Let Her Preach!

Goddess of nature, childbirth, wildlife, healing, the hunt, sudden death, animals, virginity, young women, and archery.

If there’s one topic that often divides the body of Christ, it is often the role of women in ministry. There are usually two sides in this debate: those that believe God reserves leadership roles in the church to men and those that embrace women filling all levels of spiritual leadership. In theological terms, these two camps can be called complementarianism and egalitarianism. Usually, most people fall within a spectrum. It isn’t always a black and white issue within human hearts.
​
In complete honesty, this has been an issue I have wrestled off and on for years as I’ve studied the Bible. I’ve always believed that women can preach and teach the Word of God, yet I’ve wrestled with certain positions of leadership being held by women. Texts like 1 Timothy 2:12 seem on the surface to restrict the role of women in church leadership. In Bible college I actually wrote a paper on this text in which I concluded that women should not serve as lead or senior pastors. Yet as I have walked through some studies over the past few years, I have come to see that we often completely misunderstand this text. I want to pose that this text, rather than restricting women from the pulpit, actually brings correction and direction for women to pursue spiritual leadership in a godly and dignified way.

1 Timothy was written to the church at Ephesus, a church under the severe threat of false teaching. Paul is trying to protect the bride of Christ from falsehood throughout the entire letter, and it seems that many of these false teachers were targeting women and leading them astray. Rather than completely ban women from preaching, let me suggest that Paul is taking the unbridled passion of women under these false teachers to domineer and usurp men with false teaching, and instead bringing them correction and direction to be true ministers of Christ and His Word. Let me first tell you why I believe it is impossible for this text to believe that a woman cannot teach a man in church or pastor a church, and then address what I believe this text is teaching about women and spiritual leadership.

What It Cannot Mean
A cursory reading of Acts brings one into the story of Priscilla, Aquilla, and the Ephesian church. In Acts 18, Paul joins with a husband and wife in Corinth where he ministers bivocationally and teaches the Word of God. They become a part of the missionary band, and travel with Paul for a while, and then stop in Ephesus where they minister to a particular man named Apollos. Notice what the Bible says:

“So, he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.” (Act 18:26 NKJV)

Timothy served as the overseer of the Ephesian church, the very church in which Priscilla and Aquilla had ministered. We see in Acts 18, Priscila is teaching Apollos in Ephesus, helping him find the ways of God more fully. This means that the Ephesian Church had experienced a woman teacher of the Word of God, actually correcting another teacher.  How could Paul be restricting something that in 1 Timothy that the church had already experienced? Further, Priscilla and Aquilla hosted house churches in Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome. The Bible records the names of Priscilla and Aquilla in a way that demonstrates an interchangeable equality in the roles and responsibilities they had within their house churches. Priscilla was a pastor-teacher in the Ephesian church, so 1 Timothy cannot restrict women from the office of pastor.

Outside of this context, the Bible shows women as filling almost all of the 4 (or 5) functions of Ephesians 4:11. Junia is a woman named as an apostle (Romans 16:7), Anna is named as a prophetess (Luke 2:36), the Samaritan woman evangelizes Samaria after meeting Jesus (John 4) and women first proclaimed the resurrection (Matt. 28). Priscilla serves as a pastor/teacher. Further, Phoebe is named as occupying the office of deacon (Romans 16:1). Not one office of spiritual leadership is closed to women biblically.

So, what then do we do with 1 Timothy 2, where Paul says “I do not permit a woman to teach?” Let me work through this passage, beginning at verse 11, and continuing on into chapter 3 to show that Paul is bringing correction, not prohibition, to the ministry of women in Ephesus. He is going to correct their doctrine and demeanor before pointing them in the direction of spiritual leadership.

Demeanor
The first issue that Paul addresses when it comes to women ministering in the church is that of their demeanor. It seems that a big part of the problem with women in Ephesus was the way in which they were pursuing spiritual authority within the church. Two words in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 bring out the demeanor that Paul was confronting. The desired behavior was a demeanor of silence or quietness that should accompany their learning. It is not a requirement of absolute silence, as in never speaking, but a call to a humble, quiet demeanor in learning the Word of God. Thayer defines this word as “description of the life of one who stays at home doing his own work, and does not officiously meddle with the affairs of others.”[1] It’s a descriptor of a lifestyle that doesn’t stir up others or lord it over them, but learns in humility. It’s related to the term earlier in 1 Timothy 2, where Paul writes “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence” (1 Timothy 2:2b). The word translated peaceable comes from the same root as the word silence. Paul is speaking to a tranquil and peaceable demeanor, not requiring the absolute silence of women in the church.

Further, the word that Paul uses in verse 12 to describe the prohibited activity of women regarding authority speaks against a demeanor of abuse and usury that seemed to be infecting some of the people of the Ephesian church. Authentein is a Greek word translated various ways in English: “have authority” (NKJV), “exercise authority” (ESV), “rule a husband” (YLT). The actual use of the word is much more defined and harsher than the mere exercise of authority. In classical Greek, the word was first used to describe a murderer, and later came to describe someone who served as a mastermind or author of an act of violence.[2] It is used of perpetrators in contexts of murder, suicide, and violence.[3] Over time, it came to mean “master,” and is translated in one first century letter as “I had my way with him.”[4] As you can see, there are violent and manipulative tones to the word that would necessitate a prohibition from Paul. “I do not permit a woman to teach in a way that violently manipulates and controls a man,” might be one way of looking at what Paul was prohibiting. Paul wanted peaceable, gentle leadership, not domineering and violent control.

