Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1041: Women in Leadership, part 2: 1 Timothy 2

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

In this second installment of my current research on women in leadership, I focus on what I’ve learned from researching 1 Timothy 2:8-15. I tediously work my way through this important passage and evaluate both complementation and egalitarian interpretations of this text.  If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel!  Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. Registration is now open for next year's Exiles in Babylon conference, and I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with. The future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity, and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have

Ellie Bonilla and Street Hymns back by popular demand. And Tanika Wye and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry, featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell it this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintherod.com. That's theology in the Raw.

In this episode, I want to give another update on my journey in the question of women in leadership in the church. As many or most of you know, I'm engaging in a fairly long-term project, two, three, four years maybe, trying to figure out what the Bible says about women exercising leadership and authority over men in the church or however you want to frame it. Sometimes it's called the question about women in ministry. I don't love that phrase because ministry is a general term applied to all believers. ministry. I don't love that phrase because ministry is a general term applied to all believers. And so it's not really a question of whether women can serve in ministry, unless we take ministry as a sort of synonym for like pastoral ministry in the church, which, you know, sometimes the word is taken that way. But I try to use language that reflects the biblical text more than modern day usage. So that's why I prefer the phrase, you know, women in church leadership

to frame the question. I wanted to focus on 1 Timothy 2 for this podcast, and I have a huge set of notes slash rough draft prose in front of me. It's, let's see, 36 pages. I don't think, It's, let's see, 36 pages. I don't think, I'm going to try to like maybe spot read, spot summarize my notes here. Some, I just read through it again this morning just to kind of get my mind around this passage again. And yeah, some of my thoughts here, even to myself, are more clear than others. Some are, I'm obviously still really thinking out loud. So Leah, let me spoil the fun up front and

tell you, I am not going to give you a definitive interpretation of 1 Timothy 2. When I say 1 Timothy 2, I'm obviously talking about 1 Timothy 2 verses 8 through 15, which contains the well known verse in verse 12, where Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. And then he goes on to explain reasons why. Let me say this. I'm not purposely starting here as if this passage should be the starting point. I'm simply trying to look at various important passages in this debate in no real particular order. So I just happened to spend about a month digging into this passage, just because I just, as I'm looking at the topic as a whole, looking at different passages in the New Testament, looking at different themes,

looking at the Old Testament, I did want to get some kind of handle on what are the issues going on in 1 Timothy 2. And that's really what I want to focus on here is try to do my best to explain what I see are the main issues and some of the different interpretive approaches to this passage so that you too can have at least an understanding of some of the complexity of this passage. So I'm not going to land on a particular view of this passage. At the end of this podcast, and maybe you're going to turn it off now because I'm not going to give you the answer. I just don't have the answer yet. I'm not done researching this passage. I have a ways to go and I'm still really thinking about different arguments in favor of a so-called complementarian reading or a so-called egalitarian reading. I have a lot more study to do.

Yeah. But if there's one takeaway, for me at least, from digging into this passage is that this passage is a lot more complex than people make it out to be. And so that's what I want to leave you with. I want to leave you with. I want to leave you with, leave us all with a bit more maybe humility with regard to this passage. So those of you who think this passage obviously prohibits all women everywhere teaching and exercising authority over all men in the church, if you just think that that's just such the obvious reading, I want you to back off of that. And likewise, I would want egalitarian leaning people or full on, you know, hardcore egalitarians

to at least recognize that complementarians do have some good exegetical reasons why they hold to their views. So, yeah, so I'm calling this just, you know, 1 Timothy 2, an exploratory conversation, because that's really what this is. I want to identify seven different issues in this text. We're only going to cover the first four, and then I'll briefly touch on the last three. So here's seven main interpretive issues I see in the text. And there's, you know, these aren't the only issues. These are the ones that as I was kind of marinating in this passage and reading a bunch of different scholars and commentaries, these are kind of seven that seem to be more significant for the question of women in

leadership in the church. Okay. So number one, is this passage talking about wives and husbands in the home or men and women in the church, like a church assembly? Number two, what is the significance of the attire versus behavior or the attire, like the clothing and behavior of women in verses nine through 11? And what is the relationship between this and the prohibition of teaching and authority and exercise and authority in 2.12? So basically, yeah, what's the relationship between 2.9 to 11 and then verse 12? Number three, what is meant by quietness and in all submission? Is this absolute silence or peaceful demeanor? And who are the women or wives to submit to? And he says they need to learn in all, let me just read it. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. Oh,

full submission to who? And what is meant by quietness there? Number four, there's actually four important questions related to verse 12. So again, verse 12 is kind of the key verse that people camp out on. Even within that verse, there are four different questions that we need to wrestle with. Number one, what's the significance of the verb, I do not permit, the verb epitrepo, which is in the present tense. I am not permitting some people might translate it. Number two, what is the meaning of oftentimes? Oh, this is the word translated exercise authority in most translations. And even there under that question. So under question four, which is identifying four different interpretive issues in verse 12, there's four, yeah, there's four

issues within this verse that I'm going, yeah, there's four issues within this verse that I'm going to look at. And then even within the meaning of often tell, there's four issues within that question. So again, there's layers and layers and layers to this onion. What is the meaning of didasco, the word verb translated to teach? And what is the significance of the syntactical phrase uke ude, neither neither nor. I am not permitting a woman to teach, so not permitting uke nor ude to exercise authority over man. And again, if you're like, I don't understand the issue, we'll get to that. I'll unpack why these are significant questions. I'll unpack why these are significant questions.

Number five, does Paul appeal to the creation account in verse 13 as the reason for or an illustration of the prohibition in verse 12? Number six, what's the implication of Eve's deception mentioned in verse 14? And number seven, what is the meaning of salvation through childbearing in verse 15? And what is the function of this curious statement in the passage as a whole? I think that's really important, actually. People debate the meaning of, you know, she will be saved through childbearing, which is one of the hardest verses in the New Testament to understand, which we should wrestle with that. But then also, why is that mentioned here? What's the connection between that statement by Paul and the rest of the passage, especially with regard to women teaching and exercising authority over men? So, okay, first, and I'm going to, again, I'm

going to, I might pause just to kind of gather my thoughts through the various points because I've got so much ink in front of me. Some of it is more relevant than others. So yeah, let's dive in. First question, is this passage talking about wives and husbands in the home or women and men in the church assembly? The Greek words, gune and aner, woman and man, respectively, they can be translated either one. There's one Greek word for man, woman and husband, wife. So that's why there's a debate about this arguments for translating them as wife and husband are, let's see, I've got three, four arguments in favor of understanding this passage is talking about marital relations in the home. First, most women were married at this time.

And the ones that weren't were young teens at the oldest and are probably not who Paul is thinking of. So the women, not girls, but women that Paul has in mind here, most of them would have been married. So second, the reference to childbirth in 215 assumes they're married. Number three, there's strong parallels

between this passage and 1 Peter 3, 1 to 7. That's true. If you go look at 1 Peter 3, lots of interesting parallels. And yet, 1 Peter 3 is clearly talking about husbands and wives. It's not talking about the church there, or like a church gathering. And number four, the phrase in every place in verse 8, 1 Timothy 2, 8, suggests a setting that is beyond simply the church assembly. Okay, so there's the four main arguments in favor of seeing this as husbands and wives and not men and women in the church assembly. I believe, if I remember correctly, oh, who takes that view? Well, Cynthia Wetzel takes that view. And do I have others cited here?

Let's see. No, I don't. I don't have anybody else cited here. There are other people who take that view. I'm almost positive Cynthia takes that view. If I remember reading, I read her book last summer. I'm pretty sure she takes that view. Anyway, I do think that this is actually talking about the church gathering and not simply husbands and wives in the home. And let me give you some arguments for that. First of all, yeah, this is a pretty strong argument here. First reason that this shouldn't be limited to husbands and wives in the home is that a large problem in Ephesus, who Paul's writing to, well, Timothy's in Ephesus, Paul's writing to Timothy in Ephesus. A large part problem in Ephesus has to do with widows. You see this in 1 Timothy 5, 2 Timothy 3. If Paul is thinking of wives,

then this group of people, who is a significant issue in the church, would be omitted. Perhaps the very group who he's speaking about, especially if there's some parallels between the description of the younger widows of 1 Timothy 5, describing the widows as he does here in verses 9 through 11 in particular. So it doesn't seem to make sense that Paul is only thinking of married women in chapter 2 and not single women, including widows. Are only married women not allowed to teach, but single women are? Are only married women not allowed to wear braided hair and expensive jewelry? But, you know, the widows are totally fine wearing that stuff. Okay. So the widows throws a wrench into the husband and wife interpretation. Number two, when Paul is using gune and aner to refer to husbands and wives, he almost always uses a definite article like the women, the men,

like Titus 2.5 says their own husbands. Like there's an article there. Ephesians 5.22, the women, high gunaikis, and that's why it's translated wives there. There's a definite article there and the rest of the context, obviously, Ephesians 5 makes it clear that husbands and wives are in view. Third, the mention of teaching and prayer suggests a worship setting, chapter 2, verse 8, verse 12. And so it feels a bit out of place to dive into wives and husbands here, especially when Paul does discuss marital relationships later on in 1 Timothy 6, 1 to 2. So, yeah, I do think that the church view is the better view here, that this isn't talking simply about wives and husbands in the home. He is talking about the gathered assembly. There is a lot of overlap here, though, right? I mean, the church is even called the household of God in 1 Timothy 3, 15.

the household of God. In 1 Timothy 3.15, you see a lot of parallels between leaders being able to manage their home well, and therefore they're qualified to manage a church. So I don't want to put a harsh distinction between the home and the church, especially when the church met in homes and they're given a lots of described with familial language. But I do think that Paul is talking about the gathered assembly here. Let's go to number two. Question number two, what is the significance of the attire and behavior in chapter two, verses nine through 10? And what is the relationship between this and the prohibition of teaching and authority in verse 12? So I'll just read it. This is from the NIV. Paul says, 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. Then he talks about behavior here. A woman should learn in all quietness and full submission. And then the famous verse 12, I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man. She must be quiet. So you have parallels again in 1 Peter 3, verses 3 to 5, especially, and then Titus 2. Secular parallels in telling women not to wear expensive clothing and to dress modestly and to demonstrate certain virtues. In the Greco-Roman world, secular writers frequently critiqued the extravagant displays of wealth, particularly of women. And so Paul's words here are right at home in some of these Greco-Roman critiques.

