Cheryl Schatz

Hi Kristen,
Thanks for dialoging and trying to convince me of your position. This is the kind of defense of one’s position and back and forth dialog that I am looking for.

You said:

I said he was talking about “teaching in an authoritative way that contradicts the authoritative teaching that is currently being given by the leaders of the church.” It isn’t “authoritative teaching” I’m talking about. It’s false teaching that purports to be authoritative and thus usurps the true authoritative teaching.

How would you explain the fact that Paul didn’t mention this usurping the “true authoritative” teaching in chapter 1? In chapter 1:3-4, Paul lists the reasons why Timothy has been left behind in Ephesus and then he goes on to speak about those who want to be teachers of the Law.

1 Timothy 1:6–7 (NAS)
6For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion,
7wanting 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.

The Greek term for “make confident assertions” is diabebaioomai. It means to speak confidently, to insist, strongly maintain, give a firm assurance, to be positive, to give special emphasis. There is no doubt that teaching error in a confident way would be contradicting the teaching of the truth, but why would Paul not give us any hint here that there is this is actually a usurping of authority? He uses no words about authority or usurping a position, office or power that belonged only to some. Can you explain to me why Paul would speak about their confident claims but fail to connect this to an authority they were usurping?

Can you also explain why these false teachers in chapter 1 would not be also usurping “authority” but only the women mentioned in chapter 2? Were there no false teachers who were men who were teaching in a confident way? Why then would Paul single out women and not also tell the men that they were not to teach in this way?

You also said:

I never said there was “authority” given to “accepted teachers.” I said the teaching of the “accepted teachers” was considered “authoritative” on the subjects they were teaching about. This has nothing to do with exercising authority over the congregation, any more than the scholar whose book I read to learn what an “authority” on his subject thinks, is exercising authority over my life.

I don’t know how to see it otherwise because you used the word “usurp”. This word means much more than being an authority on a subject.

To usurp authority means:

to seize and hold (a position, office, power, etc.) by force or without legal right: The pretender tried to usurp the throne. source: dictionary.com

When you use terms like usurp, the term has a meaning behind it that is assumed. Perhaps you need to restate what you mean without saying that there was an authority to usurp. Otherwise I don’t understand what you are saying about these “women” who have been called out in a special way by Paul.

In my view the woman in 1 Timothy 2:12 is one of the false teachers from chapter 1 but she is in a unique position in that she isn’t openly teaching her error. She is teaching only one person and this would have presented a special problem.

If many women were in view in 1 Timothy 2:12, then why could they not have been dealt with in chapter 1 with all the other men who were teaching error in a strong and confident way? Why did Paul need to specifically stop only women from teaching their confident errors and why were they only not to teach these errors to men?

I appreciate anyone trying to convince me of their position. I am thoroughly convinced of my own position because it fits without contradiction, but I am open to be convinced of another position in the hopes that there might be more than one option that is plausible from the inspired words and the inspired text that does not contradict the text.