Critique | Can 1 Tim 2:12 be worked out through the meaning of just one word?
I raise this area of critique cautiously,
because I run the risk of criticising John for not doing something he was never
trying to do in the first place. If I
have understood Hearing Her Voice accurately,
John is trying to challenge a particular understanding – he would say misunderstanding – of a specific New
Testament word: teach, didaskÅ. Although his argument relates to the use of
this word much more widely in the New Testament, and especially in the
Pastorals, the critical area under discussion is obviously the application of 1
Tim 2:12 to the question of whether or not women should be permitted to give
sermons in our current context.
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What all this means, though,
is that Hearing Her Voice is not an
exposition of 1 Tim 2, or of 1 Tim 2:11-15, or even just 1 Tim 2:11-12. This observation is not, in and of itself, intended
as a criticism. It’s simply an
observation. I suspect the reason for the
way John has argued is that his conclusion about the application of 1 Tim 2:12 does
not come primarily from a peculiar exposition of the wider passage, but rather
from his understanding of the meaning of this critical word in v12. In other words, I’m guessing that John would
regard his exegesis of the rest of the passage as largely uncontroversial. And therefore it’s not really part of his
argument.
But to properly understand,
and then apply, a passage like 1 Tim 2:12, I think we need to do both things: we
need to work out the meaning of individual words, and we also need to work out
the meaning of sentences and paragraphs.
John’s work is mainly about the first process – the meaning and
implications of an individual word. I
have tried to show where I think it doesn’t work. But we’ve also got to engage in the second
process – working out the meaning and implications of sentences and
paragraphs. For this reason, I don’t
think we can come to a proper understanding of what Paul prohibits in 1 Tim
2:12 without also trying to understand the argument of 1 Tim 2:11-15, 1 Tim 2,
and the Pastorals more widely.
Within the context of 1 Tim
2:11-15, at least three issues require explanation: the relationship between to teach and to have authority, the relationship between Paul’s negative
instructions relating to women (I do not
permit a woman …) with his positive instructions relating to women (Let a woman learn … rather she is to …),
and the relationship between the combined set of positive-and-negative
instructions relating to women in vv11-12 and the theological reasoning of
vv14-15.[1]
i)
the relationship between to
teach and to have authority
John suggests that the best
way of interpreting these words in v12 is that they refer to one activity: the authority of teaching.[2] But the two infinitive verbs are separated by
five other words. With the sense of an
interlinear translation, Paul’s word order goes something like: to-teach but a-woman do-not I-permit nor
to-exercise-authority of-a-man, but to-be in quietness. If the two infinitives do refer to the same
activity, it seems unusual to separate them like this.
Obviously John knows all the
exegetical issues. More importantly, he
says that his overall argument fits whether we think the two infinitives refer
to one activity or two. But in the
paragraph where he explains this a bit further,[3] he says that if we say the
infinitives refer to two activities, the authority that Paul is thinking of must
be the authority of an elder, discussed in 3:1-7. He certainly can’t mean any authority at all, for elsewhere, such as 1 Cor 11:5, he’s very
happy for a woman to prophesy, and this surely involves some degree of authority.
I’m not sure I’ve fully
understood John’s point here, which may be my fault not his. But given the necessary weighing of prophecy
that Paul describes in 1 Cor 14:29-32, a context where Paul gives another
prohibition on women in the public gathering (14:33-35) – a prohibition
commonly understood as referring to a woman’s involvement in the weighing of
prophecy, isn’t it as simply as saying that prophecy must carry a lower
authority than the weighing of prophecy, for women are allowed to do one and
not the other? For the same reason, it
must carry a lower authority than the teaching or exercising authority in 1 Tim
2. In other words, the appeal to 1 Cor
11, or any other passage that indicates women in public speaking roles, doesn’t
negate the fact that Paul still prohibits a woman from teaching or having
authority over a man.
