Case Studies in Biblical Interpretation: 1 Timothy 2:12 and Gender Roles in Church Leadership

Don Carson: I’m not saying all of this study is worthless. I am saying you have to be careful of it. It is slippery, and it can sometimes generate a great deal of dogmatism where a little more uncertainty is warranted. Let me give you one or two examples, and here I will step on some toes. I apologize. About the issues themselves I care much less than about the control of exegesis, but if I duck all the hard ones in this series that’s not going to help very much either.

Let’s take the verb authenteo/authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12. Now 1 Timothy 2 is a difficult passage. There’s no doubt but it. In most modern versions it reads something like, “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man.” It is the verb rendered here to have authority over. In the King James Version, the Authorized Version, it is, “to usurp authority over.”

Understand me well. I am now not addressing the entire issue. I will say a little bit more about the issue from a methodological concern later on. Just from the point of view of word studies, however, I want to say this is the only instance where that verb is found in the entire New Testament, which means there is not a lot of control from a lot of New Testament parallels.

That has prompted a lot of people rightly to look for parallels where this is used in adjacent Greek literature. Some go a lot farther afield, and now there has developed a division in the literature describing the meaning of this text between two positions. One position says it simply means to have authority over. That’s all it means. The other position says it’s a strong verb that means something like to domineer or to dominate. What Paul is, therefore, forbidding is not the legitimate exercise of authority in particular cases but domination, domineering.

The actual controls that are needed to go through these various texts and discover what the answer is for yourself would take me too long. In my view, the evidence is a bit equivocal. I don’t think the verb normally has quite the negative overtones that some think, but my concern in raising the parallels is this.

Suppose for argument’s sake, as some now argue in the second position, the verb has a slightly nasty overtone. Supposing it means something like, “I do not permit X to teach or exercise strong authority over or even domineer,” (I’m not convinced the parallels show that, but suppose it does mean that) would the whole position fall out?

In fact, I don’t think it would. In the first place, you have to ask yourself what to do with teach, which isn’t parallel to it and in the New Testament is almost always a positive verb and is used scores and scores and scores of times. In the second place, even if it does have a slightly negative overtone, one must ask the question, “What is the nature of that negative?”

Is it, “I do not permit X to usurp authority,” as in the King James (that is, to take on authority that is not theirs) or to dominate at all? If it’s the latter, then the question that must be raised is.… If Paul is really objecting to domination and nothing else, then quite apart from the force of the word teach you must also ask the question, “Why doesn’t he make that evenhanded? Why does he address it to women and all women? Aren’t there men that domineer?”

In other words, it seems to me that interpretation ultimately makes Paul into a worse male chauvinist than any other interpretation. He finds some women domineering on this interpretation, so he forbids this to women. Why doesn’t he forbid domineering to men? My real concern here is the question of method.

How strongly can the external parallels control the internal material? In this particular case, in my view, the evidence is a bit equivocal, but my first concern is to say, even if it does have in some contexts negative overtones, it still doesn’t control the whole argument.

1. Avoid linking language and mentality too tightly.

People sometimes speak of the Greek mind and the Hebrew mind as if it’s controlled completely by language. I’m from Canada. I’m told in Inuit, an Eskimo language, there are about 30 words for snow. I have no reason to doubt it. There is speckled snow and crystallized snow and falling snow and flaky snow and soft snow and hard snow and crusty-shelled snow. All kinds of snow. We can say all of these things by putting in appropriate groups of adjectives, but on the basis of all of this can one speak of the Inuit conception of snow?

Yet, that sort of thing is done all the time with respect to the biblical writers even in commentaries that should know better. “The Greek mind does not understand X,” or very frequently in the commentaries, “The Hebrews were unable to distinguish between purpose and result.” Oh, what a load of rubbish! That is a universal apperception.

It may be you don’t distinguish in some grammatical constructions. There is always a way in any language of making that distinction when you really want to. I even have read that Hebrew in which every noun is either masculine or feminine (there is no neuter), the Hebrew mind necessarily thinks of everything as alive because everything is either masculine or feminine.

Does that mean when you move to German, for example, and speak of das machen she is necessarily neuter, or in Greek, a child (ta paidion) is necessarily neuter? These are linguistic conventions. Nothing more. That’s all. One should avoid trying to connect language and mentality too tightly.

Certainly, language does help shape the way we think. Undoubtedly that’s correct, but this too-tight connection is quite dangerous. For those of you who are pastors and others who read TDNT, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, by Kittel, all the early volumes are deeply contaminated by this kind of outlook. The later volumes are a little better.

