The historic reading of 1 Tim 2
The debate about the rather challenging verses in Paul's first letter to Timothy continues to surface at regular intervals, and information technology is frequently characterised equally existence between those who maintain the 'historic' understanding of these verses, so requiring women not to teach or have say-so in church building, and those who desire to offering an 'innovative' reading that allows for a full office for both genders. I was told exactly that last week on social media: whom am I to go against the settled and agreed view of the Church for close on 2,000 years?
Just it is worth reflecting on how this passage has in fact been interpreted historically. Kevin Giles does merely this in his article inEvangelical Quarterly from 2000, bachelor for download here. Some of the voices from the past are well worth listening to.
Giles first notes that there is wide understanding amongst Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Jerome, Aquinas and many others that v eleven means that Paul is demanding accented silence past women in church at all times. 'Calvin and Luther besides took Paul to be saying women should keep silent in church, nonetheless in practice they immune women to sing hymns in church. Calvin allowed that they could lead in prayer, Luther did not.' Hither is a sample of related comments, some from Giles, some direct from the sources.
Chysostom in Homily nine:
For, every bit if they came here for recreation, they are all engaged in conversing upon unprofitable subjects. Thus all is confusion, and they seem not to understand, that unless they are tranquillity, they cannot learn anything that is useful. For when our soapbox strains against the talking, and no one minds what is said, what adept tin it do to them? To such a degree should women exist silent, that they are not immune to speak not only nigh worldly matters, just not even well-nigh spiritual things, in the church…For the sexual activity is naturally somewhat talkative: and for this reason he restrains them on all sides.
On v 12 Luther comments:
This passage makes woman subject. It takes from her all public function and authority
and he here appears to understand this to apply in all spheres of life, not simply abode and church. Similarly, Calvin says that
Women by nature (that is past the ordinary law of God) are born to obey, for all wise men have always rejected gunaikokratian the government of women, as an unnatural monstrosity…the truthful guild of nature prescribed by God lays down that the woman should exist field of study to the man.
The 19th-century Southern U.s. theologian R 50 Dabney comments:
Man is the ruler, adult female the ruled…Her race is a subordinate race…
Charles Hodge says:
Human being's superiority … enables and entitles him to command…This superiority of the man is … taught in Scripture, founded in nature and proved by all experience.
Calvin on creation society:
Now Moses shews that the woman was created later, in guild that she might be a kind of appendage to the man; and that she was joined to the man on the express condition, that she should be at manus to render obedience to him. Since, therefore, God did not create two chiefs of equal power, but added to the human an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of that guild of creation in which the eternal and inviolable date of God is strikingly displayed…The reason that women are prevented from teaching is that information technology is non compatible with their status, which is to be subject to men, whereas to teach implies superior authorisation and condition.
The influential English Methodist theologian, Adam Clarke, comments:
God designed that he (the man) should have the pre-eminence … the construction of adult female plainly proves that she was never designed for those exertions required in public life. In this is the master part of the natural inferiority of woman.
Irenaeus says: 'Having become disobedient, she (Eve) was fabricated the cause of death, both to herself and the whole human race' and Tertullian goes further:
The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this historic period: the guilt must of necessity alive too.You are the devil's gateway:you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree:y'all are the start deserter of the divine police force:you lot are she who persuaded him whom the devil was non valiant enough to set on.You lot destroyed then easily God's image, human. On business relationship ofyour desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to dice.
Luther on the adult female's deception:
There was more wisdom and courage in Adam…Experience has been witness of this…Information technology was not Adam who went astray. Therefore there was greater wisdom in Adam, than in the woman.
And Calvin:
[The woman] seduced the homo from God'due south commandment, it is plumbing equipment that she should be deprived of all her freedom and placed under a yoke
On the final phrase, nigh 'existence saved through the childbirth', Chrysostom comments:
Be not bandage downward, because your sex has incurred blame…the whole sex shall be saved, still, by childbearing.
Luther argues that women'south penalty for sin remains, notwithstanding the work of Christ:
The hurting and tribulation of childbearing keep. These penalties will continue until judgement…Yous volition be saved if you subjected yourselves and conduct children with hurting…If women conduct themselves weary—or ultimately bear themselves out-that does not matter. Let them bear themselves out. This is the purpose for which they exist.
Calvin (says Giles) believes these words were added for the 'consolation' of women.
[In case it should] reduce women to despair to hear the whole ruin of the human race imputed to them…Paul reminds them that although they must endure temporal punishment, the hope of salvation remains for them.
The reason for citing these perspectives is non simply to provoke revulsion confronting these views, though Giles does annotate:
It is difficult not to come to the conclusion that so much of what nosotros take just outlined, which purports to exist the exegesis of 1 Tim. 2-ix-15, is not more than a reflection of the androcentric and misogynist views of the theologians quoted, who are immersed in a thoroughly patriarchal culture, than the mind of God every bit revealed in Scripture.
(For a sustained argument along these lines, run across Alvin Schmidt,Veiled and Silenced: how culture shaped sexist theology.) I would hasten to add that these readings are very hard to support from the text of Genesis and 1 Timothy, let lonely the wider picture in the NT of men'due south and women'southward roles. For my own perspectives, see my entries on Genesis, on 1 Timothy, every bit well as on one Corinthians and Ephesians.
But Giles' real point here is that fifty-fifty the most 'conservative' mainstream view arguing that women cannot teach does not debate for what these historic interpretations argue. The consequent position above is that women should non practise any responsibleness or authorisation in club, that their purpose in life is childbirth, and that this is because they are inherently inferior and more prone to sin. Contemporary conservative commentators are always very careful to altitude themselves from such views.
The consequence of this is that, in the debates about the part of women, all views are 'novel' in the sense that they do not follow the higher up positions. And so the fence isnot between the 'historic' view and an 'innovation', but between two competing innovative readings, both of which are significantly unlike from by readings.
But I have further reflections on this dynamic. To recognise this history of interpretation is non to advocate a hermeneutical counsel of despair—if so many tin can get this so incorrect, why bother reading these texts? Quite the opposite. Information technology demonstrates how piece of cake information technology is for us to be shaped by the values of our age and read this into the Scriptural text—and that applies to all sides in the current debates on sexuality and gender relations. Our careful engagement with the text of Scripture is more important than ever, as is the commitment to allowing Scripture to challenge and form our views.
The task of estimation demands a high level of both cocky-awareness likewise every bit awareness of the range of different perspectives. The only fashion to address this is to engage, positively, with those with whom we disagree, rather than retreating into ghettos of those who share the aforementioned view as nosotros do.
(First published in a revised form in September 2013).
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