Charis

Cheryl said: Christ needs to be formed in us, but that happens as we grow and mature in him. Women in general do not need anything special for salvation (that isn’t needed by men), nor do they need to have Christ restore an authority that they lost. The bible has promised that women will be used by God in the last days in a special way in the way that men are used (he has poured out his spirit on all of us). Yes, he has drawn us to himself and it is special. I know exactly what you mean. I too have grown more in the last seven years than I have grown in the time since I became a Christian. But this 1 Timothy 2:11-15 passage isn’t about you and I needing to be stopped from teaching. It is a specific word given to Timothy for a specific situation.

I spose I project my own personal testimony into the passage.
I believe the scripture and try my very best to obey what it says.
I attended seminary for a year in preparation for the mission field (in a muslim country from 87-90). The seminary did not allow women to take homiletics/preaching but I took hermeneutics where I learned that “context is king!”
Although some people try to claim that the restrictions on women ONLY apply in church, that butchers the scripture!!! It is really QUITE CLEAR from the context that the instructions in this passage applies EVERY WHERE:
“I will therefore that men pray EVERY WHERE,, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women…” 1Tim 2: 8- 9

I came to the conclusion that either I was misunderstanding the passage or the passage meant something very much like you stated here, Cheryl:

Verse 12 could be reasonably interpreted to restrict a woman from teaching any thing to any man. A woman couldn’t even give a man directions on how to find an address for fear that she would be teaching him something.

…which would resemble the lot of women in strict muslim countries: no woman teach any man anything, no woman have any authority over any man in any realm.

Hi y’all, I’m back 🙂
We had a great time in Niagara Falls,
and all the children did fine in our absence. 😀
I have some thoughts and I’m going to break them up into a few shorter posts instead of rambling on and on in one post.

Cheryl said:
“Charis,

Bless your heart, you are a real thinker! I love how you keep working to process this.

I just want you to know that my posts here are not off the top of my head. I have been thinking about this for quite some time, and I am glad I met you, because I can see the great thought you have given this! I never met anyone else who has thought about it or can discuss it at this level. Thanks again! 🙂

Cheryl said:
“My research and documentation has proven that 1 Cor. 15:36 is one of the most powerful statements of liberty and restoration and completely refutes even today’s hierarchists. I fully agree with you and isn’t this just like our God and Savior?”

and I didn’t see 1Cor 15:36 in your index on the side…
I’m intrigued by it, but I want to finish thinking through this 1Tim passage first.

I’m gonna be gone a couple days. (Its my 25th wedding anniversary 🙂 )
speaking of which…. I think the divorce rate is higher among patriarchal Christians than in the world (see the article “A Fresh Perspective on Submission and Authority in Marriage: at this link http://www.cbeinternational.org/new/free_articles/biblical_studies.shtml ) because the women eventually grow up and want to have a say about their own life… Fortunately, my husband has made the adjustment 🙂 though he still has no clue about all this stuff that I am learning (YIKES!)

(BTW How do I do the quotes like y’all?)

Cheryl said:
“When you are finished have a close look at the two columns? Are they similar at all?
Let me know and then we will move on.”

Actually, they are pretty much the same.
“she” is each one of them and she moves into “they” when Christ is formed in her.

oops, let me try that again…

I want to thank you all for being so polite and respectful.
This is how I found you:

HERE FROMjusta berean FROM pro deo sum FROM Family Life Forums

You might want to go over to the latter message board and help the lonely voices in the wilderness who know what you are saying. I have been seeking for @3 years over there and have been “accused” of being an “egalitarian feminist” even though I didn’t know a thing about “egalitarian”

I’m not over there any more.
They weren’t so polite and respectful as y’all.
I’m a “rebellious Jezebel” :rolleyes:
Bless you! 🙂

I want to thank you all for being so polite and respectful.
This is how I found you:

HERE

Thanks so much for your patience with me. I had some ideas swirling around but I have only a rudimentary greek training and rely on strong’s and the interlinear. I don’t know the conjugations of verbs and such which does impact the translation.

[quote]Cheryl wrote: ” “they” is (now I am not too sure about this one so correct me if I am wrong) women in the past? You said “have continued in” but the tense is something that is to be done at the time that Paul wrote it. That means that both “she” and “they” must do something together.”[/quote]

What if the “she” is Eve/me/woman and the “they” who continue in faith….. are women future to Paul? (which would be faithful women of the past to me- in 2007)

I think your assumption and proof Paul is addressing a problem contemporary to himself and Timothy is a valid assumption. But I wonder if there is another “level” to the scripture here (as there is with much of OT prophecy)? IOW it is personal, it applies to ME too, not just the people back then who were contempories of Paul and Timothy?

Another possibility which I wondered about is this:
Gune can be translated “wife”
THEY- the husband and wife?

My rendering:
Let the wife learn in quietness with all subjection.
I don’t permit a wife to continuously teach nor usurp authority over the husband, but to be in quietness.
For Adam was formed first, then Eve
And Adam was not deceived, but the wife being deceived has made/birthed a breach/transgression. She will be saved/made whole/restored now by means of begetting/birthing the child if THEY (husband and wife?) continue in fidelity and love and holiness with sobriety.

