set on making sure there were specific qualifications for leadership. One needed to know something about the faith if they intended to be a leader in its movement. The preservation of truth was Paul’s aim, much more than upholding gender roles. Paul wanted to guard the truth and did not want new believers to malign the beauty and goodness of the Gospel.

1 Timothy 2:8-15 New International Version (NIV)

⁸ Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. ⁹ 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, ¹⁰ but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

¹¹ A woman^[a] should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;^[b] 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^[c] will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

The first section seems simple. Paul is after prudence, propriety, and modesty, not merely in dress but also in one’s lifestyle. Those who love Jesus and walk with Jesus are called to radical love, and radical selflessness. We are deny ourselves, take up our cross, and get about the work of doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God. The idea of lifting one’s hands was a way to show sincerity in prayer. We don’t actually believe men should always lift their hands in prayer.

I have a beautiful pearl necklace that John gave me  for Christmas one year. It is a gift that I treasure. I should not read Paul’s verses and decide to sell my pearl necklace, or get rid of my gold rings. There are Christians who might argue for that, but I’d argue it is much wiser to read the spirit of these words.

My identity and my worth do not come from my outward appearance. My authority and right to teach or learn or to take part in Christian life have nothing to do with my pearl necklace or my designer clothing, or the car I drive. Note: This issue of favoring the rich is one of the greatest issues in modern Christianity. Would to God we paid more attention to our greed and less to gender roles.

The second section of the passage, (v.11) is where we start to swim into painful and difficult territory. First, it’s important to note that Paul is explicitly saying that women can and should learn. We’ve already said in previous posts that this is a major cultural shift in his day. In Judaism at the time, women were consigned to the outer part of the temple and could not prophesy or read Torah. Greek women had it even worse. Thomas C. Oden says, in his commentary on 1 Timothy, “Even the fact that a few women were causing mischief for Timothy at Ephesus was itself a kind of indirect evidence of the improvement of the position of women in Christianity compared with Jewish and Hellenistic circles”(96.)

Paul is arguing for a specific kind of attitude in learning. He says, “A woman must learn in silence.” That word in Greek (hesuchia) does not mean silent but quiet, which has connotations of quietness and calm. Have you ever been excited to finally be included in something? Have you ever been in a situation when you were so excited about something you became obnoxious? I have. Welcome to the story of my life. Paul is simply saying, “Keep it in check, friends. Try not to be so excited you take over and dominate.”

Also, Paul is by no means suggesting that a woman’s learning must be submissive to a man. She is to be submissive to God not to patriarchy. When we’re learning, we all need a posture that is willing to learn. Without a heart to listen to our teacher, we won’t learn anything. Paul is saying it’s important to have an attitude of learner.

Finally, we get to the confusing and most complicated section of the passage. If we read this literally, here’s what we get:

“Women can never teach a man anything because she sinned first. She was deceived and then took down Adam. Her only hope is in having lots and lots of babies — as long as she stays the course and doesn’t quit.”

The problem with reading this as a direct instruction to be obeyed for all time is that it doesn’t hold up. Paul also says in Romans five that Adam sinned first and therefore all are sinners. See Romans 5:12-14. When we take both scriptures, Romans 5 and 1 Timothy 2 into consideration, Paul consistently makes it clear that all of humanity is damaged and we have sinned.

In reference to 1 Timothy, some scholars have taught that Paul is referring to one woman at that time and she wasn’t supposed to teach. Others have taught this means no women can ever teach men anything. Others have taught this means women can’t teach men the Bible. Except of course, we’ve got all these other verses and stories that contradict that. We’ve got Eve, image bearer. We’ve got Deborah, warrior, prophet, judge. We’ve got the Proverbs 31 woman who was just quite simply, amazing. She considered a field and bought it. We’ve got Priscilla, the one who taught Apollos. We’ve got Timothy’s grandmother and mother, and we’ve got Junia the apostle.

We also know that in Greek the words for men and women are interchangeable with husband and wife, which complicates it even more.

The final section is proof that we must be careful how we read this. If we take one aspect literally, we have to take the whole section literally, and if we do that, we’ll start believing that a woman’s salvation depends on her having a baby. Women are not brought into relationship with Jesus through having babies.

However, we are saved because this one woman named Mary said yes to this announcement from an angel named Gabriel and she gave birth to a son, who was sent to be the Savior of the world. Mary was not easily deceived. She was amazing. And she changed history.

When this passage is looked at in the context of the Ephesian church, and we recognize the cultural implications of the day, it is safe to say, Paul’s instructions were probably addressed to a specific situation in Ephesus. (If this post were a book, I’d write a lot about Ephesus. But I don’t have time.)

Which leads us to the final question, an important question: How do we read, listen, and live out such instructions in an acceptable way, today?

I think it’s safe to say, men and women must work to rid themselves of the kind of anger that controls and bullies people, the kind of anger that is closed to reason and unwilling to learn. Not to mention, we are always called to pray with sincere hearts.

We should pay attention to how our outward appearance controls and manipulates the way people perceive us, and we should be careful not to use our beauty or our personal style or our wealth for selfish gain. Instead, we should work to become people of good substance and solid character.

Finally, we must recognize that teachers must first know something before they should be allowed or even asked to teach us. Teachers must be approved and learned. There is a time when learning is far more important than teaching, and everyone, men and women both, should know if they are in a season of learning or of teaching. Be careful, friend. We can easily be deceived.

Men and women need one another other, and our good God to work out our lives, our salvation, and our calling on this earth. 

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