Introduction
Thematic context of 1 Timothy 2:1-15
The theme of living under authority
constitutes a large part of Paul’s letter to Timothy and the church in Ephesus.
But what sort of authority is Paul promoting? We see in verse 2 that good authority leads to peace and contentment for those
living under it. Good authority is
fertile ground for the message of the gospel to sprout and grow. We notice that
Paul’s exhortation to his readers is bidirectional. They are to submit to and pray
for those in authority over them, as well as provide life-giving leadership for
those under them. Their attitude of submission is what will show the world that
their ultimate trust is in the authority of God, the sovereign King. Next Paul
goes on to establish his own authority as an apostle in verses 5-7. His
authority is based on the mediator and priestly role of Christ who has
appointed him to be a preacher and apostle, extending the mystery of the Gospel
to the Gentiles. This mediator, the man Christ Jesus, is the ultimate example
of an authority who gives his life as a ransom to save those under his
authority. Paul maintains a very positive view of the proper use of authority
which is quite counter-cultural today. This will irritate the contemporary
reader, especially as it relates to gender. But there is no way around the
clarity and directness in which Paul writes about these topics. We must dig a
bit to understand his reasoning in order to find the proper applications for us
today.
Authority in the church
Paul explains what a good authority
structure looks like in the church. He wants men (males, not people in general
as some translations have it) to bless, lifting holy hands in prayer as the
priests did of old. This prayer posture reminds us of the mediatorial and
intercessory role of the priests in the Old Covenant. The priests’ authority
was used to bless God above and the people under them. They themselves were
under authority. Since Paul has just clarified that there is only one mediator
between God and men, namely Christ, there should be no temptation to view men/males
as having an ultimate mediatorial function in the church. Christ has fulfilled
that priestly function once and for all. Each individual man, woman and child
has direct access to God through Christ. The Reformation coined the phrase of
the "priesthood of all believers" to describe the equal access to God all
believers possess through Christ and their intercessory role for each other. Interestingly, however, the apostle Paul does
not have a unisex approach when it comes to the leadership in the church. This prayer posture
is specific to the men. It is a posture of blessing and dependence on God
above. The men are urged to “lift up holy hands without anger and arguing”
(also translated questioning). It is not clear why the men were questioning
this practice and injunction. Were they arguing against the practice? Or were
they arguing amongst themselves? What is clear is that the content of their
prayers is to be for all people, blessing both those in authority over them,
the kings and rulers, as well as those under them in the household of faith.
Paul’s gender-specific argument moves
on to addressing the women’s demeanor. He begins his admonition with
“likewise,” signifying that the women’s behavior in worship is equally
important as the men’s posture of lifting of “holy hands.” They are not to be
flashy in their dress, drawing attention to themselves, be disruptive or
overbearing, rather, learn within the good structures of authority that will
allow them to flourish, to live in peace and contentment. The word for quiet is
the nominal form of the adjective for quiet found in verse 2 translated “quietness”
or “tranquility.” There are other words that mean utter silence that could have
been used here. Paul is addressing and emphasizing an attitude and a demeanor,
not acoustics.
Authority and teaching, a paradigmatic example from the past
For the modern reader with a feminist
persuasion, Paul’s prohibition sounds like nails on a chalkboard. But we must
ask the question why does Paul not want women to teach or have authority over
men? And why does Paul use an argument from the order of creation to establish
his logic? Was he simply chauvinistic
and a product of his androcentric times?
I believe Paul is using an example from Scripture that all
his readers would be most familiar with, in addition to showing the
universality of the principle he is attempting to lay out. The illustration he chooses is the story of
the creation, fall and redemption of Adam and Eve. At the center of his
argument is the order of creation. The order alone might not necessarily indicate hierarchy,[1]
but the chronology, as a sequential order of events, is the essence of Paul’s
argumentation. Spurgeon has noticed that Paul’s argument of chronology mirrors
the Genesis timeline of events:
1 Timothy 2:13–15: (a) Adam was created first, (b) then Eve. (c) Adam was
not deceived; (d) but his wife, being deceived, came into transgression (e) but
she [Eve] would be saved through bearing children, (f) provided they [Adam and
Eve] remained in faith/faithfulness, love, and holiness with
clear-mindedness.
