Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1058: A Complimentarian Interpretaiton of 1 Tim 2:8-15: Dr. Bill Mounce

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Bill is the founder and President of BiblicalTraining.org, serves on the Committee for Bible Translation (which is responsible for the NIV translation of the Bible), and has written the best-selling biblical Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, and many other Greek resources. He was the New Testament chair for the English Standard Version, and speaks and blogs regularly on issues relating to trusting the Bible, the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus), Greek, and issues of spiritual growth. Bill was also a preaching pastor, a professor of New Testament and director of the Greek Language Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a professor at Azusa Pacific University. Bill is the author of a rather prestigious commentary on the Pastoral Epistles in the Word Biblical Commentary series, and he spent 14 years researching and writing the commentary. He's also a complimentarian, a position he arrived at partly through studying this passage, so I wanted to have him walk us through how a complimentarian scholar interprets this passage. biblicaltraining.org billmounce.com

All right, folks, my guest today is Dr. Bill Mounts, who has a long rap sheet. He has a PhD from Aberdeen University where he completed his doctorate in 1982. He studied under I. Howard Marshall. He is the president of BiblicalTraining.org, a nonprofit organization offering world-class educational resources for discipleship in the local church. He talks about that resource just briefly at the beginning of the podcast. I highly encourage you to check out biblicaltraining.org. It's a massive repertoire of free, high-quality classes and resources. It's absolutely amazing, this website. He taught New Testament and Greek at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Azusa Pacific University,

Greek at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, Azusa Pacific University, and is the author of the bestselling Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, and has also been on the translation committee for the English Standard Version and the NIV translations. So this dude knows a thing or two about the New Testament and his commentary on the pastoral epistles and the Word Biblical Commentary series is extremely good, very thorough, and he takes a complementarian reading of 1 Timothy 2 verses 8 to 15. And so I have him come on to walk us through that passage and give a complementarian or some might say a soft complementarian reading of this passage. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Bill Mounts. Anybody who's been in a Bible college or seminary knows the name Bill Mounts because you literally wrote the textbook on learning biblical Greek that I think, I don't know how many, you probably know the numbers, but I'm going to guess an

overwhelming percentage of people learning Greek, Koine Greek, go through your textbook. Is that, would that be accurate? I mean. Yeah, Zonovan estimates about 90%. 90%. Golly. That's, that's. I mean, I work on that last 10.

How many editions is it in? Has it been through several now? It's in its fourth, and I think probably this will be the last one. I wish that the linguists could make up their mind about the middle voice because I kind of had to give two positions, which is really hard to do in an introductory grammar. But you can't just tell all your users that, oh, by the way, we're done with deponency. And everyone switches over to the new middle. And so

interesting, Miles Van Pelt's a very good friend of mine. And I told him the other day, I said, when I'm dead, the book's yours, keep it up to date. But the only other thing I think that Miles would ever want to do is if we finally end the debate on what's the middle voice, making that a little clearer in the book. I didn't think about asking you this. Have you reflected on the weight of having played a significant role in teaching hundreds of thousands of Christian leaders biblical Greek in the last few decades? I mean, obviously, there's teachers using the book, but I mean, your book is the main source. I mean, that's pretty, what a feat. It's hard to explain.

You know, when you get letters from Kenya for people thanking me and people asking to translate it on their own time into Romanian was the last one I got. But it's, you know, I go like to a church and they'll see my name and, you know, I taught them Greek 20 years ago. So it really is a humbling thing. What I tell people is about everything in my ability, my name, what I've done, where I've been, I think is all geared towards biblical training, our online ministry. And it's put me in a place where i know people and they know me and whether it's that book or the commentary on the pastorals or my translation and work and stuff i've been put my dad was very well known so having the last name of mount was helped and i think i've been

put in a place by the lord i think it's my good deed he prepared beforehand to do pastorals so yeah it is it'sbling, but I have to remind myself, I don't think I'm that good of a writer. I think this is the blessing of the Lord to put me in a place to do biblical training, which I'm supposed to be doing. I went through your textbook late 90s. When did it first come out? It was like 97, 98, 97 98 maybe I think it's

93 but I'm not sure yeah so it wasn't it was fairly new at that point and I remember thinking I'm terrible with languages I wasn't a good student to begin with but languages were I learned more about English going through your grammar and Greek that I did you know but I just found it so accessible I'm like somebody could go through this on their own as I'm sure many have. And with all the workbooks and everything and learn Greek on there. I mean, it always helps to have a guide, but.

Yeah, I wrote the book intentionally that you could teach yourself with it, which is why in this, you know, the movement towards distance education or whatever you want to call it now, the book really fits well into that market because you don't really need a teacher to get the basics of it. And that was always my goal is to make it self-teaching. And then when you have a good teacher and it just makes you come alive.

But it was it was that way intentionally. makes you come alive but yeah it was it was that way intentionally good good and before i forget give a quick plug over uh your your what you what you're involved with what you've been involved in the last several years providing online largely free well pre-biblical training that's extremely high quality i mean there's i don't know anything else out there that is so comprehensive so high quality and also free so So yeah, let people know about what you got. Thanks. Yeah. No, there's other websites doing this, somewhat the same thing, but we have over 150 classes now and seminars from some of the world's very, very best teachers. We just did John Oswald on Isaiah. Man, I wish I had listened to him lecture before I ever started lecturing.

I would have fundamentally changed how I lectured. The guy is just a master. Wow. In fact, I was asking people, who should I get to do Isaiah? And I was asking people who had written commentaries themselves. And every person said, no, go get John. Go get John. And so he's also going to do first and second Kings for us this fall.

So we've just gone after the very best teachers, work really hard to do a good job recording, and then give it away, because I think that people should be able to learn in the church. And people learn best in community. And if you're in a church, you've got this built-in community, and you can learn together. There's three different levels. There's a lay level, which is foundations, more of an elder level, which is a university level called academy, and then there's a seminary level called the institute. So there's a wide range of classes, and it's all free. And we're just now starting to push into other languages.

Okay. So the website is biblicalstudies.org? Biblicaltraining.org. Or as I tell people, biblical training, anything, I bought them all. I don't want any copycats, so I just bought them. That's astounding. Well, I know people are wanting to tune in this podcast to dive into 1 Timothy 2, so we can jump in. And just to let the audience know, I mean, you wrote the commentary on the pastorals for the Word Biblical Commentary Series. Now, I think what's important to know about that series is it's not, and correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't strike me as a particularly

conservative commentary series. In fact, I was shocked. I remember before I even knew where you landed on the women in leadership kind of question, I was shocked that there was represented in the Word Biblical series a complementarian perspective. I mean, should I be shocked about that? Or why does that feel like, why was I shocked about that? Because Word Biblical, I mean, broadly evangelical, I wouldn't even say are evangelical authors in in the series but now that it's i i mean i came in when word biblical commentary was owned by word and then it changed hands and then it went to nelson and then when harper collins christian bought nelson uh it was the only kind of reference book they had along those lines, and so it went over to Zonovan, of which I was just delighted that Zonovan got it. But it was because of its history,

there's a pretty wide range of authors involved. And you have some pretty conservatives, like, let's see, Doug didn't do Romans in that series, but some of these series, you know, Jerry Hawthorne on Philippians, and some of these taught at Wheaton, and so there are some conservatives, and there are some not conservatives. And there's Middle of the Road, Don Hagner did, I don't know, Hagner would want to be

called Middle of the Road, but I mean, Fuller in that position did a wonderful two-volume edition on Matthew, so it's pretty, what would the word be, eclectic? It's pretty wide, where some are clearly evangelical, and some clearly aren't. Right, right.