2. Avoid narrowing the semantic range prematurely.

That is, narrowing the range of meaning of a word prematurely into some technical language. For example, baptism in the Spirit. What does it mean? The expression shows up only six times in the New Testament. It shows up once in each of the Gospels, once in Acts 1, and once in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. That’s it. What does it mean?

If you take a look at how the expression was used across the pages of church history, you discover it has been used in a whole variety of ways. For example, in the Puritan period, it was used to mean something like, “Give us revival. Baptize us afresh with your blessed Holy Spirit.” In other words, “Inundate us. Flood us with water,” but now it’s, “Flood us with your Spirit. Baptize us afresh.”

In the wake of the rise of the modern charismatic Pentecostal movement, for some Christians it has been identified with one particular experience. That’s breaking down again today. The question is.… Do we have the right to narrow the semantic range (the range of meaning) of a biblical expression to one particular thing that it has been associated with in our tradition without checking to see how the expression is used in the biblical context?

In five of the six passages (one in Matthew, one in Mark, one in Luke, one in John, and one in Acts), it’s tied to the prophecy of John the Baptist. “After me will come one who will baptize you in Holy Spirit. I baptize you in water. He will baptize you in Holy Spirit.” In the book of Acts, in the first instance, that scene is being fulfilled at Pentecost.

In 1 Corinthians 12, again, although some people try to make a sharp distinction in meaning because of a small change in the grammar, I suspect again it has to do with the large effluent (the flowing of the Spirit of God that is promised in the Old Testament Scriptures) to come on believers in the last days through the work of God’s messenger, his Messiah, and it is not tied more narrowly than that. There are many examples that could be given.

3. Recognize different authors use words differently.

I mentioned one yesterday, the verb to call in Paul and in the Synoptic Gospels. Another one is dikaiosune, the word often rendered justification in our Bibles in Paul. Often it should be rendered righteousness and sometimes justice depending on the biblical writer and the context.

Thus, in Matthew’s gospel, as far as I can see it primarily means righteousness. In Paul, when it is being used on its own (that is, without a modifying phrase), in my view it virtually always (perhaps always) means justification. This becomes a very important question in all kinds of words.

Let me now deal briefly with the question of synonyms here. Suppose this first circle is the circle of meaning of word A. The second circle is the circle of meaning of word B. This bit of overlap is where they share the same meaning. It’s called semantic overlap, overlap of meaning. In some contexts, in fact, it doesn’t matter whether you use A or B, but in other contexts you must only use A or B.

Let’s take a simple example in English. “This subject is very deep. This subject is very profound.” Couldn’t I have used either deep or profound in that sentence? “This is a deep well.” Yes. Can I say, “This is a profound well”? Not in English. If you ask me, “Why not?” my only answer is, “I don’t have a clue. It’s just not the way we say it. It’s just not done.”

In some cases, differences in meaning are no more significant than that at the level of the individual word. It’s sometimes helpful to enter into what is sometimes called componential analysis. It’s merely an attempt to recognize words have components of meanings.

This is a very common one given in every elementary linguistics course. Here we have the entries man, woman, boy, and girl. These are the words we’re considering. These are the semantic components (that is, the components of meaning). The component of meaning we are considering here is human, adult, male, and female.

Man is human. (That’s a plus.) He’s adult. (That’s a plus.) He’s male. (That’s a plus.) He’s female. No, he’s not female. (That’s a negative.) Woman is plus, plus, minus, plus. Boy is plus, minus, plus, minus. That’s a very simple way. In verbs like to love or to justify or a word like word (logos), you can examine the components of meaning and see how they overlap with other words. Synonyms.

Where you have two words that have exactly the same meaning in a particular context, then you have strict synonyms in that context. In that case, one word does not explain the other; it’s simply saying the same thing as another. If you have two words that are not quite parallels even in that context, then to use another one helps to explain what’s going on.

“I believe all men are sinners. I believe all men are transgressors. I believe all men are iniquitous.” I’ve said roughly the same sort of thing, but I have moved from two nouns to an adjective (iniquitous). I have moved from sinners, which has to do with missing the mark, to transgression, which is overcoming or transgressing a barrier (it’s transgressing a law), to iniquitous, which has another set of overtones.

They might all have the same sort of referent (that is, they refer to the same thing), but there are slightly different overtones associated with them, so they are general synonyms where one helps to explain another as I pile them on top of each other.