Genesis 2:4–4:1: (a) The LORD formed the dust from the ground [into] a
man, (b) then the LORD built the “side” he took from the man as a woman. (c)
When [Eve] gave [the fruit] to her man who was with her, he listened to her and
ate [the fruit]. (d) When the LORD enquired the woman, “Why did you do this?”
she replied, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (e) Then the LORD said to
the woman, “I will greatly increase your pain; in pain you will give birth to
sons”; (f) “toward your husband you will long for [“return,” LXX] and he will
rule you”; and Adam knew Eve (his wife), she conceived, she bore Cain, and she
said, “I received a man from the LORD” (cited verses are 2:7, 22; 3:6, 13, 16;
4:1). [2]
The missing link
In this above sequence of events,
there is one event that is key to the interpretation of the text that seems to
be missing in Spurgeon’s sequencing of the Genesis 2 creation account. Paul is
relying on his reader’s knowledge of the Genesis account and not overtly stating
one of his key points. It would be like a kindergarten teacher talking about
the “ABCs” to refer to the entire alphabet. ABC stands for every letter between
A and Z, but she only needs to mention ABC to trigger her students’ memory of
the whole alphabet and the proper sequencing of the letters. Paul is doing something similar here. What
happened between the following two fragments of sentence, “Adam was fashioned
first … then Eve”? I would suggest that what
happens between Spurgeon’s (a) and
(b) is at the crux of Paul’s argument. A look into the text of Genesis 2:15-16
reveals what happened after Adam’s creation and before Eve’s:
15 The
Lord God took the
man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God
commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you
shall surely die.”
God gave Adam two responsibilities in
these verses as he was still alone: to
work the garden and to keep it. The verb “to keep” (shamar in the Hebrew and phulassein
in the LXX) does not imply a quaint tending of the garden as our English
translations denote, rather a guarding which would require the warding off of
hostile forces, if necessary. The Genesis text whispers of an impending threat that
required guarding against. Adam is to take God’s word in the form of a command
in the following verse and ward off anything that would get in the way of his
obedience to God’s command. Disobeying his command would bring about death. Greg
Beale makes a case that the guarding of the garden-sanctuary was in fact a
priestly duty which was inaugurated with Adam and carried out by all the
subsequent priests in the OT and this duty included not only the mediatorial
role, but also the teaching of the Law.[3]
Paul uses the same verb in 2 Tim 1:
12-14 to urge Timothy to “guard the good deposit” which is the entirety of the
apostolic truth delivered to him (1 Tim 5:21, 1 Tim 6:20, 2 Tim 1:12, 2 Tim
1:14, 2 Tim 4:15). The guarding of the garden was for Adam a defense of the
sanctuary God had placed him in. Knowing its borders, keeping it safe and free
of intruders as well as making sure that God’s word ruled within its
boundaries. Paul’s injunctions to Timothy to defend the truth of God’s word
over against lies, false teachers, accusations and enemies of the Gospel is a
similar activity within the New Testament sanctuary which is the Spirit-filled
church body.
