50 Crucial Questions - Question 40

Isn’t it true that the reason Paul did not permit women to teach was that women were not well educated in the first century? But that reason does not apply today. In fact, since women are as well educated as men today, shouldn’t we allow both women and men to be pastors?
This objection does not match the data in the biblical text for at least three reasons: First, Paul does not give lack of education as a reason for saying that women are not “to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12) but rather points back to creation (1 Tim. 2:13-14). It is precarious to build an argument on a reason Paul did not give, instead of the reason he did give.
Second, formal training in Scripture was not required for leadership in the New Testament church-even several of the apostles did not have formal biblical training (Acts 4:13), while the skills of basic literacy, and therefore the ability to read and study Scripture, were available to men and women alike (note Acts 18:26; Rom. 16:1; 1 Tim. 2:11; Titus 2:3-4). The papyri
show “widespread literacy” among Greek-speaking women in Egypt, and in Roman society, “many women were educated and witty.”
Third, if any woman in the New Testament church was well educated, it would have been Priscilla, yet Paul was writing 1 Timothy 2:12 to Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:3), the home church of Priscilla and Aquila. Beginning in AD 50, Paul had stayed at the home of Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth for eighteen months (Acts 18:2, 11); then they had gone with Paul to Ephesus in AD 51 (Acts 18:18-19, 21). Even by that time, Priscilla knew Scripture well enough to help instruct Apollos (Acts 18:26). Then she had probably learned from Paul himself for another three years while he stayed at Ephesus teaching “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27; cf. v. 31; 1 Cor. 16:19), and no doubt many other women in Ephesus followed her example and also learned from Paul. Aquila and Priscilla had gone to Rome sometime later (Rom. 16:3), about AD 58, but apparently had returned, for they were in Ephesus again at the end of Paul’s life (2 Tim. 4:19), about AD 67. Therefore, it is likely that they were back in Ephesus in AD 65 around the time Paul wrote 1 Timothy (persecution of Christians began in Rome in AD 64). Yet not even well-educated Priscilla, nor any other well-educated women in Ephesus, were allowed to teach men in the public assembly of the church: writing to Ephesus, Paul said, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). The reason was not lack of education, but God’s creation order.