"Difficult Passages: Tempest in a Teapot"
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
But what if Paul is speaking to a specific group of women in Ephesus...
1 Timothy 2:8-15 and Galatians 3:27-28
August 17, 2025
Dr. Todd R. Wright
When the group made a list of difficult texts, Paul’s words about women jumped out!
Not all his words. He is generous with his praise for many female leaders in the church. But these words in his letter to Timothy – “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” – raised questions, like:
Did this apply only to that community or was it universal?
Are there any translation issues that influence how we hear these words?
How do we square this with Paul’s words in Galatians – “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are one in Christ Jesus.”
I’ll spend the rest of the sermon trying to respond to those questions. But first I want to note that this issue is more than a tempest in a teapot. It is a storm that has impacted countless lives in the years since Paul first wrote his letter to Timothy; a storm that is still churning away.
The ordination of women as elders and as ministers of Word and Sacrament has been a settled issue in the Presbyterian Church for decades.
Way back in 1956 Margaret Towner was the first woman ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the old northern Presbyterian church.
She was followed in 1965 by Rachel Henderlite, the first woman ordained as a minister in the old southern Presbyterian church.
A year later, in 1966, Polly Dodson began serving as the first female elder at Village Chapel.[1]
But let’s be clear, it took something like 1900 years to get to that point! And the legacy of Paul’s words to Timothy had a lot to do with that.
And even when it did happen, things did not become easy overnight.
In an interview, Towner remembered that there were “some men who doubted her and stood in her way, from fellow students at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to the senior pastor at one church who accused her [erroneously] of ‘hanky panky’ with men in the church.”[2]
And an article about Henderlite says, “While her ordination was commended by many of her co-religionists, a certain retired pastor in South Carolina sent her a postcard each year until his death, stating that the ordination of women ‘is a grievous sin because it says in the Bible, 'Let the women keep silent in the churches.’’”[3]
So let’s look at these troubling words.
Rachel Held Evans, in her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, writes,
“We forget sometimes that the Epistles are just that … letters, broken pieces of correspondence between early Christians. In our rush to extract sound bites we tend to skip past the initial greetings that designate the recipients of the message – ‘to the church of God in Corinth,’ ‘to God’s holy people in Ephesus,’ ‘to Timothy’. [We also skip] the details that should remind us that we are listening in on someone else’s conversation – ‘I have made a fool of myself,’ ‘I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else,’ ‘When you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus and my scrolls.’”[4]
She sums up,
“My point is, like the rest of the Bible, the Epistles were written for us, but they were not written to us. The letters give us the priceless gift of seeing how early followers of Jesus applied his teachings to their unique circumstances. [But] the apostles never meant for their letters to be interpreted and applied as law the same way the Torah had been. So careful readers must do the hard work of sorting through which instructions might continue to illuminate and guide the modern church and which are specific to the context.”
Are you ready to do some hard work?
Our understanding of this passage hinges on two words: submission and silence.
The first, hypotagē, is a Greek word, a military term for the acceptance of a submissive rank in an established hierarchy.
It is not easy to be submissive. But sometimes relationships are not equal partnerships. Sometimes rank needs to be respected. Sometimes resistance to submissiveness is a sign of our pride.
Elsewhere Paul counsels that children be submissive to their parents; wives to their husbands, and slaves to their masters.[5] He may be echoing societal norms, or he may be thinking of how Christ submitted to his Father’s will.
For example, Eugene Peterson translated his words to the Philippians like this in the Message:
“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
Still, I find myself wondering if there is some particular history behind Paul’s use of this term.
N T Wright believes the letter was originally sent to Timothy while he was in Ephesus, and “one of the main things we know about religion in Ephesus is that the main religion – the biggest temple, the most important shrine – was a female only cult. The Temple of Artemis was a massive structure, [and] the priests were all women.”[6]
If the church was recruiting in Ephesus, it follows that some of the women drawn to follow Christ were former members of the Artemis cult. They were used to being leaders; listened to.
