a word before we begin

There is a subject here, My Friend, that I must introduce with one word before we touch it, because it is not like most of the things I write to you about. So many matters take up room where there is honest space to wonder, to feel our way, to hold a thing with an open hand. This one does not. This is one of the few subjects in all of Scripture that is not gray, not genuinely disputed, not a place where good and honest readers land in different fields. It is plain. It is black and white. And so I am going to be plain and black and white about it, more firmly than perhaps you have ever heard me, and I want you to know going in that the firmness is not stubbornness or temper; it is simply what honesty requires when the text is this clear.

Let me tell you, in a sentence, what we are going to find, and then spend the rest of these pages proving it from the Word, in the Hebrew and the Greek and the whole sweep of Scripture from the garden to the apostles. There are exactly two things in the New Testament that a woman in the church is told she is not to do, two offices that are closed to her, and everything else, a whole vast and honored field of labor, is wide open. And the warring so many of us do over those two closed things, while the open field lies untended behind us, is its own kind of folly, and is hurting no one so much as ourselves.

You are welcome to disagree with me. I mean that. One of the teachers I learned much from used to say, with a twinkle, that you were perfectly free to disagree with him, but if you wanted to be right, you would come along with him. On this one, I will say the same, and I will say it with a smile and not a scowl, because being right about a thing does not require me to be harsh about it. You may come down on the other side of this if you choose. You will simply be sitting on the wrong side of it, and that is all right, for God in His grace uses wrong and stumbling people all the time, as we shall see before we are done. But I will not pretend the Bible is unclear where it is clear.

chapter one

the two ditches

There is a road here, and on either side of it there is a ditch, and almost everyone who takes up this subject ends up in one ditch or the other. I want to name them both before we take a step, because the whole of this booklet is an attempt to walk the road and stay out of both.

The first ditch is on the right, and it is the one the church has fallen into most often. It is the error that will not let a woman do anything. It takes the two genuinely closed things and stretches them out into a thousand closed things, until a woman may not teach a Sunday school class with a man in the room, may not lead a Bible study, may not pray aloud, may not serve as a deaconess, may not so much as read the Scripture from the front. This ditch silences women far past anything the Bible silences them, and binds where God left free, and it has done real harm, and real harm to real souls. I will use a hard word for it, because it earns the hard word: it is both legalistic and, in its effect, demeaning to the very daughters of God it claims to protect. It shuts them out of ground the Word of God threw wide open.

And I will not pretend to you that this is abstract for me, because it is not. I am a woman who does this very work, who sits with the Hebrew and the Greek and the commentaries and labors over the text, and I have felt the edge of that ditch myself, more than once. There are men in the church, sincere men, brothers I will meet in glory, who would look at me doing this and tell me I have stepped out of my place, that a woman has no business handling the Word this way, that the study itself is a kind of rebellion. They are wrong, and I can show you from the Book that they are wrong, and I will before we are done. But I will not stand here and tell you the misogyny is imaginary, that no one is really kept small, that the over-binding is only a story women tell. It is real. I have tasted it. There are men, and women too, who would keep the daughters of God in a smaller room than He built for them, and calling that what it is is not bitterness and it is not the other ditch; it is simply honesty, and honesty is the whole business of this series.

The second ditch is on the left, and it is the fashionable one now. It is the error that says a woman may do anything a man may do, the pulpit and the eldership included, that there is no difference of role at all, that the verses which say otherwise were merely the prejudice of an ancient culture and may be quietly set aside. This ditch is the spirit of the age dressed in Sunday clothes, and it fails on two counts at once: it is not biblical, for it must explain away the plain words of the text, and it is not even biological, for it denies the real and good difference God built into us. It does not honor women; it erases them, by pretending the design was never there.

What you must see about the two ditches is that they are the same mistake made in opposite directions. The one adds to the Word, building the wall higher than God built it. The other subtracts from the Word, tearing the wall down where God set it. Both have let something other than the text decide where the line falls, the one its suspicion of women, the other its surrender to the culture. And the road between them, the only safe road, is the one this whole series keeps coming back to: you go to the Bible yourself. Not to your favorite woman teacher with the conference and the book deal. Not to the angry voices online. Not to what your grandmother assumed or what the magazine says you should want. You go to the text, in its own languages and its own context, and you do the patient work of finding out what it actually says, and then you submit to that, wherever it lands you. That is the road, and it is the only one that does not end in a ditch.

Both have let something other than the text decide where the line falls: the one its suspicion of women, the other its surrender to the age.