Gold and pearls were very expensive. And the kind of elaborate hairstyles Paul probably has in mind here would have taken hours to prepare, usually by the hand of a slave. So, only the rich would have been able to have the time for such extravagance. Ephesus was a relatively wealthy town, and so it fits right at home that Paul would be addressing this issue in the church in Ephesus. Also, in some of the ancient critiques, the secular critiques in the Greco-Roman world, you often see fine clothes, gold, pearls, and perfumes that were characteristic of prostitutes and adulteresses. So this kind of display of luxury among women often went hand in

hand with sexual immorality. We see this clearly in Revelation 17.4 and Revelation 18.6.16 where the harlot of Babylon, the whore of Babylon is described as wearing gold, jewels, and pearls. Pearls in particular were seen as the epitome of extravagant wealth. So wealth and sexual immorality on women, especially, often went hand in hand in the ancient world. Paul's use of various virtues here, decency, self-control, prudence, or there's different translations here. The one word that really stands out here is the one translated by the NIV, I believe, propriety. It's the Greek word, sophrosyne. This was the primary virtue of women in antiquity, and it's not even close. This just went hand in hand with the virtuous women that they

demonstrated, sophrosyne. It's hard to capture with a single English word. It does speak of, well, it's one of the four cardinal virtues described by Plato. So it does apply to both men and women, but when applied to women, it often carries the idea of chastity or sexual purity as a form of self-control. So it does seem to have strong sexual connotations. So if we want to sort of mirror read what Paul's saying here, he's addressing women who were not only displaying their wealth, but also needed to be told to demonstrate sexual chastity or purity. Well, the word purity has some negative vibes from the purity culture today, so I want to hesitate with that word.

But I think Paul would have no problem using that word because he wasn't raised in the purity culture. But it very well could be that there was an issue of women displaying not just wealth, but also engaging in sexual promiscuity in Ephesus. Now, everything I've said so far is agreed upon by scholars, complementarian, egalitarian, like clearly there's references in the ancient world to women displaying wealth. Clearly, they also kind of demonstrated sexual immorality. These went hand in hand. But can we be more specific? Can we be more specific with the kinds of women Paul is addressing here? And this is where I have been very intrigued by the work of Bruce Winter.

Bruce Winter was an Australian scholar who, he was the warden at Tyndale House. Shout out to Tyndale House. My friend Peter Williams is now the warden or principal, I think he's called now, of Tyndale House. Tyndale House is one of my favorite places on earth. Shout out to Tyndale House. It's an evangelical biblical studies research center in Cambridge, England. Cambridge, England is one of, if not my favorite city on earth. Absolutely love it.

And Tyndale House is this, it's a house. It's an old British house that's been expanded. So it has several rooms you can rent out. It has a whole, well, it's a bunch of dorm rooms you can rent out. And then it has a library that contains virtually every book in the world of biblical study. So not theology or philosophy necessarily, but if, you know, books written on the Bible, this library contains virtually all of them. And if they don't have one that you're looking for, you know, they might even go and purchase it if you're a researcher there. So I've been there several times. I was just there. Well, yeah, I was there for this book. I spent three different weeks there at Tyndale

House doing research. And it's, yeah, for nerds like me, it's just heaven on earth. And the whole environment's awesome. It's a bunch of just, it's explicitly evangelical and very scholarly. So you have people that are just experts in like papyri and Hittite and just all kinds of crazy hardcore stuff. And they're sold out believers in Jesus. And so it's a great, great community. Anyway, getting nostalgic talking about it. So yeah, I wrote, I've written a few books there. I wrote a good chunk of my book Embodied at Tyndale House and did a ton of research for this book that I'm working on at Tyndale House. Why did I bring... Oh, so Bruce Winter. I first met Bruce Winter years ago when he was kind of running Tyndale House. And he's just a salty, spicy Australian scholar.

I think he's in his early 80s now, but just a brilliant, brilliant scholar, great man of God, spicy personality. So he's got this book, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, I believe it's called. It's too far away. I can't read the subtitle. But the subtitle has to do with something with the new Roman women or women. And that's a description scholars use to describe a movement that was birthed around the turn of the century where certain wealthy women of Rome threw off the shackles of traditional

Roman values and started kind of an ancient sexual revolution, if you will. The movement was fueled by newfound wealth. It was pouring into the empire. So women were getting access to more and more wealth that they didn't previously have. And also there was some, all throughout the first century, really, there was a growing loosening on traditional Roman values surrounding sexuality. And part of it was spurred on by Ovid. Ovid is, how do I compare, who do I compare Ovid with? I don't know. Oh, I'm sure there's a great modern parallel to Ovid. Ovid wrote some really racy, I mean, provocative poetry about love and sexuality. And I believe, I've read just bits and pieces, but I believe he advocated for adultery, which was outlawed in

the Roman world. Like that, you know, we all think, you know, yes, the first century was a, you know, pretty, you know, opened all kinds of forms of sexual exploration. One of the few that was still off limits was adultery. Like that was a big, big no-no. It was deemed illegal, I believe, by Augustus. So Ovid was actually exiled by Augustus. And there's some political reasons for that maybe, but as the tale goes, it was because he was just kind of stirring the pot. He was just creating too many waves in the traditional Roman culture. So Augustus exiled Ovid to the city of Tomis. Throughout the first century, secular Greco-Roman writers often address and, well, sometimes address and condemn certain behaviors of women that seem to

reflect this new Roman woman. Some quotes here by Dio Chrysostom, Seneca. Okay, how about this? This one from Seneca is really relevant. So Seneca was, who was he? He was like, oh gosh, Joey Dotson's going to kill me if I don't rattle off Seneca's credentials. He was like the mentor, right? Well, he's a stoic philosopher, writer, statesman, and mentor to Nero before Nero got upset at him. But Seneca praises his mother in ways that appear to be set against the backdrop of these new Roman women. So here's what Seneca saysises his mother in ways that appear to be set against the backdrop of these new Roman women. So here's what Seneca says. He says, unlike the great majority of women, you never succumbed to immorality, the worst evil of our time. Listen to what he says. Jewels and pearls have not moved you. And you never thought of wealth as the greatest gift to the human race.

And you have not been perverted by the imitation of worse women who lead even the virtuous into pitfalls. You have never blushed for the number of children as if taunted with your years, blushed for the number of children. You're not ashamed that you bear the marks of bearing several children. So there was within the new Roman women, they didn't want to bear children because that takes a toll on your body. And they

wanted to maintain this kind of pristine beauty, this beauty of youthfulness and not be worn down by the being weathered by childbearing or whatever. And Seneca says, you were proud of how many children you have. Never have you in the manner of other women whose only recommendation lies in their beauty tried to conceal your pregnancy as though it were indecent. You weren't ashamed of childbearing. Could this, yeah, think of Paul in 1 Timothy 2.15. You have not crushed the hope of children that were being nurtured in your body. In other words, you've not had an abortion. You have not crushed the hope of children that were being nurtured in your body. In other words, you've not had an abortion. You have not defiled your face with paints and cosmetics.

Never have you fancied the kind of dress that exposed no greater nakedness by being removed. What a clever phrase. I almost said, you know, really think about that, but maybe you shouldn't really think too hard about that. But kind of dress that if you take it off, it's like you don't see any difference because it was so see-through. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honor of modesty. Saffrosune, I believe. Was that? No, wait. Shoot. I don't have the actual original here. So anyway, Seneca praises his mother for not being like all those other women out there who, what, succumbed to immorality, probably adultery, adorned themselves with jewels and pearls and paints and cosmetics, have spurned children or aborted their pregnancies, and adorned themselves with immodest clothing. Instead, Seneca's mom adorned herself with the cardinal virtue. Yes, okay, sophrosyne.

He does use the word Sophocene here. So Bruce Winter in his book notes that Seneca's mother, his mother's virtues contrasts sharply with the alternative lifestyle of the new Roman woman and that the concerns reflected in 1 Timothy 2 are very similar to those of Seneca. In fact, there are striking parallels. And Bruce Winner, I mean, he does an amazing job. I mean, looking at lots of ancient parallels where people were critiquing these new Roman women, and it does show striking parallels to several New Testament passages. First Timothy 2, he also looks at 1 Corinthians 11. He looks at,

I believe, Titus 2 and several other of our key passages in this debate. And it really could open up the historical context so we can have a better understanding of what Paul is actually addressing. Now, Winter is not without his critics. I remember talking to Lynn Koik, right? She's kind of quickly becoming a fan favorite for Theology in a Raw for good reason. And last time I had her on the show, I don't know if you remember, I think it was last fall, but we talked about this just briefly. And in her, she wrote a really outstanding book on women in the Greco-Roman world and she talks about the new roman women and says yes this was a thing but lynn doesn't think that it was as widespread as bruce does and uh i'll never forget lynn saying

on the podcast like you know ovid was exiled and there wasn't a second ovid like ovid died in early first century. When did Ovid die? AD 17. So just a couple decades after the birth of Christ. And Lynn said, yeah, there wasn't a second Ovid. And she doesn't think that the movement, the new Roman women movement sort of made it far outside of Rome. Bruce Winter does think it, he thinks it did. He cites evidence, you know, and the evidence can be maybe interpreted differently, that we had these new Roman women in Corinth and Crete and Ephesus. And so they may lie behind some of the concerns about women in these letters, not least in 1 Timothy, the women addressed in 1 Timothy 2, 9 through 11. Why am I making a big deal out of this? You know, one of

the big overarching exegetical questions is, should we interpret 1 Timothy 2 as contextual? Something going on, something really specific going on in Ephesus? Or should we interpret it more universal? That this is something that Paul is giving blanket universal. Obviously, he was speaking to Timothy at Ephesus, but he's also giving what he considers to be universal for all churches, that that's kind of a big overarching interpretive lens or question that we need to ask when we're wrestling with this passage. I mean, if winter is correct, and there's other attempts at identifying a specific background issue going on here. Some people look at the Artemis cult in Ephesus,

and that there's something specific with women following the cult of Artemis that was sort of influencing the church. And so that is what's lying behind Paul's, that's what's motivating Paul to say what he does in 1 Timothy 2. And I read some interesting stuff on that. I still have a lot more work to do on that. I'm waiting for Sandra Glenn to finish her book on this topic. Is that public? She's writing a book on 1 Timothy 2 and the Artemis cult. And there's other... So there is an older work, or there's several older works that have explored this connection. They've been pretty severely critiqued by scholars on both sides of the egalitarian

complementarian debate. But I've not looked into it too thoroughly. I've just seen people critique, again, a pretty large group of scholars critique previous work done on this. So I haven't been as motivated maybe to look at the Artemis stuff, but I definitely will and I need to. There's another interesting article, let's see, by Gary Hogue. And he looks at 1 Timothy 2 in relation to a secular work written in Ephesus, possibly right around the same time as 1 Timothy, called Ephesiaca, I don't know how to pronounce that, by Xenophon. And a lot of the key words in 1 Timothy 2, 9 to 10 in particular, also occur throughout this fictional work. But he tries to build a kind of a background that there's something specific.