And that's an interesting challenge for Zonovan now, because some of them are outside of the Zonovan kind of purview. Andrew Lincoln did Ephesians and doesn't think paul wrote ephesians which you know right it's not a particularly evangelical position to take david ony and revelation i don't even know where he would be at but i don't you know he's a mainstream biblical scholar he wrote a three-volume commentary on revelation i don't think i'll ever read enough to figure out what he what his yeah yeah but yeah but it's you know it's it's a you know Gordon Genesis man he was on the ESV committee so I got to know him

and he is rock solid evangelical British evangelical um so there's you know there's wide range of people sure sure yeah so tell us uh you you uh the backstory how long did it take to write the commentary um did you did you have a strong view on first simothy two before you started writing the commentary we kind of learned it as you went i kind of learned as i went i mean i was raised complimentary like you said earlier so that you were but it was you know that's only five verses. And there's 13 chapters in the book. And one of my pet peeves is, you know, I get in a situation just like this. And people want to talk about the women's passage or more academic circles.

They want to talk about authorship. And I go, there are 13 wonderful chapters in these three books, whether it be leadership or how to encourage someone in leadership you know second empathy one is nothing but encouragement um deep love that paul had for timothy and and how that showed itself i'm absolutely convinced timothy was paul's best friend i mean there's so much caring for the widows, 1 Timothy 5, how to deal with controversy. I mean, the list goes on and on. So I went in it. I was pretty young. I'd been, well, I must have been 40. That's probably over. I was teaching in Azusa Pacific University in Southern Cal. And so, you know, Dr. Hubbard contacted me and asked if i'd be interested and i said sure i don't

really know much about the pastorals i was kind of glad to have a group of books that i i could focus on those three you know if you write a commentary on colossians you really have to know all of paul really really well yeah and so the pastorals gave me kind of a closed unit of material. And so I was very happy to have that. But, yeah, I wasn't expecting the challenges that came with the women's passage. Well, I saw you offline several years ago. I wanted to kind of get my arms around the women in ministry question. And, you know, I cracked open your commentary to say, all right, what are

a few key books I need to read some main articles, you know, thinking there'd be like, five or six or 10, maybe 20. And your bibliography at the beginning of that passage, I think it I mean, 20, 30 pages of bibliography or something. I mean, it's so extensive. And I got overwhelmed. I shut your commentary and said, I need to put this off to a later day. And this, I'm in the season now where that is the later day. But it was literally looking at the sheer volume of stuff written on just one passage, let alone 1 Corinthians 11 and other significant passages. I was like, oh, man, I need to find space to cook.

I'm like you. I feel like I'm a pretty thorough scholar. I like to read everything on whatever it is I'm researching. And I was like, there's a volume of literature here that's not for the faint-hearted. Yeah, and I don't know of many people that have been that exhaustive. Thankfully, while there's still stuff being written, I think enough has been written that people are going to say, okay, there's enough resources. Whatever I want to read, I can, and I can make up my mind

and then move on to the next topic. So it's not nearly as hot. I don't think it's as nearly a hot topic as it was when I was writing the commentary. It took me 14 years to write it. I wrote basics of biblical Greek at the same time because the commentary work is so tedious that I needed something else to occupy myself with. So when I say 14 years, if I just sat down and wrote it, it would probably have been 10. But it still was a good chunk of time.

So it was a good chunk of time. Well, let's let, can we just dive into the text? And I would love for you to, I guess, maybe slowly walk us through and maybe unpack what you think is going on. So again, when we say 1 Timothy 2, I'm talking about verse 8 and following, where he starts to get into kind of male and female relationships. I know one of the questions is, is he talking about a home environment here? Is he talking about like a church gathering? And you worked that really well in your commentary. Yeah, that's one of the most important decisions that you have on the passage, because it controls the scope of where the instructions go. And so when he says, you know, I desire that in every place, you know, men should pray with holy hands, you know, in every place

sounds very, very broad, but I really think chapters two and three are a solid unit. And you have at the end of chapter three, that this is how you should behave in a household of God. And I want to be very careful at saying that the 501c3 organizations are the church. saying that the 501c3 organizations are the church. We always taught our kids, you cannot go to church. You are the church. Don't ever say, I'm going to church. You're going to a building. You're going to a nonprofit organization. You're going to a gathering, but you're not going to church. So with that as the caveat, I think that the context is the church gathered. I think it's Greg Beal's phrase. And so the instructions are, in my mind, limited to that context. There are other people that would say, no, what is here applies to university teachers and stuff like that or there are church organizations and i i don't think that's the case because i see two and three as a tight unit and the end of three says no this is this is the church

gathering and not husbands and wives you're saying so that would even take it even more narrow that like right i i am i went back i had to reread my commentary last week to get ready for the podcast and again what do i think pressure on my mind than it is in yours. I think about it. Hey, this isn't that bad. Someplace to go. I could have said that better. But I've often thought that that option has been not given enough time in the material.

And there's not that many people that hold to it. I mean, Gordon Hugenberg, for a long time, was the only person I knew, and there are a few others. But when I was reading back through the commentary, I started being reminded of the problems. I mean, a wife having authority over a husband is a relatively easier, it's an easier topic to address than a woman over a man but you know so unmarried women can teach and married can't i mean the the practical implications uh start getting overwhelming like how would you ever put this into practice so i i i mean i spent some time on that and i i think it's man-woman.

Well, I even – I think I cut – I have the electronic version of your commentary. You do so well breaking it down into real clear, like, here's this view. Here's three or four arguments to support that view. Here's this other view. Here's a few more than you say. Here's based on X, Y, and Z. I think this view is still stronger, and you do that. I have it right here in front of me just like how you work through the different arguments you know one of the big arguments against the interpretation that this is

paul specifically talking about the home and not the gathered the gathering is that you have so many other questions about widows like non-married people um the pastoral. And so it'd be kind of odd on this really significant male-female passage to be excluding all these other women that he's having to wrestle with later on with various things. So yeah, you have the younger widows that are being convinced by the false teachers who are going about, getting about from house to house, who are going about, gadding about from house to house, saying what they should not say, as Paul says. And if it's husband-wife, then probably the center of the problem is not addressed. There's no indication that the women were teachers.

