67 Kristen,

You said:

Cheryl, I like your view; I really do. I just wish there were some way for me to get around what seems to me to be a real fact about this passage: that the context of this section is Paul talking about how groups of people conduct themselves in the church. For him to suddenly switch over to talking about one particular woman, with absolutely no transitionary words to make this clear, is just hard for me to swallow.

Excellent challenge Kristen! There are transitionary words that document the change. First of all is a change from a desire to a command. A critical and exegetical commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (pg 452) details the change to the imperative:

A new topic, which extends through to v. 15, is introduced with asyndeton (cf. BD 459–63) and a switch to the third-person imperative.

The second piece of grammar change is from plural to the singular. This is exceptionally awkward if keeping within the general instructions that Paul has just given. The key problem in seeing verses 11-15 as dealing with women in general is verse 15 which cannot be removed from verses 11 & 12. Verse 15 cannot be generic or the verse becomes nonsensical. Men have tried extremely hard to force verse 15 to be women in general saying that the singular and plural refer both to generic women, but this is not only unprecedented but nonsensical and it brings in an idea of women’s salvation through child bearing that is completely outside the scope of the rest of the Scriptures. There is no other way to take verse 15 that is not problematic is to take the singular and the plural just as they are written. Thus Paul changes the subject in verse 11 to the issue of a problem woman and he ends the discussion with verse 15 – the expected good outcome of her salvation.

I believe that Paul was inspired by God to write this section and the grammar is not a mistake. I also believe that some things that Paul has written are very hard to understand outside of the context of an insider. There is no doubt in my mind that Timothy knew exactly what Paul was talking about. Timothy also knew the people involved, the problems and I believe that Paul was writing in response to discussions that he had with Timothy either in writing or in person.

If one doesn’t believe as I do about the inspired grammar then one will come to this passage confused, but not even knowing it until verse 15. Verse 15 is the clincher. The singular and the plural cannot be forced to mean the same thing, nor can the salvation of all women be forced to be dependent on having children nor on the actions of others (they). If you concentrate on verse 15, I believe that the rest will all fall into place. Figure out verse 15 and there will be no question that verse 12 is not a prohibition of all women from teaching any or all men.

I still admit it as a possibility– but when I have tried to present this view to others who are not already inclined to be egal, they have seen it as evidence that I want to read this sudden introduction of one woman into the text, just to bring about an egal interpretation.

This is why verse 15 is so important. This verse dictates who is being referenced in verses 11 & 12. The complementarian argument falls apart in verse 15 with a confusing conclusion. One is left scratching their head. The fact is that we are forced to conclude that the singular and plural are not the same because Paul differentiates them in verse 15, so we have to go back and take the beginning of what Paul says in verse 11 and conclude that his change in grammar from plural to singular is intentional and not a mistake. It is verse 15 that forces us to this conclusion and it changes everything. If a person questions me on verses 11 & 12 and makes fun of me because I take the grammar as anaphoric, I let them know that verse 15 requires me to take it this way, as well as verse 14. I read back into verses 11 & 12 the specific singular because I want to respect God’s word and I have to make Paul a nonsensical idiot who is deliberating deceiving and tricking everyone when he uses singular and plural in verse 15 to mean the same thing. It is God’s Word that causes me to respect the grammar.

I am not afraid of people making fun of me. I just respectfully as them to make sense of verse 15 and then I ask them how child bearing relates to verses 11 & 12 and how salvation relates to child bearing and why Paul would confuse the grammar by doing what no other Scripture passage has ever done – and that is to make a singular to be the same thing as plural in the same sentence. No one has been able to unravel this in a way that keeps the respect of Scripture to say what it means and means what it says.

And I’m talking about scholarly people here, not just ones who have a knee-jerk reaction against egal interpretations in general. In other words, introducing a single, unnamed woman here is causing more skepticism directed at egalitarianism, not less.

This doesn’t phase me at all because I want truth more than anything and I reject a lot of what egalitarians say because it comes out as contrived toward a point of view rather than trying to understand what Scripture says. I want consistency and I want truth and if an argument that an egalitarian holds is full of holes, I will reject it. It doesn’t concern me at all that the person is an egalitarian. I want truth and not a system of thought.

Some egalitarians are willing to swallow anything another egalitarian writes just because it gives a reason no matter how weak. I just cannot do that. I really want to know what God’s word means and if I stop searching because I have accepted a weak argument, I won’t press forward to know what God wants me to know. When there is a solid argument, there will be no more contradictions. Then I can stop searching for truth unless I am convinced that there is a hole in my argument that I have not seen. I reason this way because truth does not contradict itself. When I can see contradiction and holes in the argument, I won’t accept it no matter how many doctorate degrees a person has. Truth is not depend on doctorate degrees. Truth is dependent on God’s Word and no contradiction.

Particularly when one interprets “she” as being “Eve representing all womankind,” in which case the use of the present tense is no longer so problematic.

But it is very problematic. How do you have a dead woman representing all womankind? And if she did represent all womankind why is womankind then represented as “they” rather than continue the representation as “she”? And why would Eve be a representative of all women regarding salvation? How does that work? It makes no sense to me regarding “she” and “they” and makes even less sense regarding bearing children. It is confusing, jumbled and not proper grammar.

So I guess I’d have to say, in order to make your reading more convincing, you’ll need to do some explanation of why Paul would switch the subject matter in the middle of the passage with no transitions and no warning. Perhaps this will help you strengthen your reading. I hope so. I would like to believe it.

Paul was writing to Timothy and not directly to us. Paul did not switch writing “in the middle of a passage with no transitions and no warning”. Paul changed grammar and he changed the intention using the imperative. I have no doubt at all that Timothy was expecting Paul to give him advice on how to handle this one problem person. Timothy would have known exactly what Paul meant and the very rare word that Paul used would have instantly told Timothy what Paul’s intention was. Timothy knew. Timothy was not confused. I believe that the only ones who are confused are those who ignore the grammar change and ignore the change to imperative and who ignore verse 15 as the conclusion with both the singular and plural used together as being different. I think that it is our tradition that says that women are somehow inferior that allows us to accept the idea that all women cannot teach with the authority of God’s Word because all women are not as good spiritually as men. I think that we have accepted the thought that we need men’s teaching but women’s teaching is optional. That is not true. The eye cannot say to the hand “I have no need of you”. Women’s teaching is very much needed by men. We are all needed and when we ignore what God has given we all hurt. We have been hurting for a very long time by the false interpretion of 1 Timothy 2:11-15. When we get it right, we will no longer be prejudiced towards women.