Women Must Learn in Quietness: A Short Instruction on 1 Tim. 2:11-15

Today in my AGTS Hermeneutics class we were discussing the genre of “epistle” or “letter” and the ways in which elements of “occasionality” and “rhetoric” fit into good readings of the New Testament letters. I always expect students will have questions about “women” and “ministry/preaching/teaching/eldership”. While I have written on the subject pertaining to other texts of the Bible elsewhere (in blogs and in publication), I offer here a short 6 minute 50 second student recorded audio of my end of class discussion on 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in answer to a student’s pointed question about this text. Apologies as the recording was begun about 30 seconds into my reply. The student had decided to record the discussion for a friend and when I found out, I asked for a copy to share as well. So here it is for whatever it is worth. 🙂

Here is the text in the New English Translation:

11 A woman must learn[r] quietly with all submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow[s] a woman to teach or exercise authority[t] over a man. She must remain quiet.[u] 13 For Adam was formed first and then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived,[v] fell into transgression.[w] 15 But she will be delivered through childbearing,[x] if she[y] continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control.

(and HERE is the hyperlink to the text on Bible Gateway that includes the helpful footnotes as well)

I wrote four short phrases or words on the white board as the student had read these verses:

  • “learn in quietness”
  • “teach or exercise authority”
  • “deceived”
  • “saved through child-bearing”

You will hear the audio pick up where I’ve already begun discussing “learn in quietness”. I have offered that this phrase is the precise expected posture and response of a disciple or student rather than intended as a censure against. It is a call for entering into discipleship directly.

I know this short response does not answer all manner of questions you may have about the text (or that I still have about this text). It is not comprehensive of the passage. I say these things recognizing there are numerous other readings of this text and its possible function and intent. Yet all these caveats aside, I have offered here a brief reply for those who have wondered about this pivotal passage for those arguing that women cannot be pastors or preach.

And I say, not only can women preach and teach the good news of King Jesus … they MUST do so … as we all must do so!

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Seven Reasons Theological Faculty Might Not Embrace Online Instruction

A friend wrote to me today asking why I thought faculty tend to be opposed to or simply not sufficiently embracing the move to online modalities of learning in higher education, particularly with regard to seminaries and theological education. Administrators all seem keen to the move (less costs, wider market) or at least the ideas of such. In reflecting on my reply I came up with the following seven reasons I gave for why I think this is happening (seven just seemed the right spiritual number for a response from this seminary professor 🙂 ).

  1. Lack of knowledge/skill with online modalities in general (tools, modality, engagement, etc). An awful lot of faculty have spent a tremendous amount of time becoming experts in a niche field of study. Online education was not one of those for most. Nor even pedagogy/androgogy (nor online approaches to such). Some may simply lack tech skills in general or may even fear such (whether consciously or unconsciously). Lack of awareness and lack of experience contribute to make this an area many theological faculty simply are unequipped to deal adequately with as part of their teaching life.
  2. Concern over lack of genuine and/ or deeper student engagement and discipleship. This is a concern for quality of engagement that seems all too lacking in online modalities. The kinds of conversations that happen by sharing space and time in person simply do not happen. There are other engagements, but these are never of the kind one encounters in person. Whether faculty are genuinely engaging in such positive ways (in person or online) is another issue altogether.
  3. Lack of sufficient care or interest for courses where one does not face students in person so may under develop their courses just by default. Honestly, for myself, I find myself far more engaged in heart and mind toward in person courses. Online modalities simply do not give the same stimulation intellectually, emotionally, or socially that in person classes offer to professors (even to introverted professors). This lack of care may not be fully appreciated by the faculty themselves who may not even be aware they lack the same intuitive draw for person-to-person engagements.
  4. (Often) lesser remuneration especially as online requires unique course developments. While there are schools which pay to develop courses, the person paid to develop the course may not even be the one teaching (or grading, or engaging in dialogue online, etc). Some schools simply expect faculty to develop courses in the normal fashion of in person where there is not usually any thought of extra remuneration for course development. The amount of time that may be required is often tedious and little more than data entry beyond the actual contents of a course. This can be a demotivating factor for faculty driving further lack of interest or enthusiasm for online instruction.
  5. Prioritization of seated modalities in the mind of professors. Faculty are most often hired for seated courses. While most faculty roles include the need to teach online as well, these are viewed as a portion of the job and may not be perceived as holding the same central aim as in person modalities. The question of value matters. If online modalities are expected, but not viewed as primary then there is the potential for a psychological barrier to its value being equivalent.
  6. Lack of value to the professor who desires personal relationship and personal engagement. Faculty are people. And people are made for relationships. While this can happen online (and does in all sorts of modalities through social media, for example), there is something lost in not seeing, hearing, and sharing space with others. This unique sharing of time and space can serve as an innate potential for bonding. And many faculty may feel already isolated in much of the work of researching, course prep, writing, meetings, etc. Thus, this is both a relational outlet and relational input for many.
  7. Resistance to reducing classes to information transfer. While I am unaware of any online courses being promoted as if it were just about information transfer, this seems to be a default setting in all too many cases. This can be all too true in any form of education, but seems perhaps more prone to such when there is less direct human engagement. While faculty should not fear such, it seems to linger as a fear in the back of many minds. And theological faculty might often explicitly be committed to modalities of discipleship in how they teach (and engage students). And discipleship is never reducible to an information transfer.

