Objections to Seeing 1 Timothy 2:11-15 as about Marriage, Not Preaching

IN THIS ARTICLE: Many claim 1 Timothy 2:11-15 prohibits women from preaching in public, but last week, I showed evidence that the passage instead addresses the domineering behavior of a wife to her husband. Here, we’ll answer objections to this interpretation.

Last week, I showed the validity of seeing 1 Timothy 2:11-15 as instruction intended to keep a wife from domineering her husband. Two weeks ago, I showed that, whether the concern is a wife or a female “preacher,” this passage cannot be restricted to something a woman does publicly to a group of men. Before that, we saw that this passage is in response to a local situation in first-century Ephesus - it does not mean that a contemporary woman cannot publicly teach the Bible to adults, nor does Genesis 2-3 teach that the first woman was created to be subordinate to the first man.

There are several objections to seeing 1 Timothy 2:11-15 as exclusively or primarily about marriage. The best objection is simply that this is a minority position among scholars of both “complementarian” and “egalitarian” camps. Indeed, this should give us pause, but when we consider this position from the biblical data, we can see why proponents of the position seem to be growing in number. Here are the objections from the text itself, and my answers:

First, do verses 1, 8-10 prove that Paul is writing about a worship service?

Cynthia Long Westfall sets the stage for dismantling this argument, which largely rests on seeing verses 1 and 8 as being about prayer, and then thinking, “Aha! People pray in church on Sunday, so this chapter is about the Sunday service!”

The first problem is there is no signal in 2:1 or 2:8 that the urged prayer is meant to be restricted spatially and temporally to church meetings … Paul’s teaching elsewhere stresses the need for continual prayer and giving thanks at all times (Rom 1:9; Eph 1:16; 6:18; Phil 1:4, 4:6; Col 1:9; 1 Thess 5:17-18; 2 Thess 1:3, 11; Philem. 4) …. In 1 Timothy 2:8, Paul specifically instructs the men to pray “in every place” which is spatial as opposed to the verbal noun ekklesia (“meeting, assembly, gathering”), that Paul normally uses for the church service, as in 3:5, 15; 5:16 …. In addition, the Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman practices of prayer were not limited to sacred spaces (temples, shrines, synagogues) or restricted to worship services …. the context of the rest of the passage hardly fits the context of ‘public worship service’ either, particularly the reference to childbirth.”¹

Regarding the suggestion that we know Paul is talking about a Sunday service because he says men should pray with uplifted hands in 2:8 (and thus, when would they do that? A Sunday service), I’d first say that in my pastoral experience, when hands go up in the air during a church service, the hands belonging to women outnumber those belonging to men by at least a 10-1 ratio. Yet I’ve never heard of anyone being as dogmatic about making men raise their hands when they pray as about women staying out of the pulpit.

Gordon P. Hugenberger and Fredrick J Long provide more biblical data about the “uplifted hands” gesture and the “pray in every place” phrase. Hugenberger:

The prayer gesture of uplifted hands mentioned in 2:8 is by no means confined elsewhere to public worship.[Powers cites Exod 9:29; 1 Kgs 8:22; Neh 8:6; Ps 28:2; 63:4; 134:2; 141:2; Isa 1:15; Lam 2:19; 3:41; Hab 3:10; Luke 24:50]. Moreover the very general expression "in every place" ought not to be identified solely with formal church gatherings. Nowhere else in the NT does the expression require such a restrictive definition …²

Long:

“What indications exist that Paul intends a restricted location of concern to Christian Worship or a church setting? I don’t see any whatsoever. The one item that interpreters will point to is Paul’s statement in 2:8 “for the men/husbands to pray in every place” (προσεύχεσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ). However, this expression is found elsewhere in Paul only three times, each with a clear sense of missionary or evangelistic import:

• 1 Thess 1:8 “The word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia but also in every place your faith towards God has gone out, so that I have no need to say anything” (NASB95).

• 1 Cor 1:2b “called saints, which all that are calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place...” [We must note that Paul wants the Corinthians to think of the gospel spreading to others throughout the epistle; see esp. 14:36; cf. 2 Cor 10]

• 2 Cor 2:14 “God...is triumphing...and manifesting through us a knowledge of Christ in every place.”³

Remember that the first Christians were Jewish. They inherited a long tradition of praying three times a day wherever they happened to be. This goes back to David’s claim in Psalm 55:17, “Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice,” and Daniel 6:10, “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God” (note that Daniel is praying at “home” in “his upstairs room”).

The Didache is an early church manual written no later than the second century, but possibly written pretty close to the dating of 1 Timothy. This manual urges Christians to pray “three times a day.”⁴ It’s not a command for house churches to host three church services daily, seven days a week, but for Christians to pray wherever they are, three times daily.