And he does link that one. He does link it to the Artemis cult there. But beyond that, just generally, there's something in Ephesus where you have women, whether we call them the new Roman women or not, just wealthy women displaying their wealth and engaging in sexual promiscuity. one or both of these specific backdrops, whether it's the Artemis cult or the new Roman women, or maybe it's not an either or, but a both and. If one or two of these backgrounds are kind of embraced as the lens through which to read Paul, then this could yield evidence, could, not will, but could yield evidence that Paul's prohibitions are more contextual than universal. If the wealthy women in chapter two are part of a specific first century new women movement who are flaunting their wealth, engaging in sexual promiscuity, throwing off the shackles

of motherhood and not embodying the cardinal virtue of soffersune, which Paul repeats, by the way, in verse 15. In fact, if you have your Bible, I mean, it is interesting that he sort of sandwiches his stuff on women with this key cardinal virtue, soffersune, which is exactly what the new Roman women were not embodying. Like this is, these are often called, you know, they're departing from this cardinal virtue of soffersune. Paul uses the word in verse 9 and in verse 11, which he almost doesn't need to. It's almost, it seems superfluous in verse, sorry, verse 15.ous in verse 11, in verse 9 and verse 15, when he says women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith,

love, and holiness with sophrosyne. It just kind of added on there. So it could be, I'm not saying I embrace this, I'm saying this is an interesting possibility. It could be that these women whom Paul says should not teach or exercise authority over man. And it is true that these new Roman women were known for sort of domineering their husbands who put up with their adulterous affairs. So yeah, displaying wealth, engaging in sexual promiscuity, and kind of being bossy and bossing their husbands around. Like it was kind of a whole package deal. So if some of the critiques on wealth and sexual promiscuity in the passage

are applying to these women, then it would very much, it could easily also apply to women who were dominating their husbands. So if that was the background, what does that imply? It implies that, you know, Paul's not thinking of godly women like Priscilla, Phoebe, Lydia, or Junia, or others, Mary, when he penned 1 Timothy 2.12. And this also does make sense of that strange passage about childbearing in 2.15. Why even bring up that? What does that verse have anything to do with women teaching or exercising authority over men? Well, it would have a lot to do with if Paul's critique is part of a greater critique of these new Roman women. Because they, as Seneca said, they are spurning their call to have children or however you worded it.

Next question. This is moving into our third question here. What is meant by quietness and in all submission? I don't actually, I kind of almost want to skip this because it seems pretty clear, not really debated, that when it says a woman should learn in quietness, that that has to do with a general demeanor, not literal silence. So I don't think this is banning women from speaking in church. And why do I say that? Well, the same root word is used in 1 Timothy 2.2 when Paul says,

you know, we should all live a quiet and godly life. Let me quote it exactly. We need to pray for all people, kings and all those in authority so that we may live a peace, live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. That's all believers, right? Or at least, okay, at least all the people, all the believers in Ephesus. Surely he's not banning speech from everybody at Ephesus. He's giving a general Demeter, a quiet life, keep your head down, don't cause too much trouble, live a humble life, an honorable, respectable life. And that's the same root word that Paul uses of women here. In full submission, since I don't

think this is simply talking about wives and husbands in the home, then full submission, I think here probably has to do with the one teaching. And so maybe, yeah, it's possible that, again, if we mirror read this, you know, why does Paul have to say this? Well, the women in the church gathering were not being quiet, not in the sense of being, you know, they were simply talking, but they were being boisterous and kind of disruptive and weren't submitting to the one teaching, which again, whether you're egalitarian or commentarian in this sense, it doesn't really matter. I mean, when somebody is teaching, you shouldn't be like disrupting that, right?

You should be respectful to the one teaching. Yeah, let's move on. I don't think that that's probably the least significant and least disputed interpretive issues in this passage. So let's, let's move on to our, uh, fourth main question. Um, the fourth question is there are four important questions about 2.12, uh, 1 Timothy 2.12. Oh yeah. So let me repeat the four questions again on this verse. Um, number one was what's the significance of epitrepo, I am not permitting? Number two, what's the meaning of authentio, to assume authority?

What's the meaning, number three, what's the meaning of didasco, to teach? And number four, what is the significance of the syntactical phrase, neither, nor, I do not permit, Paul says. Epitrepo is in the present tense. And so some people, now, okay, so there's a huge debate about verb tenses in Greek. Okay, and here's, yeah, who do I want to bring in here? There's, yeah. And I'm not an expert in that debate about the aspect of Greek tenses, whether it's talking about time or speaking or saying something about the nature of the action. And again, I'm already going to confuse myself if I go any further than that. But just to say, well, it's in the present tense. It's like, well, what does that mean? It's not self-evident that that means something, okay? But some people say that the present tense means Paul is saying something like, I am

currently not permitting, for certain contextual reasons, that a woman in Ephesus teach or exercise authority over a man. So it kind of highlights, some people push the tense to say that this strengthens the view that Paul is thinking of a specific time and place in Ephesus, that he's not giving some universal prohibition. So Philip Payne champions this view. And Philip Payne is one of the most prolific egalitarian scholars. I mean, the dude has written just tons of scholarly articles and scholarly books on this topic, which is why I'm excited that he's coming out to speak at the pre-conference

at the Exiles in Babylon conference. So we're doing a pre-conference on a debate on this topic. So two people on the egalitarian side, two on the commentarian side. And so Philip Payne and Cynthia Westfall are the two egalitarians. And then we have Sidney Park and my friend Gary Brashears, who's going to be on the complementarian side. So yeah, Payne says, he says this, with only one exception, 1 Corinthians 14, 34, which is widely regarded as an interpolation, the verb to permit, epitrepo, never refers to a universal or permanent situation in any of its uses in the LXX, the Septuagint, or the New Testament. Especially its use in the first person singular present

indicative makes it unlikely that Paul intended 1 Timothy 2.12 as universal or a permanent prohibition. I have not verified that statement. And by the way, that's one of the more frustrating things in this debate. Whenever I actually look at somebody's, well, I shouldn't say every time. In many cases, especially if somebody is really passionate about their viewpoint, when I actually look up their footnotes, their references, and I double check their evidence and what they're citing, it is discouraging. I'll just be honest, y'all. It's discouraging that sometimes the evidence doesn't check out. And I'm not saying with Philip Payne that's the case. I'm just saying I don't believe what anybody says until I actually go and look up everything. And I haven't done that. When he says

there's only one exception to the rule, that epitrepo in a present singular indicative always refers to a non-permanent situation. I would need to verify that. I will say that most scholars do not, even egalitarian scholars that I read, most egalitarian scholars don't make too much of the verb. So that should add caution, I think. Yeah, both I. Howard Marshall and Philip Towner, two magisterial commentaries on the pastorals taken as pretty definitive, both egalitarians, and neither of them say we should make much of this present tense, the present tense of epitrepo. That's kind of my default. I'm going to need to be convinced otherwise. In my knowledge of Greek, which isn't

very extensive, it doesn't, I don't know, I get nervous kind of reading too much into these kind of things, looking at reading too much into a tense to make a pretty big theological conclusion that this is not universal. It's only contextual. I do kind of lean towards Marshall and Towner, who says, you know, it's contextual reasons why we should say that, not simply because the verb is in the present tense, which Philip Payne does offer contextual reasons to. Okay. Another issue in 1 Timothy 2.12, perhaps the biggest issue, although it's not unrelated to the other issues in the verse, is what is the meaning of athenteo? The verb translated to have authority, or what does the NIV say here? It says, oh, it says assume authority. Ooh, Philip Payne would like that. Okay. So this word has been scrutinized by dozens and dozens and dozens of studies, hardcore academic studies, which makes it

one of the most examined words in the Bible, which is interesting because it only occurs here, which I guess you can argue, well, that's why it's so heavily researched because it only occurs once. It's also heavily researched, right? Because it's in a really important passage about women in leadership or teaching or in positions of authority in the church. So this is a really important word. So it only occurs here in all of scripture. They call it a hapax legomenon. It only occurs once in scripture. To make matters more complicated though, there are hardly any occurrences of the verb at least, so this is a verb, athenteo, prior to Paul. Hardly any occurrences. Three to five, really. I think there's only eight occurrences of the verb before A.D. 312,

which once we start getting a few hundred years after Paul, we start losing a lot of relevance for what Paul meant by the word. I mean, what a word means in 2022 might be different than how it's used in 1722, right? I mean, words develop over time. So, you know, I looked at every extra biblical reference up until I believe the third century. So I went a couple hundred years after Paul. Beyond that, I didn't look at in detail at other references. There's also, okay, what is the meaning of authentio? Well, there's several questions within that question. So this is kind of the third layer here. What's the meaning of 212? What's the meaning of authentio? Well, there's several issues we have to wrestle with there. The etymology, authentio, contains the root for the word autos, which has to do with self.

