1 Timothy 2:11-15 answering objections to "a woman"
My article laying out the original argument showing that 1 Timothy 2:12 is a specific woman that Paul forbids from teaching is here.
Matt Slick has put up several articles attempting to refute my reasoning and today I would like to answer Matt’s “refutation”. This article will be an answer to Matt’s article at http://www.carm.org/womeninministry/1Tim2_9-15specific.htm
In Matt Slick’s article he admits that “a woman” and “a man” could be a specific husband and wife. This is quite an admission from Matt since he has been trying to prove that it would be impossible for Paul to be referring to a specific woman. Since we already have that admission from Matt, we will let the context be the key to understanding Paul’s meaning. Matt summarizes the egalitarian argument this way:
“One of the interpretations given to these two verses is that there was a particular married woman who had been deceived (as Eve was deceived), was believing false teachings, was ignorant of the truth, and had been teaching false things to her husband…Even though she was a fallacious teacher, she was being shown mercy because of our (sic) ignorance just as Paul said he was shown mercy due to his ignorance as he mentioned in 1 Timothy 1:13. Once the woman learns the truth, then she will be permitted to teach men and or her husband.”
At this point Matt writes that this interpretation would be reading into the text because the text says:
“absolutely nothing about ‘this woman’ being deceived in ignorance. It isn’t there. Nor is there anything prior to this text that would imply there was a woman was deceived.”
What Matt does is completely ignores Paul’s connection between verse 12 and the reason for the prohibition in verse 14 as the deception of the woman. Since Paul is the one who connects the two, we cannot say that there is no mention of deception. We also find a connection to 1 Timothy 1:3 where Paul is instructing Timothy to stop certain people from teaching strange doctrines. The inspired text here doesn’t say that Timothy is to stop certain “males” but unnamed people teaching error. What has happened to some of these unnamed people who are teaching false doctrine? Paul said that some have turned aside from the truth. Another thing that Matt Slick completely misses in his article is the ones who turned aside from the truth are desiring to be teachers and they do not understanding what they are teaching:
1 Timothy 1:7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.
So there is a connection between 1 Timothy 1 & 2 because Paul is stopping teachers in chapter 1 and stopping a single teacher in chapter 2. The reason Paul gives in chapter 1 is that these teachers are teaching in ignorance and in chapter 2 Paul stops a woman teacher and he ties it in the deception of a woman, another strong connection to the ignorance of the false teachers in chapter 1.
Paul also makes a clear difference in chapter 1 between those who are acting ignorantly in unbelief and those who know the truth and are distorting that truth.
Matt then claims that there is nothing in the context to suggest that there is a woman who has been sincerely deceived and is ignorant of proper doctrines. But what Matt fails to state is that the only command in verses 11 & 12 is the command for Timothy to let “a woman” learn. The fact that Paul makes it mandatory that she is to learn is a strong indication that her teaching is faulty.
Paul’s command for her to learn ties in to chapter 1 where Paul says there are people who are ignorantly teaching error. We know one thing for sure. There is no evidence at all that Paul meant to stop godly people who are teaching correct biblical doctrine. Paul’s theme of error and deception in the church is carried from false deceived teachers to “a woman” who must learn and must stop teaching and it ends with the deception of Eve in Chapter 2. For Matt Slick to say that there is no connection between ignorance (chapter 1 has ignorant people teaching error) or deception (chapter 2 has a deceived woman – verse 14) and the stopping of one teacher reveals Matt’s prejudice.
The next point that Matt tries to make is that Paul tells “a woman” in verse 12 to be quiet instead of telling her to be silent. Matt asks,
“…if the verses are about a woman teaching false things to her husband, then shouldn’t Paul tell her to stop doing it completely?”
The answer is very simple and understandable. If this is indeed a husband and wife situation, it would not be “normal” for Paul to tell a wife that she could not say one word to her husband. For Matt to say that Paul would have had to tell this wife that she couldn’t talk at all to her husband if she was a false teacher is completely illogical. Matt then puts words in Paul’s mouth by saying that this would be telling her “to speak her false doctrines a little more quietly” and he asks “Does that make any sense?” Matt’s question doesn’t make sense. The fact is that Paul could not interfere in a marriage and tell a specific wife that she could not talk to her husband at all. The term “quiet” in verse 12 most certainly refers back to the “quiet” from verse 11 where she is told to learn in a quiet manner. Paul’s first concern is that she learns the truth in a quiet manner, not looking to continue to teach her error, but learning in a quiet manner. He is certainly not telling her that she can teach error, just a “little more quietly”. Paul said she is to be stopped from teaching. Her being in quietness then has nothing to do with continuing false teaching but with her place of learning (verse 11).
