Paul and his terrible PR team: women in leadership part 4

A lot of fingers get pointed at Paul. There are a lot of people out there who see him as an arrogant church leader on a power trip with an inflated sense of God’s anointing who was heavy handed and likes to have a good go at churches. Without careful reading, it’s perhaps understandable why people feel like this; he does sound angry quite a lot. However, particular ‘angry’ statements always need to be put in context of Paul’s thinking shown in all his writing.

When it comes to gender roles, there are a couple of comments that seem to give no room for women to be on the same level as men with leadership. The most direct of these appears to be in 1 Timothy 2 v12 in which he says:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a wife to teach or to assume authority over her husband; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

Not only does this seem a little harsh, but the reasoning appears to be pretty whacked too. Women can be saved through childbearing? What the?! The woman has to remain quiet because she was made second and was the one who was deceived? Surely Paul isn’t arguing like this. Surely. Let me suggest we can look at this differently, like this:

If you read the beginning of the chapter, you can see that the point Paul is trying to make is that people should be quiet when they get together so that everyone can learn. If you hold this at the forefront of the reading then it might change things. And also note that Paul is using the creation story here, but for the agenda above, not to put women in their place. He wants everyone to learn.

So, to put it simply, women should be quiet so they can learn. In the first creation, Adam was formed first and Eve second. Adam was taught, but Eve wasn’t, and this led to her deception. To avoid this sort of deception happening again, teach the women this time! After the deception, God promised Eve that she would be the bearer of the Saviour, which through Mary she was, and now he stand as an example for other women to bring forth God’s word to the world.

This kind of interpretation is the only one that will really work with the rest of Paul’s writing. In Romans 16we see Paul referring to Priscilla as a minister (a word often used for Jesus) and a fellow worker equal to her husband, Aquila. In the same chapter we also see him calling Junia an apostle and one third of the people mentioned at the end are female which people are called to submit to, female workers, not merely male. This goes hand in hand with statements in Galatians saying ‘there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free for you all one in Christ Jesus’. To turn this passage in 1 Timothy into a damaging doctrine that stifles the role of women in church is to do something anti-Pauline and completely unnecessary. What a shame that so many people proof-text passages and end up with positions that oppress people – in this case, half the population! Reading the Bible properly is important stuff y’all.

I would like to acknowledge a lot of great work by Roger and Faith Forster on this issue, from which I’ve grabbed a lot of this stuff from.

Ladies, do your thing! We males need to learn to be led by you as well!