the root for the word autos, which has to do with self. Hübner, I don't, sorry, Hübner, I don't know if your first name is pronounced Jamin or Jamin. Yeah, anyway, I'm just going to call you Hübner. Hübner wrote an outstanding article on Othenteo. Absolutely fabulous. It's so great that I actually forgot to write it down. But Jamin Hubner, J-A-M-I-N-H-U-B-N-E-R. And yeah, you're going to have to Google it because I didn't write that in title. He does some good work on the etymology of this word and says, all other words, well, most words that have autos in the root somewhere contain some sense of self, of one's own accord, self-sufficiency. So there could be, even there built into the word, some kind of negative connotation. It's not simply assume godly authority over man, but assume some kind of self-serving, selfish authority. And again, these aren't exact translations, but it could tint the word with some kind of negative flavor to it. What's the relationship between the noun and the verb? We have hardly any references to the verb

in extra biblical literature. We do have several other references to the noun, the noun form of authentes, would be the noun. Interestingly, many of the very old forms of the noun back in classical Greek literature, the noun often refers to murder. Like you want to call somebody a murderer, then you would call them an authentess. It's still pretty rare. It's only used, I think, 31 times in classical Greek literature in that sense. I think 38 times the noun occurs. Let me get these exact numbers for you. Yeah, the noun occurs prior to AD 100. The noun occurs 38 times. The adjective adverb occurs eight times. The verb only occurs three to five times prior to 100 AD. And 31 occurrences of the noun mean murderer.

But some people say, see, this is a really negative word. But other people are like, well, that's clearly not what Paul's referring to here. So there's a debate about how should we understand the relationship between the uses of the noun versus the uses of the verb. Some people say we should only look at extra biblical uses of the verb. Others say, no, we should consider all root forms to help us understand the meaning of the verb as Paul uses it. I would lean towards that, that since we have hardly anything to go on, we should gather all the evidence. And sometimes verbs can take on a different meaning than the noun, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes the noun retains some kind of scent, some kind of air, some kind of flavor to how the verb is being

used. So I don't think we should just look at the uses of the verb. And this is where people... Okay, so I actually haven't framed the question here. So here's why it's important. Well, here's the main question with authentio. Does it refer to what we would consider otherwise godly authority? Or is it talking about some kind of negative, abusive, domineering authority? So in other words, is Paul prohibiting women simply from exercising any kind of authority over a man? Good, humble servant leadership. Like, no, that's off limits. Or is he saying something a little more negative here? Women aren't allowed, or as Paul's saying, you know, sure, women could demonstrate godly, humble servant leadership authority over men, but not

the authentic stuff. Women should not domineer, try to master, dominate men in sort of the negative way. So this is what has led to dozens and dozens and dozens of articles written on the meaning of this word. Many of them that examine the ancient references to this word to try to help us understand what Paul means. Because Paul doesn't, he just says the word. Well, yeah, it's debated, but there's not a lot in the context that kind of helps us understand whether he's thinking of authentio as a negative form of authority or simply authority per se. It is, so going back to the fact that this is only used once in the Bible, sometimes people make a big deal out of words that are only used once in the Bible. But just because you use once in the Bible doesn't mean it's a rare word. I mean, if we grabbed any 13 of your emails and we found out that there was a word you

only used once in all 13 of those emails, okay, of course, I'm paralleling Paul's 13 letters. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a rare word. It just means that you just happened to use that word once in the 13 letters. It could be a really common word anywhere else. Like, say you use the word capital once in your 13 letters, it doesn't mean the word capital is like a rare word. It just means it was rare in your 13 letters. It doesn't mean you even thought it was a rare word. Now here's the difference though with Othanteo is we've got piles and piles and piles and piles of Greek literature to go on here. Even within those piles and piles and piles, uh, we have very few references to this word, relatively speaking. I mean, a few dozen is not a lot considering how much Greek literature we have to go on, including papyri and just kind of menial documents, just letters written back and forth between people.

So we have a lot to go on. So it does seem to authentico is actually a rarer word, a unique word in the Greco-Roman world, which could suggest that Paul purposely latched onto this word and not many other words he could have used to describe authority because there was something in the meaning of authentico that didn't simply convey the idea of simply authority. And this is a Huebner talks about, does a great job, you know, pointing out that there's several other different phrases and words Paul could have used that simply convey authority with no negative connotation. Could there be something specific within authentico for why Paul passed over these other words and

said, no, the authentio conveys the specific nuance I'm trying to convey here. Now, I don't know. Let's see, I've got 10 pages of notes summarizing all of the extra biblical references to this word. And I don't know how much I want to go into detail here. Well, so both complementarians and egalitarians do the same word studies. Complementarians look at the same passages and say, see, it's not a negative word. And then egalitarians do the same, look at the same passages and say, see, it's a negative word. It's negative authority. And complementarians say, no, it's not. Look at this text. Egalitarians say, I am looking at the text. Look, it's clearly negative. So it gets really fascinating to kind of, you know, look at these same texts with them and see that,

and try to make up your own mind. Well, is it being used negatively here or just in a neutral or positive way? Let me give you one reference. This is, some people say that this might be the most important. Well, both Payne, who's an egalitarian, and George Knight, who's a commentarian, call this reference the single most important occurrence of the verb outside of 1 Timothy 2. It comes in, it's called the BGU papyrus, number 1208.38, dates to around 2726 BC. So predates Paul by a few decades. And without, I'm not going to give you the full context here. Let me just read where the statement occurs. It says this, since I had authority, often tekatos, with respect to him, he immediately granted Kalatitis, the ferryman, a concession,

which allowed the latter to make a profit at the same rent. Yeah, you're probably thinking, what in the world are you talking? Is he speaking English? So here's what's going on. You have a guy who is taking a ferry with another man's slave. Okay. And let's see. Apparently the slave refused to pay the ferryman for the ride. And this is where the author of this letter, Trifon is his name. He exercises authenticitas, authentico, over the slave so that the slave ended up paying the ferryman. the slave so that the slave ended up paying the ferryman. And so commentarians say, see, I mean, he's a master. He's exercising just normal authority over a slave. And this isn't a negative connotation. It's just normal authority, not bad authority. He's not kicking his slave. He's not beating him. He's just saying, look, I'm a master. You're a slave. Even though he's not his slave, he's still a master.

And so he has authority over this slave. It's not pejorative at all. However, this is where Philip Payne points out that it actually would have been an inappropriate use of authority to kind of boss around another man's slave. Like, uh, according to Philip Payne, who cites classicist John, uh, Warner or Werner, that he didn't have proper authority over the slave. Okay. Um, and so he's kind of writing an apology. This letter is kind of an apology to the slave's owner saying, Hey, sorry, I, I, you know, kind of manhandled your slave a little bit. I really apologize about that. I mean, again, he didn't say I apologize, but that's kind of the tone of the letter,

according to one way to look at it. Here's where I want to possibly point out something that I have not seen others emphasize. Let's just assume that the master, this guy, did have legitimate authority over another man's slave. Let's just assume that. I'm kind of more interested in the fact that this is a master-slave relationship. So even if within that culture, masters could easily exercise authority over slaves, culture, masters could easily exercise authority over slaves. I'm more interested in the very social framework that gives meaning to authentio here, that it is a master exercising authority over a slave. That is not how Christian leadership should look like. So if we go back to 1 Timothy 2, yeah, women should not exercise authority over men as a slave owner would his

slave. Well, there's another text where, is this the noun used? No, this is a verb. Oh yeah, this is in an astrological text, the astrological treatise Methodus Mystica, treatise, Methodus Mystica, which was apparently inaccurately dated to the 1500s AD, but has now been redated to around, well, anywhere between 100 BC to AD 50. So just predating the New Testament. And here we have a description of the planets, the movement of the planets determining the social status of people who are born according to when the arrangement of the planets or something like that. This is a very common thing people would dabble in kind of astrology in the ancient world. This text conveys a familiar astrological trope where planetary positions in the heavens correspond to social positions on earth. There are seven different occupations mentioned, a leader and

ruler, a royal man, a great man, an artisan, a craftsman, one who works with fire or iron, a fence, or one who cares, takes care of seaside business. Okay. So you see a descending order here, a leader and ruler, a Royal man, great man. So again, less and less and less on the social hierarchy. The last one mentioned is the one who has full command of everything, the most superior. So he kind of like gives a, you know, the first six are in descending order, but then the last one has the most authority over them all. And the word, that's where Othenteo occurs, the one who is at the very top of the social hierarchy, and yet he gains nothing. And this is, again, it's kind of like an ironic lot in life. This person born should have full authority over everybody, and yet he lives like a slave or whatever it's talking about.

Interestingly, here again, authentio is part of this kind of hierarchical social fabric. The very thing that the New Testament goes to great lengths to completely undo. So on the one hand, and this is where Al Walters and other commentary writers say, see, nothing negative here. I'm like, well, according to whose worldview? The very word is participating in this social hierarchy, which that is obliterated by a New Testament vision of leadership. So if women were demonstrating that kind of social hierarchical leadership over men, then yeah, that would be a problem for Paul. One more text. This is, I believe this is a noun occurrence, not the verb. Let me see. No, it's still, no, this is still, No, this is still Othenteo. Let's see. If Saturn alone is ruler of the soul and dominates Mercury and the moon, he makes his subjects lovers of the body. Now, that's a translation, dominate,

but that's a verb here, Othenteo. Yeah, that does seem to be some kind of coercive leadership. He makes his subjects lovers of the body. Seems kind of coercive at least, but this is where complementarian scholars will say, no, this is just kind of different. The planet's kind of just exercising their rightful authority over other planets according to certain astrological viewpoints. But I'm like, it seems a little stronger than that to me.

There's another text here. Let's see. with it according to the manner indicated. It makes people reprehensible and in their honorary offices makes them not masters, but subordinates of others or else people who entrust their own affairs to others. Like text above, the arrangement of the planets determines one's social status. Here, authentas refers to a master as opposed to a subordinate. So this is a noun here. Again, has to do with social hierarchy where you have a master and a subordinate or a slave. Another text, if the moon is waning, it does not make them masters, but servants of such persons. That is a masters again, often test refers to masters in contrast to a servant.