And having listed my seven replies, let me add one more: sometimes we’re just lazy (or done). Maybe I shouldn’t be saying it. But the reality is that we are people who wear out and care about what we care about and don’t care about what we don’t care about. We only have so much energy and time and focus. And when all is said and done we may simply not care about the online courses like other courses and thus take lazy ways out. Copy and paste. Quizzes. Discussion boards. We just don’t want to put in the effort for an alternate modality and course development that requires alternative approaches, alternative tools, alternative assessments.

So what might you add to or change on my list?

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A Question of Canon: Star Wars and the Old Testament

The following is an answer I provided one of my graduate students regarding a “canonical approach” which was asked with reference also to Star Wars “canon” in a reading assignment for a course in Old Testament Theology. I felt a fair bit of explanation was helpful and thought there might be others who would also benefit from our discussion (though I’ve only included my reply).
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Let me offer some reflections on the language of “canon” and a “canonical” approach to OT theology. It would seem there might be an improper understanding of the use of the term “canon” (in the study of OT theology or with regard to Star Wars) as it is being used in these contexts. Canon refers to the authorized forms of texts (films, books, series, etc) that were received by their respective community as authoritative for the community (in some fashion, which is not equivalent, but for the sake of discussion I will make use of such). This is why there is debates over who shot first: Han or Greedo [Han shot first is the only correct answer]. An altered version exists (and in this case is attributable to the “original author” but many claim the original film version as canon by which to judge the latter as an alteration of canon) but was not original to the series. Instead it belongs to a reworked, reimagined version (which enters the debate in Star Wars about a flexible canon and how inclusive and diverse it might be). Fan fiction accounts of Star Wars do not enter the canon of Star Wars.


On biblical texts (and the OT in this case), it is to say that the form received of our texts matters. Instead of simply tracing the history of individual texts as they developed (which is what Historical Critical studies does) canonical approaches contend for the final received version of the text (even while recognizing there are multiple communities and texts which reach back to the earliest centuries). Making it overly simple, the issue with Scripture is that we have at least two divergent accounts (technically many more) of our texts (some of them significantly divergent, some of them not so much): Masoretic Hebrew and Greek Septuagint.

The Church received the latter of these for nearly 1500 years as its text-form. The Reformation changed that though many of the Reformers and their translations included the Apocryphal/Deuteroncanonical books until the end of the 1800s. This was not only a difference of books bound within the covers of the “Canon” (where some were still called “deutero-canon” or “second/ary canon”), but also differences in the shapes of a number of the books altogether (with several fairly significant variants: 1 Samuel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Esther). So when speaking of a canonical approach such includes both discussions of the variant forms of the books (that were all independent scrolls until the Christian era) and even the arrangement of the books themselves in relation to one another (by “arrangement” I am including the idea of inclusion/exclusion of books). In an fascinating mixture of these canons, our current Protestant order of the OT follows the Greek Septuagint order, but uses the Hebrew Masoretic as the primary base text for the forms of the books within the Greek order.

While much of the theology one may suggest and/or derive from the divergent “canons” of the OT, perhaps the larger issue is related to the theological idea of “canon” itself and the group which receives/recognizes/confesses said “canon” as “canon”.