Every teacher named is male. I know it's one of those controversial topics, but if, in fact, I think people are right when they say that a lot of the issues centered in on the widows who had too much time on their hands and were falling prey to the false teachers, that if these instructions don't take care of that problem, then they don't take care of the main problem. So that'd be an argument for man-woman. Okay. All right. Verse nine and 10, where it starts to get kind of interesting here. He, you know, gives several commands about women, you know, dressing modestly with decency. My translation says 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.

What's going on here? Why does he highlight this kind of seeming lack of modesty and wealth? Obviously, the gold pearls, expensive clothes, hairstyles that in the first century, only wealthy women would have the time to spend three hours with some elaborate hairstyle. Usually a slave would be you know doing that for them um so can you maybe open up this part of the passage of what what's going on here at ephesus i think i think the key is to understand that these words all have deeper meanings than just behavior it i think i settled on the word deportment but it's it's the attitudes that produce certain incorrect dress. I mean, the topic is the disruption.

I think the Ephesian worship times were just as bad as those in Corinth. I mean, it was you read this stuff and you go, man, the elders have gotten out of whack, the false teachers. I mean, it's really bad. whack, that false teachers. It's really bad. And so in these things on the women, you should have your emphasis on the things that really matter, your character, on good deeds, and your dress should reflect this inner commitment to Christ. In other words, they were dressing as prostitutes. They were dressing as people who were being, they appear to be unfaithful to their husbands because of their dress. And so it's, but it's not just the dress, it's those attitudes that are behind it. You know,

when I pastored, some of this came alive where,'re talking, you look over, and then you see these gals with low-cut dresses on. And you go, oh, really? I'm supposed to be preaching to you? And you look over at the husband, the father, and say, what's going on in your relationship with your daughter or your wife, that they're dressing this way, and it's very disruptive. And I think what I experienced was virtually nothing compared to what was going on in the Ephesian church. So Paul is concerned that people have, as committed followers of Christ, we would say today, that their dress does, in fact, reflect who they are. And what's going on in Ephesus is they were not reflecting on who they are. And by the way, just to bring a little

Greek, I got my phrasing here, as I said, I think I got the ESV and the NIV to do a change based on how this was being read. You know, know they said you're supposed to be respectable modesty showing self-control and this is not with braided hair and the problem is that all the women had braided hair you look at all the statues and all the normal people at females women i had their hair braided pulled back against their. So to say don't have braided hair doesn't make any sense at all because that's how everyone did it. But the conjunctions are braided hair and, you remember Kai, and gold or pearls. And so the problem was not braided hair. And so the problem was not braided hair.

The problem was that they were putting gold and pearls and other things into their hair, and they were wearing extremely expensive clothing, costly attire, I think I did on my translation. So that's the problem. They are dressed dressed for kill and they are separating out the different classes they are belittling the poor people again it's what happened in the corinthian church with communion and that's what and that's what paul's saying no that's not that's not what should characterize you you should be you should be dressed with good deeds and the little i looked into this this was, like in other ancient sources, this kind of dress, you see it described in other sources as intertwined with, and you

mentioned it in passing, with promiscuity, or even in promiscuity, even on the part of some married women that were, you know, in the wake of Ovid, you know, who kind of was supportive of adultery on some, you know, where it was almost like a mini like sexual revolution in the first century, it seems like where this kind of these kind of wealthy women were throwing off the shackles of, you know, yeah, faithfulness to their husband, even. Well, I wish there had been more verbal connections with what was going on in Corinth, because then I would have been more comfortable making direct connections. But there you have probably the teaching that we're free in Christ.

And then that got taken to, well, if I'm free in Christ, I'm free from everything. I'm free from social restraint. I'm free from my husband. I'm free from my father. And I'm going to dress like it. See, I don't think on 1 Corinthians it's hat wearing. I think it's how you wear your hair.

And if a woman had loose hair, it said either she was accused of being an adulteress, which was a horrible, misogynist thing to do on the part of Jewish law, or it's saying I'm a prostitute. the part of Jewish law, or it's saying, I'm a prostitute. And so the dress really does reflect, can really reflect who you are and what your values are. And Paul just wants them to quit, just the men are doing a lousy job keeping unity in the church. They're just so angry with each other. They're yelling and shouting even while they're praying. And then the women are being just as disruptive, but in a different way. So are you saying that the elaborate hairstyles and expensive clothes and expensive hairstyles, are you saying this also should go hand in hand with either the reputation of or actual

sexual promiscuity? Or are you saying that's stronger in 1 Corinthians, but less clear here in Ephesus? It's probably stronger in 1 Corinthians, but it certainly is here, and that they were setting themselves apart. I mean, you watch somebody that, you know, walks in with this massive pile of hair on their head, you know, I don't know if it's as bad as Marie Antoinette, but, you know, this big pile of hair on their head you know marianne i don't know if it's bad as marianne to an ad but you know it's a big pile of hair on your head and and loaded with jewels that you know you worked a lifetime you can never afford if you were a day laborer and it was disrupting the church it was creating social conflict all that kind of stuff okay all right did you ever i forgot if you interact with bruce winner's work on the new Roman women. Yeah, it would have came out, I think, yeah, after this commentary.

His book came out after that. On the ESV, the topic came up in several places. I remember talking about it then. Yeah, his work came out after mine, I think. Okay. I found it – I just – yeah, I read it recently. I remember he came out to Aberdeen when I was a PhD student. And right when the book came out and gave a seminar,

I had no context for what he's even talking about. Now looking back, I'm like, oh, that would have been so interesting to, because he was in front of all the, you know, Francis Watson and Simon Gathergold and all, you know, they're all, they're interacting with his work. And I remember I was checking out because I was still doing Paul and the Lost stuff. I didn't have time for the past roles at that time. And I found it a really intriguing thesis. Now, Lynn Kohik, who I had the podcast a while back, is a little skeptical, doesn't think the movement he's talking about went far beyond Rome and didn't last very long. But as Bruce often does, I mean's he's so masterful with original sources he he i don't know i thought it was i thought it was at least intriguing if not a

compelling case and he even talked about you know the word soffersune translated was it propriety and the you know that was kind of like the key like feminine virtue right this is like women who that was the main thing they need to have so for soon a you know um what's another translation i'm trying i'm trying to figure out what what i did with it yeah sometimes it's called purity or translated purity um a little woman adorn herself in respectable or modest apparel with modesty and modesty i went was modesty was i do and then self-control was so for soon as yeah so self-control oh so okay yeah yeah in my i mean feel intimidated talking to the guy who literally wrote the textbook on greek but my limited understanding it it is one of those greek words that it's hard to capture in one single English word because it was such a widely used and widely known concept that it kind of picks up this kind of cultural, holistic nature to the term.

