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We do not build from 1 Timothy 2:15 a theology that women are saved differently from men - qualifying it as we see fit. Yet we build from 1 Timothy 2:12 a theology silencing women - qualifying it as we choose.

If we accept the idea that Paul restricted women's voices - but did not completely silence women - then we have to decide where to draw the line. Women are systematically dishonored. And a woman seeking to serve God is never quite sure which step will trip a land mine that blows up in her face.

When we silence the women eager to speak and live by the Spirit of truth and the Word of truth, we actually fan the flame of heresy that Paul sought to put out.

Deborah P. Brunt

Several years ago, a professor asked me to teach one session of his college class. The topic? Women in ministry. I didn't want to touch that subject and, until then, had successfully avoided it.

 

Ironically, at the time the professor approached me, I was serving in a paid, full-time ministry position. I worked with women in the churches and primarily related to women's leaders. What I saw from that vantage point had caused a growing unrest in my spirit regarding the parameters for women that had been taught to me as "biblical." At the same time, I saw the repercussions for publicly questioning these parameters.

 

One situation stands out. From the day I stepped into "full-time ministry," I related to one woman whom I came to know as gracious and winsome, a person of integrity who loved God and genuinely cared for people. Once when we talked, her eyes filled with tears as she mentioned how badly she had been treated by other Christian leaders - "just because I've told little girls they can be anything God calls them to be." It was the only time I ever saw her cry.

 

I marveled that she opened up to me that way. My male boss had risen up as a defender of the doctrine of limited permissions for women. This woman had spoken out to present a different view. Considering my situation, she might have counted me a member of an opposing camp. She might have treated me with hostility or distrust. She might have worried that I'd report the "weakness" of her tears. Yet, she didn't try to win me to her "side." She didn't give details. She didn't express bitterness, but rather deep grief. Briefly, poignantly, she spoke to me as a friend, from her heart.

 

I left the encounter deeply moved and deeply concerned over the anguish etched into her face.

 

Shortly after that conversation, I learned she had had a stroke. My boss heard the news the same time as I. To my shock, he laughed. Hearing details of her condition, he showed no compassion - none. He was glad she was incapacitated - and made no attempt to hide his delight.

 

Even more disturbing, that incident was not atypical. Again and again, I watched what happened as people tried to enforce the male-female rules we've designated "biblical." Again and again, I saw such attempts produce injustice and incongruity, dishonor and downright meanness. Again and again, I felt the jarring in my spirit that signaled the Holy Spirit's grief. I became convinced that something was very amiss with our "scriptural" views on women and the kingdom.

 

Still, when asked to teach about women in ministry, I hesitated. I didn't yet know what I did believe. I did not want to dishonor the Lord, or to get sidetracked from my "primary goals" by becoming embroiled in controversy over a "side issue." Only later did I see how crucial, to my life and to the kingdom, is the issue I was trying to dodge.

 

But also, I hesitated out of fear. Every time the Holy Spirit nudged me, the spirit of intimidation threatened me. I feared speaking up, even to ask questions. I feared exposing myself to the kind of pummeling that had taken out my friend. Thankfully, I feared God more. As soon as I expressed my willingness to examine what I'd been taught, the Holy Spirit told me, "Don't be afraid to look."

 

Turning to Scripture, I cried, "Lord, open my eyes."

 

Trusting the Spirit to speak, I explored the testimony of the entire New Testament. What I found surprised and delighted me. Scripture after Scripture showed a picture of the Body of Christ in which women participate fully and freely in every aspect of the kingdom, and men and women stand shoulder to shoulder, serving the Lord.

Finally, with a profound new awareness of the fullness of the redemption Jesus Christ has given to women, I turned to the two statements in Paul's epistles that seem to severely restrict ways women can serve. Both statements appear to forbid women even to open their mouths:

1 Corinthians 14:34-35. "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

1 Timothy 2:12-15. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing - if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

One of my college friends belonged to a church that preached a strict theology of What Women Cannot Do, built on the two passages above. She could not pray aloud in mixed company or say anything in church gatherings of any size, even when she and her fiancé met with one other couple. She could not serve in any way that carried even a hint of authority.

Most people, even in conservative Christian circles, would say, "Paul didn't mean women must be that silent."

Yet if we accept the idea that Paul restricted women's voices - but did not completely silence women - then we have to decide where to draw the line.

