First Born, Part II

In this essay, I continue to offload patriarchal baggage so we can hear the good news that God has forgiven sinful men and women and made us sons and co-heirs with his Son, Jesus (read more baggage-busting good news in Sean’s post on Sonship) .  I will argue that there are missional reasons why God accommodates the patriarchy (male leadership) and primogeniture (privileged status of the first born) in the Creation account and in the Apostle Paul’s letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy 2.  Paul is pastorally applying the Law and the Gospel (the conviction of sin and the forgiveness of it) to men and women throughout the New Testament to bring about faith in Christ.  On the one hand, Paul is employing primogeniture as the Law to convict sin and on the other hand he is undoing primogeniture through the Gospel. 

God is a missionary – Gospel comes first

God is a missionary.  He speaks to his people, his creation, in a way we can understand.  He even uses constructs, such as patriarchy (male leadership over women) and the favored status of the first-born (son) over other siblings to convey his grace for us and his plan to forgive sins in Jesus Christ.  This is because Lord is first and foremost about saving our souls.  Social revolution comes as a fruit but will never be perfect until heaven.  The Apostle Paul summarizes the priority of salvation in 1 Timothy 1:4 inviting us to pray for all people to God our Savior, “who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  Article VI of the Anglican XXXIX Articles states that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation” – that is the point of the Bible: to lead you to Jesus and his love and mercy for you.  In his book, Finally Feminist, John G. Stackhouse Jr., writes,

“What matters most is the furtherance of the gospel message.  In the New Testament, and in subsequent church history, we see that God is willing to do almost anything to get the gospel to as many people as possible, as effectively as possible.”[1]   

I find this such a helpful focus.  Stackhouse goes on to write,

“The main scandal of Jesus’ career is properly Jesus—not Jesus and feminists, or Jesus and the abolition of slavery, or Jesus and Jewish emancipation, or Jesus and anything else.  The other causes are good, and they are implicit in Jesus’ ministry.  But they are incipient at best.”[2] 

God is the master missionary.  He uses imperfect people located in history loaded with culture and norms that can be beautiful but are always broken too. 

A medal commemorating the Emancipation in the West Indies in the Royal Museum, Greenwich, UK

The Gospel does bear fruit.  First, it is for you: Jesus forgives your sins and brings you into his family.  Second, it is for your neighbor.  You will want to love as you have been loved.  The abolition of slavery is the prime example.  The gospel did its work - leading Britain to peacefully free its slaves.  John Stackhouse notes that women suffragettes were fierce advocates for abolitionism; they saw the equality of women and slaves as implications of the Gospel.[3]  The Gospel has born fruit in marriages – eliminating polygamy in many countries, causing a new norm for men to love their wives as their own bodies and women to respect their husbands.  That is the trajectory of the Gospel: to save sinners and make them co-heirs of God’s kingdom with Jesus.  When we encounter patriarchy in the sonship promise, God was speaking in a way his people could hear at that time.  He is patient yet powerful, keeping the Gospel the main thing.  At the same time, God moves them deeper into his promised new creation.

Context of 1 Timothy

Paul is rather heavy-handed with the Law towards women in Timothy’s church in Ephesus.  Why would he be?  Paul knows Jesus’ ministry to and through women (Mary Magdelene, Mary and Martha of Bethany, the Samaritan woman at the well).  Elsewhere, Paul praises his fellow female apostles and evangelists (Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla) and partners with them in ministry (Romans 16 has a long list of them).  Elsewhere, Paul instructs women (and men) who are prophesying out loud to the church on how to do it with order (1 Corinthians 14:27); he doesn’t stop them.  When he gives list of spiritual gifts, such as in in 1 Corinthians 12 (which include apostles, prophets, teachers), he doesn’t specify gifts for men only.  Even here, in 1 Timothy 2, Paul begins his rebuke of women by a counter-cultural invitation to them to be disciples. 