Sometimes Paul or Matthew or the psalmist can pile up words that are pretty close, that are roughly similar, and what they’re doing is shaping the whole meaning by building up a larger picture. In some cases, the words are strictly synonymous in that context, although they might not be in some other contexts, like profound and deep. Let’s take a look how that works out in a few particular instances.

Consider, if you will, the famous passage at the end of John 21 where Jesus interacts with Peter after the resurrection (15 to 17). “Peter, do you love me?” The verb is agapao. “Peter replies, ‘I love you.’ ” The verb is phileo. The second time.… “Peter, do you love me?” The verb is agapao. “Peter replies, ‘Lord, you know that I love you.’ ” The verb is phileo. The third time Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” the verb is phileo. “Peter says, ‘Lord, you know everything. I’m very disturbed you’ve asked me the third time. I love you.’ ” Phileo.

Should one capitalize on the distinction in verbs or not? Are these strictly synonyms in this context or not? How can you know? If one begins from the assumption that agapao and agape always have some sort of large, heavy theological overtone to do with God’s self-denying, self-originating love (there’s no necessary emotional component) and phileo always has to do with emotion, then you’ve answered your own question. You’ve already answered your question.

I’ve already indicated some passages, and there are many others where, in fact, agapao has very negative overtones. Even agape, which often is taken to mean something like self-denying, self-originating love.… What does Paul say using that noun, agape, in 1 Corinthians 13? He says, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am only a sounding brass or resounding cymbal. Though I give all my goods to feed the poor, though I give my body to be burned …”

Isn’t that self-denial? Perfect, willed, voluntary self-denial? “… but have not agape …” Which means agape can’t simply be philanthropic self-denying altruism. It can’t be! Then you come to the fact that even in John’s gospel, John is constantly using a fairly small vocabulary but interchanging verbs. He uses two verbs for to send. They are pempo and apostello. I can’t for the life of me see any difference between the two as John uses them, and in instance after instance after instance, John turns out to be a master of using synonyms.

I come to this chapter and I ask myself, “Am I warranted in John 21:15–17 to make a certain capital on the change of verbs?” In fact, I sometimes have to ask myself a rather rude question: “If I speculatively changed the pattern of verbs here, could I simply have also gotten out a spiritual lesson?”

Supposing, in fact, it hadn’t been that Jesus asks, “Agapao?” and Peter answers, “Phileo,” Jesus asks, “Agapao?” and Peter answers, “Phileo,” Jesus asks, “Phileo?” and Peter comes back, “Agapao!” Boy, you could preach that one, couldn’t you? You give me any combination at all, and I’ll preach it! But that’s already warning me of something. That’s sending up all the red lights flashing, isn’t it?

When it says he was disturbed because the third time Jesus asked him, the point is he has asked him three times, not that he has changed the verb. The three times may have more to do with the fact that Jesus had predicted Peter would deny him three times, and Peter did. Now he is made to confess him three times, and it hurts. Besides, do you really think all Peter is confessing to is some kind of emotional commitment? This side of the resurrection that’s all he has? He might be a bit more humble, but it isn’t realistic.

Our problem is we’ve developed these large structures of thought and then dumped them into words. Let me explain what I mean by that. I am not for one moment denying there is something special about Christian love. I am not for one moment denying there is something peculiar about the love of God. What I am denying is that it is tied univocally to a single word or word group. The thing that is peculiar about the love of God is that it is entirely self-generated.

Bill and Ruth have come to the end of term. They’ve kicked off their sandals and are walking hand in hand down the beach. The sunset is a spectacular crimson, the kind of thing you see at the end of mushy movies where the credits go up. Bill turns to Ruth and says, “Ruth, I love you; I really do.” What does he mean?

Supposing he had said, “Ruth, I adore you; I really do,” would it make any necessary difference to what he means? In both cases he may simply be saying he feels as if he is overcharged with testosterone and wants to go to bed with her. He may mean no more than that with both expressions, but if we assume even a modicum of decency, then the least he means is that he finds her lovely.

He certainly does not mean, “You are despicable in my eyes, you have the worst case of halitosis it has ever been my misfortune to smell, your hair is so greasy it hasn’t seen shampoo in at least three months, and your nose is positively bulbous, but I love you.” So what does God mean when he says, “I love you”?

