Timothy’s Woman Problem

Image courtesy of sippakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1 Timothy talks about many issues, relevant but at times difficult. Here I refer particularly to what Paul has to say about women in leadership in Chapter 2. Some churches and organisations today would not allow women to pastor or teach citing this scripture as authority:

“Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.”

1 Timothy 2:11-12 NKJV

So what do we make of it?

Let us try to piece together what happened at the church in Ephesus that warranted Paul’s strong statement before we come to any conclusion. 

Timothy had written to Paul to report on the situation at Ephesus. False teachers had infiltrated the church and were teaching a kind of Jewish proto-gnosticism. Among other things, they taught that:

-Eve is both a mediator and redeemer figure who pre-existed Adam.

-Man came into existence because of a woman, and he was given enlightenment through the woman. Since Eve was the first to take a bite from the Tree of Knowledge, she is the bearer of special spiritual knowledge (called gnosis).

-Women are called to lead people to the illuminating gnosis which was represented by the Tree of Knowledge. Redemption completely reversed the effects of the Fall so that men are no longer subject to earthly authorities and women are no longer subject to their husbands.

This teaching originated from male teachers but was quickly taken over by women in the church. Hardly surprising; feminism had a new name. Those who believed prefer female leaders to male. Some of the women were teaching the heresy in the church meetings and were lording it over the men. As a result men had become lesser beings in the church!

Under such circumstances, it is not hard to conceive why Paul instructed Timothy to forbid women to teach and lead. This was the strategy for the hour. If it was a solution to a particular problem at a specific time and location we should have reservation as to whether this particular instruction from Paul is to be taken as a command for churches everywhere every time. We might risk generalising too much.

In general, men are to be leaders and teachers in church but women are not to be shunned for holding positions in church leadership. Paul himself commended at various occasions women coworkers of his whom he held at high esteem, like Phoebe, Junia and Priscilla (see Rom 1:1, 7 and Acts 18:26). Clearly Paul considered them worthy leaders and teachers.

So how could we say that Paul forbid women to lead or teach in church at all times across the board? We can rest assured that this is not the case.

References:

1. The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Frank Viola

2. TheBibleProject.com

The Thought Behind 1 John 1:9

8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:8-9. NKJV.

Believers are well-versed with 1 John 1: 9. It is often quoted to encourage Christians to confess their sins with the assurance of God’s forgiveness. But such admonition implies this: if believers don’t confess their sins they won’t be forgiven. Too many today hold this view citing 1 John 1: 9 as the authority. So, confessing sins become a prevalent “Christian” practice, whether at the table of The Lord’s Supper or at an individual’s private prayer time. Many have been taught to start their prayer with confessing sins. They become sin-conscious. But is this what the verse is trying to tell us? Not necessary so. Let us examine briefly.

The main contention is whether 1 John 1:9 is for believers. The problem is that unlike most letters in the New Testament the author did not name the intended recipients. So are we to accept that all that’s written is to us and for us as believers? If we don’t know who the original audience was and for what purpose the letter was written we cannot be sure how to apply the words in the epistle to our life. Some exegesis is in order.

Notable Bible scholars hold the view that 1 John was addressed to Gnostics, or to believers who were confused as a result of the infiltration of Gnostic beliefs into the church. Here I quote Professor F.F. Bruce (in bold):

What 1 John is all about? In form and content it is a message of encouragement and reassurance, sent to a group of Christians who were perplexed and bewildered by recent happenings in their midst.

What happenings?  … their most talented brethren had left them in order to form a new community or communities devoted to a specially attractive line of teaching which was represented as an advance on anything that Christians had been taught thus far.

What teaching? In its theory it closely resembled the docetic brand of Gnosticism; in particular, it denied that Christ had ‘come in the flesh’. …On the practical level these new teachers claimed to have reached such an advanced stage in spiritual experience that they were ‘beyond good and evil”. They maintained that they had no sin, not in the sense that they had attained moral perfection but in the sense that what might be sin for people at a less mature state of inner development was no longer sin for the completely ‘spiritual’ man. For him ethical distinctions had ceased to be relevant.

What was the result of the divergence in understanding? In such a situation it was impossible for those who propagated and embraced the new teaching to continue with those who believed that the old was better. So they left the fellowship.

The Christians who remained in their former fellowship were hard hit and shaken by the secession of these others, and needed to be assured.

To Christians in this perplexity, then, the First Epistle of John was written.

This is a most logical and reasonable reconstruction of the situation that led to the writing of 1 John. It helps make sense of many passages in the epistle. For instant, ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us …’ (1 John 2:19, NKJV). Also, ‘every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God’. (1 John 4:3, NKJV).  And most importantly for our case at hand, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8, NKJV).

We don’t want to go into too much detail about Gnostic teachings here, but from what we have learned, we can reconstruct 1 John 1:8-9 this way: ‘If we, like the Gnostics, insist that we are beyond good and evil and have no sin – for sin holds no meaning to us - we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we, unlike the Gnostics, accept and agree with God that we of ourselves have fallen short of His glory and have need to be saved from our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’  

From the simple exegesis, we know that verse 9 must be read together with verse 8, it is not stand-alone. Although the “we” in verse 9 could refer to or include believers, the “we” in verse 8 alludes to people holding the Gnostic view. The author is not saying that believers must own up to what they have done wrong before they can be forgiven. Such rendering is far-fetched and is no different from taking the verse out of its context. The author is talking about people whom he doubted were true believers in the first place! This is wrong application!

Reference

F.F. Bruce, The Epistles of John. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.