As the designation “Christ” implies, Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s messianic hopes, who has come to gather his people under the reign of God (cf. 1:1, 16–17; 11:2). The designation reminds the reader of Jesus’ redemptive involvement with the people (1:21; 2:6; 3:11–12; 4:15–16, 21–25; 9:36–38; 11:2–6), and necessarily assumes the validity of other designations which cast Jesus as Israel’s long awaited Messiah: e.g., “Son of David,” “Son of Abraham,” “King of the Jews,” “Ruler,” “Coming One,” and “Shepherd.”

Matthew. The College Press NIV commentary (Mt 16:15). Joplin, Mo.: College Press.

And Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jona, because flesh and blood did not reveal (it) to thee, but My Father who is in the heavens.]… is very common in the Talmud and Midrashim as an expression for humanity as contrasted with God;

Allen, W. C. (1907). Vol. 26: A critical and exegetical commentary on the gospel according to S. Matthew. The International critical commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (175–176). New York: C. Scribner’s sons.

I removed the Hebrew expressions from the second quote as my blog doesn’t allow for these foreign characters.

NN, I think you are running into a problem as you are equating “Christ” as “God” when the two terms are not synonyms. They are not interchangable terms and the Bible never says that the husband is to be a reflection of God to the wife. It is a serious weakness in your argument.

Jesus is both God and Man. The Christ is a term for His sinless humanity. While God expresses His relationship with Israel as a husband, He never said that the husband in a human marriage reflects God. So where in the New Testament is it ever said that marriage is a reflection of GOD and the church?

NN,
When you say that marriage is to be like Christ and the church are you inferring from the term Christ that this means Deity or His humanity? Do you have a reference for the husband and wife being like GOD and the church?

By the way I will be in Minneapolis this week giving three lectures on women in ministry and our freedom to represent Christ and teach His word. Hopefully I don’t have anyone stuck in my spam box during that time as I don’t know how much time I will have to go through email or view this blog. I have been given a very busy schedule so carry on folks without me although I do hope that NN will be forthcoming in spelling out the bottom line of what he is claiming. If I do get time to check on the blog, I will certainly try.

NN,
I don’t think you directly answered pinklight’s question. Are you saying that the husband reflects God and the wife reflects the church? If you could answer that one directly first, that would be helpful. Yes or no.

NN
You seem to be suggesting that a wife is to see her husband as lord and king and master.

He is to be our Husband as our Lord, King and Master

That is taking the metaphor of marriage too far for the human husband is not God. He is a sinner who is not lord or king or master of his wife.

Maybe it is just late, but I don’t understand your point. You said:

For “man cannot shut up about the gospel.”

Are you trying to say that a wife seeing her husband as lord, king and master has something to do with the gospel?

NN, Please forgive me. I had not realized that your post would end up in my blog spam box and I did not catch that until just now. Sorry that you post got left aside for a few days. It was not my intention that this happened. Thanks for respecting my wish to have the discussion posted here.

NN, I would like the community here to read and interact on my blog. I would be happy for you to post your comments here. Please do so rather than a link. Thanks!

Craig,
I think it was just an internet typo that you found and yes it is good to double check before we solidly hang our hat on it.

Also if it was active and Eve was the deceiver it would make her unlike Paul who was not a deceiver but who was deceived. It would also make it far less likely that she would be treated as one who needs to be taught. Deceivers are not sent to the church to be taught, but are turned over to satan to learn not to blaspheme. Paul’s assurance that “she will be saved…” and that she must learn and of course the grammar that says that she was deceived, makes it clear to me that she is not in the category of the deceivers.

But as usual you find such good things to check out because you are digging deep in order to uncover only truth. Good show!

18 Charis,

You said:

PS. Here’s another scripture where Paul uses his (marriage and) childbirth metaphor:

Where exactly in Romans 7 are you equating marriage and childbirth?

17 Charis,

You said:

How about?
Paul was writing this letter to Timothy and they had a shared context. Timothy could have already been familiar with the allegory.

So where would the original allegory be found? 1 Timothy was written to Timothy but it was also inspired by the Holy Spirit and so it was meant to be understood. How could a hidden allegory that was known only to Timothy and Paul have been understood to make the words worthy enough to have been saved for our benefit? You said:

Paul compares the church to Eve in 1 Cor 11:3.

Where does Paul compare the church to Eve in 1 Corinthians 11:3? Next you said:

Paul compares the relationship of Christ and the church to a marriage in Eph 5.

That doesn’t follow that the church is compared to Eve anymore than I can say that the church is compared to me because I am married.

Paul equates childbirth with the process of “Christ formed in you” in Gal 4:19.

No, that is not true. Paul is equating the pain of childbirth with the anxious concern he has for his spiritual children. He is not saying that he is giving birth to Christ in them. The pain is his pain, not Paul giving birth to little Christs within us. You said:

Paul uses Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar allegorically to describe salvation. Taking all these clues together, ancient church fathers understood Eve as a “type” of the church.

While Paul does equate Abraham and Sarah with our inheritance through faith and Hagar is equated with the old covenant that cannot bring life, you are taking unrelated verses and stringing them together to say something that the Bible never says. The Bible is not about hidden “clues” that have to be uncovered to form a secret knowledge that has been hidden. Eve is not set up to be a form of the church. This would be reading into the text rather than seeing what the text actually says.