It is only after this priestly commissioning that Eve enters the scene. She is
made to be Adam’s ezer, his suitable
helper and necessary ally. She is not inferior, but perfectly suited for the
task to be his counterpart. Adam presumably relayed God’s word to her
accurately, explaining to her the importance of obeying God’s command and
helping him ward off evil. Paul stresses the fact that Eve, after being
deceived, became the first transgressor. She could have expected immediate
punishment with death, as God had foretold. Yet, she did not die. So, what,
beyond believing Satan’s lies, facilitated that transgression? Paul wants his
readers to see that Eve’s taking authority into her own hands is the best
example in the Scriptures of what he is trying to warn his readers about,
namely a woman usurping her husband’s benevolent authority which had been
established before the fall. When Satan tempted mankind, he found it easy to
subvert God’s created order by approaching Eve first. Eve’s guard was down. She
did not ward Satan off. She did not fight the lie. All authority that comes
from God is built on the truth, a truth that must be defended. Paul makes a
point in this passage that his apostleship was built on the truth (he mentions
the word truth three times in verses 4-7), and that all good authority is
sacrificial since it places God’s truth above personal comfort and
self-fulfillment. Eve’s deception was based on the twisting of God’s word and
created order. Eve officiates the first sacrament of the lie. She gives Adam
the fruit. It is a mock “take and eat” ceremony in which she plays the role of
the priestess. In sharing the fruit, they share in complicity. She believed she
knew best what she needed for flourishing and takes authority into her own
hands, subverting God’s creational structures. Eve sinned because she was
enticed and deceived by a lie. Adam sinned with his eyes wide open, failing to
exercise the priestly duty God had given him, even though it appears he was
standing right next to her when it happened. Adam did not sacrifice himself for
his bride and her well-being and when God called Adam to account after the Fall
(“where are you?” is singular), Adam blames Eve for his sin. But God will have
nothing of it and holds Adam responsible. God even attributes the effects of
the curse to Adam’s cowardliness, “because you listened to your wife…”
Paul’s use of the story of Adam and
Eve as an example to make his point about the proper use of authority in the
church. He draws a direct parallel and application between the misuse of rule a
woman might have over her husband in this passage and the usurped authority Eve
had over Adam in the garden. He’s implying that the pattern of temptation for
men and women to sin in the area of rightful use of authority remains universally
the same for his readers and for us today. Women in all ages might be tempted
to usurp their husband’s authority and men in all ages will be tempted to either
let them do so or to rule over them harshly instead of what Paul is urging the
men to do, namely to use their authority to love and serve their wives in all
gentleness. But Paul does not use the story of Adam and Eve simply as a
negative example: “Look at how Adam and Eve failed!” Rather, he also uses it in
a positive, redemptive way.
Salvation through childbirth, a Gordian knot?
This is one of the most confusing and
debated verses in the NT and many brilliant scholars have proposed plausible
varying interpretations, so these lines are written with utmost deference and
humility. Some of the key problems with understanding the passage are
1)
The
notion that childbirth could be salvific for all women in the sense Paul often
uses sozo
This understanding would not support
the apostle’s own understanding of salvation, which is by grace, through faith
in Christ alone, not dependent on any works, as noble as they might be, so that
no one can boast. Salvific childbirth being conditional upon a woman’s
faithfulness, love, and holiness with sober-mindedness is even greater an
aberration.
2)
Taking
“will be saved through childbirth” to mean, “will be preserved through the
physical ordeal of childbirth,” which is semantically and grammatically
possible, makes a woman surviving childbirth dependent on her faith. This
message is also contrary to the Gospel of grace and Paul’s own theology of
suffering. Many godly women have died in childbirth disproving this claim.
One possible way of interpreting the
passage that brings some clarity into the debate is seeing the entire passage
as referring to Adam and Eve and Paul’s redemptive-historical perspective from
which he derives applications for the life of the church. In this view,
childbirth was, for Eve, a means to a salvific end, not a salvific end to
itself. This approach resolves a few questions:
1)
Why
Paul pulls in the creation account at this point in his argumentation
2)
Why
there is a switch in personal pronouns from singular to plural, “she will/would…if they…”
3)
Why
childbirth seems to be a spiritual life or death matter even though we know
that no work, not even childbirth, is instrumental unto eternal salvation.
