Cheryl Schatz

gengwall,

Cheryl – as I said early on my objective isn’t to convince so much as to provide food for thought.

I think it is always valuable to provide food for thought as it stimulates our minds to stretch beyond where we are (stuck). My concern in this one is that if there is no weight of evidence to have Paul go from a generic prohibition to a specific example that gives no background on the specifics, the generic prohibition will be turned around as a universal prohibition against all women’s teaching to men for this is where the comp position gets its universal prohibition from. If Paul isn’t stopping false teaching and the woman’s transgression and deception which is ongoing, the specific example will be seen as a byproduct of what is forbidden for all women. i.e. all women are forbidden to teach men and when one woman doesn’t listen and is teaching her husband, she is sinning. If it opens the way for comps to reaffirm a universal prohibition on all women, then it needs to be especially evaluated to see if it holds weight because I guarantee it will be used against egal women who are sincerely seeking to serve the Lord by using their gift of teaching for the benefit of the body. A generic view of verses 11 & 12 has always been used for a universal prohibition against all women. And if one woman’s transgression (vs 14) is not tied to one woman’s prohibition (vs 12) and the two can be seen as separate instead of tied together in context, then a universal prohibition against all women will be against godly teaching by women instead of dealing with the deception of a particular woman. Therefore testing this view is highly important.

You rightly bring up the issue of the anarthrous noun and its importance. The question is whether we divorce the presence of the definite noun for “the woman” in verse 14 from “a woman” in verses 11 & 12. Why would Paul not use “the woman” in verses 11 & 12 to begin with?

First of all it was not necessary to use the definite article to show that this was a specific person. Timothy was very aware of the sticky situation that he needed Paul’s help on and when Paul went from the plural to the singular and placed a prohibition using the singular, there would have been no doubt in Timothy’s mind what Paul was doing and why.

The next question would be why Paul had to use the definite article in verse 14. How would comps see verse 14 if it was anarthrous? Would all women be set up as having being permanently weak, deceived and sinners by nature while all men would be seen as leaders, strong and unable to be deceived? What do you think?