Matt then tries to make an issue of the fact that the word “teach” that is forbidden in verse 12 is from the Greek word didasko (to teach) not heterodidaskaleo (to teach falsely). He asks,
“So, if Paul is referring to a certain woman in 2:12 who is teaching false doctrine, then why does he not use the word heterdodaskaleo when referring to her teaching…It doesn’t make sense if the egalitarian position is true.”
The answer is found in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 2:20, Jesus uses the same term for false teaching when he speaks to the church in Thyatira:
Rev 2:20 ‘But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
Here we see that Jezebel is teaching and leading in false doctrine, yet Jesus himself uses the term didasko. If Jesus can call false teaching “didasko”, and it is also used this way in Revelation 2:14 and 15 then there is no problem in Paul using the same term to include false teaching. The proof that it is false teaching is in the context itself.
The question that I would like to ask Matt back, is where does it make sense from the context of 1 Timothy that Paul was desiring to stop godly Christian women from teaching correct doctrine? No Old Testament passage ever forbids women to teach the bible to men, so why should we even consider that Paul’s goal was to stop godly teaching instead of stopping false doctrine? It only makes sense to those who come to this passage with a preconceived view against women teachers.
Next post will be part 2 of the review of Matt Slick’s “refutation” of the “a woman” argument.
12 thoughts on “1 Timothy 2:11-15 answering objections to "a woman"”
Not to mention the fact that “the woman” of vs. 14 HAS BECOME in transgression. The verb gegonen is parsed as 2nd. Perfect, active, 3rd person singular. If it were Eve, then she’d have to still be in a state of error, which was impossible at the time of Paul’s writing since Eve was long dead. The only way around that would be to make “woman” (there is no article in the Greek) mean “womankind” or “all women for all time”, which of course many people insist is the case in spite of other clear scriptures to the contrary.
So he’d have to show either how Eve is still in a state of error, or how the Bible clearly teaches that all women are still in a state of error, or he’ll have to admit that (as Occam’s Razor would dictate) only a particular woman alive at the time of Paul’s writing could have still been in a state of error.
Yup, this is a major problem for Matt. I will be bringing out more in the next segment of my refutation of Matt’s refutation 🙂 Thanks, Paula!
Matt is bringing his ‘authoritarian’ presuppositions to his hermeneutic. He cannot understand why Paul is not throwing his weight around with this couple.
Good thoughts. I’ll be following this.
Lin,
Yes indeed his presuppositions have affected his ability to get past his hierarchal views that won’t allow Paul to be dealing with a specific situation in Ephesus. Matt has at least a dozen articles on this subject that he has produced in an attempt to refute me and I will be going through each one of the articles to dismantle the faulty foundation that he has build his argument upon. It should be fun.
What he cannot do is show that your interpretation must be wrong, as this is simply too difficult a task to do. What you do is make valid word choices for the meaning and then ask the reader to see if it hangs all together.
Don,
Yes, this is exactly what I do. I show why the context points to a prohibition on false teaching and I point out the inspired words that are related to one single woman – an individual who has been in the group of deceived teachers but who is being allowed to teach her husband her error. If this was easy to refute, Matt would have refuted it by now. The fact is that there are clear and logical reasons to believe as I do and no compelling reason to reject my view from the passage.
Well, there obvious IS a compelling reason to reject it, namely if one come INTO these verses with a masculinist belief that men should be on top. This is why I think it is only necessary to show one or more ways an egalitarian can understand these verses and be faithful, as most people will choose that given the choice.
So do not let him try to paint you into a corner, he is the one who needs to show that you are being incorrect/unfaithful and that his (masculinist) interpretationi is greatly preferred and I do not think he can do that.
Don,
Thank you for your wise words!
Diane Sellner from CARM has apparently decided to do Matt’s work and reply to my article so I gladly put her comments for all to see and so I can soundly answer them. Diane is answering my articles that reviews Matt’s articles on women in Ministry. Diane says:
Quote (from Cheryl):
In Matt Slick’s article he admits that “a woman” and “a man” could be a specific husband and wife.
Diane Sellner’s answer:
I have already answered Matt’s claim that anyone can claim anything from the text. His example was not provable from the text and the specific grammar of verse 15 “she” and “they” refutes his claim that it could be a prostitute who had a crush on Paul. The fact is that any view must be supported by the context and I have shown how the exact wording of verse 15 proves that Paul is referring to one woman not all women. It is interesting to see that Matt and Diane disagree and I would assume that Matt trumps Diane since he is the “expert” at CARM.
