Craig

Hi Gengwall,
You may be having a similar problem with definitions to what I had a few months ago. Please correct me if I am wrong Kristen, but I think you would see a universal, general command or principle as one that could be written by Paul to any church throughout history, without any personal knowledge of the church or situation or time they existed. For example, “serve one another in love” is a universal command. However “wash one another’s feet” is a particular command to a particular time and situation based on the universal command.
If v12 was a universal command, it would mean that to teach or authentein is something bad only for women to do, and not for men. It could also mean that women universally have a problem with this, but men never do. Paul would not address every church this way unless the command only applied to women.
For egals to assert that to teach or authentein is always something bad for both men and women to do, Paul must have spoken in terms of “a woman” because there was a specific problem occurring in that specific church involving a woman.
So egals are saying that the command is specific to the situation at Ephesus, and not universal, because Paul only applies it to women. This is the same with the commands of v8-10.