Jewish and Aristotelian tradition reserved learning only for men.  Here Paul invites women to learn alongside their husbands, men, and Jesus’ apostles!  Paul is going against his patriarchal society by imploring: “Let a woman learn…” (1 Timothy 2:11).  She is to learn as any student of a rabbi should: in quietness and submissiveness.  Submissiveness to what?  The late Middle Eastern Biblical scholar, The Rev. Dr. Ken Bailey suggests that a woman is to submit to the sound doctrine of the gospel.[4]  Paul asserts this in 1 Timothy 1:10 and again only verses before ours: “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Timothy 2:5,6).  Paul wants women to learn and submit to the sound doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul is following Christ’s invitation to women.  In Greek, Roman, or Jewish culture, women were possessions of their husbands or powerless and single.  No one wanted them to be educated.  Except Jesus.  Jesus blessed Mary of Bethany for sitting as his feet as his disciple, quietly learning as any good student in Luke 10:38-42; Jesus made Mary Magdalene an apostle to the apostles at his resurrection John 20:16-18; Jesus’ mother, Mary, instructs the church through her song, “The Magnificat,” in Luke 1, etc.  Thus, Jesus and Paul want women to learn from Jesus.  Another layer to “quietness,” is “tranquility” or “peace” according to the early Arabic versions of this Scripture.[5]  This paints a picture that Paul wants women to learn in a good setting so that they can help combat the onslaught of myths, lies, and teaching-without-understanding that plagued Timothy’s church (1 Timothy 1:3-7).

A model of the Temple of Artemis

Anti-male culture

In Ephesus Now, I cite Dr. Ken Bailey’s work on the culture of Ephesus.  He paints the picture of Timothy’s church setting.  (You can watch his insightful lectures on how the New Testament honors women and proclaims the Gospel to them in a Middle Eastern context here.)  Ephesus housed the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  A group of virgins and castrated males ran the cult practices of the temple, which employed thousands of priestess slaves.  Acts 19 describes how economically dependent the city was on the idol worship of Artemis—the idol makers riot and try to attack Paul for convincing people to leave faith in Artemis and worship Jesus.  Artemis was a multi-breasted goddess in charge of fertility who never married.  Dr. Bailey notes the anti-male sentiment in the Ephesian culture: “Castration being the ultimate violence against the male, would not anti-male sexism in various forms have been inevitable?”[6]  This culture did not want reconciliation between male and female.  Women finally had the upper hand in this culture.  They wanted retribution.  Is it so different today?  When any minority, finally gets power, we want revenge, reparations, prenuptial contracts, and a good lawyer.  That’s our “natural” way of handling oppression.  What we need is supernatural.  We need Someone from the outside that understands our red-hot anger yet can cool it with a better way forward—a way of forgiveness paved by His own blood.

The hilarious girls in charge in Derry Girls on Netflix sound similar to the Ephesian women in Timothy’s church.

Authority Over

Within the letter of 1 Timothy itself, we see the presence of strong women who want retribution not reconciliation.  They were uneducated yet asserting their ideas, perhaps contributing to the theological mess in chapter 1.  Paul speaks to them strongly: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12).  The English Standard Version translates a mild version of 1 Timothy 2:12 “exercise authority over” but the King James Version (KJV) translates it as “usurp authority.”  Dr. Bailey prefers the KJV and notes it is better translated as “lord it over;” it is used only here in the New Testament.[7]  The noun version of this word entered the Turkish language to describe the power Sultans had to execute the people in their empire.[8]  Paul is warning against women who are lording their power over men, effectively emasculating them in public.  A hilarious modern example would be how women treat men in Derry Girls, a heart-warming, dirty-mouthed Irish comedy on Netflix.  1 Timothy 4:3 backs up this anti-male, Amazonian woman, vibe in Timothy’s church.  Paul warns Timothy against liars and those who depart from the faith (contrary to “sound doctrine”) who “forbid marriage” along with abstinence from food.  Were women also forbidding marriage?  It can be inferred that they were denying children to their husbands based on where 1 Timothy 2:15 goes. 

Paul is writing to women who are usurping authority, denying marriage, possibly denying childrearing, and asserting themselves regarding the faith without any education.  Paul exhorts them to learn sound doctrine properly as a good student and not dishonor men publicly.  Does he expect a woman never to teach a man ever?  Let Paul’s female co-workers, evangelists, pastors, and teachers answer that.  Acts 18 describes how Prisca (or Priscilla) helped train the male apostle Apollo, and led the Corinthian church in her house along with her husband, Aquila (Acts 18:1-4, 18, 24-28; Romans 16:3-5).  In Romans 16, Paul praises Phoebe, Mary, and the female apostle Junia.  They had learned sound doctrine – they served and taught the Gospel of Jesus.  Paul honors them.  He exhorts the women of Ephesus to do the same.