Paul’s redemptive
historical use of the creation account
There are many ways NT authors use
the Old Testament. Here we have a case of an Old Testament allusion, not a
direct quote from Genesis. Like a Cliff
notes version of a story, Paul is summarizing the creation, fall and
restoration of Adam and Eve in a very brief, sequential fashion. He is jogging
his readers’ memory of the main events in the first four chapters in Genesis,
in order to refer to the whole story. Utilizing Spurgeon’s breakdown again:
1 Timothy 2:13–15: (a) Adam was created first, (b) then Eve. (c) Adam was
not deceived; (d) but his wife, being deceived, came into transgression (e) but
she [Eve] would be saved through bearing children, (f) provided they [Adam and
Eve] remained in faith/faithfulness, love, and holiness with
clear-mindedness.
We have already looked at how Paul
argues against a woman teaching or having authority over a man in the church
based on the order of creation. In the second part of the verse, we see how God
was merciful to Eve in providing restoration to her personally and the
beginning of God’s gracious promise to her and enabling her to fulfill her
life-giving calling. Adam prophetically named her Chavvah, life-giver, before she had born a child. Not only did Eve
not die immediately, she was shown mercy in an impossible situation. God restored
and redeemed Eve in a two-fold way. First, he saved her from immediate physical
death which she rightly deserved and second, he allowed her to participate in
the task of bearing the seed that would lead to the ultimate salvation of the
world. The juxtaposition of Eve becoming the first transgressor and Eve
becoming the first mother highlights God’s mercy to Eve. She transitions from
death-bringer to life-giver through the grace of God. Eve is aware of this
mercy to her in her impossible situation. She who was created to be ezer (helper), “helped” her husband into a catastrophic predicament. It is
sheer mercy that leads them out, as God provides the first sacrifice and covering
for both their guilt and shame. Now she is able to cry out in faith: “I have
gotten a man with the help of the Lord!” (Genesis 4:1), confessing her utter
helplessness to bring about life on her own and her total dependence on God to
be her helper in her time of need. She has a sense that her salvation is of God
and that the means by which God’s salvation will come into the world is through
her Seed. Hence, she understands, not to the fullest extent, but at least for
her situation that childbirth is God’s chosen salvific means.
But is Paul making a direct leap in
application to the women in Ephesus he is addressing in the second half of the
verse? The use of the subjunctive with the particle ean in the protasis implies a condition the fulfillment of which is
necessary for the content of the apodosis to be true. This makes women in
general an unlikely candidate as the referent for the plural “they” in the
second half of verse 15. The ESV translates “Yet
she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and
holiness, with self-control.” If the “she” still refers to Eve, then Paul’s
female contemporaries’ faithfulness cannot add to Eve’s salvation. I would
suggest that Eve’s bearing of a child, however, did hinge upon Adam and
Eve’s reconciliation to each other after the fall to make their one-flesh union
possible and fruitful. Another possible translation for the verb meno, which the ESV translates
“continue” might just as well be “dwell”, “abide” or “live” which would
indicate the permanence of Adam and Eve’s restored covenant relationship as a
prerequisite environment to bringing children into the world. Spurgeon’s
assessment is as follows:
The verse division between verses 14 and 15 of
1 Timothy 2, not original with Paul, is unfortunate and misleading. Paul was
still talking about Adam and Eve: Eve was the subject of sothesetai
(“will be saved”; 2:15a); Adam and Eve together (of 1 Tim 2:13–14) were the
subjects of menosin (“they remain”; 2:15b). Where-as Eve fell into
transgression, her salvation/deliverance would be in her reunion with her
husband, that is, in her longing to bring forth children with his help. As the
“restoration blessing” predicted, Adam would oblige, know her, and she would conceive.