Long clinches our argument that we should not see “pray everywhere” as “pray in every public Sunday service” with the example of our Lord and other early leaders:

Jesus encouraged praying in secret (the Lord’s prayer), perhaps even in the water closet (Matt 6:6); Jesus was praying while being baptized at the Jordan (Luke 3:21); he was praying in the wilderness (Mark 1:35) and on a mountain (Luke 9:29); the disciples are praying in Gethsemane (Matt 26:41) and at the temple during the prayer hour (Acts 3:1). Jesus also anticipates the disciples to be praying “whenever” (ὅταν, Mark 11:25) and “at all times” (πάντοτε [Luke 18:1]; ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ [21:36]). Cornelius “was praying to God continually” (δεόμενος τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ παντός, Acts 10:2). Paul prays at a house possibly alone (Acts 9:11) as does Peter (Acts 11:5). Paul went to a riverside looking for a place of prayer (Acts 16:13) and prays and sings hymns in prison (16:25).⁵

Then, in v. 9-10, when Paul wants women not to dress in finery but in good deeds, what good deeds could he be talking about if his framework is a closed-door meeting with other Christians? If we only had verse nine to go on, we could surmise that Paul wants the women to “dress modestly, with decency and propriety” in the Sunday worship service (although it seems like modest attire would be the kind of thing he’d expect every day). But when he adds that they should not adorn themselves “with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God,” it seems clear that he wants them to do good deeds every day, wherever they are. This passage is talking about a 24/7 lifestyle.

We should also note in passing that those who call for a permanent restriction on women teaching men generally don’t call for a permanent prohibition on gold jewelry or expensive clothes.

Finally, some say, “Why would Paul only address wives in this chapter? Why is he ignoring single women? Isn’t that mean?” First, everyone agrees that Paul sometimes addresses married and sometimes unmarried women in 1 and 2 Timothy. Second, Sandra Glahn writes:

Some argue against ‘wife,’ noting that the author’s appeal to modesty earlier in the context would extend to all women, not just wives. It’s true that all women — not only the married — would need to be modest. But when one considers that the average female married in her teens, and that modesty here was probably concerned with class distinctions, it seems doubtful that Paul is enjoining young girls to put away flashy jewelry. Instead, he is probably more focused on people with a greater degree of agency over how they present themselves — wives.⁶

Third, as someone who was single for much of his thirties, I can attest that preachers often preach entire sermons to married people (particularly co-parents of minor children), despite the presence of others in the room. If you’re married, ask any adult single churchgoing friends if this is true.

But v. 10 says “A woman should learn” and v. 11 says she shouldn’t “teach” - these are “sermon words”

Some say that we should see this passage as pertaining to the Sunday service because of verse 10, “A woman should learn ….” They ask, “Where does learning happen?” and answer, “The Sunday service” (despite 1 Corinthians 14, where wives are explicitly told to stop interrupting the service but instead to ask questions of their husbands at home - but more on the interpretive options in this passage another day). First, this is the kind of anachronistic reading that plagues the passage and reveals the sad state of contemporary discipleship. We segregate our worship and discipleship into a giant Sunday worship experience in a special church building. The first Christians did no such thing (nor did they even own church buildings). Second, Paul no doubt wanted them to learn when they went to services, but this does not mean they had been trying to teach in services — on its own, the phrase does not tell us where they were trying to teach.

Next, the word “teach” does not mean the passage must be talking about a Sunday sermon. Indeed, the Greek word for “to teach” (διδάσκειν/didaskein) usually applies to gospel instruction in the New Testament. But after two decades as an ordained minister, I can affirm that one spouse attempting to “teach” another from Scripture and even weaponize the Bible is all too common in Christian marriages. I’ve seen wives do it; I’ve seen husbands do it. One of the most effective ways to bully a Christian is to use the Bible against them. Marriage is fertile ground for this.

And the Greek word for “teach” is not limited to a Sunday worship service in passages like Rom. 2:21; 1 Cor. 11:14; Heb. 8:11; and 1 John 2:27. Look at I Corinthians 11:14 —

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him

Where does Nature do this teaching? During a Sunday service? Of course not. And as an aside, it’s also interesting that the “plain reading” of this verse grounds a prohibition on long hair for men on “nature itself,” but most churches don’t prohibit long hair on men today.

But Paul is Specifically Talking about God’s Household

Next, some people claim the proof that chapter two is talking about a church service occurs in the fifteenth verse of chapter three: “if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household …” interpreting God’s household as the Sunday service in the church building. But verse 15 tells us what Paul meant by “God’s household”: “the church of the living God.” It’s the people, wherever they go, not a building on a specific day of the week.

Paul always describes God’s church and his household as people, everywhere, every day, breaking bread, praying, exhorting, evangelizing, and learning. In chapter two, household problems are church problems. But it doesn’t mean the problems are restricted to (or even primarily involve) the Sunday house church gatherings.

If a Domineering Wife Would Have Brought Shame on the Church in that Greco-Roman Culture, Wouldn’t a Woman in the Pulpit Have Done So?