Since it is “she” who is made whole (not “they”) perhaps saved/made whole refers to a restoration of a womanly character, reputation, role. No longer held in contempt as “deceived” but “discerning”. Her pre-transgression and pre-curse dominion/authority and position in marriage restored. Like a reversal of the curse upon Eve

This seems to be some parallel preaching by Paul:
Gal 4:19 ¶ My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
20 I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.
21 ¶ Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.
29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.
31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

Perhaps the child-bearing in 1Tim is the child of promise rather than the child of the bondwoman? It is the woman moving from life under the law, in the Old Covenant to life under the promise, to freedom under the New Covenant.. She moves from “one born after the flesh” to “one born after the spirit”. That would mean the possibility is there for ALL women, married, single, childless

I feel as though I lived under the law! I believed what the teachers, preachers, books, translators, commentators said about women being silent, restricted, easily deceived. Their news was not good news to me, it spoke death over me. And I quenched the witness of the Spirit within which cried out at the bondage and yearned for life and freedom. I was a baby Christian for 25 years, never really growing up and learning to walk in the Spirit, still in bondage, living under the flesh, living legalistic without a deep relationship with God…. So I personally identify with the process illustrated in this verse “Cast out the bondwoman!” : moving out from a life in bondage under the law into liberty!

Gal 5:1 ¶ Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Cheryl,
What if the passage that has been (mis)used by generations to keep women silent is really one of the most powerful statements of liberty and restoration in the Bible? Wouldn’t that be ironic?

🙂

Thank you, Cheryl for taking the time to think about my questions and consider my ponderings when you are in the heat of such a warfare as this.

Cheryl wrote:”he ties it in with “the childbearing”. It is a definite noun. What one child is tied in with salvation?”

I agree that “the childbearing” refers to Christ formed in a woman
my cross references for that are Gal 4:19-5:1 and Rev 12

Cheryl wrote: “The basic meaning of the verb sozo is to rescue from peril, to protect, keep alive. Sozo involves the preservation of life, either physical or spiritual.”

What isn’t sitting right with me is “she will be saved if THEY continue in…” So, if we take your understanding of it being a woman teaching doctrinal error, is HER salvation dependant upon THEY?

Paul uses Eve being deceived as a “type” of the church (“a chaste virgin bride”) being deceived in 2Cor 11:2-3 I considered whether 1Tim 2:14 could refer to the church, but that does not fit with the context. In context, Eve has to refer to “a woman” and not the original “Eve” because the woman “shall be saved” is future.

What if “they” in verse 15 refers back up to “women” in verses 9-10?
What if you, Cheryl; and I Charis are among those women?
What if every woman, married, single, childless or mother of all the generations since Christ who CONTINUED “in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety” and “adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety… [and] with good works. ” (9-10)
What if “she shall be saved” is me? I am 48 years old. I have been an evangelical Christian for some 28 years. In the past 3 years, I have grown in my relationship with God exponentially. I feel that I am being renewed in the image of my Creator in a way I have not experienced earlier in my Christian life. Christ is being formed in me (and by the way the labor of THIS childbirth is painful and intense and would be equally painful for a single childless woman- Gal 4:19)

Could that “sozo” be about me/woman/Eve being restored to HIS image? because THEY/women have continued in….
“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge *after the image of him that created him*” (Col 3:10 )
Isn’t the female reflection of the image of God Eve? So if I- Charis- am “renewed in knowledge after the image of” my creator doesn’t that look like Eve restored?

We are looking at God’s Word, alive and active, sharper than any two edged sword. What if this has been veiled until this generation? Wasn’t the truth about slavery veiled for some 1800 years?

I see it as a promise to any woman, that she can be restored to garden intimacy with Christ, eating from the Tree of Life/Jesus and Garden Authority/Dominion which was undermined in the fall (for all women, not just married women). Personally, I was a christian woman guilty of “husband idolatry”. It is not until I repented from that and put Jesus in His rightful place as my “ONE HUSBAND*” that I am enjoying liberty in Christ.
2Cor 11:2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to *ONE HUSBAND*, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Reading through this, I have such respect for you, Cheryl, to take such persecution with grace! I never heard of Matt Slick, but I have felt oppressed as a Christian woman. And the verse you are discussing above is one of the “clubs”.
I prayed and asked God to show me what 1Tim 2:11-15 means.
I want to share where that went. I am not as knowledgable as you in the greek, but it does not seem incompatible with your findings:
This is the rendering which I think reflects the meaning of the verse:
She (Eve/woman) will be saved (restored) through bearing the child if they (women) continue in…
How could it mean Christian “salvation” because it is dependant upon “they”?
“will be restored” is in the future.
Restored HOW?
I think it refers to the verse before (see below)
I think in any woman who allows Jesus to be formed in her and “continues in…” Eve/woman is restored to the garden state before the transgression: garden intimacy, partaking of the “tree of life”/Jesus, garden dominion/authority.
Quote:
1Tim 2:14-15 interlinear
Adam not was-deceived the but woman being-deceived in transgression has-become;
She-will-be-saved but through the childbearing if they-remain in faith and love and holiness with sensibleness
Taken with my understanding of 1Tim 2:14, “THE CHILD bearing”/Christ being formed in me
(see also Gal 4:19-5:1 and Rev 12 – parallel passages on the childbirthing)
this interpretation would resolve the appearance that the curse on Eve seems to exempt single women:
Quote:
Ge 3:16 ¶ Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.