Does he mean, “Quite frankly, you’re so attractive to me I can’t do without you”? The whole of biblical revelation declares that biblically speaking we are the people of the halitosis, morally speaking, the people of the bulbous nose and the greasy hair, but he loves us anyway. Why? Because he’s that kind of God.

You can make that point about the love of God, but you don’t have to say agape to do it, because when Demas loves this present evil world, it’s because he finds the present evil world attractive. When Amnon rapes his half-sister, Tamar, it’s not because he’s thinking altruistically despite the verb.

The point is the link between the verb and the whole doctrine of the love of God cannot be maintained univocally. I’m not denying the doctrine. I’m saying you cannot maintain a univocal link with the word. What that tends to do is generate a kind of magic view of language that is exegetically unrealistic. As far as I can see, agapao has the full range in the first century of the verb to love in English, and it’s the context that will tell you what kind of love is at stake. Nothing more.

4. Learn to recognize the diversity of metaphors.

We sometimes hear a distinction between literal interpretation and symbolic or metaphorical interpretation. One person in the United States of a fundamentalist persuasion a number of years ago wrote a book called, Why I Preach That the Bible is Literally True. I have to tell you I don’t believe the Bible is literally true and neither does he. Not at the linguistic level at least.

Jesus says, “I am the door.” Do you see the problem? Metaphors change. “The lion of the tribe of Judah.” “The Devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” The same metaphor in this case (that is, king of the beasts) now, in one case, applied positively to the Messiah in his royal office and in the other applied in terms of raw savagery to the Devil. It does not mean the referent is the same, the thing referred to. Or in the vision of Isaiah 11, “The lion will lie down with the lamb.” That is the end of savagery in the law of the jungle.

A couple of years ago I was asked to interview Carl Henry and Kenneth Kantzer, two American evangelical leaders who have been around for about 80 years. They’ve seen everything. In the last 50 years, they have been at the center of a great deal of American evangelicalism. I was asked to interview them for a video tape after they had given some lectures on their perception of the changing face of evangelicalism in America, partly to get their perspectives on permanent record.

In one particular exchange, Carl was beginning to wax eloquent about what we need in evangelism in the future. “We do not need these potted half-baked efforts. We need a veritable desert storm of evangelism, and in some cases we need to target particular groups, a patriot missile of gospel strategy.” He was throwing in these Iraq War metaphors. We were just over the thing, and they were just dripping off his tongue like this.

I said to him, “Are you speaking as the mother of all theologians?” After the tape was all done, I went back and looked at the whole thing, and I thought afterwards, “In 50 years if anybody looks at the tape then, virtually the entire conversation is comprehensible, but that exchange might not mean a thing.” It depends on how enduring those metaphors are, and it’s too early to say. That could be extremely dated material in a few years’ time.

Metaphors change, and sometimes biblical metaphors say exactly the opposite of what we mean. “How green was my valley?” It’s appropriate to quote that title here in Wales. We tend to think of the valleys as the lush places. The hilltops.… That’s where you can’t plant anything or grow anything, and it’s not a very nice place to live. The wind is too strong. But in Palestine, it’s just the opposite. You built your cities on the hilltops. That’s where it was safe. The superpowers had the chariots. They went down in the valleys. That’s where it was dangerous.

All of the biblical metaphors on hilltops and valleys have reversed everything. G.K. Chesterton says, “It’s dangerous for a Christian to live on a hilltop. He thinks he’s looking down at everything, but if a Christian starts from the bottom and looks up, then he sees how great everything is around him and he’s reminded of his own smallness, and he learns humility before God.”

That’s fine for Chesterton, but you’re not going to find that in the Hebrew Scriptures because all the pictures are reversed based on their cultural use of hill and metaphor because of the danger of superpowers with their chariots.

5. Positively, then, on word studies, the context is the most important control.

Don’t be afraid of words. God speaks through words. He’s a talking God, but it is context that must finally control. Let me give you one more example, and it too is a delicate one. Turn to Ephesians 5. This is the pronoun in Greek, allelon, which is usually rendered one another. Chapter 5, verse 21: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

In contemporary discussion, if one side of the modern debate lists all the passages in which, let us say, women are told to submit to men, this is the passage that will immediately be introduced. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” To one another. I would be the first to want to argue in broad perspective there are some lessons to learn there.

Ephesians 5 tells me as a husband I am to love my wife as Christ loved the church. The least that means is self-sacrificially and for her good. Let nothing about what I’m about to say justify any male chauvinism. In my view, even on a surface reading of Ephesians 5, the challenge put before men to love my wife as Christ loved the church is far more difficult than anything that is put on her. That’s an unbearable standard.