Thus, each church, denomination or Christian organization comes up with its own answers, setting its own parameters inside which women can serve. Some insist their parameters alone match the biblical ones. Yet, inevitably, in a myriad of ways, each group contradicts and/or moves its own restrictions - sometimes loosening them, sometimes tightening, sometimes permitting "exceptions," sometimes using coded language or other creative ways to allow what they say they forbid and to forbid what they claim to allow.

As a result, women are systematically dishonored. And a woman seeking to serve God is never quite sure which step will trip a land mine that blows up in her face.

How opposite from God's ways of calling, guiding and honoring those who serve him!

First Timothy 2:15 says: "Women will be saved through childbearing - if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety." If we used the same reasoning with this verse as we do with the statement Paul spoke three verses earlier about women being silent, we might say:

"Paul didn't mean women have to bear children to be saved. He was just saying that in general that's how it works. If a woman isn't fertile, she'll surely be okay if she obeys the 'faith, love and holiness' clause. As to whether a woman must be married when she bears children, many insist yes, based on scriptural texts forbidding fornication, but others say, 'This is her salvation at stake here.' The proponents of single women bearing children in order to be saved point to Tamar in the line of Jesus."

Ridiculous?

We do not build from 1 Timothy 2:15 a theology that women are saved differently from men - qualifying it as we see fit. So why do we build from 1 Timothy 2:12 a theology silencing women - and qualify it as we choose?

In the previous Key Truths article, "We Think We Know," we saw that Paul himself negated the "obvious meaning" of English translations of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. First, he described gatherings of believers in which "anyone" and "everyone" speaks up to contribute and to lead. Then, Paul "snorted" at statements that women should remain silent and that the Old Testament law teaches as much.

We also considered an array of questions that arise when we take 1 Timothy 2:12 at face value. Now, let's take another look at 1 Timothy 2:12-15, asking the Holy Spirit to give us eyes to see. In the NIV, verse 12 says: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." Like most English translations, this version paints a clear picture, but is it the picture God meant us to see?

Most of us agree that Scripture does not ban women from teaching anyone, ever. So we've surmised that Paul was limiting who women can teach. Indeed, it appears the verbs "to teach" and "to have authority" go hand-in-hand, and that each identifies something improper for women to do in relation to men. In essence, we "see" Paul saying: "I do not permit women to teach men or to do anything else that involves exercising authority over men."

Yet the Greek wording doesn't say what the English translation does. In Greek, the verb "to teach" begins the sentence. The second verb and the word "man" appear after the entire opening clause. Verbs that appear to us to be parallel may have a different relationship entirely.

Also, as the NIV correctly indicates: Paul did not speak of "women" (plural) in 1 Timothy 2:12, even though he did use the plural term before and after this verse. Nor did Paul speak of "men." Paul said "a woman" and "a man" (both singular).

Thus, what Paul "did not permit" isn't as obvious as our English translations make it seem. Was he discouraging one-on-one discipling that involved a woman and a man? Or was he, perhaps, censoring what a woman was teaching? Was Paul saying he did not allow something false regarding "woman" and "man" to be taught?

The answer may lie in the two Greek words that NIV renders "silent" and "have authority over."

Silent. NIV says, "she must be silent," yet the phrase "she must" doesn't appear in the Greek. The word translated "silent" is hesuchia. Several verses earlier, Paul used a different form of the same word. He urged believers to pray for those in authority in order that we may live "quiet [hesuchios] lives" (1 Tim. 2:2). The goal of our praying is not that we live silent lives, like certain orders of monks, but that we live tranquil lives, in harmony with others. The goal of Paul's admonition related to "a woman" and "a man" is not to silence the woman, "but to be in harmony, causing no disturbance."

Have authority over. NIV says, "I do not permit a woman ... to have authority over a man." Yet the Greek word authentein, here rendered "have authority over," is not the word for "authority" used throughout the New Testament. In fact, authentein appears nowhere else in all Scripture. Further, according to David Hamilton, co-author of the book Why Not Women?, "the word appears very little in other ancient literature. This makes it difficult for experts to agree on its meaning" (p. 221).

Scholars themselves aren't sure what this key verb means. If Paul wanted to communicate the meaning passed down to us, he could easily have done so, using the well-known word for authority that he himself employed many times. Further, the meaning translators have assigned authentein contradicts what other New Testament passages show and teach. So why would we hang an entire theology of What Women Cannot Do on one obscure verb? Why wouldn't we ask God, "Might this passage be saying something else?"