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Concerning Contexts for Interpretation of Scripture

The following is a short reply I gave on one of my graduate student’s Hermeneutics assignment wrestling with the following two readings:

  • Punt, J. “Current Debates on Biblical Hermeneutics in South Africa and the Postcolonial Matrix.” Religion & Theology 1.1-2 (2004), 139-160.
  • Sahayadhas, R. “Christian Theological Hermeneutics in Asia: Prospects and Problems in Constructing Contextual Theologies.” Bangalore Theological Forum 35.1 (2003): 151-176.

I thought my responses might be a helpful brief reflection for persons wrestling with divergent interpretations to at least offer an openness to hearing that has not presupposed that difference ruled out of hand because it is different.

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Concerning contexts for interpretation of Scripture. The issue with contending that we should all be “a Body of Christ, One in him” and imagine that there is a singular approach most often presupposes that our own context (Western, post-Enlightenment, etc) is in fact the one that is true to that unity. It fails to appreciate the thousand ways we ourselves are inheritors of our interpretive contexts.

We often only begin to note this when others from different contexts propose alternate interpretations (such as the samples of Post-Colonial and Asian contextual readings provided).

Suddenly this strange new world opens before us seeming to challenge the very foundation and fabric of “the Truth” (which might be the case, but might also not be the case), when such differences may simply be challenging the dominant interpretive communities (Western and post-Enlightenment, for example) and their predetermined grasp on how to properly interpret.

We might see various contextual interpretations as “divisive” when in fact they are simply “different” from our own. Those are not identical categories: divisive and different. It may actually be that the “different” interpretation is pushing back against a “dominating” interpretation that has not been sufficiently humble to recognize its own many contextualized blind spots to interpretation of Scripture. This is sometimes referred to as a hegemony of interpretation. We do well to attune our ears better to hear what the Spirit may be saying to the church (historical and global).

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And here is a comic I didn’t send them, but find too often to be the case for our readings of Scripture:

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Hearing the Prophets on Justice: A Response

One of the assignments I have given some of my students as we discuss the writing prophets of the Old Testament is to reflect on the following:

“What might be some ways that the prophetic words about justice for the poor and foreigner in the prophets studied this week speak to specific issues today?”

Here was one of the finest answers I’ve read from any student on this (I received permission to share from the student, but have left it anonymous). I find these points cogent and pointed and hear the prophetic voice echoing in them as a call to justice and righteousness as the “branch of Jesse” who was anointed by the Spirit to set to rights all things. I can see the blessed outstretched hand nailed to a tree in both the raised fist and the embracing arm.

Student Response:

The terms mišpāt (justice) and ṣedeq (righteousness) are paired together throughout OT prophecy and are concepts that are “indicative of God’s expectations for his people with regard to every aspect of society.”1 It is also not an accident that those made “right” with God and declared “justified” before Him in passages like Luke 18:14, Romans 2:13, James 2:21-25 (among many others) are expected to have the correct attitude about their salvation which will, in turn, compel them to do good works, stop judging people who aren’t like them or who have yet to get their act together, and instead, deliver people from their oppressive situations.

In order to avoid becoming too political, I will simply share some practical examples of how twenty-first century Christians can “do” justice.

  • If we know of someone who doesn’t share our nationality, and who is being oppressed by someone else who thinks they are somehow superior, step in for them and speak up to the oppressor. Be a peacemaker and do not allow the situation to escalate any further than it already has.
  • If we know of a single mom who is struggling to get by and her child’s father isn’t doing his part, offer her child care, or to pick up her groceries when we are at the store.
  • If we have the means, pay for the education of someone who couldn’t otherwise afford a higher education.
  • Seek employment in social services positions (the injustices going on in the American family are unprecedented).
  • Become a lawyer or a judge.
  • Start a food bank (or help someone already feeding the poor).
  • Become an advocate for people in nursing homes or care centers for the disabled (they often have no one to make sure they are receiving proper care. I believe this is a blight on our society).
  • Befriend someone who has moved to the country recently. I can’t imagine how frightening it might be live in a land where I don’t know the language, culture, or how to get around. 
  • Work in a center that is giving unwed mothers options other than abortion.
  • Adopt a child.
  • Mentor the child of a single mom or dad (or any child in a home where their level of care is sub-par).
  • If we know someone who is being abused by their significant other, counsel them to get out of the relationship and find them options that will help them get out.
  • Run for political office and be the change that you would like to see happening in our government.

The list could be longer, but I’m sure that you get the idea. As in every aspect of ministry, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.

1. Hayes, E. R. “Justice, Righteousness.” In The IVP Bible Dictionary Series: Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, edited by Mark J. Boda, and J. Gordon McConville. InterVarsity Press, 2012. https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ivpmmwd/justice_righteousness/0?institutionId=9758.

