I had this idea a while ago and forgot to post it here for discussion until today. The prompt for my doing so was its appropriateness as a response for this post on Halden's blog.
Regarding the fact that 1 Timothy 2 roots its “I do not allow a woman to teach” doctrine in the creation narrative…. I had what was, for me, a bit of a brainwave the other Sunday. There’s another teaching in scripture that is rooted in the creation narrative: Exodus 20:8-11. Yet the Sabbath commandment is unique among the Ten Words in its NOT being repeated in the NT. And while our strategies may differ in how we deal with the Sabbath commandment in our lives, surely we can all agree that Moses’ idea of how to “Keep the Sabbath holy” is bound to his culture, time, and place, and is not for us today.
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Just in case anyone cares, my own strategy for dealing with the Sabbath commandment is twofold: (1) I understand the Sabbath rest eschatologically, and (2) I take various principles behind it seriously in Christian ethics--for example, trusting in God for provision rather than in your work. But I understand actually keeping the Sabbath literally as something I am not to follow as a Gentile Christian. See Romans 14:5.
I think it is wise and important to follow the universal concept of the sabbath, but not the particulars of the practice. Jesus said that "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." It is one more form of grace given to us by our creator. As humans even before the fall, we needed time to rest. The law and rituals of God's chosen people are particular practices to help them physically and mentally conform themselves to a spiritual reality. God rested. That thought interests me. Could God have continued to create indefinitely? Is God, God if he does not create or never ceases to create?
As to the I Timothy 2 passage, I think there is some difficulties with this verse and others like it, but I think there is some truth here as well. If it were an isolated verse it might be easy to overlook, but there are several such passages in the NT. Also, Paul does connect it to the creation narrative which should cause us to pause before deciding it is some form of anachronism. Along the same lines, there are passages about elders or overseers being married men and commandments about husbands being heads of their households. There seems to be a definite intention in the functionality of men and women. God has expected certain roles from the sexes. Their is a great deal of freedom in those roles, but there is a hierarchy. What amazes me in contemporary Christianity is the expectation of equality. If Christians are going to believe in a hierarchical triune God, why is it so difficult to believe in a hierarchical balance to the sexes. The key is that the hierarchy is not based on intrinsic value or essence, for Christ is in every way the nature of God, but it is based on a purposeful submission. Women would do well to follow the lead of Christ when dealing with the topics of teaching men and authority in the church.
Thanks for your comments, Michael!
You said of 1 Tim 2: "Paul does connect it to the creation narrative which should cause us to pause before deciding it is some form of anachronism." This is exactly why I raised the Exodus 20 passage, as another teaching rooted in the creation narrative--but which is certainly "anachronistic" for us. I would argue from the Exodus 20 example that the 1 Tim 2 example is not necessarily for all times and places and peoples, despite being rooted in the creation narrative. You didn't respond to this analogical argument.
You also say: "If Christians are going to believe in a hierarchical triune God, why is it so difficult to believe in a hierarchical balance to the sexes." I do NOT believe in a hierarchy among the Trinity. We could discuss this as a separate issue.
I see Christ as subverting traditional patriarchal structures, in some of his teachings. For example: Matthew 23:9-10. I read this as saying: concern yourself with your obedience to God first, rather than with your obedience to your father (or your husband, or your rabbi). Just as elsewhere the NT teaches that "Jesus is Lord" (and not Caesar) - therefore we should concern ourselves with obedience to Christ and not to human authorities.
And I don't think it's reading Galatians 3:26-29 out of context to say that because "you are all SONS of God...there is no male or female" (my emphasis) that fathers and husbands and male elders are not mediators of salvation nor of communication between God and women. The "priesthood of all believers" applies to women just as it does to men. Hence, my "expectation of equality."
And there are many OT & NT examples of women who do teach and lead; and often put men/patriarchy to shame as they do so.
A couple of people have elsewhere said to my analogy of Exodus 20 and 1 Timothy 2 that since it is a false analogy because the former passage is in the OT/Mosaic Law, and the latter passage is in the NT.
While I think this might make sense from a certain perspective as justification for dismissing the analogy, I am surprised by the response, because I know neither of these friends is in the "the OT is irrelevant and totally replaced by the NT" camp.