In 1992, Richard and Catherine Kroeger published a book that suggests a different translation of 1 Timothy 2:12 based on in-depth research of ancient cultures, the biblical context and the text of the verse itself. In their book, I Suffer Not a Woman, the Kroegers make several observations, summarized below.

"Paul ... to Timothy, my true son in the faith" (1 Tim 1:1-2), the letter begins. Notice what Paul himself says about the place where Timothy served and the purpose he went to accomplish: "Stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain persons not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies" (vv. 3-4 TNIV).

The purpose? Confront false teachers. Expose teachings "contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God" (vv. 10-11).

The place? Ephesus. Ancient center of goddess worship. There, "For millennia the matriarchal goddesses reigned supreme," the Kroegers write. "The Great Mother was given many names in different parts of Asia Minor, but she bore the same characteristics ... she was the mother of gods and men" (pp. 50-51).

"The most famous shrine of the great mother goddess lay at Ephesus, where she was revered as Artemis" (Greek) or as Diana (Roman) (p. 52).

Paul had seen firsthand the goddess worship in the region. Once, as he taught and worked miracles there, a riot broke out led by Demetrius, a silversmith. Demetrius cried, "You see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia ... There is danger ... that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty" (Acts 19:26, 27).

Ah, but people in Ephesus who turned to Christ no longer worshiped the goddess, right?

Theoretically, that's true. But how many false beliefs from our own culture have seeped into the church today? Remember, Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus and now wrote Timothy, offering further instruction, because people in the church were teaching false doctrines and devoting themselves to myths.

One heresy already arising was Gnosticism, which took the people and events, vocabulary and concepts of Judaism and Christianity - and turned them upside down. Paul refuted incipient Gnosticism at length in the book of Colossians.

"According to Gnostic thought, all matter was evil," the Kroegers explain. "The Creator, the God of the Hebrew Bible, was evil because he had made the material world. The serpent was beneficent in helping Adam and Eve to shake off the deception perpetrated on them by the Creator, and Eve was the mediator who brought true knowledge to the human race" (p. 60).

Thus, in Gnostic thought, God deceived Adam, and the serpent enlightened Eve.

What's more, in Gnostic stories, "Eve pre-existed Adam and was responsible for infusing him with life" (p. 120). Indeed, Gnosticism portrayed Eve as a sacred giver of life, a sort of mother goddess. Together, the emerging Gnostic teachings and the goddess worship in Ephesus taught women to lord it over men.

Which brings us back to the mysterious Greek word, authentein. The Kroegers discovered, "In the late Renaissance, an era when scholars studied classical texts more thoroughly than is customary today and had at their disposal materials to which we no longer have access," this definition of authentein was cited: "to declare oneself the author or source of anything ... 'To represent oneself as the author, originator, or source of something'" (p. 102).

In a place where false teachers built goddess myths from an inverted Creation story and where those embracing such myths saw woman, not as equal to man, but as a superior being who had bestowed life and light on man, might not Paul have counteracted such heresy by writing:

"I do not permit a woman to teach or to represent herself as originator of man but she is to be in conformity [with the Scriptures]" (Kroegers' translation of 1 Timothy 2:12, p. 103).

Several years ago, as I read I Suffer Not a Woman, something in my spirit leapt up on reading the Kroegers' suggestion as to the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:12. Yet, one question plagued me: How could such an obvious lie, such a total upending of the Creation story prove any real threat to Christianity? Surely people who knew Christ would dismiss such a story out of hand, and neither Paul nor Timothy would need to expend energy warning against it.

Then, in 2003, Dan Brown published the novel, The Da Vinci Code. Wikipedia described the novel as "a worldwide bestseller that had 60.5 million copies in print by May 2006 and that has been translated into 44 languages." When The Da Vinci Code movie was released, it became "the second highest grossing movie of 2006 worldwide."

Dead center in the book, a young woman named Sophie visits a man named Sir Leigh Teabing, in hopes he will be able to help her find the Holy Grail.

Teabing tells Sophie, "To fully understand the Grail ... we must first understand the Bible. How well do you know the New Testament?"

Sophie responds, "Not at all, really" (p. 230). For the next 20 pages, Teabing teaches Sophie "the truth" about the Bible. Within the first 10 of those pages, we learn:

"The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God" (p. 231).