Another text, for if the moon waxes, they will be high-ranking officers. This is the verb, alphantikoi. If it wanes, they will be servants of the leaders. Again, again, again, playing on this hierarchy between master and servant. So here's, and there's so much more to look at. I'm skipping over all kinds of text here. I will say, so I'm just giving you a sample where this kind of framework does occur. I looked at a lot of papyri when I was at Tyndale House, another kind of work through it and found a lot of just kind of mundane like uses of the word where it doesn't convey this kind of social hierarchy. It was just kind of somebody who possesses something, but not in any kind of hierarchical sense. Then we can, I mean, we can keep going later, later where we do have more occurrences of the verb.

But again, once we get two, three, 400 years removed from Paul, I just don't think that that's super helpful. We also could look at how ancient translations, the old Latin, Coptic, Syriac translations translate this word, which I got some thoughts there, but I'm still marinated on them. We can look at how early church writers who are native Greek speakers look at the word. So yeah, there's much more to do here. This episode is sponsored by Faithful Counseling. I'm so excited to let you know about this awesome organization. Faithful Counseling is a Christian-based online counseling center filled with over 3,000 U.S. licensed therapists across all 50 states.

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And I love that the communication with your counselor is super flexible. I mean, you can text them, you can chat with them on the phone, you can connect via video, and financial aid is available. So if you want to get started, go to faithfulcounseling.com forward slash theology, and Theology in Raw listeners will receive 10% off their first month. Okay, so that's faithfulcounseling.com forward slash theology. Let me say this, in spite of what I already said, I do think, you know, not in spite of, but I do think we can't be overly confident in looking at some extra biblical use. Because the extra biblical uses are diverse. I think with the verb in particular and some uses of the noun, you do have this sometimes.

Interesting context, we have masters and slaves. But that's, again, that's not every time. There is diverse uses of the verb and the noun. So we can't simply say, here's a handful of uses outside the New Testament that has a negative meaning. Therefore, authentio must mean dot, dot, dot. I think we do have to look at the specific context of 1 Timothy 2 to help contribute to the meaning. Unfortunately here, you know, there's debates about whether or not the context should give a negative meaning to athenteo or a positive meaning. And this is where it gets, some people say, well, you know, since the word to teach is positive,

I do not exercise or allow, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. Some people say, well, teaching is positive. It's not negative. So therefore, that's a contextual clue that athenteu is positive too. There's no reason why Ahtenteu should be negative if we're just looking at the context. Other people say, well, I mean, you do have this whole thing with all these women demonstrating, you know, luxury and sexual promiscuity and throwing off motherhood. And that fits this kind of ancient new women kind of movement or whatever, whether they're formally a part of this new women movement or they just were imitating some of their actions.

And another thing that those women would do is they would dominate men like a master would a slave. And so there is contextual clues to give a more negative scent to oftenthenteo. So all that to say, so this, I think this is, it is a very difficult word to interpret. I do think, here's where I lean. I do think the egalitarian reading here, and not that it makes, it doesn't seal the deal, but egalitarians who argue that athenteo isn't simply neutral or positive

authority and what makes it wrong is women are wielding it. I do think that there's good evidence that Paul is thinking of a kind of authority that any godly Christian leader should not exercise, but was a particular problem with women at Ephesus. I think that I would probably lean in that direction knowing that I have a lot more research to go. So I would lean towards the view that Paul is probably not prohibiting godly women from always exercising the godly servant leadership over men, but rather he's prohibiting a certain kind of woman exercising a certain kind of domineering leadership that characterized some women in Paul's day. Now, this view is challenged by what I think is a strong complementarian argument, and that has to do with the meaning of didasko, the word to teach. Didasko occurs 16 times in

Paul's letters, and in almost every case, the term is used in a positive sense. When Paul refers to teaching in a negative sense, he almost always, some might say always, makes that clear from either adding to the word, like false teaching, hetero didoscoco or whatever it is. He'll put hetero, which is other teaching or false teaching. Or there's another word he uses to attach to dedosco when he wants it to mean something negative. Or like some people say, well, in Titus 1, 10 to 11, he doesn't use a negative. He just says teaching and it's negative here. But I mean, look at 1 Timothy 1 to 11. They must be silenced because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach. So I mean, yes, the word teaching might be negative if we didn't have the rest of the verse, but the rest of the verse teach, he's clearly indicates that they're teaching things they shouldn't teach. And they were

teaching for the sake of dishonest gain. So when the word teaching is unqualified, it's almost always, if not always means something positive. So commentarians would say, yeah, the teaching Paul has in mind here in first Timothy 2.12 is not some kind of negative teaching, not some kind of false doctrine. Paul knows how to say false teaching. He said it several times in these letters. If he meant to say false teaching, he would say false teaching, not just teaching. When he says teaching without any other qualifier, the term is positive.

Paul's only problem with teaching here is that women are doing it. That he sees in the created order coming in verse 13, that God has not ordained or permitted that women should teach men. And that's not, obviously women shouldn't teach men false doctrine. That's almost like redundant. Why would Paul even need to say that? I do not permit you to teach false doctrine as if the women were like, oh gosh, I didn't know that. that. I do not permit you to teach false doctrine as if the women were like, oh gosh, I didn't know that. So sorry, Paul. Okay, I'll stop teaching false doctrine. So I do think in and of itself, the complementarians have a strong case for the meaning of didasco. Some people say, well, yes, teaching isn't negative teaching, but Paul prohibited women from teaching because women were lacked education. Have you heard this argument

before? Sorry, I'm talking to myself here. I think Craig Keener argues this, if I remember correctly, and several others really assume, well, women weren't educated in the first century. And so it's not that the teaching was wrong. It's that women lacked the qualifications to teach. I'm not impressed with this argument though. I don't know if you are. There's nothing where Paul, I mean, first of all, Paul doesn't say it. He could have easily said, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise the authority of a man for women lack the proper education. And he could have said that. He doesn't say it.

So some people say, well, it's just assumed from the historical context. But not every woman was uneducated back then. And I've got tons of stuff in my notes here, references to Plato, Musonius, Rufus, Seneca. Seneca, he supported the education of women as long as they didn't use it as a means to show off. He noted that Helvia had studied some philosophy, yet her interest in liberal arts was checked by old-fashioned strictness of her husband. Theophrist, is that how you say his name? Argued that women should be educated but not beyond the household arrangements made by idle women. Oh, Juvenal has an interesting... So he's the Roman satirist. He's kind of like the ancient

Bill Burr. He has this passage, and I think it's satire nine or eight or five or six. I forget. I think it's six, where he just bemoans these women who are hanging out with men, dressing luxuriously, and are waxing eloquent on all manners of grammar and rhetoric and philosophy. And then he even critiques these women for adorning their neck with green emeralds and pearls and elongating their ears. There's nothing more intolerable than a wealthy woman. So here you have interesting, again, parallels to 1 Timothy 2, where you have a juvenile just bemoaning the fact that these wealthy extravagant women are also kind of flaunting their knowledge over men. Well, here's two interesting parallels. Number one,

it shows that some women, at least, did have some kind of access to education. At least they, you know, were somewhat versed in grammar and rhetoric. But also you have this combination of women who were perhaps educated, dominating men. So in a sense, this critiques the lack of education view of 1 Timothy 2, while adding more support, I think, to Paul's prohibition being more contextual. Also, here's my problem with the argument that says women lacked education, therefore they shouldn't teach. Sure, they might have lacked education in medicine and philosophy and rhetoric, but what does that have to do with teaching the scriptures in church? I

mean, we know clearly that women sat at the feet of Jesus. We know that Timothy himself was educated by his grandma and mother. We know that other women in the New Testament were very knowledgeable of scripture. Women taught other women and taught other younger girls. So I don't think Paul is saying, look, because women haven't been trained in the arts of rhetoric and medicine, therefore they shouldn't teach the scriptures to men. Lack of formal Greco-Roman education shouldn't disqualify somebody from being a teacher of God's word. I don't think Paul would be arguing that. So I'm not really into the lack of, I've yet to be convinced, how about that, of the women weren't educated view. Also, again, it doesn't really make sense that Paul's saying, well, women shouldn't teach

false teaching, false doctrine. Well, yeah, obviously. Why even need to say that? It could, okay, so there's two different ways to kind of interpret Paul's thinking about false teaching view. One could be that Paul's telling women, I don't permit you to teach false doctrine, which that doesn't make sense to me. Or he could be saying, I don't allow women to teach in Ephesus because we've got this issue with false teaching and women are particularly succumbing to this in Ephesus. So not that the verb teaching means false doctrine, but there was something in the historical situation where women were engaging in false teaching.

That one's a little more credible to me. You have a huge concern of false teaching all throughout the pastoral epistles. You have women that were in a couple passages being influenced by this, 1 Timothy 5, 14 and elsewhere. My one pushback to that argument, that again, that Paul's thinking of false teaching in 1 Timothy 2.12 because women were particularly succumbing to false teaching. My one pushback to that is that while you see women being victims of male false teachers, wooing them over, I don't, as far as I see, we don't have any evidence of women in particular being the false teachers in the pastoral. Like nowhere else do we see, I don't think, women the false teachers in the pastorals. Like nowhere else do we see, I don't think, women as false teachers. They were succumbing to false teaching, but being the false teachers.

We just don't see a lot of evidence for that. And again, Paul encourages women to teach other women and other girls. Older women teach younger women. So if there was this huge problem of women just engaging in false teaching everywhere in Ephesus, then why would he be okay with them teaching false doctrine to other women and children? So I think, honestly, I think complementarians, whether you're offended at it or not, if you just look at the text exegetically, if you just pretend like we're looking at, we're trying to look at the Book of Mormon or like pretend like this passage was in the Book of Mormon or in the Koran or something where we were, you know, most of us listening to wouldn't have any kind of investment in what the text means.

