Cheryl Schatz

@168 gengwall,

You said:

But I don’t think we need to turn “a woman” in verse 11 into the specific woman of vs. 14. What I mean is that the vs. 11 woman can be a generic example. Now, comps say that as well. But they want to make her a generic example of ALL women, or even worse, all Christian women in the worship service. It is clear, though, from the text, that she is a generic example of a specific kind of woman – a deceived false teacher who is exercising violent domineering over her husband and whose potential salvation is in the future. It is unimaginable that this kind of woman represents the entire female population of the Body.

I very much agree with the last part of this paragraph, but I have a different view from the first part. First of all I need to say that what you believe is possible from the text. And I could be wrong in what I believe. However if verse 11 is about general women who are deceived, then we would have a shift from general to specific in verse 12 without any signal of the shift. Or perhaps I just don’t understand what you are saying and I can grant that as a possibility.

In verse verse 9 Timothy is talking about women in general and he uses the plural. What would make verse 11 to be about a certain group of women in general rather than about all women or about one woman? There is no hint found in verse 11 that Paul is talking about deception or that the generic “woman” is about a class of people. We don’t understand that deception is the problem until Paul stops the teaching in verse 12.

If verse 11 is about a special kind of woman as representative of all deceived women, what Paul could have done to make this clear is to keep the general term “women” and then add something for us to know that it was the class of deceived women in general that need to learn.

Then when we get to verse 12 we would have the same term “woman” now as a specific woman without any hint that Paul has just gone from a generic special group to a specific woman. At least when he went from plural to singular we knew that there was a change. I certainly could be wrong, but it seems to me that if we took verse 11 as a special group of women then we would have to take verse 12 as a special group of women too. That would complicate the “a man” to another special group of men and the “she” and “they” in verse 15 would now be, she = a special group of women (thus generic plural) and they = ? (Perhaps a special group of women plus a special group of men or only just a special group of men or ???) Looking at it this way seems to muddle everything up and makes the passage as if it is Paul’s attempt to confuse us.

In my mind the only way that verse 11 could be about a special group of deceived women would be that verse 12 would be the same group. It would seem odd for Paul to change from the generic plural to a generic singular and then to a specific singular grammar. The switch from generic plural to singular is well documented. And the switch happens in verse 11 and not in verse 12. If Paul had in mind a specific woman in verse 12, why would he call all deceived women “she” in verse 11? And what exactly would alert us to a different usage for “she” in verse 11 from “she” in verse 12?

I think the lesson that we can learn from what Paul writes to Timothy is about how deceived “people” come out of their deception. I don’t think that Paul is honing in on a small group of deceived “women” here other than one deceived woman. I think that if you go with generic language for verse 11 you open up a whole other problem. How can we know for sure that “she” in verse 12 is a specific woman if “she” in verse 11 is not?

In coming to this passage I want to take the simplicity of the passage as best as I can because I sincerely believe that the passage was meant to be understood. I don’t think that taking “she” as meaning two different things in two verses without a signal of the change of meaning would be the simple way of understanding the passage. So while I agree with your basic application of the passage, I have to take a different view of verse 11.

I believe that verse 11 is about one woman who was a problem and that Paul as a positive follower of Christ is so sure of her eventual salvation that he gives the solution before he gives the problem.

If I am wrong, I am open to hearing another side that will make the passage clear. In any challenge I will want to know why I should believe that Paul meant a generic group in verse 11 without identifying which “group” he was referring to and why he changed again to a single person in verse 12 without letting us know by a grammar change?

If I have missed something, fire away. This is great iron sharpening iron stuff and I LOVE discussing the Scriptures this way!