Their (Adam and Eve’s) restoration with each other and with God would occur “if
they would remain in faith/faithfulness, love, and holiness with
clear-mindedness.” The danger of their separation from both each other and God
was so real that Paul phrased them with conditional clause (ean menosin). That is, if they would adhere to God’s
restoration plan for them, get back together, and procreate as God intended for
them, then they would survive both marital dissension and ultimate separation
from God. And they obeyed, just as Gen 4:1 narrated.[4]
The translation “She (Eve) would be
saved through childbearing provided they (Adam and Eve) remained in faith/faithfulness, love, and holiness with
clear-mindedness” is well within the bounds of the use of the
subjunctive in conditional phrases here. The future “she will be saved” is
modified by the subjunctive phrase indicating a future result of a condition
that was fulfilled in the past (Adam and Eve’s reconciliation).[5] Hence
the future is only future in reference to the past events described in Genesis,
not future from the perspective of the timeframe in which Paul is writing.
Eve and her life-giving role would indeed
be salvaged through her childbearing provided Adam and Eve both exhibited the
very same unchanging characteristics of love, faithfulness and self-control
required for a good marriage relationship, in which the husband is the loving
head and the wife the supportive helper and ally. This translation of meno would favor the view that Paul was
interpreting and the OT text contextually for his readers, utilizing the very
same semantics he’s been using up until this point to describe godliness and
faithfulness. The second half of the verse functions as a hinge to the section
directly following, the qualifications of who, in fact, should be teaching and
leading the household of God:
The saying is
trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires
a noble task. Therefore, an overseer
must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,
sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a
drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He
must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children
submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how
will he care for God’s church? (1 Timothy 3:1-5)
Earlier in his letter Paul had warned
Timothy of those desiring to be teachers of the Law. “The
aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience
and a sincere faith. Certain persons,
by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either
what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions”
(1 Tim 1: 5-7). Could some of those persons have been women, forcing Paul to
become more explicit in his own teaching about authority and teaching in the
church? Paul makes it very clear who should be an overseer with the authority
to teach in the church, namely an elder in proper relationship with his
wife, family, household and children. A
few of the same qualities mentioned in verse 15 are repeated or implied: among
others, holiness (above reproach), sober-mindedness, self-control, hospitable, gentleness
and able to teach. These qualities reaffirm the man’s (and here in particular
the leader’s) responsibility to provide the proper kind of loving and
hospitable environment for those under his authority to be able to flourish. The
male leader is to be what Adam failed to be in his own marriage and church of
two, namely, a loving leader, using his authority to teach, protect and create
an environment of peace for the Gospel of life to flourish. His model is the
Lord Jesus Christ who gave his life as a ransom, exactly unlike Adam who failed
at using his authority properly.
In conclusion, Paul’s explanation for
the proper use of authority in the church and the home is showcased by the most
well-known example of a misuse of authority in the Bible while also immediately
highlighting God’s plan of redemption through the death-reversing event of
childbearing in a restored marital relationship. Paul does indeed view childbirth as God’s salvific
means to bring about his work of redemption into the world after the fall of
Adam and Eve.[6] Eve’s
bearing of a son was a miracle of God’s grace to her, enabling her to
participate in God’s great redemptive plan.
For women today, they do so in an analogous way. Paul’s injunction to
younger widows to marry and bear children in 1 Timothy 5:14-15 is proof that he
understood childbearing both as a separate expression of life-giving as well as
a synecdoche, including all the normal ways for a woman to live out her trust
in God’s design for her. “So I would have younger widows marry, bear children,
manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For
some have already turned aside to follow Satan.” The adversary of our souls
would want nothing more than for Christian women to repeat Eve’s mistake and follow
Satan and his lies and believe they can rise above God’s design and cast it
off as if it were shackles. Christ, the promised Seed has already come, so no
Christian woman after Mary would ever bear a savior. But childbearing is still
the most commonplace sphere in which women live out the ultimate difference
between men and women and their high calling of being life-givers.[7]
Similarly, men in their families, and elders in the family of God in
particular, have an analogous
priestly role in the church. They are not mediators as Christ was. Adam’s role
was prophetic of the great high priest and mediator, Jesus Christ who has
fulfilled that role once and for all. But
they are to lead as men under authority, teach the truth undefiled and protect
those under their care. Eve’s role was prophetic of the Lord and Giver of Life,
the Holy Spirit himself, who hovered over creation to bring physical life and
hovers over hearts to bring spiritual life. Therefore, childbearing is a central, physical
but also spiritual imitation of the work of the Holy Spirit, the ultimate
Life-giver. Women do not need to vie for the representative role of men. They
can embrace their own prophetic life-giving role as an outworking of the
Spirit’s work in and through them.[8]
The man’s authority is to be used to create a protected sphere where women can
flourish in their life-giving role.
