Cheryl Schatz

gengwall,
You said:

I think you are overly concerned about a supposed connection of the “women” of vs. 10 and a generic woman in vs. 11.

Actually I do see a connection between the two. The godly women of verse 10 would be part of the solution in teaching that is done in verse 11. Their maturity would be used to teach the problem woman when she is brought into the place of submission to learning the truth. The concern that I have is making verses 11 & 12 being about any woman thus having a universal prohibition applied to any woman generically.

There are many stark indicators that paul has changed subjects beyond the obvious change in grammatical number.

However if verses 11 & 12 are about any woman, then this would include the women in verse 10. That would make them not part of the solution to the problem, but they would also be a part of the prohibition. Do you see that?

Just the introduction of authentein alone makes this a very different situation.

The introduction of authentein should limit this to an unusual situation rather than an application to all. The use of a very unusual word seems to take away a universal application. The word is not widely used to make it applicable to any woman.

As we all know, comps make illogical leaps of reading into the text all the time and your explanation for the anarthrous woman in vs. 11 won’t put a stop to that behavior.

I agree with you about those whose mind is already made up. However for those who want to know the truth about the passage, we can reason from the Scriptures with them.

So, your argument has a flavor to it that strikes of fear that it must be your way or egalitarianism can not survive.

That would be overstating my case and that is not what I said. What I did say was more along the line that one is giving them a foothold to use an egal reasoning to push the universality of a specific prohibition. If the reasoning is solid then that is a foothold that is given that is necessary. But if your reasoning has problems, then there is a better solution to the problem of these verses that does not give an opportunity of a universal prohibition in the context.

Put another way, you see a lot of danger in my position which I think simply doesn’t exist.

That is why it is always helpful to work through these issues so that we can see things from each other’s viewpoint even if we still end up disagreeing. Discussion like this helps people not to put their own understanding into another person’s viewpoint thus there will be no misrepresentation.

I see a similar panick in the inter-church creation debate, where young-earth creationists insist that there can be no other interpretation because an old earth would guarentee victory to the evolutionists.

I think that is far too simplistic in representing the concern. The issue is far more about the clarity of God’s word and the acceptance of what God has written in context. I think the same thing is the issue in the women debate. Has God written His words so that they can be understood in the complete context? This is why I have made it a practice not to run away from hard passages but to keep my nose in the midst of the passages until there is an understanding from the context. I don’t believe that God intends to contradict Himself and anything that is contradictory is not His fault but our own mis-understanding.

The fundimental reason why my position doesn’t grant an inch to comps is that I am still arguing for an individual woman in vs. 11, just as you are. Mine is generic to be sure but she does not lose connection to yours, who is the archetype.

I just don’t see that. Arguing for a generic woman means that any woman can fit into that category thus a generic woman is not much different than all women except it is one at a time instead of a group. It still rejects one specific woman alone.

Kristen’s example from the workplace is indeed a great analogy and makes perfet sense to me. I see no reason why Paul and Timothy couldn’t have had a similar dialog.

The problem with Kristen’s example is two fold. First of all it is stated as not singling one woman out but then in verse 14 it is doing just that. Second of all using the phone for private matters while you are being paid to do company matters is not the same as saying one cannot use the phone at all at any time. However verse 12 says that “a woman” is not allowed to teach a man. It doesn’t say that she can’t teach him in church but she can teach him at home. It says that she is not allowed to teach him period. The reason is stated both before and after the prohibition. Before the prohibition it is stated that she needs to learn. After the prohibition the issue of deception is used as a reason for the prohibition, but the fact is that one of the things she is to stop doing is teaching him.

Now if the illustration Kristen used would be that all employees are forbidden to use the phone at any time, then this would affect both the person who is misusing company time as well as those who call out on their breaks. That would lump the offender in with all those who are being respectful. Is Paul really doing that? Is he stopping any woman from teaching men just because one woman was teaching her deception to her husband? I am not persuaded at all that this is Paul’s intention. It is not like him to forbid godly actions because of one person who is doing something wrong. I would like to ask if you have any Biblical precedent for Paul stopping the freedom of any person from doing something because of one person doing wrong? If Paul did that then it could be seen as a precedent to stop any godly woman teaching any man just so that one deceived woman doesn’t think that she is being singled out.

What needs to be established, and what I think is clearly established in the text, is that the topic is false teaching. Once that is accomplished, the separation from vss. 8-10 is complete and there is no threat from a generic woman in vs. 11.

But the problem with making verses 11 & 12 as generic is that false teaching is not identified here. It is not until the issue of a specific woman is identified with the deception of Eve that we see deception. But then we have to ask ourselves why any woman is to be stopped from teaching because someone else is deceived? A generic woman would not be equal to a deceived woman since deception is not generic.

Do you see a threat in the passage that would spoil anything by making the woman of verses 11 & 12 as a specific woman rather than any Pam, Patricia or Mary?