The Conduct of Men and Women in the Public Worship Assembly

As we approach this highly, hotly, and in many instances hatefully debated pericope of scriptures, we must keep several principles of hermeneutics in mind. Principle one is that the Bible was not written to me but for me. Principle 2 is audience relevance, which simply means that scripture must be interpreted in the context of the persons and the times in which it was written.

Also, in respect to how the First Century believers did church, we must not read back into scripture the way we do church today. Our knowledge of church structure and the organization of authority at the time Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus, as well as to churches, is very limited - in fact it is so limited,  it is impossible to determine anything more than the broadest limits of the authority structure of the local churches that Paul planted. We know churches met in households (Philemon 2; 1Cors.16:19). We know that they, for the most part, had no Bibles (definitely not a complete Bible) no books or commentaries on the Bible, no big buildings with a pastor in a pulpit and people sitting in chairs looking at the back of someone’s head. Also, they had no Bible colleges or seminaries.  

Having said all that, several years ago I begin a serious study on the subject of women’s role in the church, (perhaps spending over 100 hours) which has led me to believe that  the traditional view that Paul wrote 1 Timothy to provide a church manual to guide the church organizationally throughout the ages is simply not true. I am convinced that 1 Timothy is a personal letter written to an individual named Timothy for the purpose of addressing the specific issue of false doctrine in Ephesus, that was being taught by some men and spread by a small number of women – perhaps just one woman

1. Two Problems Relating to Praying in the Assembly of Believers - 2:8-10

When we come to this text, we need to remember that it does not stand alone. It is tied to what comes before it in the first 7 verses of chapter 2 and what comes after in chapter 3. Paul was calling Timothy and the church at Ephesus to pray and to worship in light of the following realities: God's desire for the salvation of all people (2:4), God's deserving of the worship of all people (2:5), and Christ's death for all people (2:6). So we've already seen in chapter 2 who to pray for and what to pray for. Now Paul is telling us the character needed - in both men and women - to produce the conduct that will enable us to pray and worship in a manner that will bring glory to God in the church. One modern translation of 1Tim. 2:10 reads: “But they should be recognized instead by their beautiful deeds of kindness, suitable as one who worships God.” 

A. Divisive Men in the Church Meeting– 2:8, “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;” Paul talked about men who were either not leading in prayer at all, or they were praying in the church while fighting with one another.

Clearly there were false teachers and all kinds of disputes in the Ephesian church, and the situation was apparently contributing to an attitude of anger and conflict among believers (1 Tim 1:4; 6:4-5). To this situation Paul essentially said, "Don't pray before God when you're not right with your brother." We're reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew 5:23-24: “So if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother and then come and offer your gift.”

Paul says that we should pray with purity before God and with peace before others. This is what it means to pray "without anger or argument."

B. Distracting Women in the Church Meeting – 2:9-10, “likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.” 

The apostle wants the women to do something similar to what he had just instructed the men to do, that is to pray in public. Thus, the Greek word for “in like manner” repeats the whole previous sentence, except the warning is different: men have trouble in overly internalizing anger and disputes while trying to pray effectively in public, whereas women have trouble sometimes not realizing God meant them to be beautiful and attractive to men, but not in this situation! Women must dress modestly while offering prayers in public.

It appears that there were women coming to the assembly of Christ in Ephesus similar to the way they used to go to the Temple of Artemis or Diana, dressed fit to kill, with braided hair, gold, pearls and fine clothing. Paul is letting Timothy know that this mode of dress, particularly in the city of Ephesus, was not conducive to the worship of Christ. What Christ desires is the beauty of goodness toward others, not the drawing attention to oneself in public.

2. One Problem Relating to Women in the Assembly of Believers – 2:11-12

“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”

These two verses, along with 1 Cors. 14:34-35, have caused churches to split, denominations to kick churches out because they ordained women as deacons or pastors, and vicious attacks and accusations upon those who don’t agree with them, suggesting that if you don’t agree with them you’re a liberal, feminist sympathizer and don’t believe the Bible!

We read in 1 Cors 14:34-35, “the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” (Just as a brief aside, these 2 verses in 1 Cors 14 are dealing with the use of tongues and prophecies and judging prophecies. When Paul tells women to "keep silent" he is not prohibiting them from making a verbal contribution to the meeting, whether in the form of worship or praying or prophesying or reading Scripture or sharing a testimony or similar activities. I think Sam Storms is correct when he writes, “Paul is prohibiting women from engaging in a public interrogation of another woman’s husband after the man has given a prophetic word.”)

