Craig

Gengwall and Cheryl,
Thanks for your replies. From your responses I think I may have been a bit unclear in my comments/questions.
I am thinking of a conversation I had recently with a comp friend after he had just preached a sermon on 1 Tim 2. He stated that it was unwise to base a doctrine ( or view of a passage) on a word that is used only once in the bible. He said that this is what egals do with “authentein” in 1 Tim 2. I replied that I thought comps did exactly what he said not to do because his view required a certain meaning of this word also. He had no answer to that, so that part of the discussion was “tied”.
As I have thought about that more, it seems to me it shouldn’t be “tied” but egals should actually “win” this part of the debate. The egal view of women in ministry doesn’t depend at all on a particular meaning of “authentein”. If it were somehow proved that “authentein” meant what comps claim, there may be a slight alteration in the way 1 Tim 2 is interpreted but it would still be perfectly consistent with egalitarianism.