We're just like, ah, here's what this ancient text means. I do think commentarians have the simplest explanation. Women are not permitted to teach men because, you know, verse 12. Why? Well, Paul says why in verse 13, because of the order of creation. That might be offensive. You might say it's patriarchal, outdated, just grammatically, exegetically. That makes, I think, the better sense of the verb didasko and the connection to verse 13, which we'll get to in a second. I do think it runs up against some problems with

authentéo though. That's where I do think the egalitarian argument on authenté is slightly better. Here's one more thing, though, and this has to do with, I know I'm kind of jumping around, but the syntactical phrase uc ude, neither nor. So a lot of scholars, believe me, it's been a lot, a lot of scholars have looked at that syntactical phrase. This goes all the way back to like the early 80s when there were scholars debating this. I think Philip Payne has been arguing for a certain meaning of uk-ude for 40 years through many articles. Here's the significance of that phrase. So, Andres Kostenberger and others have argued that phrases joined by uke ude always refer to either two positive concepts or two negative concepts. Never, or rarely, does uke ude neither nor join one positive concept and one negative concept. Ergo, or since Didasco is clearly positive,

therefore, and is joined with uke ude to Athenteo, since Didasco is positive, therefore, Athenteo must also be positive, not a negative domineering kind of authority, is how the argument goes. There's good evidence for that, the syntactical phrase. I think Hasenberger, when I looked at all or most of his references, some of them were clearer than others. I did find a few where I'm like, ah, it doesn't really fit here. And Philip Payne, his argument is that no, uke ude often joins two overlapping concepts to convey a singular point. So, since authentio is negative, that shapes our understanding of didasco. Not that there's, you know, that Paul's talking about teaching and also exercise and authority, but some kind of negative domineering teaching. So,

teaching and authority are talking about one kind of activity. And because authenticity was negative, that gives shape to the singular idea of something that is holistically negative. So that's the debate. Honestly, I don't, yeah, I don't know. I got kind of got a headache after looking at text after text after text and looking at, is it, is it, you know, is Philip Payne right here? Is, is, is, uh, Kossenberger right here? And I'm like, I just, I don't know, like in all these extra biblical references to the syntactical phrase, I just wasn't too, I don't know. I wasn't that impressed. Like, I don't know. It just seems like there were, there was diversity in how this phrase is used to some extent that I don't know if we can just use that as a hugely significant argument for understanding the meaning of 1 Timothy 2.12. People disagree

with me on that. Some people are very impressed. This is a linchpin argument. I think it's pressed a little bit too much in my opinion, and maybe I'll change my mind on that. Maybe it was just getting too tedious for me. So here's another issue that could support an egalitarian reading. And then this does go on, it kind of assumes a negative view of often tell is this kind of domineering authority. This explanation simply points out that Paul was sensitive to disrupting, overly disrupting the social fabric of the Greco-Roman world. In the Greco-Roman world, it was socially shameful for women to be in positions of authority over men of the same or higher social status, especially if the women were exhibiting other socially unacceptable behaviors,

being unsubmissive, sexually promiscuous, flaunting their wealth. The quote that I kind of summarized from Juvenal earlier is case in point. Here, Juvenal just can't take it. These women showing off their wealth and dominating men and flaunting their intelligence or whatever, making men look stupid. Now, to be clear, respectable women could occupy many leadership positions even over men. I mean, wealthy women, for instance, were patrons over other male clients. Women owned male slaves, and they would be in authority over their slaves. So it wasn't unheard of to have women occupying roles where they could teach or exercise authority over men, depending on the social context.

For instance, the emperor's wife would be able to boss all kinds of men around without even batting anyone batting an eye. The same goes for other women of high social standing. shameful for a woman who had an unacceptable character, like the women Paul's addressing in 1 Timothy 2, to be in a leadership position over a man, especially if the man was her husband or another man of similar or higher social standing. So perhaps Paul is addressing such women in 1 Timothy 2. These women were flaunting their wealth, being sexually promiscuous, or at least giving the impression that they were. They were neglecting their duties as mothers, 1 Timothy 2.15. They were not being submissive to the teaching and the assembly, which is why Paul had to say, be quiet and learn in full submission. And if these women were also teaching men, this would have been incredibly shameful for the church.

I mean, obviously, if they're engaging in sexual immorality and flaunting wealth, that would be morally problematic. But even if they were just simply maybe giving that kind of air, being perceived as sexually promiscuous, being perceived as not demonstrating saffrosune, self-control modesty. If these women were teaching men, this would have been very shameful for the church. And it was already under public scrutiny. And here's something I want to point out. Throughout the pastorals, Paul shows concern for how the church is being perceived by the world. concern for how the church is being perceived by the world. If you want to look at the references, 1 Timothy 3.7, 1 Timothy 5.14, Titus 2.5, Titus 2.8, and you can also look at like 1 Thessalonians 4.11. Let's see. Oh, so in Titus 2.5, Paul tells Christian wives to be submissive to their husbands so that God's message will not

be slandered. That's interesting. Because it was socially acceptable that women would wise be submissive to their husbands, and if women were not doing that, or at least giving the impression that they were, then people could kind of start ridiculing and slandering the church. Paul's purpose in this command has to do with how Christian marriages will be perceived by outsiders. And it's the very purpose for why he tells them to be submissive to their husbands, at least in Titus 2. Again, if the church gained a reputation as a breeding ground for unsubmissive wives, it would have been severely criticized by people in power and possibly shut down by the governing authorities. This doesn't mean, this is an

important statement, this doesn't mean that Paul sheepishly constructs church life according to the Greco-Roman status quo. The gospel is very countercultural, but it does mean that Paul, as a good missionary, navigated the delicate balance between being theologically countercultural All of this should be considered in light of the fact that church gatherings were very public. When you think church gathering in homes, we think, oh, it's kind of a private gathering. You can't think in modern day concepts where our homes are like private property and someone has to knock on the door. Like random people wander in and out of kind of atriums and different parts of the house and stuff. Like that wasn't very uncommon. Like other than someone's bedroom or bathroom or something, like the houses were very public to outsiders. It's why Paul assumes in 1 Corinthians 14, like if an outsider kind of wanders in,

make sure you're not acting like crazy people. So if it appeared that women were teaching and dominating and exercising authority for men in ways of, you know, they're wearing extravagant wealth and whatever, all of this would have violated the current social protocol and would have magnified the social

suspicion that was already mounting against the church and would have hindered the church's mission. Possibly then, all this forms a possible backdrop to Paul's prohibition of women teaching and exercise authority over man. So if we assume this kind of background, and I'm not saying we should, I'm saying it's possible, then Paul could be prohibiting all forms of teaching. Perhaps it's, I mean, it doesn't say it's temporary, but he could be prohibiting Ephesian women, given the way they were flaunting their wealth and demonstrating socially unacceptable behavior. were flaunting their wealth and demonstrating socially unacceptable behavior, Paul could be saying, these women in Ephesus should not teach or exercise authority over men. And we wouldn't

need to force didasco into some sort of intrinsic negative meaning. Tether to authenteo, if authenteo does capture that kind of master-slave kind of connotation, that would be enough to say, look, I don't care what you're teaching. We need to shut this down because people are starting to, you know, raise an eyebrow at these church gatherings. And, you know, we want to be counter-cultural, but we're also good missionaries. We don't want to disrupt the social fabric so overtly that we bring down the heavy hand of Caesar. Okay. So there's a few other issues here that I'm not going to get into great detail because I haven't, that's kind of where my notes end at

verse 12. But just to point out a few other issues, verse 13 is really significant because Paul says, for Adam was created first. What's the purpose or function of Paul pointing out that Adam was created first? Complementarians say, well, he's obviously rooting male-only authority in the creation account. Adam was created first, and that in the ancient world, the firstborn kind of has the priority, the authority, and that's what Paul's clearly referring to. It might be offensive to our modern ears, but that wasn't to the ancient ears and it wasn't to Paul. And he clearly says, for Adam was created first. I think that that's a strong exegetical argument. Again, if you leave aside whatever offenses you might take at that, I think it's a strong argument.

I don't think it's without its problems. A couple pushbacks to that view is the word for, gar in the Greek, oftentimes does give a reason for what was previously said. Like, here's the reason why I'm saying women shouldn't teach or exercise authority. It can also give an illustration. Like, for instance, that doesn't, I don't think alleviate, that doesn't just refute a commentarian reading, but it does lessen the kind of theological connection between the created order and Paul's prohibition. If we take Gar in more of an illustrative, you know, an illustration. you know, an illustration. So, Howard Marshall, a great commentator, says, you know, Paul's reference to the order of creation in some sense might be a reply to some specific aspect of the false teaching, which has influenced women to behave in a church meeting in a way that threatens the dignity of men. So, Paul sought to correct. And maybe the false teaching

that was in the air had another reading of the Genesis account that prioritized the status of Eve. And we do see this in later Gnostic texts, by the way, where they had a different reading of Genesis that prioritized Eve. Now these later Gnostic texts are later, you know, by at least perhaps a century, but that's when these texts were written down. Perhaps there were already ideas. Remember, it's an oral culture. So, I mean, there could be ideas in the air that had kind of different readings of Genesis that prioritize Eve over Adam. So maybe that's why this is according to how some egalitarians read the connection between 2.12 and 2.13, that Paul is seeking to correct some misreading of Genesis. It is interesting. I mean, even though I think that, you know,

certainly you have parallels in the ancient world of the firstborn given priority and stuff. But it's like, well, that kind of has to do with like brothers and inheritance and maybe some social status. But Paul is, again, I'm going to say Paul is not playing into any kind of like social status hierarchy, even if you're a commentarian. I think that's, you can't make that argument. And here is specifically with, you know, teaching and exercising authority. What does being the firstborn have to do with being a good, like that qualifies you to be a teacher? Adam was born first, therefore he's a better teacher than Eve. I mean, that just seems a little odd to me. Then you had the connection between 213 and 214 for Eve.