In this same letter Paul tells Timothy, “Let no one despise your youth …”[7]
I wonder, was he easily intimidated? Was he feeling overwhelmed by these women? Paul was not intimidated by anyone. Is that why he could work alongside strong women without feeling threatened. Is Paul trying to shield Timothy? Is that why he warns women in Ephesus who seem to have fallen into their old habits of dominating the church as they had in the temple to submit?
The other word is silence.
Rachel Held Evans was never known as silent or shy. But in her reflection on this passage, she took her exploration of silence in two unexpected directions. She writes:
“I confess that I feared that [a] silent retreat would stifle me, that it would divert me from advocating on behalf of women who preach and teach. But in the quietness of [a benedictine abbey and at a Quaker meeting] I encountered something much bigger than myself, something that assured me that everything would be ok if I could just quiet myself … ”
“There is a big difference,” she continues, “between being silenced and silencing oneself. And it is precisely because women like Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich and Catherine of Siena knew how to silence themselves before God that they gained such a significant influence on the Church in times when women had little voice. In silence, I found a reservoir of strength that could make my words weightier. In silence I had finally found my voice.”[8]
Isn’t that why we bristle that this text – because it seems to deny women their voice?
But what if Paul is speaking to a specific group of women in Ephesus – those who have left behind the temple of Artemis and are still trying to learn what it means to follow Christ.
What if he is saying to them that there is no shame in submitting, as Christ did.
What if he is saying that they can learn lessons from God in stillness and silence; lessons that would otherwise be drowned out by human chatter.
What if he is also telling them they can leave behind the fancy temple wardrobe, because they don’t need to impress God.
And what if Paul cites the story of Adam and Eve, not to shame women, but to remind them that Christ is the one who frees us all from our sin?
I started this sermon by saying the leadership of women is already a settled question in the PCUSA. And yet the legacy of a certain interpretation of Paul’s words lingers.
They drown out his words to the church in Galatia where he says we are all one in Christ.
In 2016 the denomination put out a report on Gender and Leadership in the PCUSA. It found that 84% of female ministers reported experiencing discrimination, prejudice, or harassment based on their gender and 96% of them felt that there is still gender discrimination in the US.[9]
They backed up these figures with heartbreaking stories. For example:
“I'm a female solo pastor, but I have been turned down for interviews for jobs before because the congregation prefers a male pastor. I find this is particularly common in smaller churches. I have members of my congregation who openly say they would prefer a man.”
And, “An Executive Presbyter tried to steer me into a part-time position that had always been filled by a woman (and for which I was significantly over-qualified) and away from applying for a full-time ministry position. [He] also declined to help me make connections to lead a retreat on a topic I had recently published a book on, but jumped at the chance to create such opportunities for a new male pastor moving into the presbytery.”
And, “In seeking to call [someone] to ministry, churches always hope to find a man. They will accept a woman if qualified men don't apply. Women are forced to work for less money ...”
That was less than 10 years ago … in our denomination … where we accept women as ordained leaders. So what can we do?
We can lift up Paul’s words to the Galatians and explain why those to Timothy are not universal.
We can encourage women to use their gifts in every aspect of church life, right alongside men.
And we can make sure our neighbors know that we are blessed to have female pastoral leadership, as well as women as elders, and committee chairs, and teachers of classes for kids and adults!
Each of those actions would blunt the traditional sting of Paul’s words to Timothy … and
honor the God who created us all in God’s image. Amen
[1] Village Chapel records show she was elected March 28, 1965
[4] Here and following, pages 259-261
[5] See 1 Timothy 3:4, Titus 2:5, and Titus 2:7
[6] From Paul for Everyone: the pastoral letters, page25
[7] See 1 Timothy 4:12
[8] From A Year of biblical Womanhood, page 278
[9] Here and following from https://pcusa.org/resource/gender-and-leadership-pcusa