For most of Christian history theologians and church leaders have debated what Paul meant with his statements about women, particularly 1 Timothy 2:11-15.
This is the passage that has been used by some in the church to prohibit women from some ministries that involve teaching and leading men. The question is, do they have a correct understanding of this passage, and are they using it in an appropriate way?
On the surface Paul sounds totally misogynistic in this statement, and this statement has caused a lot of women to give Christianity, or at least these statements of Paul, a wide berth – people simply side-step them.
But what if we dig beneath the surface a little and see what we can find. Let’s first read the text in a reliable translation, and then we can start digging a little.
1 Timothy 2:11–15 (NRSV) — 11 Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. 12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
The way we will attack this passage (I am using the word attack advisedly here), is, as usual, to carefully look at the context, the word meanings, and any background information we can glean, to come to a better understanding of it.
Second Temple Background - Early Gnosticism & the Essene Influence[1]
Around 150 AD a church elder somewhere in Asia Minor wrote a work of fiction, which seems to mirror certain gnostic ideas that had emerged earlier than this time. It was titled the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and was well known in the early church. Since several prominent early church fathers referred to it, men like Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Methodius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and others, it seems to have had widespread influence.
It has a repeated theme of virginity and celibacy, and this theme is a feature in all the Apocryphal Acts, which all seem to be tainted with early gnostic ideas. Sexual self-restraint (egkrateia) in these works is associated with salvation. For example, The Gospel of the Egyptians, dated to between 80–150, also endorsed celibacy and not having children.
Here are some of the beatitudes which are attributed to Paul in the Acts of Paul and Thecla:
Blessed are those keeping their flesh chaste, because they will be a temple of God. Blessed are those with self-control (egkrateia), because God will speak to them. Blessed are those having wives as though not having them (i.e. being married and celibate), because they will receive an inheritance from God. Blessed are the bodies of virgins, because their bodies are pleasing to God and they will not lose the reward of their chastity; because the word of the Father will be a work of salvation to them in the day of his Son, and they will have rest forever. (Sections 5–6)
Boycotting the Womb
This and other early Christian writings also extol the virtue of celibacy, and they explicitly connect it with not having children. In the days before safe contraceptives, having children was almost guaranteed if a couple were engaging in sex.
Ron Cameron writes,
“The theology of the Gospel of the Egyptians is clear: each fragment endorses sexual asceticism as the means of breaking the lethal cycle of birth and of overcoming the alleged sinful differences between male and female, enabling all persons to return to what was understood to be their [pre-fall] state.”
At the fall it was commonly understood that the unity of the first man was broken by the creation of woman and resulting sexual division. Clement of Alexandria quoted selections from the Gospel of the Egyptians, endorsing celibacy and a childless union.
In Luke 11:27, when a woman in the crowd called out to Jesus saying “Blessed is the womb which bore you and the breasts which nourished you.” Jesus said to her,
“Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed is the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.'”
Commenting on this text, The Gospel of Thomas highlights the ideal of celibacy and not having children. (Logos 79, Gospel of Thomas)
Both Tertullian and Irenaeus (200 & 180 AD) wrote against such anti-sexual and ascetic heresies of Marcion, Saturninus and Tatian, who said that marriage was nothing else than corruption and fornication.
Gnosticism & The Essenes – J.B. Lightfoot
Paul does not define these heresies because there was no philosophy called Gnosticism at that point. We are inferring the questions by examination of the answers that he provides.
A Gnostic is a person who considers himself as having “knowledge” beyond that which the ordinary person has. He thinks of himself as a member of an intellectual elite, one of the few who set themselves above all others as possessing superior knowledge.
A modern example of Gnosticism is the Mormon religion, where extensive genealogies are used to connect you to some superior person in your past, and where Jesus is simply another angel on a journey to perfection.
The Gnostics considered matter to be that in which evil resided. It was postulated that some antagonistic principle, independent of God, thwarted and limited God’s creative energy. Evil is resident in the material world.
According to one group, the solution was to hold to a rigid asceticism.[2] All contact with matter should be reduced to an absolute minimum. The material part of man should be reduced by subduing and mortifying. One should live on a spare diet and refrain from marriage. Eating animals was forbidden.
Some early Christians were influenced by the Jewish Essene sect, who were mystics and members of a secret brotherhood, and characterized by the same sort of severe asceticism that Gnostics practised, in their rigorous observance of Mosaic ritual.
Marriage was an abomination to the Essene and so they adopted children instead of producing them. Those who accepted marriage as necessary, regarded it, nevertheless, as evil. They lived for prayer and religious exercises.
Jesus may have been referring to the Essenes in Matt. 19:11-12, when he said,
Matthew 19:11, 12 (NRSV) — 11 “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
So Jesus was not totally against celibacy, and it appears that Paul himself may have lived a celibate life after becoming a follower of Christ.
This whole teaching of mystic asceticism, celibacy and organised monasticism is the precursor of the Catholic orders and traditions which operate along similar lines.
Concerning Essene doctrines of the soul and of immortality, Josephus writes:
“They taught that bodies are perishable, but [that] souls [are] immortal, and that the souls dwelt originally in the eternal ether, but being debased by sensual pleasures united themselves with bodies as if with prisons.”
Gnostics, like Platonists, believed that matter was bad, or not real, and that spirit was real and good. They believed that salvation was achieved when one ascended to the realm of the deities and had knowledge of, the divine. At that moment in time, the divine spark, or spirit, or mind was released from its material earthly body. Gnosticism was elitist and exclusive; the claim was that only a few people could achieve gnosis.