Quote (from Cheryl):
This is quite an admission from Matt since he has been trying to prove that it would be impossible for Paul to be referring to a specific woman. Since we already have that admission from Matt, we will let the context be the key to understanding Paul’s meaning. Matt summarizes the egalitarian argument this way:
Diane Sellner’s answer:
The reality is that Matt cannot prove from the context that Paul was not referring to one woman. I can prove that Paul is not referring to all women because of the exact grammar of verse 15. If Paul meant all women he would not use illogical and faulty grammar. Diane had previously been arguing that verse 15 was faulty grammar that the Holy Spirit allowed into the text. This is a liberal position and not a position that one who believes in the inspired text should take. The Holy Spirit did not inspire a grammar error no matter how much Diane would like to remove herself and Matt from the implication of the inspired grammar.
I am not going out of the context by looking at the context of the entire letter. For me to take the ignorant people who are teaching error that Paul is stopping in chapter one is a very important context to the stopping of a deceived woman in chapter two. Paul gives no other reason for stopping teachers other than error and the word “deceived” in verse 14 proves that deception is a key to the prohibition. One cannot ignore this context. It was Paul who said the false teachers were ignorant. He said that they did not know what they were teaching. This is the definition of ignorant. I can insert a “single wife” in chapter two because of the fact that two are shown to be in relationship verse 15 has “she” that can only be traced back to “a woman”.
Diane also says:
Quote from Cheryl:
What Matt does is completely ignores Paul’s connection between verse 12 and the reason for the prohibition in verse 14 as the deception of the woman. Since Paul is the one who connects the two, we cannot say that there is no mention of deception.
Diane wrote:
Diane has completely missed the point. I didn’t say that that a deceived person sinning isn’t sin just because they are deceived. I said that deceivers were sent out of the church to be “taught” by Satan and the ones who are deceived were given to the church to be taught the truth. The ones who are deceived, Paul says, are teaching things ignorantly and with unbelief. When one is completely deceived as verse 14 says, one is ignorant of the truth. If they weren’t ignorant of the truth then they wouldn’t be fully deceived.
Diane writes:
God gifts people as teacher. Where does it say that Adam was appointed as a teacher? Teachers aren’t appointed, they are gifted and I am sure that as a mother Eve taught her children and as God gifted her she taught them as adults too.
While Eve also died because she ate the fruit that God said would cause their death, she did receive mercy. God promised that the Messiah would come through her seed and not Adam’s. That is mercy shown to the one who was deceived by the serpent.
Diane wrote:
”
At least Matt tries to answer my exegesis while you just ignore everything I quoted from scripture. I didn’t make up the fact that Paul claimed to receive mercy because he was deceived and ignorant. Eve received mercy because she too was deceived. One who is completely deceived is ignorant of the truth. That goes without saying. If one stays in the place of knowing the truth then they cannot be deceived. Only those who have left the truth can be deceived.
Paul makes this clear in 1 Timothy 1:6, 7:
Here Paul clearly say that these people are “straying” from these things. What things? Paul has just told us what things they are straying from:
They are straying from their love for God, from a good conscience and from a sincere faith. When they stray from this sincere faith, they are then open to deception.
Paul says that same things to the “she” in 1 Timothy 2:15. What does Paul say that “she” needs to do to be saved? She says that she needs to “continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.” She to learn and stay in the faith and love for God and holiness with self-control to stay away from the error. This is what Paul says will bring her to salvation. If she stays in her error she will not be saved.
Since there is a repetition of things that one must stay in (verse 15) and not stray from (verse 5) we can be sure that she too has been deceived as the other false teachers by their ignorance. The connection between the two is very strong.
Diane said:
First of all we know that Eve was deceived, however in verse 14 it does not say that Eve was deceived but “a woman” is deceived.
This cannot be Eve because of the grammar. The verb gegonen is parsed as 2nd. Perfect, active, 3rd person singular. If it were Eve, then she’d have to still be in a state of error, which was impossible at the time of Paul’s writing since Eve was long dead. This is why John MacArthur states that “she” in verse 15 cannot be Eve because it is future tense and thus cannot be Eve since she is dead and cannot do anything about her salvation. Verse 14 also cannot be Eve (although Eve was the first one deceived) because the grammar does not fit a dead person.
The argument that women cannot teach men because they are easily deceived makes no sense. Why should we let women teach gullible children if women are easily deceived? Why should they be able to teach other women if they are easily deceived? This argument should logically take away all ability for women to teach because all are easily deceived? But this has been disproved a long time ago. Most cult leaders are men not women and women are not as a whole more easily deceived than men.