But it does, seems it does include this heavy emphasis on sexual fidelity. Yes. Yes, absolutely. He brings it up twice in here and also in 215 to close out the passage. It seems that there is this at least perception that these women are behaving in sexually promiscuous ways. Yeah, in my translation, it was moderation. And that's what's hard about these words is I know Mark Strauss on the NIV committee will say that he thinks that 95% of the Bible, to its original audience, was clear. And because we're not in that context, we see a lot of ambiguity. But they had the advantage, they knew the culture, they knew how the words were used in different kinds of contexts.

And so, I mean, words, almost all words have a wider semantic range than translators are. Like I said, absolutely. Words have a wider semantic range than you can express in another language because languages don't have words with the same semantic range. And so it's hard to pick up, again, not even the range of a self-resolution but a um all the culture that was behind it and what the original here would have heard when they heard that word they may have been thinking about something you know they heard the previously as some leader talk about or something it's really hard to get all that okay yeah yeah so people i think some people are wondering like wait does this does this matter

a whole lot for the interpreting the next few verses where it gets in there you know the preaching i don't know um it is one unit he does seem to be talking about what a certain kind of situation there um but i don't i don't know if it uh i don't know if strong egalitarians or complementarians need to – oh, so what do I mean? What's my view on verse 9 and 10 would just destroy my view on women and leadership? I don't think it would. It does help us maybe unpack the broader content. It does a little, Preston, because it's 9 and 10 are the point counterpoint to the 11 to 15 passage. like point counterpoint to the 11 to 15 passage is that um it's one thing to say this is how you should be you know nine and a ten and then here's what you shouldn't be doing

in the in the following verses so in that sense they belong together and that they're balancing sides of of paul's approach i could see a case. If Bruce Winter is largely correct, and I'll just, again, this is me kind of thinking out loud as I'm just swimming in these arguments and sources. If he's largely correct that there was a specific movement that had made its way to Ephesus, then I think it could give evidence that there is something specific going on at Ephesus that Paul's addressing, which could be taken as he might not necessarily be making as categorically of a universal command in 11 to 12. And again, that would support a more egalitarian reading. I'm not saying that that's correct.

I'm saying that I could see somebody making an argument along those lines. You have a lot of people who are willing to read, and I don't allow a woman or an uneducated woman to teach a man or a husband. I mean, it's kind of like, or to teach false. I mean, there's this desire to put a lot of words between the lines in this passage. And I think you have to be very, very careful at saying, well, could it be this? Stephen Baugh's dissertation on Ephesus and this whole thing was incredibly important. As you know, for a long time it was argued, you know, Great Artemis and the Mithras and all the Magna Mater, which is my doctoral dissertation. And I mean, all this stuff and Ephesus was a unique city. And Stephen did a

really good job of saying there's nothing unique, even with the temple, there's nothing unique. So I've never seen anything that convinced me that Ephesus was a unique city. Now it was cosmopolitan, it was richer than many, maybe not as rich as Corinth, but still as wealthy. But it was a normal Greco-Roman city. So, you know, but the thing is, too, is that wealthy people always have kind of had their own rules that are separate from lay folk. And so you see wealthy women like they can get divorced in certain contexts contexts, in the same context a poor person couldn't get divorced. You have the fact that wealthy, and I would say wealthy people tend to kind of have their own set of rules. And so, you know, what kind of women can put pearls and gold, a lot of it, into their hair?

Well, it has to be wealthy so it's an issue that that's an issue of wealth um in terms of wanting to separate themselves out again which is the problem rich or poor um your your department your dress needs to reflect who you are as a follower of christ and that's the problem i'm kind of a minimalist i had a student at gordon conwell laugh at me. He said, you're the only minimalist that writes 800 pages on 13 chapters. But I'm a minimalist. If I say, if I want to believe the text says something, I want to be really sure that I'm as right as I possibly can be.

And so I don't conjecture a whole lot. And that's just kind of my approach to exercise. Well, let's keep going. I don't conjecture a whole lot. And that's just kind of my approach to Jesus. Yeah. Well, let's keep going because we need to get into, really, I mean, a lot of this is, yeah, all of it's important because it's the Word of God, but it's also setting up these highly debated verses. So verse 11, a woman, again, this is NIV, should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man. She must be quiet. Do we say quiet on the second one? She must be quiet.

She must be in quietness. It should be quietness, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm looking at my translation. Let me see what you mean. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I wanted to make sure we hadn't said quiet that's not what's going on with asu here so that that's why i was wanting to double

check what we actually came up with well yeah the niv says she must be quiet which i think is very misleading because in verse yeah no offense in the niv but verse two he commands everybody to live quiet lives which is a cognate word of the same word. So obviously he's not saying they're not, they can't speak, like literally speak. I can honestly say I lost that vote. Really? No, there's no way, no way I would have voted for quiet because it is misleading. Women are guaranteed a vocal role in the worship service and ministry in general.

Yeah. And you had the cognizant, you know, and quietness, you know, a couple of verses earlier. So, yeah, I lost the vote. Wait, so just so people know, you've been on several translation committees, right? Yeah, I was the New Testament chair of the ESV. Yes. And then when that ended quickly, it's a really cool story. I'd been out for about three years and I was commenting to my wife, Robin,

I said, I really miss translation work. It's like a giant Bible study. And it's just, and it's kind of like what Jack Neifus says about golf. You have to have a bad memory. Get a bad shot, you just move on to the next.

And translation committees, I lost that vote. Okay, next. I'm just going to forget that I lost that vote. There's 15 of us on the NIV. So I had somebody ask me just a couple days ago, they said, I heard that the ESV was basically a kind of a redoing of the RSV, only it had a more biased slant against women and leadership in its translation. It was how the argument he was relaying to me. He's like, what do you think about that? I'm like, I don't know. I didn't think that was the case. But I don't, I mean, on the NIV, the NIV is a much broader committee. And there's complementarians and egalitarians. I don't know what it

would have been on the esv i've never i've never heard that um you know you you have a servant and not a deacon in the church and so you have a couple of translations like that the main distinctive of the esv was and i actually saw the contract that Crossway had, and it specifically states Isaiah is, prophecy is about a virgin. The punctuation, Romans 9.5 is going to call Jesus God. I mean, they actually put it into the contract. So as you're getting rights to the RSV. So yeah, I would say it's a slightly evangelical update of the RSV. Of the RSV. Okay.

