Cheryl Schatz

Craig @73
You said:

Next question. Cheryl @45,
“Timothy who Paul has encouraged before not to be timid must bypass the woman’s husband in order to silence her. Think about the culture of that time and how that culture gave a husband full authority over his wife. If the husband was the perceived “master” of his wife, it should not be hard to understand how sensitive this situation would be when Timothy needed to walk past the “master” to silence the wife’s teaching. It is no wonder that Paul specifically lists this one deceived teacher as a problem as he gives Timothy wise counsel on how to deal with this sticky situation.”
I have heard you say this sort of thing on several occasions. I am not sure that I fully understand the importance of it. What part of the passage are you addressing? What difficulty in interpretation are you addressing?

Thanks for asking! In verse 12 “a woman” is to be silenced from teaching. In 1 Timothy 1:3 Paul reminded Timothy that he was left behind for the purpose of stopping certain people from teaching false doctrine. Deception and false doctrine are a major theme in 1 Timothy and so when we see Paul lending his own name to the stopping of a person from teaching, we have to ask why would Paul single out one of the ignorant teachers who is teaching falsehood? Wasn’t the purpose of Timothy’s existence in Ephesus to stop false teachers? Was he given the command to stop any true teachers? If only false teachers were to be stopped from teaching, then why would Paul have to single out one false teacher?

I believe that the answer to these questions rest with the gender of the false teacher. Any male teacher who was teaching error could easily be commanded to stop. There was no protocol that would stop an apostolic representative from dealing directly with a false male teacher.

But dealing directly with a deceived female teacher was another story in that culture. If she was married and it appears that she was, and since the culture of that day made the husband king of his own home and his wife was under his authority, having a young man (Timothy) take control over another man’s wife would not have been seen as culturally appropriate. But if indeed she was deceived like Eve and her husband was silent like Adam and letting her carry on in her deception without correction, then someone needed to do something for her own spiritual good. Timothy was that someone. He was to go with Paul’s authority and in Paul’s name to stop her from teaching. Whatever fear that Timothy had to overstep a husband’s cultural “rights” would have been helped by Paul giving Timothy the right to stand behind Paul’s name as the author of the prohibition. So in verse 12 we have Paul giving the authority to stop a female false teacher by the authority of one of the doctrinal pillars chosen by the Lord Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:12 (NAS)
12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

I think the term “I do not allow” to be highly significant as a “weight” behind Timothy’s marching orders. “Timothy you stop her from teaching her false doctrine, and you let them know I said so.”

Craig, does this help to answer your question or have I somehow misunderstood what you were asking?