Diane wrote:
The fact is that Paul uses the same words in 1 Timothy 2:15 as he used in 1 Timothy 1:5 regarding the things that those who are ignorant and deceived fell away from and what the woman must hold onto and not stray from in chapter 2. There is a connection!
I am also not saying that there was only one woman. I don’t know who the others were since Paul doesn’t give us their names nor their gender. We do know that there was at least one woman who was not teaching her error publicly but privately. Everyone else could be lumped into the same pot since their teaching was public. It is absurd to say that all the females had it together. I am not claiming that so it is a straw man that you have erected. Perhaps you might want to read my argument again to familiarize yourself with my argument.
Diane wrote:
No man is put out of the church for being deceived. Only the deceivers are put out. If you claim that all people who teach false doctrine are in the same boat and all are put out of the church, then you will have to prove this to be true. You cannot do that because you will find that only the named deceivers who were deliberately deceiving concerning the resurrection were said to be put out of the church. Scripture is clear that Paul believed that the ignorant could receive mercy and be saved just as he was. There is nothing in scripture that has the ignorant ones put out of the church. To claim such a thing is showing an amount of ignorance of scripture.
Diane wrote:
This is a mesh-mash of confusion. I am talking about the deceived ignorant teachers and you bring in chapter two about prayer. These two things are not connected except that men who have the truth should be praying for the lost and ignorant people who do not have the truth not debating the issues even in their prayers. Paul goes through the deceived teachers, then the leadership who should be dealing with these ones not in anger Then Paul brings in a special case that Timothy had to deal with by itself because it was a unique case not quite like the others. We know that Paul goes back to the deceived teachers because he stops her from teaching as he stopped the people in chapter one and he says that she is deceived just as the ones from chapter one are. Lastly he tells what she has to hold onto which are the same things that the deceived teachers didn’t hold onto that caused the to be deceived in the first place. The common bond of these prohibitions is a love for the lost and a care that the ones who do not know the truth and who have been deceived will learn so that they can turn from their error and be saved.
Diane writes:
Apparently Diane doesn’t understand my argument and that is why she continues to say that same things. I have continually said that there is a special case because it involved a woman teaching her husband privately. If there was other women in the false teachers they were either teaching other women or children or others publicly but it was not a private teaching in a marriage relationship. Paul makes it clear that it is only “a man” that she is teaching, not the entire church. Diane once you understand my argument, perhaps then you can try to refute it. At this point, you cannot refute it because you ignorant of my argument.
Diane wrote:
Apparently you have not read verse 7 and then perhaps you can explain how not understanding the law or what they are confidently teaching is not ignorance. I will be eagerly waiting your response.
Diane writes:
This again is a mish-mash of misinformation. You say that Paul never suggests that the ones who are ignorant of the law and teaching in ignorance are not deceived? You are very wrong. Whenever someone who is ignorant teaches error they are deceived. When one who knows the truth and teaches error purposely, they are not deceived but deceivers. Paul did not claim to be a deceiver because he said that he did it ignorantly and in unbelief, but he was completely deceived because he believed his error to be the truth.
I also did not say that a deceived person is not punished for their sin. This is another straw man. I said that a deceived person may receive mercy. Paul said this and he said it in reference to those who, like him, are teaching in ignorance. They too will be punished if they do not come to the truth, but Paul believes that they may receive mercy and have their eyes opened as he did.
What I find in these responses, Diane, is someone who is emotionally attached to the argument who is unwilling to actually listen to the opposing argument to digest it and then figure out how to refute it. Instead you choose to misrepresent what I teach and erect a straw man so that you can easily knock it down. But when you erect the straw men you only show your own ignorance of the argument. I choose to believe that you are only ignorant instead of deliberately twisting what I say. That would make you someone who is a deceiver and I would not choose to classify you as a deceiver.
They are straying from their love for God, from a good conscience and from a sincere faith. When they stray from this sincere faith, they are then open to deception.
Paul says that same things to the “she” in 1 Timothy 2:15. What does Paul say that “she” needs to do to be saved? She says that she needs to “continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.” She to learn and stay in the faith and love for God and holiness with self-control to stay away from the error. This is what Paul says will bring her to salvation. If she stays in her error she will not be saved.
Woah! I never saw that before!
Lin in #3:
Quote: Matt is bringing his ‘authoritarian’ presuppositions to his hermeneutic. He cannot understand why Paul is not throwing his weight around with this couple.
That’s what I’ve often thought! Since Paul is clearly not doing the “right” thing by making it absolutely clear that women should stay in their place, then by golly we’ll have to do his work for him! 🙂