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Proverbs 31 and the Virtuous Woman

Here is a question I was asked about Proverbs 31 and the Virtuous Woman. I have found this passage to have a fairly wide misuse in the Church against women.

Question: Is there a commentary you’d recommend for Proverbs 31. I’ve read three different commentaries and each give a different perspective of the king, mother and virtuous woman. I don’t know who’s interpretation is correct.

My brief response:

You’ll find folks all over the place on this. I have my own take.

Some dude (no clue from where) named “Lemuel” who was a “king” (not sure of where) shares advice from his mother (the queen mother? And no clue who she is). How’s that for help?

The literary effect though is that the advice/wisdom spoken from “father” (Proverbs 1.8a; 10.1a) and “mother” (Proverbs 1.8b; 10.1b) plays out in the larger structure of the book where the “father” speaks wisdom to his “son” (chapters 1-9) and concluding with the “mother” speaking wisdom to her “son” (chapter 31).

Then regarding the “virtuous woman” of Proverbs 31, I would also connect this to “Lady Wisdom” that the “father” in chapters 1-9 tells the “son” to find and join himself to. Now at the end of the collection of wise sayings we hear a mother’s voice to the son in chapter 31. This “virtuous woman” is the personification of wisdom throughout the Proverbs. In chapter 9, she is contrasted with Madame Folly who will destroy the “son”, but is deceptively alluring and can even sound and look like Lady Wisdom (compare Proverbs 9.1-6 with 9.13-18). The “son” must heed the advice of the parent/s and seek wisdom above all else and finding such, bind and commit himself with all he has to such. This is the marriage to Lady Wisdom. What this passage is not intended to be is a passage for Mother’s Day sermons to talk about how women need to be. It is intended to speak to who we all must be as people in wisdom. If we join ourselves to wisdom then we will be like this (not in the details spelled out, but in the flourishing of life). We will find what the fear of the Lord compels us toward.

In other words, I read this last chapter in light of the early chapters and hear Mama Lemuel saying, “Wisen up, son! Listen to your mama! Do the right thing! Be the right kind of person! And it’ll be alright.”

So here is me also adding my voice in seeking to discern the wisdom of this passage. 🙂

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Genesis 2.18 and the “Not Good” of Creation: Random Reflections

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Gen.2.18, NIV)

Could it be that there was lack of “goodness” in God’s first creating? How might we come to terms with this notion? What does it even mean that something was “not good” when we as readers have heard the repeated refrain of “good/very good” in Genesis 1?

The “not good” of Genesis 2.18 seems to be about incompleteness for the man functioning as intended. In Yahweh’s response he brings the creatures before the man who names them (recognizing them for both what they are and what they are not). The man knows there is no counterpart to him. Yahweh then creates a co-equal “helpmate” for the man from the man. This will lead to the “very good” of the end of the creative week (1.31; noting that chapter 2 reads like a recapitulation to the creative week of chapter 1) as creation is sufficiently formed and filled toward fruitfulness.

It is striking to me that this “not good” could be enjoined upon the man as a participant with his creator in coming to know what is properly good in the “other” created from him even as he can know the good of the creatures that are not his partner.

Further, we should consider the knowing of good that is offered in Genesis 2-3. The relation to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil at the center of the garden is that it was not for those created in the divine image to lay hold of for themselves, but to only always receive the “knowledge of good (and evil?)” as gift of God through abiding faithfulness to the word of God. The command to “not eat” was good. To obey was to know this good as the gift of God’s word faithfully enjoined.

How might we think of the “not good” in relation to “death” since one may wonder if there was any notion of death prior to the rebellion of the man and woman? If we were trying to force “good/not good” to pertain to “death” prior to the rebellion of the man and woman in chapter 3 then we would have to wrestle with their categories in relation to ours. There would have to be “death” as we describe it in our modern context. This is necessitated by plant life being given for food which requires something we classify as “living” to “die” as part of its consumption. Further, cycles of life are set for functioning in the first chapter suggesting seasons that would lead to death and rebirth of creation in its annual cycles. However, ancient categories of “life” and “death” would not likely be such. It seems more likely that only things with the “breath of life” would be deemed properly “living” and thus no death present prior to the rebellion of chapter 3.