what is actually closed

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sources & notes

  1. The three Greek words for the one pastoral office are episkopos (ἐπίσκοπος, “overseer, bishop,” from epi, “over,” and skopeo, “to watch”), presbyteros (πρεσβύτερος, “elder”), and poimēn (ποιμήν, “shepherd, pastor”). See W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, entries “Bishop,” “Elder,” and “Shepherd/Pastor.” That the three terms name one office viewed from three angles, and not three distinct offices, is drawn from the New Testament’s own interchangeable usage of them (see note 2). Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Faithful (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus); J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, vol. 5.
  2. 1 Peter 5:1–3, where Peter gathers all three ideas into one charge: the presbyteroi (elders) are to “feed the flock” (the verb of poimēn) “taking the oversight” (the verb episkopeo). The same stacking appears in Acts 20:17, 28, where Paul summons the presbyteroi of Ephesus, reminds them the Holy Ghost has made them episkopoi, and charges them to shepherd (poimainein) the church of God. The qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9 confirm the identity, Paul moving freely between “elder” (Titus 1:5) and “bishop” (Titus 1:7) of the same men. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, vol. 6.
  3. 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9, the character qualifications for the office: “blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober… not given to wine… not greedy… one that ruleth well his own house.” The point that the office is reserved for the qualified man, not upon maleness as such, follows from the weight Paul lays on character. Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Faithful (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus).
  4. The word authentein (αὐθεντεῖν, 1 Timothy 2:12), the infinitive of authenteō, rendered “usurp authority” in the KJV, a rare and forceful word carrying the sense of holding sway or exercising dominion, distinct from the ordinary word for delegated authority (exousia). See George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles (NIGTC, 1992); Andreas J. Köstenberger and Thomas R. Schreiner, eds., Women in the Church: An Analysis and Application of 1 Timothy 2:9–15; and W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary, entry “Authority.” Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, notes that the verb stands in the gnomic present, “a general, timeless fact,” which tells decisively against the claim that Paul intended only a temporary, local measure. The distinction pressed in this chapter, that Paul forbids not all teaching but the governing, ruling teaching bound up with this authority, rests on this word.
  5. James 3:1, “Be not many masters [teachers], knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation”: that those who handle the Word are held to a stricter reckoning. The point that teaching carries real accountability though not the shepherd’s office is drawn from this text. Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Mature (James).
  6. 1 Timothy 2:13, “For Adam was first formed, then Eve,” grounding the teaching in the creation order of Genesis 2:7, 18–22 rather than in local custom. On ezer kenegdo (עֵזֶר כְנֶגְדּוֹ, Genesis 2:18), “a help meet for him,” literally a helper corresponding to, or answering to, him; see the standard Hebrew lexicons (BDB, “עֵזֶר”) and the observation of Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (vol. 1), that the woman was made “not out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled… but out of his side to be equal with him.” On equal worth with ordered role, the analogy of the Son’s submission to the Father (1 Corinthians 11:3; John 5:19; Philippians 2:5–8) is the classic parallel: full equality of essence with an ordering of role.
  7. 1 Timothy 2:14, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression,” with Genesis 3:1–6, 13 (“the serpent beguiled me”). That the heavier reckoning of the fall falls on Adam, not Eve, is the plain teaching of Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians 15:22, where sin and death enter “by one man,” Adam, who sinned with open eyes. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, vols. 1 and 6.
  8. The documented tendency of cults, sects, and new religious movements to draw women in greater numbers than men has been observed by sociologists of religion for decades. See Linda Woodhead and Paul Heelas on the “holistic milieu” and the disproportionate participation of women in new spiritualities (The Spiritual Revolution, 2005); and Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion (1985), on the recruitment patterns of sects and cults. The broader finding that women are, across virtually every measure, more religiously engaged than men is well established (see, e.g., the Pew Research Center’s studies on gender and religion). Scripture’s emphasis on the deceiving of Eve is echoed, not contradicted, by the observable world, and a named weakness is one that can be guarded.
  9. Feelings are real yet not authoritative; the Lord’s own submission of feeling to the Father’s will in Gethsemane, Matthew 26:38–39, Mark 14:34–36, Luke 22:42–44 (“O my Father… nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”). The principle that the affections must be brought under the Word rather than allowed to rule is a settled principle of the Puritan and expository tradition. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746).
  10. Deborah, prophetess and judge, Judges 4:4–5:31 (Barak’s deference, 4:8). Huldah the prophetess, consulted by King Josiah’s delegation when the Book of the Law was found, 2 Kings 22:14–20 and 2 Chronicles 34:22–28. These women prophesied and spoke God’s word with authority, yet neither held the reserved shepherding office; that is precisely the distinction drawn in these pages. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, vol. 2.
  11. Priscilla instructing Apollos alongside Aquila, Acts 18:24–26 (she is often named first, Acts 18:18, 26; Romans 16:3). Phoebe, diakonos of the church at Cenchrea and probable bearer of the Roman letter, Romans 16:1–2. The daughters of Philip who prophesied, Acts 21:8–9. Women named as Paul’s fellow labourers, Romans 16:1–16 and Philippians 4:2–3. Women as the first witnesses of the resurrection, sent to tell the apostles, Matthew 28:1–10, Mark 16:1–11, Luke 24:1–10, John 20:1–18. On Titus 2:3–4, the standing charge that the aged women teach (kalodidaskalous, “teachers of good things”) the younger women. W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, s.v. “Teach, Teacher.”
  12. God uses flawed men without approving their sin. Abraham and Hagar, Genesis 16 (with the abiding strife of Genesis 21 and Galatians 4:22–31); Jacob’s wives and the resulting jealousy, Genesis 29–30; David’s wives and Nathan’s word that “the sword shall never depart from thine house,” 2 Samuel 12:10–11. Yet each remained in the messianic line (Matthew 1). Rahab the harlot, spared by faith (Joshua 2; 6:22–25), named in the roll of faith (Hebrews 11:31), and in the very genealogy of Christ (Matthew 1:5). The one-flesh design God never revised: Genesis 2:24 with Mark 10:6–8. The principle that God’s gracious use of a person never sanctifies that person’s deviation is a settled truth of the expository tradition. J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, vols. 1–2; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, vols. 1–2.
  13. 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God.” The word rendered “given by inspiration of God” is theopneustos (θεόπνευστος), “God-breathed,” from theos, “God,” and pneō, “to breathe.” See Vine, Expository Dictionary, entry “Inspiration” / “Given by Inspiration of God”; and B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (1948), which treats theopneustos as denoting the divine origin of all Scripture. The application, that one cannot receive the parts that comfort and discard the parts that press, follows from the “all” that governs the verse.
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