Women have been used and abused and mistreated throughout history.

For example, Plato in 400 BC wrote, “Women are those who fell prey to their irrational, emotional side, and are therefore incapable of reason and making rational choices … moreover as irrational beings, women may not always know what they really want, and so it is the man’s domain to decide for them.” - Plato (400 BC)

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day, regularly prayed, “Praise be to God that he has not created me a Gentile, a woman, or a slave.”

“Woman is a temple built over a sewer.  It is contrary to the order of nature and of the law for women to speak in a gathering.”
- Saint Jerome

“Men should not listen to a woman even if she says admirable things or if she says saintly things. They are of little consequence since they come from the mouth of a woman.”- Origen

“For a man to go to a woman for advice is like going to the lowest kind of animal to seek advice.” – Chrysostom

“Woman is defective and misbegotten.” – Thomas Aquinas

“There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she would be wise.” - Martin Luther

“All women are born that they may acknowledge themselves as inferior to the male.” – John Calvin

Now back to the text. First, notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say anything about the ordination of women, or women serving as pastors, or women preaching from behind a pulpit. One must read this into the text.

I believe knowing something about the cultural context of Ephesus at the time of Paul’s writing is helpful in properly understanding this passage. I am borrowing from an article by former pastor of Enid Baptist, in Enid, OK, Wade Burleson: He writes, “Ephesus, in modern Turkey, was the location of the most magnificent of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - The Temple of Artemis, so called by the Greeks and Diana by the Romans.

“This is the first temple in the world made completely of marble. The richest man in the world in his day, King Croesus (595-547 B.C.) of Lydia (modern Turkey), ordered the Temple of Artemis be constructed in honor of the Greek goddess Artemis. Work on the Temple of Artemis began in 550 B.C. and took over a century to complete.

“It was a temple dedicated to the power, beauty and strength of women. Marble artisans from all over the world carved Amazon women into the base of the 120 columns. Amazons were "warrior women" from an area north of Ephesus and the Black Sea (in modern Ukraine). These Amazon women were known for their fierce fighting ability and had been made famous by the Greek poet Homer in his portrayal of them in The Iliad. Homer (c. 750 B.C.) also gave tribute in The Iliad to Artemis, the Greek goddess of women and of war. Artemis is called by Homer, "Artemis the Hunter, Queen of the Wild Beasts" (Iliad 21.470). Artemis, if worshipped properly and prayed to during childbirth, promised to deliver women from death while giving birth. For this reason, women in the ancient world revered and worshipped Artemis. Likewise, men worshipped Artemis during times of battle and war. Since the ancient world was always at war, Artemis was often on the lips of men during times of battle. The Greek men (and later the Romans) prayed to Artemis (remember the Romans called her Diana), not Apollo in time of battle. In Greek mythology, Zeus fathered the twins Artemis and Apollo through the Titaness Leto. The Artemus cult taught that Artemis was superior to Apollo because she was born first.

“When men and women entered the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the women would wear fancy hair braids, bedeck themselves with jewelry and ornate clothes as they prayed to Artemis. Heliodorus said, "Their locks of hair carry their prayers." There were no sacrifices in this Temple. The women worshipped Artemis with their clothing, jewelry, and their words. Artemis, in turn, gave them their sexual ability over men and their deliverance during childbirth. Likewise, men came to Artemis, acknowledging their need of her strength during time of war. The men would hold up hands, palms up, just above their waist as they prayed for victory in battle. Not surprisingly Ephesus, above all other places in the ancient world, celebrated the power, strength and beauty of women and their ability to use their sexual prowess to manipulate and dominate men. The Temple operations, which included prostitution and craftsmen who sold gold and silver idols of Artemis, drove the economy of Ephesus. Hundreds of thousands of people visited the city annually.”

