Women Pastors And 1 Timothy 2

Women in Ministry and 1 Timothy 2

When discussing women in ministry one of the most cited and debated passages is 1 Timothy 2:8-15. The passage reads,

Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension. Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. ^[1]

The passage has notoriously difficult translation issues, and the last verse has as many interpretations as there are interpreters, at least it seems so. The question for the reader is how to understand exactly what Paul is teaching.

(Disclaimer: This article is born from a friend’s observation that my previous article on women in the church did not address a central text. On reflection, I wanted to go into some detail on this passage too. The current article is much longer than I anticipated when I responded to my friend’s observation. Because of its length, this article only addresses one of the multiple issues involved. I will go through the other issues in the coming days.)

Option 1: Paul did not write Timothy

Some who argue for women’s service in the Church fall back on the claim that 1 Timothy is not the work of Paul. These verses cannot, therefore, be authoritative for the Church in their estimation. While one does not have to dispute Pauline authorship of the Pastorals to argue for women in ministry, those who choose to do so have chosen a very weak argument.

What I Believe About the Bible

I believe that the Bible is the sole authoritative guide for faith and practice. I concur with the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) statement on the Bible. It reads,

The Holy Bible was written by divinely inspired authors and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to humankind. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter. It will remain the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ…

The BGCT believes the Bible to be the divinely inspired written Word of God. It is true and trustworthy, all of it. It is the only written document that can have authority over the church or the conscience of believers. It is the book to which we go when we help someone understand how he or she can be saved. It is the product of authors who were carried along by the Holy Spirit to understand the mystery of what they had seen and handled. It is without error for it comes from the heart of God…

Authorship and Authority

If the Bible is authoritative, then the question of authorship is quite significant. If Paul did not write the material here, it is hard to say how it should be authoritative. Unlike Hebrews, where the author is not named, the Pastorals name Paul explicitly and describe his connection to his protégés Timothy and Titus. The letters are deeply personal. If they did not come from Paul, then they are not just anonymous, they are forgeries. Not just assuming a name to instruct in the way a teacher would instruct, as does happen in ancient literature, they take on the person of Paul in such a way that would be fundamentally dishonest.

Of Academics and Paul

While it has become common among academic writers that Paul did not write the Pastorals, 1&2 Timothy and Titus, there is little reason to accept that conclusion. The only reason to mention it here is that most commentaries will discuss the theory. The academic scholars who make this judgment base it on differences in vocabulary, style, and concepts in the Pastorals that are not found in the undisputed letters of Paul.

Rejecting the first argument: The Pastorals Do Not Sound Like Paul

There are several very good reasons to reject the scholarly consensus, however. The first is the passage of time. If Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians between 49-51 AD and 1 Timothy in 63-65, between 12 and 4 years later as most scholars conclude, he could have sounded slightly different because of the passage of time. Most writers evolve. New emphases emerge and new ways of writing similar thoughts emerge. To say that Paul would always write the same concepts in the same ways is to deny human experience.

Paul’s Changing Communication in the New Testament

Arguing for Paul’s consistency of communication also misses something in the New Testament. Paul changed his communication style at least once. A frequently misunderstood part of the book of Acts is Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill (Acts 17:16-22). There Paul took on a definitively Greek style of rhetoric to communicate with the philosophically minded pagans. Often interpreters will read this text and think, “This is something of a communication/missionary strategy of Paul’s that needs implementation.”

To see Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill as something to emulate, however, misses something entirely. The sermon was a colossal flop. Listeners “scoffed” at Paul. The sermon did not have the effect of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost or anything approximating it. After Paul’s flop at Athens, Paul shifts away from Greek rhetorical forms to a simple proclamation of the Crucified Christ “…without words of wisdom…” The Corinthian church which loved Greek rhetoric, lampooned Paul over his preaching. Paul’s opponents said, “ … his letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible…” (2 Corinthians 10:10 italics author).

Paul’s Description of His Preaching

As Paul describes his preaching, he says he is not an eloquent preacher. This lack of eloquence is by design, so that “…the cross would not be emptied of its power…” (1 Cor 1:17). Paul’s meaning here is that he did not use the Greek rhetorical forms because that kind of persuasion would undermine the Gospel.[2] The difference is that in Acts Paul sounds very much like the Greeks, and by the time of 1 Cor, Paul has no intention of using the tools of Greek rhetoric in his preaching.

What the New Testament demonstrates is that Paul shifts his communication style in his preaching. There, then, is no reason to believe that Paul had to remain static in the way he communicated in his letters. If he shifts in preaching, why should his letters not also shift?

Debunking Doctrinal Differences

While the Pastorals express some concepts differently than the undisputed Pauline letters, they are not contrary to what Paul has written before. The Pastorals, while sounding different, contain substantively the same doctrinal positions as the rest of Paul’s work.

Possessing Only a Limited Selection of Paul’s Work.

It is also important to note that we do not possess all of what Paul wrote. We know that we are missing a letter to Corinth written before the letter we know as 1 Corinthians, for example (See 1 Cor 5:9). Although some scholars think the letter is in our 2 Corinthians in a cut-and-paste manner, that is far from proven. Even if that is the case, the larger point remains, we do not have all that Paul wrote.

