http://post-apocalyptictheology.blogspot.com/2010/06/reflecting-on-problems-with-tim-fosters.html

Thanks again Tim, if your back to read this, for a polite defense of your argument.

Jereth and Luke, thanks also for engaging on it.

Since I originally posted the blog, I feel like a slacker for not engaging, but thanks for continuing it whilst I furiously studied away

I’m grateful for brotherly engagement on the topic, and glad for mutual learning, as per iron sharpening iron (Prov. 27:17).

Thank you for your thoughtful points and the stridency with which you express them. It’s good to be exhorted to look at the passages closely.

As I leave first thing in the morning I will be unsubscribing from this blog later tonight. I hope to catch a reply before I do, but you are welcome to the last word.

Your counterclaim is that the two ringleaders have been given the boot, but the rest of the false teachers (male and female) remain.

1 Tim 1.3-6 concerns Hymenaeus and Alexandra (note the repetition of ‘certain persons’ in verses 3 & 19 (same word in Greek) followed by reference to H. and A. in the latter case.
1 Tim 4.1-4; 7 – doesn’t mention the ladies because it is talking in general terms about the false teaching (not false teachers).
1 Tim 5.20 is a reference to the elders against whom an accusation has been made and where they do not repent (verse 19), it therefore is unlikely to concern the heresy.
1 Tim 6:3-5, 20 are references to A.and H.

I have read 1 Tim 1:20 carefully. Your point seems to be that the language of the verse implies A. and H. are a subset of a larger group (again of men and women). The Greek tells a very different tale. “SOME” means “Certain people”, it does not mean a subset. AMONG WHOM “ho estin” means “namely” (see Mt 1.23; 27:33; Mk 3:17). It adds specificity. So the sense is “Certain people have suffered shipwreck in the faith, namely H. and A.”

Paul gives a sharp warning because, while they are outside the congregation, they are working from house to house and clearly having an impact. Their folly is not plain to all, not because they are operating semi-covertly (now, that’s a speculation), but because some remain convinced. We must not underestimate how difficult it was for the early church to sort out true doctrine from false without the benefit of a bible, and with charlatans around.

1 Tim 5:3, 5, 10 says nothing about the actual demeanor of the women. They are a set of conditions that must be met before the widows get on the roll. There is no indication that “champion 60+ women” actually exist in the church. This may well form some of the incentive for these recalcitrant widows to reform.

1 Tim 5:15, again the Greek is not so simple. I would need more time to investigate this fully, but the word tines followed by the passive is a speculation, “By this time some may have turned away to follow Satan”. In any case, I would put these women in the same basket as the excommunicated heretics. They have gone too far.

Thanks for the stimulation.

Tim

Sorry but I have to strongly disagree with you about the church being purified of dodgy men. Two ringleaders have been given the boot, that’s all.

1 Tim 1:3-6; 1 Tim 4:1-3, 7; 1 Tim 5:20, 24; 1 Tim 6:3-5, 20. (I love the hover feature on this blog!)

None of these verses are directed specifically at ladies. Several of them use male pronouns or refer directly to sinful males.

Please read 1 Tim 1:19-20 carefully. “SOME have made a shipwreck of their faith AMONG WHOM are H & A who I have handed over.” This indicates that only the 2 ringleaders have been excommunicated, those who are capable of repentance have been allowed to stay; Tim is charged with keeping the lid on their babble (1:3).

Why does Paul need to give such a sharp warning to Tim about the bad men in 2 Tim 3:6-9 if they are already well and truly on the outside? Verse 9 says “their folly will be plain to all”, in other words, it isn’t yet clear to everyone how bad these guys are (compare 1 Tim 5:24 – the sins of some guys are not yet obvious). They are still operating semi-covertly within the church.

And I still don’t feel that you have taken adequate account of the evidence for godly women in the church, 1 Tim 5:3, 5, 10. Verse 15 says “some” (not “all”) have strayed — and note he’s only speaking of the young girls here. You know, reading these verses in chapter 5 carefully it sounds like there are a lot of champion 60+ women in the Ephesian church who could be given some fantastic ministry to do!

With all due respect, brother, I have to end up back with Carson on this. He’s not making an argument from silence — there is ample evidence in the epistle that there were good women and bad men in the church.