Having said that, from a merely linguistic point of view, it is important to observe the context here. In Greek, we are told to be filled with the Spirit and, in consequence, we speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. This all follows out of the same construction.

We sing and make music in our hearts to the Lord. We give thanks, and we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. That kicks off, then, the following submission statements: “Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives. Children, obey your parents. Fathers, do not exasperate your children.”

If this is referring to perfect reciprocity in mutual submission, whatever that means (I don’t even know if that’s a coherent context), it has to mean perfect reciprocity for fathers and children and for slaves and masters as well as for husbands and wives, because the so-called house table of personal responsibility falls out of that command.

In fact, there’s an antecedent mistake. It is this. The pronoun, allelon (one another), does not necessarily mean perfect reciprocity. For example, in the book of Revelation in one of the great slaughters we’re told they kill themselves. They killed one another. That does not mean they all shot at exactly the same time and killed everybody (one another) perfectly reciprocally.

Allelon does not have that necessary force. That is something that has to be decided by the context. It means it was a general massacre. It does not necessarily mean A shot B and B shot A and C shot D and D shot C. It does mean they killed one another. In this particular context, one of the fruits of being filled with the Spirit is to submit to one another. Let me tell you what that means. “Wives, this. Children, this. Slaves, this.” That’s the context. Context is king.

Let me say one word about logic. Why are fire engines red? This is one of my favorites. I’ve cited it several times. I can’t resist citing it again I like it so much. Why are fire engines red? Fire engines have eight wheels and four people. Eight plus four equals twelve. Twelve inches make a ruler. A ruler is Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth sails the Seven Seas. The seas have fishes. The fishes have fins. The Finns hate the Russians. Fire engines are always rushin’ around, so they’re red.

Of course, it’s utter rubbish, but the question is, “Why is it utter rubbish?” When you actually analyze it from a strictly logical point of view, you discover there are about seven or eight quite different and complementary logical fallacies as you work through that thing step by step, and all of them you can find in sermons.

In no place is it more important to be careful with logic than when you’re dealing with the great mysteries of the faith. Let me give you one where we all agree and one where we’ll probably disagree. Where we all agree, Jesus Christ is perfectly God and perfectly human being. He’s not less than both. Now we find him asleep at the back of a boat. Is this Jesus the man asleep? “He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” Does God sleep? When Jesus is in Galilee, he’s not in Jerusalem. “But I thought God was omnipresent?”

In the whole history of the church, there’s a vast literature on how to articulate basic Christology so as not to deny the evidence of either side. There have been huge councils of the church precisely to deal with those questions, and by and large, you can articulate the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ in such a way that, although you acknowledge there are huge areas of mystery, you do not draw conclusions from either side that contradict the other side.

An area where we have much more difficulty in that regard and where there will be differences of opinion amongst us has to do with God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. My reason for drawing your attention to that is it is very common to stress one truth and then draw some apparently logical deductions which, in fact, contradict the other truth.

Wherever you start dealing with a God who is in some measure mysterious it is very important you do not allow yourself to make inferences, apparently logical ones, which in fact destroy the mystery, destroy the complementary truth. You’re responsible to repent, to believe, to turn from your sins. God loves you. All of that’s true. Are you then going to say God has done all he can for you and now it’s all up to you?

What that does is finally make God contingent. Are you going to say because God is so sovereign that not a sparrow falls to the ground without his sanction; therefore, quite frankly, whether you believe or not has nothing to do with you? Fatalism wins. A superficial reading of the Scripture in either case shows neither conclusion is warranted. What we have done is drawn inferences from one truth that have, in fact, denied another truth.

The rule of thumb is where you’re dealing with great mysteries of the faith, draw only those inferences that Scripture itself draws. What do we conclude from the truth of God’s sovereignty in Scripture? That we can trust him with our lives, that all things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to his purposes, that nothing happens by accident, that he cannot fail at the end of the age, that he will win.

What do we draw from our responsibility? That God is contingent? No. Not at all, but that God holds us accountable, that we are responsible, that he holds us accountable even when he is sovereignly controlling things. I could leave you with many Scriptures on those sorts of points, but they are absolutely essential for the stabilization of our faith. Draw only those inferences which Scripture itself draws.

I will begin next day with a few comments on genre and structure and make that brief because it is extremely important, but we had better end here now.