And not one designed to be, you know, complementarian. I would guess most of the people on the committee were complementarian. Okay. So here's a question I have for you, and this is kind of a grammar question. I do not permit. Or is it present active indicative i am not permitting is that um some people have i think some egalitarians have argued that not all actually in fact um towner and marshall do not agree with what i'm about to say

but some people say this because he's saying i am not permitting present tense. This supports the localized non-universal prohibition going on here. Do you is there any just just from a grammar, grammar, syntactical perspective? Can you give an unbiased, just grammarian perspective on that argument? It's so simple is that position is completely 100 percent wrong. simple is that position is completely 100% wrong. And I don't say that about a lot of things, but I just did a blog on this person a couple of weeks ago. I thought it would be an interesting topic. That is exactly what the present tense does not do. One of the, I'm trying to think where I first read this, I'm not sure which one it was. It's the present tense views actions from the inside, not from the outside. The heiress is up over the top and looking at things as a whole,

beginning, ending, but more just as a whole. The present tense looks at actions. So like you, instead of flying over a parade and a helicopter, that's the heiress, you're actually marching in the parade. And it specifically does not look at the beginning or the ending. That's why we call it imperfective now, because it's not perfective in that it's not completed. And so, I mean, I go on for quite a while in the commentary, I said, if you're going to make something local because it's present tense, there's just nothing in the Bible for us. Okay think it's i think philip pain i think philip pain argues that along with a i have seen a few others again i've seen a lot of egalitarian scholars not make this i marshal i i'm having my notes somewhere you know said like he even you

know gives the argument says it's there's not much here to go on. No, no. I mean, he was my supervisor, so I have a close – I really like him and trust him. And I was glad that he said that. And that's just one of the oddest – there are a lot of things that you have to say. Well, I think this, but I could be wrong. I feel strongly about this, but you know, good people still believe the other way.

And these are good people that are saying these things. I mean, these aren't bad people, but they're not grammarians. And there's just, you can't find a single grammar out there that would make that point. Okay. Okay. All right. That's a lot as firmly as I'm going to state something. All right. It's just because it's just, it's grammar. And when you say, I am not permitting, you get a different sense in English than you get in the Greek present tense. The present tense looks at something as it's continuous, even if it's a very short spectrum, it's still continuous or it's longer, but it's looking like this.

It's not doing this. It's doing this because you're in the action. Is it pretty unique that Paul, like, is this form of a command fairly unique? I am not permitting in the present tense rather than don't do this, throw off this, put on, you know, like, or do you know, is there a reason why he opts for this kind of structure? When Paul can say the command with an imperative, or he can say it with an indicative, which is a statement of fact, it's still, all of them carry his apostolic authority. And there's a section of the grammar where I, in the commentary, where I go through Paul's use of the the grammar where I, in the commentary, where I go through

Paul's use of the present tense, the use of first person, the mixing of imperative and indicative, and Paul's an apostle, and very rarely will he say what he says about marrying, but it's my opinion. I still think it's better if you're single, but do what you want to do. I mean, that rarely comes out in Paul. And even in that 1 Corinthians 7 passage, you have a mixing of imperatives, indicatives, present tense verbs. And he's speaking, whether he has the tradition from Jesus or whether he knows something is the case, it's an imperative in his mind. and mentally healthy. Faithful Counseling will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist who's a practicing Christian. This isn't a crisis line. It's not self-help. It's professional counseling done securely online. So you can log into your account anytime and send a message to your counselor. Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you don't have to be on camera if you don't want to. Faithful counseling is more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is available. We all need to

talk to somebody and faithful counseling can help. You can go to the website and read the testimonials. For instance, I read one reviewer who said that his counselor is, quote, a great counselor that truly listens. He gives you the space to talk through your emotions and provides concrete solutions and action steps to help you improve your mental health. So visit faithfulcounseling.com forward slash theology and get the professional faith-based counseling that you deserve. Theology Neural listeners will get 10% off your first month by going to faithfulcounseling.com forward slash theology. I'm going to, let me quote Payne here, for one, because he listens to the podcast. And so I want to make sure when he listens to it, the email I'm going to get represented, right? So

Payne says this, he says that Paul's use of the present indicative gives evidence that he hopes that the danger of the false teaching will subside enough that once again the Ephesian believers can practice a more open form of worship. 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, 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 a universal or permanent prohibition. So, thoughts on? That's detailed enough. I would have to check my commentary. I know I dealt with that argument. But when you have Paul using first person present tense verbs, indicatives and imperatives all the way through his writings. Now, I permit mean not permit means you don't permit it. permit means you don't permit it. You would have to find something, I think, in context that would say, well, it only means in this particular context. And that's what's lacking

in this state, but there's just, I don't think that there's context here that allows you to do that. I should tell you, just as a little backstory. When I was working on this part of the commentary, I didn't know Gordon Fee very well. I really respected him. And one of the great joys of being on the NIV is that I was with Gordon for five, six years. But this is back before all that. And he didn't know me from Adam, I don't think. And I wrote him and I said, hey, can we meet at ETS for breakfast? I'm working on the Word of Biblical Commentary and on the pastorals, and I need you to

talk me out of being a complementarian. I said, you need to convince me to be an egalitarian. And we did that twice. And it was, I mean, to be tutored by Gordon Fee really is something else. So I tried to look at these, you know, no one's completely objective or fair, but I, I tried to look at these arguments by paying these other people. And I just, I just wasn't convinced, but I mean, the details of that, I would have to look at the commentary, but I know I appreciate that. And for those who haven't read or maybe won't end up reading your commentary i mean it is i read a lot of the commentaries on this passage and yours is incredibly thorough and careful exegetically even if somebody ends up not agreeing with the commentary and

reading this passage nobody should read this and think you know you're just kind of forcing a view that i mean into the attack like you're extremely thorough and careful with the exegetical ex jesus um okay and so now we're actually we finally got to the verse that yeah oh much of this comes down to um a woman a teacher assume authority over man there's several exegetical questions there let me just i'll do my best to quickly summarize them there's well really kind of three there's the the the verb um authentio translated by the niv assume authority there's the um the meaning of the word teach which is just a basic word uh the daskalane i think um which is a standard word for teach. And then there's a syntactical structure of joining these two concepts together. And there's been a lot of ink spilled on that, a lot.

Saying these two, I mean, some of the options are these two verbs, the way the syntax is, they have to either both be negative or both be positive. One can't be negative, another positive. And since we know teach is a positive term, there's nothing, I mean, false teaching is bad, but that's, we know that because it's false teaching, but just teaching is a positive concept, which means this other word must also be positive. And that's to count, that's to disagree with what would be a more egalitarian argument that authentio translated assume authority has an intrinsic negative quality to it

i'll stop there how am i doing so far is that uh this is not good you've done your homework good job um i'm not quite sure where to say yeah some people want to you know in terms of what words they want to add in they used used to teach heresy, or, you know, you don't allow someone to teach if they're not educated, and, you know, there's a lot of words being added in. But didaskal and didaskalos and their stuff is, you know, I'm not saying talk about false teaching, it's heterodidaskalos. I mean, there's things in the context that really say they're teaching heresy, they're teaching something other than the gospel. Teaching is all the way through the apostles is a positive thing, and it's teaching Scripture. I mean, that's just, as you look at all

the usages, that was what it is. So I think it's probably why he can say teach, and Timothy understands what he's talking about because for paul teaching is teaching scripture and the implications of that and you're and you're right the uh is it baldwin someone wrote a really good article and said hey they're either both negative or both positive and teach is is going to be positive and so uh authentic has, authentic has to be positive. It's, it's a real subtle discussion that maybe your listeners aren't, aren't sure of. If you say is simply to possess authority, that's, that's one thing, but the NIV went with assume. In other words,