It wasn't the man who was deceived, but Eve was deceived. And this, so I, this has got a little, like one of the more embarrassing arguments that complementarians, embarrassing. It's just, it just doesn't really work on several levels, but say, and I was happy to find out the most commentarians I read do not say, okay, do not say that women, all women are intrinsically more easily deceived than men. Therefore, they can't teach. I was surprised that complementarians often didn't make that argument. The closest I found, Tom Schreiner, closest I found, Tom Schreiner. Schreiner says this, generally speaking, women are more relational and nurturing and men are more given to rational analysis and objectivity. Women are less prone than men to see the importance of doctrinal formulations, especially when it comes to the

issue of identifying heresy and making a stand for the truth. What concerns Paul are the consequences of allowing women in the authoritative teaching office for their gentler and kinder nature inhibits them from excluding people for, I think I missed, I think I missed, I think it's a typo on my part, excluding people for doctrinal error. It inhibits them from maybe examining people or something like that for doctrinal error. Now, this quote's from a long time ago. This was cited in Howard Marshall's commentary from like 2001, I believe, or 2000,

a couple decades ago, longer than that, when Schreiner said this. He might have changed his mind on that. And some of you, I know some of you are cringing at what he says there. Others are like, yeah, what's the big deal? So here's my problem with this. Let me just assume for the sake of the argument that this is, that Schreiner is making an accurate scientific observation. Okay. Hang on before you yell or just hear me out, we need to climb inside this argument.

Okay. I'm going to climb inside this argument to show why I don't think it actually works. Let's assume this scientifically, whatever women are more relational and nurturing than men and who are given and men are given into rational analysis and objectivity. Let's assume that men are more, you know, just biologically more wired to identify heresy and see the importance of doctrinal formulations. Hang in there. I can hear some of my Patreon supporters are like, I'm about to cancel my contribution to your ministry. contribution to your ministry. Let's assume that women are gentler and kinder in nature over men.

Two things, two pushbacks to that assumption. Number one, even if it was true, don't we want, isn't good teaching, good teaching that is actually more relational and not just rational analysis that is gentle and kind and not just being able to boldly refute sound doctrine. Like, yeah, those elements, maybe there's a place for that too. But the way he kind of says, therefore, women should be excluded from teaching. I'm like, I think we need more of that kind of teaching. And I think the evangelical church has given us much fodder for that concern of mine. That's number one. Number two comes my other concern or why even if Schreiner's

making an accurate scientific observation, why I don't think it works here is he says, generally speaking, even if we go to the studies and there's studies on this, right? That women are more agreeable than men. Men might be more prone to analytical thinking than women. Even the studies that argue that, they're generalities. They mean like there's a huge bell curve with the massive overlap, meaning like, yeah, 70% of men more analytical than 30%. Actually, you have other 30% of women that are more analytical than 30% of men. These are generalities.

So even if Shriner's logic is true here, that would suggest that, yeah, 70% of teachers and preachers should be men and the other 30% should be women because we're not dealing with absolutes. Why give a categorical ban on every single female from teaching and exercising authority over men because they're more easily deceived when not every woman is more easily deceived than every man, even if we affirm that there is some general truth there. So I guess you can say, well, Paul didn't know science. He just thought every woman was more deceived. And it's like, I don't know. That also doesn't really work because Paul often

rebukes churches and warns churches for being deceived. And he warms both men and women. Like nowhere else do we see Paul say, all right, let me take the women aside here. And, you know, you women, you know, you're way more easily deceived than men. Like Paul gives general warnings against being deceived and general rebukes for Christians being deceived. This is a point that Cynthia Long Westphal points out in her book, Paul and Gender. Okay. So we have the issue with the connection between 2.13 and 2.12. Is it given an illustration? Is Paul addressing some kind of specific bad interpretation of Genesis that he's trying to

correct rather than simply going to the creation account and giving some sort of, you know, theological basis in a vacuum, like, you know, with no sort of corrective intention. Why does he say the woman was deceived? Again, egalitarians will say from 213 to to 2.15, Paul is really focused on a specific misreading of Genesis that he's correcting here. I think that's possible with verse 13, possible with verse 14, likely for verse 15 when he says, but women, or women, right? He goes back to the general here, but women, plural. So verse 13 and 14, he's talking about Adam and Eve, but then verse 15, he says, but women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love,

and holiness with sophrosyne. So again, he kind of ties it back to where he began in verse 9. ties it back to where he began in verse 9. So this does connect verse 15 with kind of his concern in the beginning of verse 9, 10, and 11. So these all do seem to be the same kind of category of women. And this verse just jumps out of nowhere. Apart from some sort of specific historical thing that Paul's talking about, it just does not make a whole lot of sense why Paul would pull this one out of his nose. Women will be saved through childbearing. I don't need to get, you can Google the different interpretations here. Some people talk about, you know, is this like physical safety through childbearing? Because the word sozo can refer to just physical safety, not like salvation in the spiritual sense. Is childbearing, is it the childbirth, namely Eve giving birth to the Messiah that is the root of all salvation, all of our salvation?

Kind of the Genesis 3.15, Proto-Eulangelion, the kind of first mention of the gospel in Genesis 3.15. Or is it, yeah, literal salvation? I mean, whatever your interpretation, every interpretation is not without its problems. I kind of lean towards, and again, I need to look way more deeply at this, but they all have problems. The best one, I think, is the physical safety through childbirth. That was a huge, huge concern in the ancient world. Many, many, many women died in childbirth. I forget the percentages.

I don't think it's quite 50%, but it's really high. Maybe it is 50%. I don't know why that number jumped out at me, but it's a lot. Like it was fearful, frightening for women to give birth to a child. You also have, again, the kind of background possibly of the new women who were scorning childbirth. And maybe they were scared of – maybe they were scared legitimately maybe of dying through childbearing. So here – I guess the problem with that view, even though I think it might be the best of the four difficult options, the big problem is women still die in childbearing.

Like Paul seems to be giving an empty promise here. Like, no, you'll be saved as long as you demonstrate faith, hope, love, and suffer soon. And then, well, I mean, can you really stand by that promise? Absolutely. Or is it maybe generally like, yeah, you'll be saved through childbearing. I mean, some of you are going to die, but a lot of you will be kept and preserved. So yeah, there's no view without its problems.

But you do see throughout the letter a concern with – there seems to be within the false teaching a wrong view of marriage. And again, you have women that were – especially luxurious women indulging in luxury and wealth and promiscuity that were scorning motherhood and so on. So that's where I lean on that. This verse, I think the most important thing in my mind about this verse is it does kind of send signals, really bright signals that Paul has some, he has some kind of contextual thing that he's addressing here. So I think just the presence of this obscure verse adds weight to an egalitarian reading. In conclusion so far, again, in conclusion, I'll repeat, these are just my

kind of working thoughts after having spent about a month in the passage, which I need to spend several other months in this passage, which I will. I'm trying hard to not read in. Like, I guess in a sense, it's exciting for me, um, to study this passage because I'm not really bringing a preconceived view into the text. Like I'm trying to, I don't know where I'm at. Yeah. So I don't need the passage to say one thing or another. So it's been fun analyzing these arguments because some of them, again, I think there's sometimes commentarians I'm like, yeah, I think you won that one. And other times egalitarians, I'm like, yeah, I think you got that one there. So it's been interesting. And I guess the one big takeaway is this passage is complex, you guys. The meaning of this passage doesn't just leap off the pages.

And so I would recommend that the strength of your convictions about what this passage means should match the depth of your research. And I'm not therefore saying y'all need to spend just months and months and months researching. I'm saying we should all hold our understanding of this passage humbly and open to being corrected. Because there's layers and layers of complexity here. So that's one of my big takeaways for this podcast is I want us all to maybe appreciate some of that complexity. So one of the main egalitarian starting points is that since we know Paul elsewhere is totally fine with women teaching and exercising authority over men, therefore, either we have a contradiction here, like Paul's contradiction contradicting what he

says elsewhere or what the New Testament says elsewhere, or there's something more going on in this passage than what a surface reading might indicate. I'm not as enthusiastic about that starting point as some of my egalitarian friends are. Because when I ask for examples of, well, clearly I went and teach in all over the place in the New Testament. I'm like, well, where? And people go to like, well, you have the Mary and other women, went to the disciples and announced that Jesus had been raised in the dead. I'm like, I don't know a complementarian who would say, no, women are not allowed to pass on information to other men. Like that's,

I mean, I think it's theologically significant in that moment, but I don't think that is, is to me compelling evidence that therefore women can teach and exercise authority over men in, in church simply because the women happen to be at their, I mean, it absolutely values the,

the honor and value and worth of women. Clearly, that is a beautiful statement about women when in the Gospels we read that it's women that were the first ones to witness the resurrection, women that brought the message to men. That clearly elevates the value of women that they were seen as credible witnesses to the resurrection. But it's one thing to say that women were lifted up and highly valued in the New Testament. It's another thing to say there are therefore no role distinctions in

church order. Two things can be true at once. God can highly value women and also have different roles for men and women in the church. People say, well, you had women like Mary and Martha sitting at the feet of Jesus. They were disciples of Jesus. I'm like, yeah, no one's saying women can't be disciples of Jesus, can't follow Jesus. You had wealthy women funding Jesus' ministry in Luke 8. Again, I don't know a commentarian who would say that wealthy women can't fund ministries. You have commentarian churches all over the place are funded by wealthy women who give a ton to ministry. So we have Lydia, Chloe, Priscilla, and others who are wealthy female homeowners who hosted church gatherings. Again, no one's saying women

can't be wealthy. No one's saying women can't open up their homes to churches. Now, there is a sub-argument there that says, well, in the ancient, in the first century context, you know, being a homeowner necessarily meant that you were also the elder, the overseer of that gathering. I addressed that in my first part, the podcast I did last November, an overview of my journey, part one or whatever it's called, where I pushed back on why I wasn't compelled by that assumption. why I wasn't compelled by that assumption. I've since been in dialogue with one Patreon supporter in particular who has given some, another kind of, a few other angles to that argument that's, I need to, it was really good. So yeah, still thinking through that one. I think we need to maybe slow down and cautiously make that connection that simply because a woman was wealthy and owned a home that hosted the church, therefore she was the de facto leader of that church.