Paul and Timothy's Presence in Ephesus in the Midst of the Artemis Cult - Acts 18:24 through Acts 20:1 records for us that Paul and Timothy spent three years in Ephesus (c. A.D. 55-58), by far the longest time Paul spent in any one city during his three missionary journeys. Paul almost lost his life during a riot in the city because silversmiths who made little statues of the goddess Artemis were upset that Paul and Timothy were cutting into their business by winning converts to Christianity. Paul would later write in 1Corinthians 15:32 that he "fought wild beasts at Ephesus."  Did he fight lions, tigers and bears? No, the wild beasts were the people of Ephesus who were devoted to Artemis, "The Queen of the Wild Beasts."  When Paul left Ephesus in A.D. 58, he traveled south for about 30 miles to the island of Miletus and then called for wise leaders of the church in Ephesus to join him at Miletus where he said to them, "After I leave, savage wolves will come among you and will not spare the flock. Even some among you will arise and distort the truth to draw away disciples after them" (cf. Acts 20:29-30).

As Paul predicted, less than five years later (A.D. 63) the Christians in Ephesus were in trouble. There were some men and women or maybe even a single woman, most likely a new convert out of the Artemis cult, who had begun to teach false truth in the assembly at Ephesus. Timothy is sent to Ephesus to help the church and give some correction. In a letter that we don’t now possess, Timothy sends Paul a letter from Ephesus, giving him an update on what is happening and asking some specific questions about how he should proceed. The Apostle Paul sends a response to Timothy in a letter we now call 1 Timothy.

A. The One Command in this Section of Scripture – 2:11- “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.”What do you think the command is? Just guessing, most would say “be silent and submissive”. But there is only one imperative mood (the mood of command ) verb in this text. It’s the word “learn.”

The key to the present passage, then, is to recognize that it is commanding that women, also, should be allowed to study and learn, and should not be restrained from doing so (verse 11). They are to be ‘in full submission’; this is often taken to mean ‘to the men’, or ‘to their husbands’, but it is equally likely that it refers to their attitude, as learners, of submission to God – which of course would be true for men as well.

The Meaning of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 – (Reading from the KJV)

(1). "Let the woman learn in silence (quietness – same word in 2:2) with all subjection" (v. 11). I believe the problem in Ephesus is a particular woman who is in a teaching position within the assembly of Christ because the noun "woman" is in the singular, not the plural. In verses 9 and 10, the word “women” is in the plural, but in verse 11, Paul switches to "the woman" or possibly that woman about whom Timothy has written Paul.

The word translated silence is hesuchia (quietness). It is used in 1 Timothy 2:2 to describe what the character of every believer should be, both males and females. It never means "don't speak," but addresses the character of humility. This woman, or some women, in Ephesus, coming out of a society saturated with the power, strength, abilities and even domination of women through the Artemis cult, needed to realize that she, or they, had a great deal to learn about Christ and His kingdom.

(2). "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" (v. 12). This is the key phrase. First, the phrase translated "I suffer not a woman to teach" is literally in the present tense, which could be translated, "I am not now permitting a woman to teach." Again, the woman not now permitted to teach is in the singular. It is the same woman of verse 11. This woman needs to learn in quiet humility before she ever presumes to teach, because she is still too influenced by Artemis cultic beliefs. For this reason, Paul writes: “I permit none of these theologically ignorant women (in Ephesus) to teach, because they have brought their syncretistic religious beliefs with them into the Church.”

(3). "I suffer not a woman .... to usurp authority over the man" (v. 13). This phrase "usurp authority" translates one Greek word authentein and is used only one time in all of Scripture and that is here in 1 Timothy 2:12. Paul could have chosen nearly fifty Greek words to speak of the ordinary exercise of authority, but he chose a word that more represents someone "dominating, controlling, or subjecting one to harm." Of course, this is precisely what the Artemis cult taught women to do. Artemis was the female goddess of fertility and war. Women in Ephesus were taught to use their voices, their charm, their sexuality and their beauty to dominate, control and subjugate men. It seems that this woman in Ephesus was causing trouble in the church by behavior in the assembly of Christ that was way too much like the ways of the Artemis cult from whence she came.

(4). "For Adam was formed first, then Eve." I think Paul is saying something like, “Timothy, tell the woman causing problems that her notion she should always have the floor and direct the assembly because she believes women are superior to men -since Artemis came first and Apollo came second - is an erroneous belief. The truth is God created man first then He formed Eve from Adam, so it is very appropriate for her, a woman, who considers herself a descendent of the warring, super-women, i.e. the Amazons, to sit quietly and learn from those who are older and wiser, even if they are males! Artemis taught the power of women to dominate men through sexual prowess, but Christ teaches that men are equal to women and there's nothing wrong with a woman learning from others (even men) before she begins to teach in the assembly.