Suggesting then, that these 3 letters are so different sounding than Paul and cannot be his work does not take into account a known fact. It is also making a judgment about the fit of a part within the whole without knowing the whole. It is not sound reasoning.

Differences Because of the Audience

In Paul’s undisputed letters outside Philemon, the audience of the letter is a congregation or group of congregations. In the Pastorals, the audience is individuals with close connections to Paul. The Pastoral’s primary design was to pass on direction to Paul’s proteges. Of course, there are going to be differences between personal letters and letters to unruly congregations.

Differences Because of a Scribe

Another reason for differences in the Pastorals and the undisputed letters is the role of the amanuensis, the literary secretary or scribe. In Romans 16:22, Tertius identifies himself as the writer. What Paul would have done was to speak the letter to his scribe who wrote it for him. On occasion Paul will write for himself, “…see what large letters I have written with my own hand…” (Gal 6:11). In 2 Thess 3:17 Paul writes, “I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark in all my letters. This is how I write.” Here Paul documents his use of an amanuensis in his letters and makes his own personal mark on them to confirm authenticity.

Tertius was not Paul’s only amanuensis. Sosthenes, Timothy, and Silvanus also served in that role.[3] Some of his scribes even helped in composition.[4] The use of an amanuensis was normative for Paul.

Of Luke and the Pastorals

So, who was the amanuensis for the Pastorals? In 2 Timothy 4:11 Paul writes, “… only Luke is with me …” There is good reason to suggest, then, that Luke served as the amanuensis of the Pastorals. Other evidence for this conclusion is that the language of Pastorals is similar to the language of Acts. Luke, the physician, employs a larger vocabulary and a more complicated style than much of the rest of the New Testament. If Luke is not the amanuensis for the Pastorals, the similarity of the language between Acts and the Pastorals becomes a thorny issue. The single most logical explanation of the differences between the Pastorals and the undisputed letters of Paul is the change in amanuensis to Luke.

The Differences Are Not Good Evidence of a Forgery

The differences in style and wording are a better argument for authenticity than forgery.[5] Consider it this way, one of the differences between the Pastorals and the undisputed Pauline letters is the introductory formula, “…it is a faithful saying…” The phrase is not in the rest of the Pauline epistles, but it occurs regularly in the Pastorals.[6] If someone were to forge a letter in the name of an Apostle, would they not copy his introductory formula precisely? The fact that the writer sees no reason to disguise with copying points to a Pauline origin.

The Weight of Church History

Before leaving this argument, there is another important aspect to consider: the weight of Church history. Around 140 AD, Marcion, an ancient heretic, denied that Paul wrote the Pastorals. That means that the Church accepted these as writings of Paul significantly before then. Allusions to the Pastorals in Polycarp and Ignatius make it probable that these letters were known and attributed to Paul by 115. There are also similarities to 1 Clement leading to the likelihood that his letter was alluding to the Pastorals as well.^[7] 1 Clement is a fascinating piece of evidence because it could have been written as early as the 70s or 80s but no later than the mid-90s.[8]

A teacher once said in one of my seminary classes, “There are Christians that lived between Jesus and your grandmother. And they matter.” We Baptists are often quite unaware of the rest of the thinking of the Church, particularly the ancient and medieval Church. For me, I read from the ancient church quite often, particularly when I am studying the doctrine of God.

I frequently read Athanasius and Anselm. My library contains the works of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and others. When Patristic sources say something, I have learned to give that great weight, although they are not infallible. Since the ancient believers refer to the Pastorals and to Paul as their author, then one ought to tread very carefully in denial.

Other than a few ancient heretics, there are virtually no voices questioning Pauline authorship until the 1800s. Opposition to Paul’s authorship is late and weak. The ancient consensus is much stronger than 19^th-century doubt.

The Case Cannot Stand.

There is simply not a strong enough case to be made that someone other than Paul wrote the Pastorals.

Personally speaking, I find the argument a bit insulting. For these letters to be forgeries or simply later authors taking Paul’s name to say something Paul would have said (as sometimes happens in ancient literature) is to put on these texts a fairly shocking bit of dishonesty. There are personal notes that contain genuine affection toward Timothy. There are admonitions against opponents by name and travel plans as well. Paul’s note of Timothy’s health in 1 Tim 5:23 is not a note of forgery but of genuine concern for his dear friend’s.

The notion of Paul not writing the Pastorals should be rejected completely and with more than a bit of disdain.

In the Next Segment:

Coming to the Correct Translation of the Verses

The Plain Reading

Of Phoebe, Priscilla, Junia, and Letter Bearers

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), 1 Ti 2:8–15.

[2] Layne Wallace, Teaching Congregations a Theology of Preaching, 22.

[3] https://taylormarshall.com/2015/01/secretaries-peter-paul.html

[4] Witherington, The Paul Quest, 89.

[5] Witherington, The Paul Quest, 113.

[6] Witherington, The Paul Quest, 111.

^[7] Walter Lock, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (I & II Timothy and Titus), International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1924), xxii.