Cheryl Schatz

Craig,
You also said:

4 I know both egals and comps who can see the force of Cheryl’s argument from v15, and yet they still have difficulty accepting that v11,12 are speaking of particular individuals. This makes me wonder “are there any other ways of understanding v11-15, where Paul could be expressing a principle in v11,12 while still making sense of the “she” and “they” of v15.
Pinklight, I understand that you are very hesitant about constructing possible scenarios to explain the meaning of bible passages, but don’t we use background information learned from outside the bible to understand difficult passages quite frequently?

Background information is very helpful to understand the cultural context. However background information will not help us in alleviating the problem of a rogue pronoun missing its corresponding noun. The pronoun “they” cannot attach to a missing noun located in a previous unpublished letter. A pronoun must have a corresponding match and so this is where we must conduct the parameters for our search.

Anyway, suppose Timothy had asked Paul about a particular woman and a particular man. Could Paul have answered this by first stating the principles that would apply to the specific situation in v11,12 (while Paul and Timothy would know exactly who these principles would be relevant to), and then in v15 spoken of them as “she” (the woman) and “they” (the woman and the man/her husband).

This seems highly unlikely. How is it that all of these deceived women are only teaching one man each? Are we really to assume that there are perhaps many deceived women who are not teaching publicly but are teaching and authentein(ing) one man each and that these women will all be saved if the one man they are teaching (who by the way are all saved and not in need of salvation for themselves) will walk with them in faith, love and self control? If this is the case then this is common and not about one woman at all. But if it isn’t about one woman, then what do we do with verse 14 “the woman” who is in the transgression? How would we know that we are to have two different groups instead of one woman throughout the entire context? And lastly, if this was such a common problem that Paul would make a general statement about the generic woman who is teaching one generic man, then why is this problem never mentioned anywhere else? Can we learn general things about this situation that can apply to ourselves and the Church? Yes, I do think so, but I think it would be very hard to defend. I think it would be akin to saying that Paul was giving a general statement about 1 Cor. 5:1

1 Corinthians 5:1 (NASB95)
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.

This could be a generic man who is living with his generic father’s wife, but I don’t think so. The passage does not have names attached and “someone” is very indefinite but I don’t think that it is a generic principle that is being referenced.

This is very similar to Cheryl’s view, but just with a slight twist in v11,12 for those who can’t see the Greek as directly referring to a particular woman and man. Does this make any sense, or is this not possible from the grammar as well?

I think your view will be harder to prove for you will have to deal with the issue of why every false woman teacher is only teaching one man. Aren’t there any false teachers who are teaching a man and a couple of women? Or two men? Or a man, a woman and two children? No, I think the anaphoric reference from verse 14 back to verses 11 & 12 forces us to see this as a specific example. More on that later.