My question in response to their pointing out that one passage is in the OT and the other in the NT is this: "On what grounds do we distinguish between one OT author using an earlier part of the OT to make a theological/ethical argument and a NT author using an OT passage to make a theological/ethical argument?"
One friend said that we don't have to keep the Mosaic Law because Christ kept it perfectly for us, and fulfilled the Law. This seems to me to be based on a confusion. While it is true that Christ's perfect obedience atones for us, so that we do not have to be perfectly obedient in order to have fellowship with God, it does not follow that obedience is not expected or not important. To me, the question is not whether or not we as people of God have covenant obligations, but rather what those obligations are, and how they might differ from the covenant obligations of people of God in other times and cultural settings.
It is also said that the coming of Jesus marks a significant change in God's way of relating to humanity from Moses, and that there has not been nor will ever be a similarly significant change after the NT era. Hence, while we may have some reason to abrogate or ignore portions of the Mosaic Law, we may not abrogate or ignore (or contextualize) anything in the NT.
I think this oversimplifies the history of God and God's people. Many changes occurred from Abraham to Jesus. Let's remember our biblical history together and think about important differences in the way God related to God's people in the following times:
-- The Time of Abraham
-- The Time of Moses
-- The Time of David
-- The Time of Solomon's Temple
-- The Time of the Exile
-- The Time of the Maccabean Kingdom
-- The Time of Jesus (or just before Jesus comes on the scene)
further we might notice significant differences between the time of the Apostles and now.
Contextualization seems very important to me as an interpretive tool, and as a tool in Christian theological ethics, and not just for how we respond to OT texts, but also to NT texts.
At the end of the day, I don't see a major difference (in the way we relate to the text) between Moses citing the tradition of the first Creation narrative in Exodus 20 and Paul citing Genesis 2-3 in 1 Timothy 2. The use of the OT in the New (or slightly newer, in the Exodus case) in each case does not completely undercut the need for (culturally/historically) contextual understanding of the teachings in the passage.
Hey Scott...When I wrote about the Exodus 20 Sabbath command not applying to us b/c it was under the Old Covenant, I wasn't trying to make a sweeping claim about the entire OT. It was just an initial thought, trying to differentiate between the two commands (Ex 20 and 1 Tim 2) rooted in the Creation narrative.
I've thought about it some more and probably wouldn't take the same approach to answer again. :)
I agree with you that we have "covenant obligations" even under the new covenant. It's just a difference of what those are.
I think more of what I'd say now is this: In regards to the Sabbath, Jesus offered the final and definitive word the issue. He wasn't so much replacing the command of Ex 20, as much as He was helping God's people rightly understand it. So God's Sabbath command through Moses actually did persevere under the new covenant--just not in the strict literal sense it had previously been interpreted. But with Paul's command in 1 Tim 2, we have no such further revelation.
Did you read the quote from Doug Moo I put on Facebook about the difference between a theological principle and the form of application that principle takes--and how those can not be separated in 1 Tim 2, whereas they could in passages such as Exodus 20 or 1 Cor 11? I'd be interested to hear your response to that.
Scott,
I did respond to your use of the analogous relation between Exodus and Timothy citing the creation narrative as a basis for a command. I may not have state my point clearly, but first let me make an important distinction. First there is a huge difference between saying that I need not follow a command in scripture and that I need not follow a universal ideal that supports those commands. I think you are right to think that you are not obligated under the covenants of the Israelites, but many of those specific practices have universal underpinnings. The specific deeds involved in keeping the sabbath holy may have been of practical importance to the people of Israel but the origin of the sabbath is not in the particular practices but the ideal, creative will of God. It was his nature that both created and rested. So to say, look the sabbath rest references the creation narrative and we do not follow the particulars of the practices associated with the sabbath rest, therefore we do not need to follow the particulars of the commands of Paul seems logical on the surface, but misses the point. Both passages reference the creation narrative not as supporting the particular rules, but to support the idea that there should be rules or roles as in the second case. I think you may be able to successfully argue that the Exodus and Timothy passages do not necessarily apply to all times and places and peoples, but I do not think you would be very successful in arguing that the underlying principles of periodic rest and sex roles in family and church are not universal.
