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well first timothy 2 uh is such a controversial passage and i'm so glad that i'm here with
the new testament scholar uh because i'm really just punching i'm just an amateur so uh what
is what is paul forbidding there do you think well let me dare make an advertisement first
of all okay there's a recent commentary by robert yarber bob yarber on the pntc series
on the pastoral epistles that is especially strong in following the trace of the argument
through the text and it's one of the best treatments of first timothy 2 i've seen anywhere
simply because it follows what series is that in its pillar series okay that's right yeah
so um by all means if you want more exegetical detail that's right to look first um and then
the the next thing i'd say you you can you can configure that as two limitations or one
i do not permit a woman to teach or have authority is that two things or is it one thing yeah
and syntactically that is according to the way the greek sentence is put together it's
two things but it's pretty close to one thing anyway yeah that is the authority that was
exercised in the early church was primarily through the word it was not from some hierarchical
structure or status so it sounds like a church recognized word-based authority what has come
to be called a magisterial authority a teaching authority um which seems to be the limitation
that paul has in mind and that is in line with other texts that that that one finds
in the new testament to my mind that's the focus of interesting um yet by the way first
of all i um just to show where we are in our cultural moment i bought the pillar commentary
by bob and i immediately opened it and read that section and i did think it was masterful
and i said oh here we go this is great and i like the fact that now here i'm speaking
as a pastor practitioner i like the fact that you say there is some debate about whether
that's two things or one and there are people i've seen some people who uh not i'm convinced
by what you said it's one thing but there are people who say it's true and uh what i
what i do at redeemer what i've done over the years and it's not a it's not a popular
position is to say paul is forbidding something here yes something and i'm open to anybody
who may have a different opinion from me on what that is or how that works itself out
we also have to keep in mind that different denominations invest different levels of authority
in different offices and therefore what authority looks like in a baptist church or a presbyterian
church or an anglican church might be different and so i'm open to that i am not open to somebody
saying there isn't anything he's forbidding or that was not a trans-cultural statement
and therefore we we don't have to it doesn't bind us anymore so or it's just so difficult
therefore we can't know therefore you know that's interesting an awful lot of young christians
are doing that they're throwing their hands up and they're saying since i can't understand
it i'm just going to do what seems right to me yeah so yeah it's it's what a friend of
mine uh likes to call imperial ignorance that is to say um it's it's the assertion that
not only i don't know but you cannot know right that's a good point and it self's justifying
too it's really saying the door to anything to anything i want to do so i would i would
generally say he's forbidding something you show me something and i'll work with you on
that but don't tell me he's not forbidding anything because he is but how would you answer
that question um how do you know this is a transcultural
piece of uh an exhortation that that's true for all time and all as opposed to greet one
another with a holy kiss yes yes um two things uh paul grounds his argument first in the
order of creation and second yeah in the order of the fall now you you can you can wrestle
quite a long time with exactly what that means i i'm i'm prepared to venture uh a suggestion
but the point is it's hard to think of any events in in all of the bible that are less
culturally dependent than the order of creation certainly it's it's not as if paul is saying
now considering considering the relative ignorance of women who don't have enough education therefore
i forbid such and such that's what he's saying no he's not it's it's it's tied in his own
argumentation to two things that are massively trans-cultural yeah he it almost seems like
he may know somebody might question at least certainly it is an inconvenient that he does
that for people who really don't like the exhortation the only thing i say again as
a practitioner is if somebody says how do you know it's a transcultural passage i said
well how do you know it's not especially when you're talking about a new testament passage
it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the person who says it's not and it should
be a very high bar and uh and in light of the way he ties it to the creation in the
fall it's very difficult to see how he could anybody could get over that and i've heard
people try to do it and i just think they're pretty unconvincing
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