Doctrine
Beyond demeanor, Paul next outlines a correction to the doctrine being spread by many of these women. That word authentein can also be understood as describing the author or creator of something, and is used in the early church fathers to speak of God’s creative acts.[5] There was also a false teaching spreading in the regions of Anatolia that all things began with the Great Mother (Artemis, Diana, and later Eve), and that she had not sinned or been deceived because she had a special knowledge (gnosis) that guided and protected her.[6] These same teachers had a negative view of childbirth, and often discouraged women from having children, something God designed as a part of the mutual cultural mandate of Genesis 1. Notice that this makes perfect sense of Paul’s description of Creation in 1 Timothy 2:

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control. (1Ti 2:13-15 NKJV)

Paul gives a line by line correction to this false teaching. Adam was formed first, not Eve or the Great Mother. Further, Eve was deceived by Satan and fell into sin. Also, she will be saved by faith and faithfulness to what God designed for the marriage relationship, namely the reproduction of faithful image-bearers. He directly confronts this doctrinal heresy being spread in this region by some Gnostic Christian sects.

Direction
After correcting their doctrine and their demeanor, Paul gives direction to women and men desiring to serve God’s church in spiritual leadership. “It is true that anyone who desires to be a church official wants to be something worthwhile” (1Ti 3:1 CEV). Many translations of 1 Timothy 3 translate the text using an assumed masculine gender, which used to be the case when addressing a mixed audience. “Hey guys” isn’t a statement that a group made up of entirely males, but an inclusive term often used to address a mixed group. What’s telling for me, though, is the gender of the term “church official” or “office of a bishop.” This word is a feminine singular term in the Greek, interesting to be sure, in that it appears directly after a discussion of the role of women in the church. Could it be that Paul, rather than restricting women’s roles in the church is actually encouraging them to pursue service as an elder or deacon?

Therefore, if any [woman] desires the office of a bishop, [she] desires a noble task. (1 Tim. 3:1)

Paul is giving direction to women who desired to serve God’s church. They were to do so sound in doctrine and humble in demeanor, and in line with the character qualities necessary for spiritual leadership, which Paul goes on to outline in chapter 3, first for elders (3:1-7), and then for deacons (3:8-13).

What about that requirement that elders and deacons be “the husband of one wife?” Surely that restricts service to men, right? Well, not exactly. See, when it came to marital faithfulness, men had particular issues that women didn’t normally face. Women were expected to live faithful to their husbands, and faced harsh penalties for infidelity. Not so with men, however. Listen to a quote from one ancient source, describing the relationships of a typical man: “We have hetairai for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily health of our bodies, and wives to give us legitimate offspring and be the faithful guardians of our homes.”[7] The hetairai were a sect of professional escorts, reputable prostitutes if you will, that would accompany men to social banquets and functions. Rather than take their wives, they would take an escort to their company party, and have pleasure with them as part of the night. Further, regular relations with their slaves was a part of satisfying their sexual appetites. Their legitimate wives served to produce legitimate heirs and to manage their household.[8] Into this morass of immorality, Paul writes that a man was to be a “one-woman man.” That makes total sense when put against the historical culture into which it was written. Marital faithfulness was to be a characteristic of any man who sought spiritual leadership. He wouldn’t have escorts and concubines. He would be faithful to his wife. The phrase seems to become synonymous with monogamy, as Paul later takes the same idea and applies it to widows: “Do not let a widow under sixty years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man” (1Ti 5:9 NKJV). The point is faithful monogamy within marriage.

Thus, anyone with a God-given call and desire could fill the office of elder or deacon in the church, providing sound, spiritual leadership. They were to do so with a quiet demeanor, with sound doctrine, and with the biblical direction of character qualities laid out to spiritual leaders.

Conclusion
No, Paul doesn’t restrict the ministry of women, instead he gives correction and direction for their faithful service as both elders and deacons in Christ’s church. So, my friends, let her preach! Open your pulpits and your churches to the God-called daughters, Spirit-empowered prophetesses, and women gifted to lead.

*This is an edited, rerelease of a blog I wrote 5 years ago in 2020. A few changes have been made, and a footnote edited to aid in the study of the topic.

[1]Thayer,” Hesuchia,” E-Sword.
[2]Marg Mowzcko, “ The Meaning OF Authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12, with a Brief History of Authent-Words,” Marg Mowzcko; available from: https://margmowczko.com/authentein-1-timothy2_12/; accessed 6  August 2020.
[3]Ibid.
[4]Ibid. 
[5]Deborah Gill and Barbara Cavaness, God’s Women: Then and Now (Colorado Springs: Authentic, 2004), 153.
 [6]Ibid.
[7]Julia Neuffer, “First-Century Cultural Backgrounds in the Greco-Roman Empire,” Adventist Archives, available from: https://www.adventistarchives.org/first-century-cultural-backgrounds-in-the-greco-roman-empire.pdf; accessed 27 March 2025.
[8]Ibid.  

---