Counter-balance

Paul uses the Law and the Gospel upon both men and women throughout his writings.  In 1 Timothy 2, he is zeoes in on women, the women of Ephesus, and for their sakes, he zeroes in on the first woman ever, Eve.  Elsewhere Paul zeroes in on men, Adam in particular.  In both cases, Paul pulls out the hammer of the Law—to convict of sin—in order to drive women and men to the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, the Gospel. 

In 1 Timothy 2:13-14, Paul warns women that they too can be deceived, as Eve was.  That is why they should learn!   Balance Paul’s rebuke of women with his rebuke of all humanity in Adam—the man—as our representative.  Paul writes to the church in Rome:

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17)

Paul writes to the church in Corinth (run by the married couple, Pricilla and Aquila):

“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21,22)

 Women are not the only recipients of conviction.  Men are too.  In fact, it seems that Paul holds Adam, not Eve, responsible in Romans and 1 Corinthians.  So, if he reverses it in 1 Timothy, he is doing it pastorally – to expose sin, catch the women’s attention, and convict them of the gravity of knowing the truth of the Gospel.

John Chrysostom agrees with this counter-balance in Scripture.  Ken Bailey highlights his writing:

After the example of Adam’s transgression... so here the female sex transgressed, not the male. As all men died through one (Adam) because that one sinned, so the whole female race transgressed because the woman was in the transgression.[9]

Dr. Bailey goes on to explain the historical timeline.

It is generally assumed that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians while resident in Ephesus. As noted, 1 Corinthians, like Romans, affirms ‘...in Adam all die.  ’There can be little doubt that Paul’s second-Adam theology, set forth in 1Cor. 15:42-50, was also proclaimed by Paul in the city of Ephesus. If any first century person was so inclined, Paul’s views set forth in Rom. 5 and 1 Cor. 15 could have been understood as very bad news for men.[10]

Perhaps the Christian women in Ephesus who had a cultural anti-male/anti-marriage sentiment skewed Paul’s summary of the creation account and the fall of sin?  In Romans and 1 Corinthians Paul is setting up a duality between Adam and Christ, between the death from Adam’s sin and the far stronger and better life from Jesus’ forgiveness.  With this duality, Paul eloquently conveys the surpassing grace of Jesus Christ.  This is good news for all people, men and women.  But even then, as now, people rip Scripture out of context and use it for their own agenda.  In 1 Timothy, Paul needed to counter-balance his account of sin on the man’s account with the woman’s account.  Paul’s word of conviction is tailor-made for his Ephesian audience.  That’s what God’s first word of the Law does: it attacks and kills our sin.  Colossians 2:14 says the Law points out our sin and cries, “Guilty!”  Jesus replies, “Forgiven!”  Won by his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead.

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses… God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”  (Colossians 2:13-14)

It is never pleasant to be convicted of sin.  I speak from experience.  However, it is always, always worth it.  The Lord never does it to condemn you but rather to save you. God’s first word is meant to drive you to Jesus, your Forgiver, Advocate, Peacemaker, Redeemer, and Brother who loves you so.  Paul was lightyears ahead of his first century Middle Eastern culture.  He was speaking in primogeniture terms, yet undoing them to give way to something new.  Imagine a church where men and women honored one another, worked together, and both reflected Christ’s image to the world?  This is the vision Paul had as he was led by the Holy Spirit.

Endnotes

[1] John G. Stackhouse, Jr, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), 38. 

[2] Stackhouse, Finally Feminist, 41.

[3] Read the history of the abolitionist and suffrage partnership in response to the Gospel in John G. Stackhouse, Finally Feminist, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), 57.

[4] Kenneth E. Bailey, “Women in the New Testament: A Middle Eastern Cultural View,” Theology Matters, Vol. 6 No. 1, Jan/Feb 2000, 8.

[5] Bailey, “Women in the New Testament,” 8.

[6] Bailey, “Women in the New Testament,” 7.

[7] Bailey, “Women,” 8.

[8] Bailey, “Women,” 8.

[9] Bailey, “Women in the New Testament,” 9.

[10] Bailey, “Women in the New Testament,” 9.

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