Chris

Paula: “Again, truth and fact are not a matter of popularity, even among experts.”

The argument is a legitimate appeal to expert opinion. The fact that there is expert consensus serves to demonstrate that some quirky individual wasn’t chosen for the ‘expert’. As you know you can find an ‘expert’ to support almost any position you want to take but, by backing up the expert with a second opinion, peer review, or other experts, you can avoid committing the fallacy of unrepresentative sample. The ad populum fallacy is not an issue here.

Paula: “Even the example– ‘most physicians believe that a high fat diet is unhealthy’– can be and has been challenged due to evidence that it is a high carb diet that is unhealthy.”

I’m sure a high carb diet is unhealthy too. The dose makes the poison 😉 . But your counter-argument is irrelevant to the question. The fact that experts can make unsound judgments doesn’t make the appeal to expert opinion an invalid argument form. It just means the truthfulness of the expert’s claim should be judged on other grounds. All other things being considered equal, if someone can support their claims with expert opinions, the burden of proof shifts to the person without the support expert opinions.

Paula: “And who are the experts you appeal to? You did not name them.”

I’ve named and quoted a couple, but why is it necessary for me to name all the experts involved? This would be a huge task and one which space does not permit on this blog. It seems to me, thus far at least, that Terri Darbi Moore’s point that “[m]ost commentators and scholars see these two verbs in 1 Tim 2:15 as both referring generically to all women, with the conditional clause qualifying the discussion to refer to Christian women in particular” stands until a good argument can be made to reject it.

Now I know you guys have a peculiar take on the grammar in 1 Timothy 2:15, namely, your claims about the shift from ‘she’ to ‘they’. It seems like you have a mental block in place when it comes to understanding what ‘she’ and ‘they’ are referring to, and I’m not sure how to get you past it. IMHO, Moore’s explanation was fairly clear. Are you saying that if ‘she’ refers back to ‘the woman’ in verse 14, then ‘the woman’ in verse 14 cannot be put for all women collectively because ‘she’ is grammatically singular? If so, please defend this claim.

Personally, I’m inclined to agree with John MacArthur when he says, “The salvation spoken of here is not salvation from sin. It cannot refer to Eve since the future tense is used (“she shall be saved”)” (see http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/sg54-17.htm). When ‘she’ in verse 15 refers back to ‘the woman’ in verse 14 it is not referring to the woman *as* Eve or *as* the woman herself but rather the woman as the representative of all women collectively. Using the singular ‘she’ is fine grammatically because ‘the woman’ in verse 14 is singular, but it should be understood that all women are meant because, conceptually, ‘the woman’ stands for all women. The plural ‘they’ in verse 15 refers to all women collectively.

Cheryl doesn’t like the idea that ‘she’ refers back to its nearest candidate for antecedents in verse 14 so she says, “The only ‘she’ in this entire passage that verse 15 can refer back to is ‘a woman’ from verse 12.” But this is an ad hoc hypothesis designed to prevent her pet interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 from being falsified. The fact that she has to go all the way back to verse 12 for an antecedent that works in her theory begins to reveal how weak her view really is. Generally, though I will certainly grant not always, the nearest antecedent is correct (note: I’m not thinking of demonstrative pronouns here). The patriarchalist view accepts the nearest antecedent.