Living under authority in the world,
the family and the church is the focus of this passage. Viewing it through this
lens helps understand some of the difficulties in it. The missing link of
Adam’s calling established before Eve’s creation helps us understand
Paul’s prohibition in verse 12. The
Gordian knot in verse 15 is not nearly as complex if viewed in a redemptive historical
way. The beauty of a well-functioning church body in which each person
understands his or her role gives freedom to live in peace and tranquility.
There is no scrambling to be at the top of the leadership pyramid, no
possibility for deception when it is built on the truth of God revealed in
creation and fulfilled in the one mediator Jesus Christ. The story and situation of Adam and Eve is unique as it is simultaneously the first marriage and the first church! Today, we cannot affirm the submission of all women to all men in all areas of life and society. What does stand out, however, is that women can embrace
their differences and their primary life-giving role as complementary to the
role of men both in their marriages and their churches. Men are challenged to lead in their marriages even when it is
difficult for them or they’d rather step down. Certain qualified men, elders, have the same leadership challenges in the church family, the Bride of Christ. Their sacrificial leadership
as they follow Jesus' lead swill provide the protected environment for all to blossom as they submit
themselves to him, the one mediator who gave his life as a ransom for all.
[1]
Some have argued that the animals were made before Adam and this fact does not
make them his superiors
[2]
Andrew Spurgeon, 1 Timothy 2:13–15:
Paul’s Retelling of Genesis 2:4–4:1, JETS 56/3 (2013) 543–56.
[3]
“Adam’s priestly role of ‘guarding’ the garden sanctuary may also be reflected in
the later role of Israel’s priests who were called ‘guards’ (1. Chr. 9:13) and
repeatedly referred to as temple gatekeepers […]”
Greg Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A
Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Intervarsity, 2004), 69.
[4]
Ibid, 555
[5]
Ibid, 555, Footnote 63.
The future tense sothesetai is often seen as referring to future from
the time of Paul’s writing and thus future salvation (e.g. Bowman, “Women in Ministry”
193, 209). Porter argues, “Eve as the subject of the future verb in v. 15 does
not carry great conviction. The attitudinal force of the future form of the
verb in v. 15 is one of expectation, that is, it grammaticalizes or conveys not
a temporal conception (past, present or future) but a marked and emphatic
expectation toward a course of events. Since Eve’s fortunes have already been
determined, they are beyond any further expectation, so this solution is
unlikely” (“What does it mean to be ‘Saved by Childbirth’” 92). But if Paul
were retelling the fall by the phrase “she fell into transgression” (1 Tim
2:14; Gen 3:1–7) and the restoration by the phrase “she will be delivered
through childbirth” (1 Tim 2:15a; Gen 3:16), then sothesetai “expects”
childbirth that would be fulfilled in Gen 4:1. That is, Eve’s childbearing
would be future to her transgression.
[6] See also
other means that Paul notes as necessary for salvation, such as keeping a
careful watch on teaching in 2 Tim 4:16.
[7]
“Childbearing” is used as a synecdoche, where the part of “child-bearing”
refers to the whole of what it means to be a woman.
[8]
All women can be life-givers, whether or not they bear physical children.
