As we close our study of 1 & 2 Timothy we come to the most notorious lines in either book:

“11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (1 Tim. 2:11-12).

Of course, the typical complementarian vs. egalitarian debates center on this passage. In class I gave both a historical and a theological argument for why I don’t think this passage prohibits all women throughout all time from teaching or holding positions of authority within the church.

****This post is not a write-up of the class, but a sort of postscript to the class. If you want to find either the historical or theological arguments I gave, you’ll have to listen to the podcast. What follows is a few extra, more technical details to the way I think history and theology should interact.****

History and Theology

Historical-critical arguments function by seeking to uncover the historical background behind the text. This historical work is very important, but ultimately I don’t think it is strong enough to hold the weight we put on it.

The mistake is in assuming that “historical-critical” readings have an objectivity to them—that history is a “hard science.” But the truth is that historical-critical readings are just as subjective as any other kinds of readings because you can never remove the “reading subject” from the act of reading.

(This is the myth of “scientific objectivity and neutrality” and it has made its way into the heart of biblical studies. George Steiner called it the “fallacy of imitative form.” The fallacy is that we can copy and paste the “scientific method” and apply it to all fields of study and end up with cold, hard, scientific truth—even when interpreting Scripture.)

If you come to my office I can show you bookshelves filled with commentaries by different historical-critical scholars—all brilliant—but they disagree (especially on the issue of women in ministry). The complementarian historical-critic can form a background history to 1 Timothy that shows that Paul clearly meant this prohibition against women teaching in the church to be universally applied to all churches in all times. On the other hand, we can pull down a commentary by an egalitarian scholar that constructs a historical background to 1 Timothy that shows that Paul clearly did not mean for this prohibition to be universally applied. And then you can pick whichever view you like best and pretend that it is “scientific truth.” But what’s more subjective than picking the commentary that says what you like best?

None of this is to degrade the work of historical-critical scholars. We absolutely need that work. But it is time we recognize the limits of what historical scholarship can actually deliver.

This is why I concluded the class with a theological argument for women in ministry. I think that is a much more robust grounding for women in ministry while at the same time being honest about the involvement of the “reading subject” in the interpretation of the text.

To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from Ephraim Radner: We do not look to history to find the truth of Christ, we look to Christ to find the truth of history.

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