Have a great holiday!

cheers
Jereth

Luke & Tim, thank you for the conversation. A little while ago I wrote down my musings on 1 Timothy in a bit more detail, I’m willing to let you (and Mark) have a read:
http://jereth.customer.netspace.net.au/Gender%20roles%20-%20sect8%20onlyB.pdf

Apologies to Tim that it will not engage with your current theory but I wrote this some time back.

I confess having a lot of trouble accepting your scenario Tim. The text says to me quite clearly that in Ephesus there were some very dodgy men, some dodgy women, some good men, and some good women. Quite what you’d expect in any church, really. You are making far too much of 2 Tim 3:6–7 & 1 Tim 5:11–13 to conclude that all or even most of the women in the city had gone dodgy.

In 2:8, Paul tells the men not to quarrel but he does not say “with the women” does he? I feel that you are much too eager to read a “slanging match” / “gender war” into this. I reckon Paul is just having a go at some macho men who are banging heads together over creation science and the timing of the rapture.

4:3 does not say that women are refusing marriage and sex. Again, you are reading in far too much. All this verse says is that the heresy was anti-marriage. For all we know, the dodgy men didn’t want marriage either. (Though men who don’t want sex is something of a stretch I admit…)

You say there is no evidence that gender roles are being undermined; yet asceticism and rejection of marriage (4:3) are precisely the things that go along with rejection of gender roles, no?

If the big problem here is dodgy women, why does Paul say that the women must not teach the men? (2:12) So it is ok for dodgy women to teach other women? And there is no need to restrain the dodgy men from teaching anyone? (1 Tim 6:3-5; 2 Tim 3:6-9, 13)

Your argument seems to rely heavily on 2:8-10 being situation-specific. But 1 Peter 3:3-4 goes against this, it is almost exactly the same as 1 Tim 2:9-10 yet written to a totally different place, where there is no heresy. I think what we’ve got here is a general Christian ethic — clothes purchased on Chapel Street aren’t what make godly women hot. 2:8, similarly, is a general command to all blokes everywhere to keep their testosterone in check. Hey, 1 Tim 2:1-6 seem quite general too, as do chapter 3:1ff. I wonder if that means that 2:11-15, sandwiched in between, might be a general command too! (grin)

Jereth

Was the heresy embraced exclusively by Women?
We’ll have to leave the question of how monolithic the heresy was; your following Mounce and I’m following Knight who argues for more diversity in its manifestations. However even if we grant a broadly similar heresy it clearly wasn’t a uniquely female phenomenon. Firstly the fact that a large number of verses are about women doesn’t prove anything expect that a large number of the verses are about women. Frequent references to “the Jews” in John doesn’t imply an anti-Semitic agenda. Secondly an example of how the false teachers work is simply an example of how the false teachers work and can’t be turned into a comprehensive description of their mode of operation, it’s only a single verse tucked into a description of the end times. Lastly you can’t escape the fact your making an inference from an absence of data, logically just because men aren’t mentioned as victims doesn’t mean they weren’t victims.

Is an elaborate reconstruction really necessary?
Tim, you require a reconstruction because the plain reading of 1 Tim 2 isn’t about heresy. As I said earlier, Bauckham liberates us from elaborate audience reconstructions. Even if were to conclude there was a heresy uniquely effecting women at the time, which given the problems with the evidence above is unlikely, its hard to see why it must be connected to the false teachers. It’s arguable whether or not the Complementarians require a reconstruction, if we do it’s simply the context of the surrounding passages the community of the church at worship and then its leadership, this incidentally (following Knight) makes sense of verse 8, returning to the theme of verse 1. (Verse 8 is incidentally doubly problematic for the Egalitarian interpretation because it’s addressed only to men, does this require another separate heresy?)

Is an occasional reading even permitted?
Finally even if a reconstruction led us to believe this controversial passage was addressing a unique situation in Ephesus, there are no textual markers indicating it’s occasional. Why are these particular verses occasional? What about chapters 1 and 3, or the entire epistle? Cole escapes this conundrum by making an extra-biblical argument, which is disappointing. (Just to head off two counter-arguments at the pass: all Scripture is both occasional, written in a context, and trans-occasional, inspired by God, with universal principles that still apply to us today.)

I just went through and modified it for you? Is that what you were after? Happy to change the placement of the tags if you’d like…

Oh, and I used < em > and < /em > for it! Just take out the spaces between ‘< ‘ and ‘e’ and it will work! Gee, these blogs have a mind of their own