There are many who have made a link between Eve and “mother” church even going so far as to claim that there has to be a mother God who is married to the Father God. The Personal gleanings of those who went before us are not inspired and the Bible never explicitly says that Eve is a picture of the church or that the church can be said to be in the state of deception and not yet saved.

To the understanding of Augustine, et al, add that of Katharine Bushnell: “827. The ‘childbearing’ of Revelation 12 is that same ‘childbearing’ of 1 Timothy 2:15?

It isn’t even close to being the same grammar as 1 Timothy 2:15 is a definite noun and Revelation 12:2 is a verb.

16 Charis,

You said:

I disagree. The passage says she shall be saved through the childbirth.

That is what I quoted for if “she shall be saved” is future, then she isn’t saved at the present time. So if “she” is the church then the church is made up of unsaved people who will be saved sometime in the future. How would this make any sense?

Craig,
I don’t know why the link shows an active voice. I looked up a couple of my interlinears NASB based and KJV based and they are both showing the passive.

gengwall,
As to the generic woman at the beginning of the passage, Craig found a resource The Greek NT by Ward Powers on page 32 that shows that the first word of the Greek sentence doesn’t necessarily have to have a definite article to be definite. This would apply to 1 Timothy 2:11.

For those who might also think Paul is giving an allegory for the church, I ask, where is the marker that qualifies this as being an allegory? Where is the meaning of the allegory listed? Where is the church said to be unsaved? If there is no answer to my questions, then how would we ever have a Scriptural tool how to identify this as an allegory, unravel the meaning of the allegory, check to see if our understanding is correct and then apply the allegory?

Charis, I don’t think that Paul would go into a complex allegory without saying so. After all, Paul made it clear that the two people he was talking about in Galatians 4 as allegory, were allegory stating this as clear as can be in Gal 4:24. Why then would Paul resort to a more complex allegory in 1 Timothy 2 without ever stating that it is allegory and what the allegory means? Should we take this further to make the attire spoken of in 1 Timothy 2:9 as allegory with the pearls representing Christ being attached superficially to their hair when he should instead be attached to their inner beings? We have to be very careful as allegory can be used to remove the clear teaching of Scripture and instead be used arbitrarily to mean whatever we think it should mean. While Paul went into great detail to give the application of the allegory in Gal 4, no such application is given in 1 Timothy 2.

Also if we see this as an allegory about the church, then the church is not saved. Does the Scripture define the church as those who are not saved? Never. The Scripture talks about the church as those who are born from above, not those who are still existing in the results of the transgression. The church is never given as an allegory of the deceived ones nor is the salvation of the church from death to life said to be something in the future that follows things that she, the church must do. Lastly the salvation of the church is not said to be dependent on whether the last Adam remains in faith with us. There is never a conditional if attached to the last Adam. Hebrews makes it clear that there is no if attached to the resurrected Christ. He cannot die again and our faith is not attached to one who may or may not remain in faith (thus qualified as being attached to an “if”). How would such an iffy allegory be consistent with the rest of the Scriptures?

We can tell that the Scripture is giving an allegory if the author says that it is an allegory or tells us what the allegory means. If we make the entire Scripture an allegory then we will have lost our foundation for truth as truth then becomes an allegory based on our own interpretation. We should never look to a passage that is not identified as an allegory, to be an allegory especially if the meaning of the passage can be understood in the way it is written. I believe very strongly that the specific grammar of this passage shows a specific meaning that can be understood exactly as it is written. There is no such marker that makes this an allegory.

Mark 9:38, 39 Is this the verse you were thinking about?

Okay, I am going to shut down the comments on this post and refer people with comments to the current post here http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2011/06/25/specific-or-general-woman/ as I don’t want the comments to disappear on this post due to being over the limit on length.

Thanks to Craig, here is a scan of the part of the page that lists point that the first word doesn’t necessarily have to have a definite article to be definite.

The thing that has really stuck in my mind is that fact that Paul did not consider it “godly” to stop someone from preaching the truth of the gospel. How can we then say that Paul was stopping godly women from teaching the truth of the gospel to men? It just doesn’t fit.

You’re welcome pinklight!

Craig,
If you have the ability to scan that page and email it to me, I would be interested in looking at it.

Also my new article is up on line here http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2011/06/25/specific-or-general-woman/

Craig,
You are correct in that emphasis is through word order. I did not know that the first word in that way could be taken as a definite. Very interesting.

Sorry folks, that I took so long to get this post up. As you can see it is quite detailed and it took me quite some time to edit it, as well I have been extremely busy as I am preparing to give three talks in July along with corresponding powerpoint presentations. My upcoming talks are a high priority right now so part two of this post may take a bit to post. Hopefully everyone will have patience with me. Thanks!

I have just posted the next article on this issue here http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2011/06/25/specific-or-general-woman/

If we could move over to that post to continue comments as I am going to close the comments here to make sure that we do not go over the limit and lose the comments on this post as they tend to disappear when we get close to the 300+ comment level.

Hank,
Welcome to my blog!

Circumcision is indeed nothing when it comes to salvation. However circumcision that is for medical reasons is not an issue of slavery or freedom. Neither can physical circumcision remove the sin from our hearts. It is a sign and a symbol that was fulfilled by Christ.

9 Waneta Dawn,

That is an interesting thought and certainly could be part of what Paul is saying.

Welcome to my blog kbonikowsky and dogmadekate!

Ryan,
The problem with upgrading is that I will lose comment numbering. I would hate to lose that.