"More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion" (p. 231).

"Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet ... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal" (p. 233). Not God. Not the Son of God.

"... almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false" (p. 235).

Actually, almost everything Teabing taught about Christ is false. For example, early Christians did not even consider including the unchosen "gospels" in the New Testament because the writings were Gnostic gospels, fictional accounts that took the people and events, vocabulary and teachings of Jesus' life - and turned them upside down.

Yet, after only 10 pages of "disproving" biblical Christianity using phony "facts" and Gnostic arguments, Teabing reaches a startling conclusion that easily convinces Sophie - and sways how many millions worldwide?

Teabing says: "... the Holy Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which of course has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church. The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean. It was man, not God, who created the concept of 'original sin,' whereby Eve tasted of the apple and caused the downfall of the human race. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy" (p. 238).

The heresy taught in The Da Vinci Code is a lie - but it gains validity because the misogyny littering the history of the church is true. Centuries of disparaging comments and indefensible choices by church leaders have risen from an ungodly bias against women that retreats during times of great awakenings and revivals, then returns as the Spirit ebbs, to once again put women in their place. In our era, the goddess heresy has been strengthened by the church's generational sin.

In Paul's day, a similar heresy was strengthened by the generational sin of goddess worship in Asia Minor and encroaching Gnosticism in the church. Seeing the danger of this false doctrine, Paul wrote Timothy:

"This, I do not permit a woman to teach: to represent herself as originator of man (or to assert woman's dominance over man) but to be in harmony (with the truth and with one another). For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner [details that directly refute the Gnostic Creation myth]. But Eve's daughters will be saved as fully as Adam's sons through the Childbearing [literal translation] - the Child born of a woman, the promised seed of Eve, Jesus, who crushed the serpent's head. The evidence and the goal of this salvation, in women and in men, is that they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety" (1 Tim. 2:12-15, paraphrased and amplified).

Seen in this light, Paul did not impose restrictions on women, indicating their inferiority to men, but rather confronted the false teaching that women are superior to men - a false teaching sweeping the world again today, confusing multitudes even in the church.

When we silence the women eager to speak and live by the Spirit of truth and the Word of truth, we actually fan the flame of heresy that Paul sought to put out. We assure the world that the God of the Bible is watching women warily, waiting for them to speak up, so he can censure and silence. We lambaste the voices that offer a view of Scripture countering the doctrine of What Women Cannot Do. We laugh when our outright meanness takes those voices out.

Then we point long fingers at the women still speaking up. Often, they're the ones who no longer care about the Bible or its God. Angry, frustrated with church-sanctioned injustice and determined to be free from it, they may even declare "the feminine" divine. "See!" we say with great outrage and fear. "This is what happens if you let women speak and lead."

"If you let women speak and lead?" That very mindset assumes a hierarchy of the genders in which it is up to men to decide the extent to which women may or may not participate in the kingdom of God. Such a mindset robs women of the full redemption Jesus purchased for us with his own blood. It gives women strong incentive to turn away from the One who alone can offer fullness of life - and to pursue "other gospels" that cannot save.

God is not honored when we lash women to an untenable theology we ascribe to his Word. His kingdom is not furthered when either gender in his church tries to dominate the other.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture references are from New International Version (NIV). Also quoted: Today's New International Version (TNIV).

Books consulted:

Loren Cunningham & David Joel Hamilton, Why Not Women? (Seattle, WA: YWAM Publishers, 2000).

Richard Clark Kroeger & Catherine Clark Kroeger, I Suffer Not a Woman (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992).

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 230-250.

Greek words and word order in 1 Timothy 2:12:

Interlinear Transliterated Bible. Copyright © 1994, 2003 by Biblesoft, Inc.

hesuchia (NT:2271). See "quiet, quietness," Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, © 1985, Thomas Nelson Publishers; I Suffer Not a Woman, 68, 103-104.

authentein (NT:831). See Why Not Women?, 221-222; I Suffer Not a Woman, 102.

1 Tim. 2:12-15 paraphrase based on I Suffer Not a Woman, 103, and Why Not Women?, 223-225.

The Da Vinci Code stats:

"The Da Vinci Code," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code (accessed 1/29/2009)

"The Da Vinci Code (film)," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code_(film) (accessed 1/29/2009)

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