I'm going to take authority. And then you get the implication that someone is forcing, and again, this is an interpretive thing, but by assume authority, do you mean I assume it rightly or I assume it wrongly? And like a lot of stuff of Kroger and Kroger was assume it wrongly, be the originator of man or some Gnostic myth or something. So teaching is teaching scripture. You know, I don't remember my vote on this. I know that Doug Moo has shared with people that I was okay with assumed authority, but I was very fresh on the committee, and it took me like three years to get the ESV out of my head and get ready for the NIV. So I was pretty quiet the first couple of years as to what I thought. But I think the NIV didn't get it quite right. Assume authority isn't necessarily wrong, but I think it's to be

in a position of authority. The real issue is the man. Who's the man? And that's what I spent more time on than anything else. Nowhere in Paul does he tell every woman to be submissive to every man. That's not Paul. In other words, if you and I went to the same 501c3, and my wife doesn't submit to you, I mean, that's just not in the Bible anywhere. So, again, if you remember, Paul is writing to Timothy. He expects the Ephesians to be reading it over his shoulder, but Timothy knows exactly what Paul is saying. And so he's abbreviated in places. I wish he weren't so abbreviated. But this is the word that I struggled with. And again, I talk about other people adding in words. I had to add a word here

for it to make sense. And I think it's the elders. They would all be elders. And I mean, that is the whole context of chapter three. And chapter two moves very smoothly into chapter three. So you've got and you also have the false elders and the poor, the false teachers in the first part of chapter two. So chapter two and three is really about leadership. And our passage is strongly bookended by that. and our passage is strongly bookended by that. But it was the only way I could make sense out of this over a man that I think it is. I think it's the—Greg Beal has a nice way of saying it.

He says, these are the men who have the authority to say this is what the church believes. So it's male leadership is who these women are not supposed to take exercise authority over the male leadership. This was, I think, is the heart of the matter. And again, like I said, no individual woman has to submit to every individual man. It's not a biblical teaching. So it can't mean what it appears to say at that point. And so for me, the question is, what is there in context? And to be, you know, she is to be in quiet and she has to remain quiet.

Well, it's really hard to do that and pray, you know, First Corinthians, right? To pray in a church, they don't have to be quiet. That's not what's going on so I put that all in and shook it up but what came out is that this is a leadership issue and um the restriction is on women assuming a formal leadership role within the context of the gathered church. I think I said that carefully enough. Yeah. I'm trying to think of the implicate because that does give a little specific nuance here. I could almost, well, I'm very much thinking about out loud here.

I could see egalitarians and commentarians taking that in a certain direction because, again, it's making a more specific claim here. See, for example, I remember when I was – I ran the church just part-time for a while. It was a long time ago, the adult Sunday school program. I couldn't get a man to teach it. But we had a gal who'd been a missionary her whole life, loved to teach, was very good at it, was willing to put the time into it. And I said, she is not saying this is what the church formally believes. She's out of her experience. She is sharing her understanding of the text, and people are open to discussion.

And I was fine with that. Craig Blomberg will say, Craig's one of my best friends. We actually lived together in grad school for a while. And Craig said, I'm assuming he said it in public, he said it to me enough times, that he's a soft complementarian and he's pushing against the envelope. Yeah. I really, really don't. And, you know, for me, I don't want to go beyond the text and answer to the Lord that, hey, I sent you these resources and you said no. When really that's not what the text was saying. I'm very nervous. I'm nervous. That's in my mind a lot. And I don't I don't want to.

And I notice you said most of the time women in leadership, and I'm really glad you're saying that. This issue has nothing to do with women in ministry. Right. And it's often phrased that way. And it's like, no, there's always been women involved in ministry. There are things that women can do in ministry that men can't do. And there are things that neither men or women can do, like preach when—I had to say that carefully. Men are limited, and they can't preach if they're not elders, probably.

That's an elder function, not a male function. And I don't want to get into the issue. I said that incorrectly. It sounds like I don't think women should ever be up front talking, and I don't want to get into the issue i said that incorrectly it sounds like i don't think women should ever be up front talking and i don't believe that but i i think of myself as a warm complementarian and i'm not going this is not an issue of orthodoxy and it's an issue that i am more than willing to talk about and someone disagrees with me, then fine. That's just not. Now, the problem is saying this is an issue of orthodoxy is that for women, this is a big issue. Right.

Totally, yeah. It's a big issue. But it's not the same as salvation by grace, you know, and these kinds of stuff. So it's just I just really prefer to say the least I can say that I am confident about and then be gracious and lots of wiggle room in the other areas. So that's where I come up with this. That's helpful. So I do not permit a woman to teach that's positive or exercise authority.

And so I'm hearing you say that you would still say that that is a positive concept largely because it's going to teach or yeah well i don't think it means assume authority in a with bad motives okay and what some people say was this doesn't prevent people from women from assuming authority rightly this is a prohibition against women um assuming authority rightly. This is a prohibition against women assuming authority wrongly. And I just think it's the restriction is the teaching and being in a position of authority over the elders. The elders. So would your view be similar to Blomberg's,

where women can teach and preach under the authority of the elders, but where he draws the line is there should be male-only authority, male-only elders as authority over the church? Or would you nuance your – Yeah, Craig and I are pretty much the same on that. He actually read the whole commentary as I was writing it as a Tom Schreiner. And I don't remember any real disagreements at this point from them. Here's an example, Preston. I'll give you two. When I was pastoring, I was desperately, partly because I had a young daughter, but just because there were a lot of young girls, you know, 10, 15 years of age, who felt that they had no place in the church. And I was always trying to find ways to get them involved in ministry and faced a lot of opposition from my people, some of my people in the church for that.

So I try to get them to take the offering. Oh, there's no way a woman's book take off I mean oh come on so I I was very sly I had young boys and girls deliver the communion plates no no one's gonna argue about so I mean I was always trying to find some ways to saying you were a vital part and I still remember when I preached to the pastors, I happened to have an early flight to a John Piper conference that Sunday. And I told the people, I said, you know, I know it's controversial, but gee, I have to run out of church right away to catch my flight, so I'm not available for questions. And when I was done preaching, about 20 girls rushed the platform. I went,

oh, I'm going to miss my flight and get fried here. You know what they said? They said, thank you. We had no idea why there were things that women weren't doing. And we may agree or not agree with you, but at least there's a reason. Thank you for that so i i just think we haven't done a good job of separating out culture which by and large is misogynist um and biblical teachings which isn't misogynist and the people in church don't know why so anyway it was just it was just a interesting story now on the other hand i remember my sister who was an active in crusade for campus crusade for christ not a crew it's a very good teacher um she's 76 now and she's still doing neighborhood bible studies and whatnot and her pastor got to the ephesians passage and he said i i can't preach on this i'm a guy

terry could you do it and you know when he introduced Terry, he said that he is, this is not Terry, you supering authority. He wouldn't have said it that way, but said, this is something I'm not comfortable preaching on. And I know Terry has talked about it and has thought about it a lot. And so I've really asked her to cover this passage for me. I think that's fine. I don't have a problem, but I actually, that's a position I've changed over the last 20 years. I don't have a problem. Actually, that's a position I've changed over the last 20 years. I don't have a problem with that. Clearly, you have women prophesying, both in Old and New Testament. And I know people try to distance prophecy from teaching and preaching, and they're not the same.

