Women and the Word--Paul's position?

I look forward to spending time with women—especially with my wife Nancy, my daughters Kendra and Meryn, my sisters, and my Mom. As a guy I am drawn to women for the usual reasons, but there are many other attractions. Much of that appeal comes from what I experience as a common progression when conversing with women. Many men are happy to surf along at the lightest levels of conversation--sports, politics, and the latest in plasma displays.

Women, on the other hand, usually relish the opportunity to take a conversation to a deeper level. Their honesty is frequently disarming, they teach me things about relationships, and their hearts are soft. More often than with men I get the sense of connecting with another soul--a punctuation point in the flow of my existence.

This connectedness with women gives me considerable pain when I meditate on some passages in the Bible. These passages are charter members in my list of verses I wish weren’t in the Bible. Consider 1 Timothy 2:11-15:

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women will be kept safe through childbirth, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety.” (NIV)

It’s amazing how disconcerting 5 sentences can be. It is tempting to attribute this passage to an episode of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers—the Apostle Paul’s husk, lying shriveled up next to this imposter. How could the man that wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28) give us this apparently misogynic paragraph?

If you have read some of my other posts (Authenticity.., Did God really say) you know that I am not inclined to take the easy way out on this passage (e.g. a writer other than Paul , or a rogue scribe injecting a passage). It's tempting for me to drop a cultural filter on this, writing it off as a message intended for a different place and time—after all braided hair is forbidden in I Timothy 2:9 as immodest. However, what gives me pause is the universalistic rationale Paul uses to defend his statements. Even in Paul's time the Genesis story was thousands of years old. By linking to this essentially timeless story Paul buttresses his arguments against the flow of time. In that context, Paul the man who in Acts 17 debated the Athenians at Mars Hill, lays out two powerful arguments:

1. I got there first (verse 13)
2. She made me do it (verse 14)

Then in an astonishing finale, Paul appears to link a woman’s salvation with childbearing and vigilant good behavior. I am aghast.

It’s encouraging that the Amplified New Testament manages to rehabilitate this final verse (all punctuation is theirs):

"Nevertheless (the sentence put upon women [of pain in motherhood] does not hinder their [souls’] salvation), and they will be saved [eternally] if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control; [saved indeed] through the Child-bearing, that is, by the birth of the [divine] Child."

That’s a nice touch--our salvation does come from the Son of God that was born of a woman. Unfortunately the Amplified New Testament doesn’t regenerate the other 4 verses.

I don’t have an answer to this passage. God’s Word is in this book, and God's Word, Jesus Christ, is in my heart. My heart hurts, my logic fails, and I am speechless.

Did God really say?

In thinking about God’s Word, I’m drawn to the fifty-seventh verse in the Bible:

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ”Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (NIV)

This verse is a milestone. It introduces:

• The dissonance of a creature, made by God, that is in opposition to God
• A talking serpent--apparently not a surprising thing to Eve
• The first, and perhaps only time God is misquoted in the Bible. What God said earlier was: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book “Creation and Fall”, observes:

“The serpent’s question: ‘Did God say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’ was a thoroughly religious one. But with the first religious question in the world evil has come upon the scene”

Eve’s response to the serpent’s misstatement is the epitome of innocence—correction, but with deference to the questioner.

“We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’”

Bonhoeffer comments:
“The fact that Eve must qualify something regarding the Word of God—even if it is falsely represented—must throw her into the greatest confusion. It must indeed enable her to feel, for the first time, the attraction of making judgments about the Word of God. By means of the obviously false the serpent will now bring down that which is right. “

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

There were elements of truth in the serpent’s lie--those truths gave his argument power. Humanity was not physically extinguished that day, and we do know good and evil. But God was telling the truth, something more fundamental than physical existence died that day. Before there was no need to reach for life--afterward eternal life was not something obtained so cheaply.

I too feel the attraction of making judgments about God’s Word.

I’m not saying that I have to take everything in the Bible literally. I am talking about the dangers of approaching the Word, not with humility and openness, but as an arbiter of its truth. As Bonhoeffer says, if I ask, “Did God really say…This is the question that appears innocuous but through it evil wins power in us, through it we become disobedient to God.”