Not necessarily. Even as a woman was expected to acknowledge her husband’s authority within marriage (which we saw in our examination of Greco-Roman household codes, and how Paul and Peter adapted them, first here and then here), religion was considered a proper domain for women’s leadership. Inscriptional evidence for women in leadership positions in the New Testament period is overwhelming. Honorific inscriptions from the Roman period reveal that over 200 women presided as priestesses of local cults.⁷ This includes an inscription to the Ephesian Vipsania Olympias from Paul’s era:

The council and the people honored Vipsania Olympias daughter of Lucius Vipsanius Appelles son of Neon, of the Cornelia tribe, and of Claudia Polemonis daughter of Pythes. She held the priesthood of Artemis as befits the holy office, fulfilling both mysteries and sacrifices worthily, she crowned the temple and all its precincts on the splendid days consecrated to the goddess, organized public sacrifices, made distributions to the council and the gerousia, added five thousand denarii for repair of the basilica. She was the priestess in the prytany of Gaius Licinnius Dionysodoros.

Ed: “The honorific inscription of Vipsania Olympias and her sister Vipsania Polla should be dated before the first neocorate of Ephesos (88 CE). The two sisters held the priesthood of Artemis …”⁸

What about political speech? Women were generally prohibited from holding office in the Roman period, but not in Asia Minor, the setting for 1 Timothy. Ulpian, in the third century, references Severus, from the second century, when he writes, “‘It should be understood that not only males, but also females, ought to fulfill any promises they have made because of public office (honores). And this is supported by a rescript of our emperor and his deified father (Caracalla and Septimius Severus).”⁹ This places us within a century of Paul. Historians note that conditions for women outside the home were more restrictive, not less, as time advanced from the first century.¹⁰

Finally, Bernadette J. Brooten’s Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue shows three named women as heads of Jewish synagogues who were “active in administration and exhortation.”¹¹ Brooten likewise found six inscriptions in Italy labeling women as “mother of the synagogue.” Her analysis shows that this title was not merely honorary but related to administration.¹² Later, Ross Kraemer backed up her findings in Harvard Theological Review, having found an ancient inscription on Malta that lists a woman named Eulogia as an elder of the Jewish synagogue. Kraemer then defended Brooten’s work from critics, saying the evidence shows that these were not simply honorary titles, nor did they “really” belong to any male relative.¹³

Unlike inscriptional evidence for Greco-Roman priestesses, most Jewish evidence is post-New Testament but should not be discounted. Sara Parks, Shayna Sheinfeld, and Meredith J.C. Warren write:

Most of the evidence comes from later antiquity; this is likely not because of a change in women’s place, but because of the changing importance of the institution -- the role of the synagogue strengthened and expanded after the destruction of the temple [in 70 A.D.]. We should presume that women held leadership positions in their communities in earlier times as well, although perhaps, like in the early Jesus movement, these were not as formalised [sic]. As we learned … earlier synagogue evidence would be more difficult to find because meetings took place in homes and multi-purpose spaces that left little trace.¹⁴

Why is any of this pertinent to 1 Timothy 2? While the city Paul wanted to influence may have been put out by a bossy wife, they were less likely to be scandalized by a woman speaking in a public assembly or leading religious rituals.

1. Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2016), 288-89.

2. Gordon P. Hugenberger, “Women in Church Office: Hermeneutics or Exegesis? A Survey of Approaches to 1 Tim 2:8-15,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 35/3 (September 1992): 352.

3. Fredrick J. Long, “A Wife in Relation to a Husband: Greek Discourse Pragmatic and Cultural Evidence for Interpreting 1 Tim 2:11-15,” The Journal of Inductive Bible Studies Volume 2:2 (Summer 2015): 22.

4. Didache 8:3, from The Apostolic Fathers, second edition, trans. J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer, edited and revised by Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), 153.

5. Long, “A Wife in Relation to a Husband”: 23

6. Sandra Glahn, Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023), 134.

7. Przemysław Siekierka, Krystyna Stebnicka, and Aleksander Wolicki, Women and the Polis: Public Honorific Inscriptions for Women in the Greek Cities from the Late Classical to the Roman Period, 1st edition (Berlin ; Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 118.

8. Siekierka et al., eds., Women and the Polis, 733.

9. Ulpian, D.50.12.6.2, trans. Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire, 1st edition (London: Routledge, 2002), 75.

10. Sara Parks, Shayna Sheinfeld, and Meredith J. C. Warren, Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean, 1st edition (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021), 283.

11. Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues, First Edition (New York: Scholars Press, 1982), 32.

12. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, 72.

13. Ross S. Kraemer, “A New Inscription from Malta and the Question of Women Elders in the Diaspora Jewish Communities,” Harvard Theological Review, 78 no 3 - 4 (Jul - Oct 1985): 431-438.

14. Parks, Sheinfeld, and Warren, Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean, 284.