Probably the only key argument against your position seems to be the one taken up by the couple of people you mention in your response. Intuitively, I have the same response to you as them. There is a difference between the commands of Moses to the Israelites and the commands of Peter to the churches. The difference has to be Christ. The Apostles are the appointed continuation of Christ. I have heard it said that the Gospels are Christ revealed and the Epistles are Christ explained. It is an oversimplification, but there is some truth there. Christ commissions his twelve personally and then Paul, later supernaturally. Paul writes to us in Galatians that he is not from men nor through men, but through Jesus and God. With this idea, I would tend to lean to an understanding that there is a significant difference between commandments given before Christ and those given during and after Christ. Also, to whom the command was given is significant. The sabbath commands were given to the Israelites. The commands of Christ and the Apostles were given to the "holy nation and royal priesthood" of believers, the Church. While I am not a member of the Israelites, I am a member of the Church.
The discussion of the Godhead is probably better left for a different day.
I love the Galatians passage, but I think it is used out of context many times. The context is set "in Christ" or as Children of Abraham. In Christ, there may not be a male or female, but clearly there are males and females in marriage or in the church or in the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Just as there is no Jesus or Father in the nature of God, but there is a Jesus and Father in the personhood of God. And Jesus voluntarily submits himself to the authority of the Father (Ephesians 2). So women should submit to the authority of men in the church and wives should submit to the authority of husbands in marriage.
I think that is all for now. I apologize if my thoughts are not clearly laid out. I am very tired tonight.
Thanks for responding again, Marc. :)
I think your response re: Jesus' reinterpreting the Sabbath Law for his followers is a much stronger response.
Here's my response to it, though: Jesus still kept the Sabbath, as a Jew. He took a position among the rabbis of his day on what that meant--for example, should he 'work' on the Sabbath by healing people? Is it permissible to do acts of compassion on the Sabbath? The position he took (yes) was echoed by other (later or contemporary) rabbis, and grounded in the theological claim that God is always 'working' in a sense, to sustain the universe. Jesus taught that "Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath" -- the law of love of neighbor overrides the law of ceasing in some contexts. Jesus was very deliberate about this teaching; he didn't have to heal some of the chronically ill and disabled that he did on the Sabbath; he could have come a day earlier.
But Jesus did NOT refrain from keeping the Sabbath as a Jew; nor did he discourage his (all Jewish!) disciples from keeping the Sabbath. The question of whether or not Gentiles, without conversion to Judaism, and without the requirement of keeping the Sabbath or the food laws or circumscision, could be fully part of the people of God (the Church) was decided *after* Jesus' death & resurrection.
Does it count as "further revelation" because it is an apostolic decision, or because it is recorded in the pages of the NT? What are we supposed to do when there are substantive changes to our context and we have no apostles around? I'm not convinced that everything the apostles set down as rules for the life of the church is normative for us.
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I did read your Doug Moo quote from CBMW. I think if I'm going to play by those rules, my response re: 1 Tim 2 would be that we could in fact identify a separate principle in this passage, informed by historical context. Paul teaches here that "women should learn". Women in this historical context, arguably, were unfit to teach because they were less learned. But once women have been educated, why not let them teach? (So the "principle" would be something like: women [or any young believer] should not teach SINCE they have not YET learned).
I believe this is the argument given in DPL (I forget who--Blomberg? Keener?). The biggest questions raised by this manner of dealing with the text are, I think: (1) Is this an accurate description of the historical situation of the letter's audience?, and (2) What do we do with the summary citation of Gen 2-3 here? My analogy to Exodus 20 can be seen as informing a response to the latter question.
Hey Scott..Just a quick reply...
In regards to the 1 Tim 2 passage, since that what we initially were discussing...I am not convinced that the principle Paul is putting forth has anything to do with the education or lack thereof of the females in the churches Timothy was overseeing. This is not explicitly stated at all in the text. While it might be true historically that the women were uneducated, to read that into the text as the primary reason Paul refuses to have women teach/preach is not an appropriate way to go about exegesis in my opinion.
Whereas the principle of males having God-given authority over females is explicitly stated. It is precisely this principle that Paul is grounding in the Creation narrative. The "for" of verse 13 is unquestionably linked to verse 12. So the question in my mind then is can this principle of male authority over females be upheld if women--even if they are educated--are teaching, preaching, and leading men? I am hard pressed to envision how it could.