Paul, Timothy and the Ephesians
After having looked briefly at the background of early gnostic ideas, coupled with the influence of the Essenes, it is now time to look afresh at Paul’s hitherto misogynistic statements in 1 Timothy.
In 1 Timothy 4:3 Paul states that some in the church at Ephesus were forbidding marriage. This heretical teaching may be one of the factors behind Paul’s advice that idle younger widows remarry (1 Tim. 5:11–15). And it may be squarely behind Paul’s words about salvation in 1 Timothy 2:15. It is also possible that Paul’s statements in 1 Timothy 2:13–14 were meant to correct some of the many false ideas circulating about Adam and Eve that become popular among some Gnostic teachers.
Exaggerated piety and ascetic teaching in the early church may be behind 1 Timothy 2:11–15, and it is quite possible that Paul may be addressing an individual woman, or a group of women in Ephesus, particularly.
There may have been a woman, or some women, who may have been withholding sex from their husbands on the gnostic or Essene grounds that it was evil. When Paul tells these women not to try and teach or dominate their men (Vs. 12), and in verse 15 assures them that they will not lose their salvation by having children, he may be refuting gnostic influences in Ephesus, rather than laying down a general rule about women not having leadership or speaking in church.
A Better Translation of 1 Timothy 2:11-15
After considerable research into the incipient Gnostic influences in the churches of Paul’s day, here is Margaret Mowczko’s translation of the passage. Up until verse 11 Paul has been using the plural word, women, but from here he changes to ‘a woman’ and ‘a man’. We are not sure if he is speaking generically to women, or whether he may be speaking directly to a particular woman or group of women. But here is Margaret’s thoughtful translation.
Let a woman [or wife] quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. I do not allow a woman [or wife] to teach, or domineer a man [the husband], but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was created first and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But she will not lose her salvation if she has children, provided they [the man and the woman] continue in faith, and love, and holiness in moderation. 1 Timothy 2:11–15
Margaret Mowczho says about verse 15,
“It is plausible that…Paul was assuring a married woman (or women) in the Ephesian church that if she renounced celibacy, had sex with her husband, and became pregnant, she would not jeopardise or lose her salvation. Rather, “she will be saved.”[3]
Having looked at the gnostic and Essene background behind this and several letters of Paul in the New Testament, we can start to see a quite different possibility for understanding this passage.
The Words Paul Chose
When Paul says he permits no woman to have ‘authority’ over a man, the Greek word used here is not the usual word used for authority, exousia, which occurs fairly often in the New Testament. The word he chose is authentein, from the verb authenteō, which is a rare word used only once in the New Testament.
The use of this word is suggesting that the person at the receiving end of this treatment was being forced against their will, their self-interest is being overridden, because the perpetrator is imposing their will. That’s what this word Paul chose means. It is not that this woman was simply exerting authority over this man, but that she was dominating him in some way, compelling him against his will.
When it says in verse 12, ‘I permit no woman’, it is not a harsh prohibition. This council is more about local church governance than about laying down a law on who has theological authority.
Conclusion – No Interpretation is Bullet-Proof
There is no interpretation of this passage that is bullet-proof. As Peter quipped, Paul was sometimes difficult to follow, and this is especially the case in a letter where we don’t have all the background details. But this interpretation I have outlined has much longer legs than any interpretation that claims that Paul is telling women to sit down and shut up and listen to their husbands, and further counselling that women need to get back to their main purpose in life, which is having children. This is the modern version of, “A woman’s place is in the kitchen.” I don’t believe this was Paul’s message here.
It is clear that early gnostic teaching was already showing its head in Paul’s day, and was later to fully flower in Christianity. Many of the early Church Fathers were leaning toward celibacy, but Tertullian outdid them all. “He believed lust for one's wife and for another woman were essentially the same, so that marital desire was similar to adulterous desire. He believed that sex even in marriage would disrupt the Christian life and that abstinence was the best way to achieve the clarity of the soul.” [4]
One early Church Father, Tertullian and his wife, agreed between themselves to be celibate. But when one party to a marriage says that sex is adulterous, and withholds it against the wishes of the other party, they are setting that marriage up for catastrophe.
Holiness is all well and good, but Paul does not want extreme piety or asceticism. Faith, love and holiness are expressions of a saved life, and marital sex and procreation will not in any way jeopardise one’s salvation, to the contrary. Salvation is not obtained by extreme asceticism, by excluding sex from a marriage, but it is only obtained by faith in Christ. Christ is our saviour, not celibacy, Paul is saying.
By associating holiness with childbirth, he indicates that marriage, sex, and procreation are not opposed to piety as some were teaching in Ephesus…[5]
As Paul councils married couples elsewhere,
1 Corinthians 7:3–5 (NRSV) — 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Stick to your knitting, is Paul’s message here, continue your Christian walk in faith, and love, and holiness, because these are the expressions of a saved life, not depriving the marriage of sex and children.
[1] I am indebted to Margaret Mowczko and Bishop J.B. Lightfoot for much of the background research in this article. From: https://margmowczko.com/1-timothy-212-in-context-3/ [2] The opposite opinion within Gnostic circles was to say that instead of taking a very ascetic position against the physical world and the flesh, we should try to be agnostic to it altogether and indulge sensuality to the full. We will not introduce this side of the argument at all because it becomes too confusing to most people, and doesn’t seem to be in view much in this passage. [3] Margaret Mowczko https://margmowczko.com/1-timothy-212-in-context-3/ [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullian#:~:text=He%20believed%20that%20sex%20even,much%20of%20the%20western%20church. [5] Margaret Mowczko https://margmowczko.com/1-timothy-212-in-context-3/
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