Again, I'm saying I'm open to that, maybe, but I want to see some more concrete evidence for that. I'm asking the question, do we have clear evidence of women teaching elsewhere so that either we have a contradiction in 1 Timothy 2, if we take this as universal, or there's something else going on here. And I'm saying a lot of the examples given, I'm just not convinced it's clear evidence of women teaching men in sort of some kind of church gathering. Some stronger pieces of evidence, and I've already mentioned this before in other podcasts, Phoebe, the letter carrier, and possibly the interpreter of Romans. And I have a podcast that just came out with Randy Richards on letter carrying in the ancient world, and we spent a lot of time on Phoebe. So go back and listen to that episode. I think that's a stronger case that if Paul had put Phoebe

in a place where she would be in some kind of teaching and authoritative position over men with the Roman letter. And again, where we're going on some, you know, speculation, assumptions here, historical reconstruction. I think that there's something there to consider. Priscilla and Aquila taking aside Apollos and showing him kind of correcting his theology. That one, I need to look more into that. I've never been immediately impressed with that because it does seem to be more of an evangelistic encounter and it's kind of more private one-on-one. It's not some sort of steady church office where a woman is demonstrating ongoing kind of authority over men and women in the church. I don't know. I need to look at that more. Because some people say, well, it doesn't matter. It's

just a woman's teaching and exercising authority over a man. We don't really know what was going to... I mean, it says Priscilla and Aquila took him aside. They took him aside. We don't know how much teaching she was actually doing to Apollos. We kind of assume that it was like 50-50. Or some people, when I hear them say this, it almost sounds like they think, you know, Priscilla said, hey, step aside, Aquila. I got this. You know, like, I'm going to teach Apollos something here. I don't know. I think there's just a lot of assumptions going into that incident. And I don't think we can draw a straight line between Priscilla and Aquila privately taking Apollos aside, or at least, you know, just taking him aside and giving him the full gospel and draw a straight line from that incident to, therefore, women are allowed to teach and preach and exercise authority over men as elders and pastors and leaders.

Perhaps the strongest one for me would be women prophesying. And I've already talked about that in the last podcast I did on this, that prophecy, first century prophecy, I do think there's some overlap with what we would call teaching and preaching. And so that would be one, you know, Paul's okay, very okay with women prophesying in a local church context. If there ever is some kind of like possible contradiction between what Paul says elsewhere and a universal interpretation of 1 Timothy 2, this would probably be the main thing I would rely on, women prophets and women prophesying. There is another view that is a soft complementarian view, which you've heard on this podcast before, that what Paul's talking about in 1 Timothy 2.12 is the function of elders, that even though he doesn't use the term elders in 2.12, teaching and exercise and authority is what elders did.

So what Paul's prohibiting is not all forms of teaching prophesying by women in the church. What he's prohibiting is specifically the authoritative position of being an elder. I'm not quite convinced of that distinction, but that's an interesting take. You also have John Dixon's argument, which is really interesting. He says teaching didasco is specifically kind of, it was a responsibility to write down, guard, and protect the oral body of apostolic doctrine. So before the New Testament was fully written, you had, well, think about this. Think about the content that ends up going into the New Testament. What would we call apostolic doctrine? The apostolic reflection on the life and teachings of Jesus that forms the latter half of our New Testament. What would we call apostolic doctrine? The apostolic reflection on the life

and teachings of Jesus that forms the latter half of our New Testament. And it's a pretty compelling argument. There's a lot of word studies on didasko and the noun didaskalia. Like the word teaching, especially in the pastoralist often does refer to kind of what often is described as the body of apostolic doctrine. And that teaching or teachers in the first century were not teachers in general like we think of teachers, but were specifically commissioned to guard and protect and write down and determine what is apostolic doctrine because we didn't have the New Testament yet. The one, I'm kind of, I don't have any notes in front of me, so I'm kind of going off memory here. So John, I apologize if I'm misrepresenting you here. The one, I don't know, I'm not quite convinced

that the Daskalia or Didache teaching always refers to that. There's some passages are clearer than others. So I'm a little, I'm like, I'm not sure every incident has that meaning. Also, and John's the first one to admit this. He even said, I love how humble he is in that argument where he says, you know, kind of the biggest, one of the biggest challenges to this interpretation is that once the New Testament is closed, then there's no need for teachers anymore, right?

Because it's kind of like, we need to preserve apostolic doctrine until it's written down. Once it's written down, it doesn't need to be preserved anymore so that the very function of teaching and teachers in the first century is no longer in existence. So we don't have teachers anymore, in the sense of how John Dixon understands the word teaching in Paul's letters. Or, you know, you'd have a parallel. If a guarding apostolic doctrine turns in, that doctrine turns in the New Testament, then guarding that would be, you know, Bible translators and the publication committee on the, you know, the NIV. And like, you know, I guess that would be the modern day parallel.

It's like, well, women can't be on the translation teams or something like that, which I know he's not, wouldn't say. So anyway, all that to say, there are different viewpoints that are kind of on more of a spectrum of kind of egalitarian to commentarian to kind of our softer commentarian that allows for women teaching, but just not, um, not occupying the role of elder or pastor. Further areas of exploration. the role of elder or pastor. Further areas of exploration, I think possibly the best case for an egalitarian reading would be either with Bruce Winter's background on the new Roman women, that there is something with... You just have a lot of parallels between how Paul's describing

these women and how new women are described in the ancient world, whether we go with Bruce Winter, that Paul is thinking specifically of these new Roman women, or if we take Lynn Kohik's caution that no, the movement was gone. You still have women that are kind of acting similar to that, that seem to be Paul's focus in 1 Timothy 2. And that would, again, steer the interpretation into more of a contextual framework rather than a universal framework. I also, I really want to explore this delicate balance that Paul was navigating between being

just unleashing the countercultural gospel and yet not disrupting the social fabric too much. And I used to think that was totally bogus. I'm like, no, dude, Jesus and Paul, man, they loved interrupting the social fabric. They love being countercultural. And now after having examined it, I'm like, well, it is a little more complicated than that. They did have a concern with how the church movement was being perceived. And yet the gospel is intrinsically counter-cultural. You have a similar concern in the book of Acts, if I remember correctly, C. Calvin Rowe's book, World Upside Down, which is on the book of Acts, it's been 15 years since I read

some of it or most of it. But I think, if I remember correctly, he points out that while the early church movement was disruptive, like the name of the book comes from Acts 17, where they go in and preach Jesus and the whole city's in an uproar because they're telling people that there's another king named Jesus and we shouldn't obey the laws of Caesar. So all throughout the book of Acts, you do have social disruption. obey the laws of Caesar. So all throughout the book of Acts, you do have social disruption. And yet Luke, the author of Acts, goes to great pains to point out that they've never done anything illegal. Whenever they're arrested, it's always unjustly. They are abiding by the laws of Rome. And you have, even as Osvaldo Padilla points out, you know, you have even on the lips of

unbelievers all throughout Acts, all these speeches by people who aren't even Christians in Acts, they often say things that who aren't even Christians in Acts. They often say things that are true like, hey, if this movement is of God, you can't stop it. But if it isn't of God, it's going to fizzle out anyway. And you have all these unbelievers giving these remarkably wise speeches in the book of Acts. So I'll say you have a similar tension in the book of Acts, kind of like this is a countercultural movement. But hey, we're not doing anything illegal. we're abiding by the laws of Rome. So you see this kind of, yeah, this tension being navigated there. And I do see, every time I read the New Testament now,

I'm seeing more and more of these statements that I haven't seen before, this concern of Paul for how the church would be perceived. So all that to say, I don't know if we need, okay, here's going to be, I'm getting ahead of myself here and I'm going to conclude this in a second. So I'll just throw this in your lap. I don't know if we need to find women teachers and leaders and apostles and elders under every rock that we think they exist in the New Testament in order for an egalitarian understanding to be correct. I am wondering. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't read, well, it's been a long time since I read Webb's book. What's his name? Robert Webb, Barry Webb, Walter Webb, Derek Webb. No, what's his name? Webb. Slaves,

women, and homosexuals is the title. Anyway, it's been a long time since I read it, but if I remember correctly, he kind of looks at, you have trajectories throughout the Bible. So you don't see, I hope I don't butcher his argument, but something like slavery. You don't see slavery ended. You just't see slavery ended. You just kind of see the nature of slavery slowly being gutted from the inside out, which gives us a trajectory to where post-Bible, post-canon, we can take the principles that are in the scriptures and say, therefore, slavery is wrong and evil and we shouldn't be doing this.

But you don't see a revolution against the institution of slavery in the first century. And if you did, that probably would have shut down the Christian movement. And then he compares it to same-sex sexual relationships and says, we don't see that with same-sex relationships. He calls them homosexuals or whatever, which I think is a poor word, but he says, we don't see the same concern with same sexual relationships. So with slavery, you do see a trajectory moving towards no slavery, same sex sexual relationships. You don't see the same trajectory, both old and new Testament. You see marriage defined as one man, one woman, same sex relationships are always prohibited.

And then he says, the third category is women. And he says, women is more like the slavery thing where you don't see patriarchally, you know, completely dismantled or however you want to word it. You don't see, you know, you still see Paul saying man's ahead of women. You still see man saying, you know, women shouldn't teach or exercise authority over men. So it's almost like you can almost have a somewhat of a complementarian reading of the New Testament and still see a trajectory moving towards a time when society's ready where you can have women in full positions of teaching and authority over men. I'm not totally convinced by that argument, and I would

need to do a lot more looking into it. But I'm interested to explore more this sensitivity that Paul has to overly disrupting the cultural fabric while maintaining the countercultural nature of the gospel as it pertains to how women are being perceived by outsiders, how women are being perceived in the church by outsiders. All right, folks, I got to run. That was way too long, way longer than I intended. Uh, but thank you so much for listening for the five of you that are still listening. Yeah. Oh, just so you know, um, I do post, uh, the written form of a lot of my research in, you know, to, uh, my Patreon supporters. And so if you do want to get access to that, then I'm just chumming the waters here. So there are benefits to being a Patreon supporter.

And so if you want to support this show on Patreon, support the work that I do, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. All right, we'll see you next time on the show. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.