Thanks for the conversation Scott. This has really probed me and made me do some thinking...Michael, thanks to you too.
I owe a response to Michael's post first:
(1) I agree that the creation narrative contains a general, universal principle of rest. Sabbath also takes on more meaning as you go on in the development of the narrative of the Torah. Such as, trusting in God for provision (the manna story), and care for the earth (giving the fields a sabbath rest). While not necessarily rooted in the creation narrative, we can abstract out underlying principles from these teachings and find application for them to our own lives.
However, I do not agree that the creation narrative (neither one!) contains a general, universal principle of male headship or female submission or other "sex roles". It's just not there in the text (that I see). Now, does this information get added as the narrative develops, say in Paul's references to the creation narrative? At the moment I am not aware of other passages where this could be the case than 1 Tim 2. And in that passage, we don't have an explicit principle -- just the summary citation of Gen 2-3. So except by his particular instruction: "I do not allow a woman to teach...she should learn quietly in full submission", we are left in the dark as to what principle Paul might be reading into the narrative. I remain fully unconvinced by modest complementarian understandings of sex roles -- and I utterly reject the traditional sexism of the church (a different position than complementarianism). Once we say that there is no essential inferiority in women, and that it is an arbitrary hierarchy for the sake of order, it seems completely arbitrary, given what scripture tells us, what sort of hierarchy God has in mind. William Webb's "soft patriarchy" thinks we maintain the necessary heirarchy simply when a wife takes her husband's last name. More often I hear from complementarians that husbands and wives, both filled with the Spirit, should make decisions together, but that the husband gets a deciding vote when there is disagreement, although the husband should listen respectfully to his wife's opinion first, and use his God-given authority carefully, with an attitude of sacrificial-servant-love. Now, one must admit this is an arbitrary construct, and that there is no way to arrive at this simply from exegeting Ephesians and Colossians. 1 Timothy 2, again, gives us a particular instruction about women "teaching and having authority over" men and about their "learning in full submission". My mirror reading--a perfectly good exegetical technique as I've been taught--suggests an occasional, situational reason for this instruction. And this instruction seems idiosyncratic in the rest of the NT. We see women in positions of leadership in the early church throughout the NT. Learning directly from Jesus, witnessing the resurrection, praying, prophesying, leading house churches in their homes, even teaching. Many women in the OT as well take initiative in their families and communities, often stepping out of the bounds of the traditional sex roles of their cultural settings, in order to follow YHWH better than the men around them. Some are even prophets and judges--clearly roles of leadership. Hence, the thesis that there is a general, universally applicable principle in the Bible that women are either inferior to men, or required by God to be in a subservient position in a social or ecclesial hierarchy (aside from Jesus' general teaching that the last shall be first) seems groundless to me.
To continue... (sorry for the length)
(2) You comment that you are not part of Israel but you are part of the Church. This is true. But to reiterate, these are not the only two periods in the narrative which are distinguished by the way people relate to God and vice versa. The religious history of the people of God is more complex than that. Paul--indeed the entire NT--is explaining Christ to his churches, in their particular cultural-historical locations. Good theological practice demands that we recognize a gap between the original audience of scripture and ourselves, and do some work to bridge that gap. I know you and I, Michael, have disagreed about this before. I'm not sure what it would take for you to change your mind; I guess I don't really understand your reasons for saying that the scriptures are not writting to the ancient Israelites or to first-century Ephesians, but to *me*.
(3) The NT teaches that, following Jesus' example, all Christians should submit to one another. Both in Philippians and in Ephesians, and in the Gospels. It also teaches that "submission to authority", whether of the state (empire) or patriarchy (family) or religious authorities (Sanhedrin, church) is consistent with disobedience and resistance in proper circumstances, because God _alone_ is Father and Christ _alone_ is Lord.
Marc,
Maybe we should be having a separate discussion about exegetical & theological methods?
Anyway, to take another tack:
Why is teaching the crux of male authority, in your view? (You say: "can this principle of male authority over females be upheld if women--even if they are educated--are teaching, preaching, and leading men? I am hard pressed to envision how it could.")
Maybe I should be working harder at understanding your position, after having done so much work to try to explain my own. :) I think I understand the biblical/exegetical aspects of complementarianism. But maybe not the ideological/theological aspects, fully.
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