But yeah, in the research I've done, I've just seen a decent amount of overlap in language used to describe each one, the context in which they're in. of overlap in in language you describe each one the context in which they're in that it's to me i think that's even tom told me that he's told me this for years that you know i always ask him every every time i talk to him about this topic tom schreiner you know what's the best egalitarian argument he said women prophets you know so and i yeah i think i think that at the very least does is a strong argument for women teaching and preaching, even if you hold to male only elders. Yeah, the argument is that women prophets are not women priests. Yeah, yeah. And that's significant because priests are part of the formal structure of the temple and prophets aren't.

But yeah, I mean, it's – and again, the difference is – you know, Wayne Grudem's thesis, the master's thesis I think was on this, is that the difference between Old Testament and New Testament prophets, and the main difference is that in New Testament prophets, you test the prophets. And you don't test Jeremiah. You don't test Isaiah. You know, you listen, and you either run the other direction or you accept what they're saying, but you don't test them. But in New Testament prophets were tested. So that's why it's an important distinction. run the other direction or you accept what they're saying but you don't test them but in new testament primes the prophets were tested so and that's why it's an important distinction i wonder how that would because you do kind of test them like in deuteronomy 18 don't you like if a prophecy is

not coming if it's not accurate or something that he's not a true and you have prophets that aren't end up being false prophets like hannah and i and and others in the book of Jeremiah that were seen as prophets, but they were false because – I don't know. Yeah. I think people – I don't know. I guess I've always assumed that the people understood the false prophets were just saying what they wanted to hear or what the king wanted them to hear. But there's always going to be people that would historically accuse Jeremiah of being a false prophet. But there was something more inherent with Old Testament prophecy

in terms of its authority that's not shared by the New Testament prophets. So verse 13 is, I mean, I think this has always been probably the best commentary in reading this passage. You have Paul giving what can be seen as the reason. There's a little debate about the meaning of gar here, translated for, whether it's an illustration or the reason. But for Adam is formed first, then Eve. Adam is not the one who is deceived, but it was a woman who was deceived.

So the fact that he goes to the creation account has been argued um that this is universal that this is part of the structure of creation um do you want to help us understand yeah is that if verse 13 weren't there i'd be an egalitarian really okay i mean i i would have other problems in putting other things into context but for me this this verse is the determinant verse and so it's really important yeah so there's an argument that four is as illustrating something and not giving a cause and i just i think i spent two pages in the commentary and that is i think it's a very, very weak argument. Gar, the conjunction, almost always introduces a reason for something, and there would have to be something in the

context. I think Paul has two relative uses of gar. I'm not sure, but there's always something in the context that makes it clear. So I think for verse 13 is the reason. And I think the key is the Greek word behind formed. It's not the normal, it's not the normal verb for create. It's not the normal one, but the one place it really occurs is in Genesis 2 of the Septuagint. And so I think Paul is using a somewhat unusual verb to draw people back to Genesis 2 and say there's something about. And by doing that, he's not just saying, hey, whoever's born first is the boss. I mean, Paul Julian, who, by the way, was my systematics professor at Fuller, an amazing,

amazing man and teacher. But he just, he ridiculed Paul at this point. He said it was limited by his rabbinic training. And according to this logic, the ground has primacy over animals. Animals have primacy over human beings. And Paul is not saying simply because Adam was formed first that therefore he's the boss or whatever, but he's using the verb to draw the reader back to Genesis 2 and saying, look at the whole thing. And this is very common in Paul. He'll often quote part of an Old Testament passage and make it clear that you should see the whole passage. And he's just pulling it back to Genesis 2, and he's saying, what does Genesis 2 tell us about, again, this is where it's tricky, man, woman, or husband, wife roles? Of course, there were only one man and one woman in the image of God in Genesis 2, and it's husband and wife. And it's not just the fact that Adam was formed first, but that Eve was created for, how do you want to translate that preposition, as a helper, as a partner, as someone who was appropriate for him you know it isn't supposed to be

uh marrying the lion he's supposed to marry the woman because however you want to handle that trend but i was looking even at the nrsv and and uh it's you know for a helper i know the bible project has got some good stuff on that, they argue. But anyway, what he's doing is saying, look at all of Genesis 2, and what does that teach you about the roles between Adam and Eve, which are then, I don't know if it's typological, but it helps us understand the roles of the men and the women, the leaders and the women in Ephesus. Why does he say, if it's not the order, why say first? Are you saying it's not a generalized, anybody that's first is better, but in this specific incident in the creation account, there is something about the order of creation?

There's something about the order of creation. There is something about the order of creation. But again, what I'm saying is that you have to look at all of Genesis 2. And he's expecting Timothy and the Ephesians to know all of Genesis 2. It's kind of like Jesus on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's a beautiful psalm that ends in a phenomenal statement of faith and trust. And there's no way that Jesus is just quoting the first verse and saying, don't read any further. You know, read the whole thing.

Yes, this hurts. I'm in agony. But just as the psalmist said, I have faith in God at the end, so also I do too, hanging on the cross. I mean, that's the most powerful illustration. I know this technique of referencing, was it synecdoche? Referring to when you are talking about the whole. So I think that's what's going on here, that Adam was created first, and Adam and Eve was then created second for him in a different role, co-equal, both fully in the image of God.

But there's something about how they were created that Paul thinks is important. Yeah, I've seen different counter-arguments to that. I do think the commentary, and it is the most straightforward, for sure. The deception piece is a little tricky because but i'm glad to see most commentaries i read did not make the claim that women are by nature more easily deceived um he is kind of now going back to just more what happened in the garden not a categorical statement um is there any do you see any could he be and then you know it goes in the child base the safety child bearing he gets kind of stranger and stranger i'm glad he yeah yeah ended the chapter so to

speak you know and moved on because i'm like i don't know where he's going with all this but do you think he could be thinking of some proto-gnostic ideas here and obviously gnosticism came later but you do have a lot of kind of re-writing of the creation account in gnosticism came later, but you do have a lot of kind of rewriting of the creation account in Gnosticism that kind of prioritize even away. I mean, I can see where some people would say this belongs in the second century for sympathy because it's like, wow, this seems to be interacting with kind of Gnostic ideas, but there's none of those that were written down at this time. Do you think that's worth pursuing, or is that just... Probably not, because every time the heresy that's being taught is described, it's Jewish myths. Now, there's Gnosticism in Aberrant Judaism, but these are, you know, the myths and endless

genealogies, 1 Timothy 1, these are all Jewish myths and genealogies. And so they have to I'm not saying there can't be Gnostic elements because we know that there was proto-Gnosticism in the first century. But the focus of the false teaching had to do with Jewishness. And so I would want to be very careful. And you know, the thing, by the way, you want to talk about honest scholarship, Doug Moo is right at the very front, and Tom Schreiner too, because both have said in print, hey, I held this position, I changed my mind.