But if the two infinitives refer
to not one activity but two, the plausibility of John’s argument, which after
all is built fundamentally on his alternate understanding what Paul meant by
the word teach, is significantly
reduced. This is even truer if the
proper relationship between the two infinitives is to say that the first – to
teach, is a specific instance of the second – to exercise authority.
ii)
the relationship between Paul’s negative and positive
instructions
The bracketing repetition of quietly/quiet in vv11-12, as well as the Greek word order (in quietness comes before learn), reveals the positive thrust of
Paul’s instruction. His desire is for
women to learn in a particular manner
– the manner of quietness. This manner of learning is then further
qualified with the words with all submissiveness. Such a term automatically introduces a
relational dynamic to Paul’s instruction, for the manner of quietness can exist on its own, whereas submission is to someone or
something. The use of such words is
immensely challenging for modern readers.
It’s probably worth remembering, though, that as any teacher can
testify, when it comes to learning quietness and submissiveness are not
negative qualities, but positive ones.
But what is a woman’s submissiveness in learning directed to? Men?
The teachers? The teaching? The congregation? The most plausible answer is the person doing
the teaching, in the public times during which they are teaching.
Again, though, remembering the
bracketing repetition of quietly/quiet at the start of v11 and the end of
v12, the negative instruction that comes in between these words at the start of
v12 is best understood as a flipside of the same coin about women learning. This way of understanding vv11-12 is also
indicated by the natural contrast of learn
and teach. In other words, v12 is the negative way of
viewing the positive command of v11: for a woman to learn quietly with all submissiveness means a woman is not to teach or to exercise authority over a man. But it’s the positive instruction about women
learning that is Paul’s bigger focus.
If this understanding of the
relationship between the positive and negative commands is correct, and it’s
the way these verses are usually understood, John’s definition of teach would now require that v11 means
something along the lines of: a woman is
to acquire the fixed traditions of and about Jesus as handed on by the apostles
quietly and with all submissiveness.
To unpack it like this certainly exposes the contemporary
inapplicability that John argues for with regard to Paul’s prohibition in v12! But it’s a strange place to come to, isn’t
it? It seems to put all the emphasis on
the specific activity being undertaken, rather than on a truth about how men
and women should relate in the publicly gathered congregation. And yet that is the more natural way to read
vv9-15.
At the same time, for various reasons
other than the ones John has given,
some people have tried to limit the applicability of Paul’s instruction in v12
to this particular time period. To be
consistent, however, whichever argument someone puts forward, if v12 is
temporally limited, then other statements in the immediate context should be
similarly limited. This includes Paul’s
positive instruction for women to learn quietly in v11. Again, it seems a strange place to have come
to.
iii)
the relationship between vv11-12 and vv13-15
As most people recognise, the
theological reasoning behind Paul’s instruction on how women are to quietly
learn is given in vv13-15. His teaching
on the appropriate expression of femaleness with respect to learning (vv11-12)
is grounded in his discussion of male and female roles in Creation and the Fall
(vv13-15). It is not immediately clear
why such a weighty reasoning would be provided for the specific activity of
acquiring the fixed traditions of and about Jesus as handed on by the apostles,
which contextually is what a woman’s learning must now consist of if the
teaching in the next verse means preserving and laying down. But wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to
other contexts with regard to the manner of a woman learning?
Conclusions about 1 Tim 2:11-15
I suggested earlier that the
reason Hearing Her Voice doesn’t give an exegesis of 1 Tim 2, or 1 Tim 2:11-15,
or even just 1 Tim 2:11-12, is because perhaps John doesn’t think there is
anything remarkable about his exegesis of the rest of the passage. I don’t think John says this explicitly
anywhere. It’s just me guessing.
But actually, I think this is
a problem. You can’t just have a
different understanding of one word and leave everything else untouched. If you change one bit, you change the whole
thing. Maybe not in every situation, but
in this situation definitely. It’s just
what happens once you realise the inter-connectedness of Paul’s instructions,
and the inter-connectedness of his instructions and his theological reasoning.
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