V0034167 The Garden of Eden illuminated by a tripartite extension of Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The Garden of Eden illuminated by a tripartite extension of light, symbolising the Trinity. Engraving by A.C. after H. Bol. By: Hans Bolafter: A. C.Published: – Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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A Quick Exodus: A Brief Response

The following question, and my answer, emerged from readings on the Book of Exodus:

Student:

“It is interesting that the meaning of the word “exodus” means quick exit (1), why is it called a quick exit when it really was not?”

My brief response:

The Israelites had to be dressed to leave in a hurry (Exod. 12.11). They had to make bread without adding yeast (which required time for yeast to work; Exod. 12.15-20) and instead end up even taking their bread un-yeasted with them (Exod. 12.34).

Further, Yahweh had told them ahead of time that Pharaoh and the Egyptians would compel them to leave “quickly” (Exod. 11.1). Moses repeated this message to Pharaoh and the Egyptians (Exod. 11.8). And Pharaoh and the Egyptians did precisely this, by compelling the Israelites to leave “quickly” for fear of all dying in Egypt (Exod. 12.31-33).

It is kind of like when a mom says, “You need to be ready to go whenever it is time to go” which means have shoes on, jacket handy, etc., so that as soon as it is time you are ready and can leave quickly.

Also, the forty years does not occur until the people fail in the book of Numbers after leaving Sinai and spying out the land. The days of the Festival of Unleavened Bread ending with Passover and the sudden leaving of Egypt in the night is what the “quick” exit points to.

As an aside, this seems to speak to some of the idea of the “quick” coming of the Lord mentioned later in Scripture (including especially the Gospels and the Revelation) where he will come suddenly (“quickly” or “soon”, Rev.22.7, 10, 12, 20) and thus issues calls to always be “ready” or prepared for that sudden dawning of a new day of liberation into life.

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1. Bill T. Arnold and Bryan E. Beyer, Encountering the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 78.

Haggadah for Passover according to the Spanish rite (the ‘Brother Haggadah’)
1350-1374 CE, Catalonia, Spain
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A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Video Intro with Brief Bibliography

Here I offer a brief (12 minute) video for some of my students on my proposal for a Pentecostal Hermeneutic. I thought others may benefit from it as well.

Brief Recommended Bibliography (excluding journal articles with the exception of the Reader edited by Lee Roy Martin and also the link to the many hermeneutical resources by Craig Keener)

Archer, Kenneth J., A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Community (JPTSup 28; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004).

Archer, Kenneth J., and L.William Oliverio, Jr, eds., Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity (Christianity and Renewal – Interdisciplinary Studies; Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Green, Chris E.W., Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2015).

Grey, Jacqueline, Three’s a Crowd: Pentecostalism, Hermeneutics, and the Old Testament (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011).

Keener, Craig S., Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017).

Keener, Craig S. (n.d.). Biblical Interpretation. http://craigkeener.com/free-resources

Martin, Lee Roy, ed., Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

Noel, B.T., Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics: Comparisons and Contemporary Impact (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2010).

Oliverio, L.William, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

Philemon, L., Pneumatic Hermeneutics: The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2019).

Spawn, Kevin L., and Archie T. Wright, eds., Spirit and Scripture: Exploring a Pneumatic Hermeneutic (London: T&T Clark, 2013).

Yong, Amos, The Hermeneutical Spirit: Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017).

Yong, Amos, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006).

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An Oracle Against the False Prophets: A Psalm for 2020

So many false prophets,
Deceived in their much prophesying,
Mad with their own imaginings.
Mad with their claims of divine approval.

Deceived long ago when they sold themselves to the powers of this age
Thinking to speak for the Lord who alone is lord.

Lying mouths, deceitful hearts, all of them.
Speaking, but ought not to be heard.
Thinking, but not Your thoughts.
Eyes to only see the kingdoms of this world.
Mouths to speak what their deceitful hearts desire.

Imagining the Lord with them,
They have not realized He has departed.
Indeed, He has departed far from them.

You, O Lord, You have borne witness against them,
But they will not listen.
You have given signs,
But they refuse to see.

They bless the wicked, yes, they bless the wicked;
They have cast their lot with them
Even as they speak such lies in Your name.

How long will we tolerate and welcome such?
How long before the Lord will silence such?

Forgive us, O God!
Have mercy
And do not hear their endless chatterings
And do not count us among these wicked deceivers!

May Your Name alone be exalted,
And every false witness brought low before your throne!
May Your Name alone be praised!
And may Your kingdom come at last!

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