You know, that's almost impossible to get someone to do, and Doug actually changed his position that, and he's saying, no, changed his position that, and he's saying, no, verse 14 is an illustration of what happens when the proper roles between men and women are not followed. And this is just an illustration of the kind of mess that happened and can happen. So, Doug was the first one that I read, I've ever read of a scholar changing his mind. If you read Schreiner's second edition of his Romans Commentary, he has this little refrain. This is a change from the first. That's a real honest scholarship.

But now, again, what does the text say? The text says that Adam was not deceived. Now, we all know that he was standing right there and he sinned with his eyes wide open. I don't think 14 is ontological. As a person said, what would you rather have, a woman that's easily deceived or a man who outright lies, be your elder? Well, that's not the point. And verse 14 can't be making an ontological statement. And so I go with it that it's just Adam didn't stop his wife. He was right there.

He wasn't tricked. Eve was clearly tricked by the snake. I mean, that's what it says, right? The woman was deceived. Adam wasn't tricked. He knew exactly what was going on it was larry crab's book that made the point it was the first time i ever read it that adam was standing right there i guess she turned and had him the fruit so he had to be right there and so he said with his eyes wide open but that's not the point the point is that she was deceived. He wasn't. He knew what he was doing. And so you can actually, I think, in terms of, I want to say, traditional male-female roles, there's probably no such thing anymore. But Adam, okay, here's the way I say it. How come Adam gets blamed when Eve sinned first?

Well, you can take the position of Sirach that sin had its origin with Eve, but that's not biblical. Sin had its origin with Adam. How come? Well, because he didn't do what he was supposed to do. And in this case, he was not deceived and he didn't protect his wife. But Eve was deceived. So I just think, I mean, 14 15 it actually makes a lot more sense to me 14 is a difficult one i have a very smart wife i have a very smart daughter just got her phd in

french art history um she married a german so she's trilingual i mean you know i mean this is not a this is not someone that's easily deceived. But that's not the point. The point is that Adam wasn't deceived, but she was. Eve was. And she fell into sin. And then Paul, in as clumsy a way as you possibly can, tries to dig his way out of that particular hole by saying, but she and her descendants don't stay in that state of having been a sinner. Yeah, so what's the safety of childbearing? Do you want to take a stab at that before we close here? I'm real comfortable with this. We know that the false teachers

were downplaying marriage, 1 Timothy 4, and so certainly they would also have been downplaying childbearing. I. This is not what an enlightened woman does. You don't get married. You certainly don't have children. And so I think what Paul is saying is that instead of assuming a role that God has not designed for you. You are to work out your salvation, Philippians 2.12, in other ways. And there could be no way further from what the false teachers were teaching than childbearing. So I think childbearing is just one of the many things that are uniquely feminine that they can do that's really important and does, in fact, ultimately, in Eve's point, lead to the Christ. And so it's how do you work out your salvation?

Well, you don't do it the way the false teachers are telling you, but you work out your salvation within the biblical confines. And one among many illustrations could be, don't listen to what they're telling you about not having children. That's a good thing, and you should have them. That was something else in the context that wealthy women who were not only maybe engaging in or having a reputation of being promiscuous, there were several interesting passages, one from Seneca describing his wife and others where you know these wealthy women were avoiding childbearing because it takes a toll on the body you know and it's dangerous I mean what 50 percent of women died through childbearing or something like that

and um so yeah it's uh it does go along with kind of how the passage began in in verses 8 through 10 um yeah it's as long as you understand that childbearing is only one of many things that women can do in ministry. And, you know, I read a book somewhere that talked to, but they were talking about as a pastor, the frustration is that you have the children leave home, they go off to college or whatever. And, you know, the women are just in this marvelous place to serve in the church, to teach young women how to love their husbands, which is not natural for a lot of people.

And they go off and get jobs. And I think what Paul is, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I remember as a pastor, I'd say, please, can you older gals mentor these younger gals? Some of them don't have moms. Some of them have moms that aren't Christians. And, you know, there's so, I guess what I'm saying, there are so many things that women can do in just about every facet of ministry. women can do in just about every facet of ministry and childbearing is is only one of the in this case uniquely feminine things that they can do i do think it's a shame i mean in our culture i think there's been such a backlash maybe even inside the church of like such an

overemphasis on women having kids that now, you know, without throwing off the shackles of misogyny, I feel like there's been a backlash of, you know, saying even, I know some people even hearing like speaking highly of women having children is almost seen as like a bad or negative thing. I'm like, I can't think of a more powerful God-like activity that, I mean, is the most remarkable thing a human being can ever be

involved in is giving birth to a child and then nurturing a child from the body that god has created us with like that that is a a you talk about an aspect of bearing god's image literally creating life um and only women get to participate in that i mean it's it's an absolute stunning miracle and the fact that it's now downplayed or seen is oh don't you dare tell women they're just good for baking babies ever which i'm they would never say that you know but um i think we've we've maybe swung the pendulum a little too far when we when we when we don't admire the profundity of childbearing? We had two children die.

The first died as a miscarriage. The second one died in my arms four hours after she was born. And what was interesting was Rose, the first one, I could barely feel her move in Robin's womb. But that was the death that devastated my wife. Just, it was the first really bad thing that ever happened to her. For me, it was Rose, it was Rachel dying in my arms. And, you know, feeling her take your last breath kind of stuff. And, but I often reflect that I don't understand what my wife went through when her first, our first baby died inside of her. And it was such, Robin just wants, wanted to be a mom.

That's what she wanted to be. And she was thinking she was never going to have children. So it is, it is incredibly amazing. And I don't think men can fully, well, I know men can't fully understand it, how wonderful it is incredibly amazing. And I don't think men can fully, well, I know men can't fully understand it, how wonderful it is to give life inside your womb, to feel it grow, and then to give it birth. But you're right. I mean, that is just not the message of today. It's too bad that childbearing and childrearing is not seen as a real viable thing. I guess we've been talking about this, Preston.

It's kind of like maybe we're not that far from Ephesus. Maybe this is a good message for today. That is certainly not the only thing that women can do, but it is a privilege that women have that men will never have. Bill, that's a great word to end on. Thanks for being a great pastor and not a bad commentator and Greek authority. Yeah, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it and giving us so much to think about. Would highly recommend, I mean, both your Greek grammar and also your commentary on the pastoral. So thanks for your time.

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