(5). "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (v. 14). And Timothy, please remind her that the Scriptures teach that Eve was deceived. Contrary to what she learned in the Temple of Artemis, males are not always her problem. To be deceived and in need of correction is just as much a possibility for her as it was for Eve. She must move away from her belief in female superiority, a belief reinforced by the Artemis cult.

The basic point is to insist that women, too, must be allowed to learn and study as Christians, and not be kept in unlettered, uneducated boredom and drudgery. The story of Adam and Eve makes the point: look what happened when Eve was deceived. Women need to learn just as much as men do. Adam, after all, sinned quite deliberately; he knew what he was doing, he knew that it was wrong, and he deliberately went ahead.

3. One Provision Rescuing Women Through Childbirth – 2:15

“Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.”

There is great difficulty in understanding what Paul meant in 1Timothy 2:15. Someone counted thirty major interpretations that exist. But the context is the determiner, so the flow of the argument is this: Do not attempt to put down women just because Eve was really deceived. Remember, God chose a woman through whom the promised child came and not a man! So, men, be careful and kind in your assessments and in your comments about these women that God has given to end our loneliness.

Another possible interpretation is that although someone in the church in Ephesus was teaching the women that they should not get married (1 Tim. 4:3), and thus naturally, not have children, Paul counters with: Childbearing is not an evil act! It is an act blessed by God. A woman can prosper through childbearing, if they, (the husband and the wife) continue in faith and love and holiness with good judgment.

To sum up my present understanding of the hotly debated verses, Paul is not allowing a woman to teach others to dominate men, to teach the domination of men, nor to dominate a man themselves, but to be peaceable (heshucias). So 2:12 has nothing to do at all with mature, trained Christian women exercising their spiritual gifts and serving the body through teaching, preaching, or leading. These were women led astray by false teaching, whom Paul is correcting in these verses and who must start at the beginning with full submission to the gospel and sound teaching.

Martha Stearns Marshall (1732–1793) blazed the pioneer trail for women preachers and pastors in spite of scorn, persecution, and rejection by the colonial religious establishment of the 18th century. She was the most famous of many Separatist Baptist women preachers, deacons, and elders from that era. Marshall was a Holy Ghost anointed Baptist preacher. According to her contemporaries she was of singular piety, zeal, and surprising elocution. Her exhortations melted her audience into tears. She preached in church buildings, barns, town squares, and open fields. It wasn’t unusual for thousands to gather to hear her proclaim the Gospel message.

In 1747, she married Rev. Daniel Marshall, a Presbyterian “New Light” from Connecticut and convinced him to become a Separate Baptist. Both of them had come under the spell of British Evangelist George Whitfield’s powerful preaching who is credited with being the catalyst for the Great Awakening.

Soon after their marriage, the Marshall’s sold everything they had and departed for the mission field in New York’s Susquehanna Valley to bring the gospel to the Mohawk Indians. But after the French and Indian War broke out, they had to leave and joined Martha’s brother, Rev. Shubal Stearns, at Sandy Creek Baptist Church in Guilford County, North Carolina. A tremendous revival broke out from that church spreading north, south, east, and across the Appalachian Mountains.

Shubal recognized his sister’s divine gift and along with her husband, encouraged her to preach, and preach she did! She even was arrested and jailed in Virginia for refusing to stop preaching the gospel even though she was three months pregnant at the time.

Martha and her husband migrated down the Piedmont into South Carolina and Georgia despite the colonial authorities ordering them to stop preaching in those two colonies. In defiance of this unjust order and the laws that prohibited religious freedom for unlicensed groups such as the Baptists, the Marshall’s settled on Kiokee Creek near Appling in Columbia County in 1771.

Daniel Marshall was a wanted man and was soon arrested for preaching the gospel without government licensure in Augusta. He was convicted, and Martha was furious. She let loose with scriptures that she had memorized using them to support her case for religious liberty challenging the arresting constable and the magistrate saying that she and her husband would obey God rather than the laws of men. The British constable, Samuel Cartledge, was so moved by her passionate oratory that he converted and became a noted Baptist church planter and preacher.

From their base of operations, Martha continued to preach and Daniel and his son, Abraham, established the first Baptist Church in Georgia - Kiokee Baptist Church in Appling, Georgia in 1772. (This story is taken from an article written by Rev. Dan White.)