1. My argument in my words

My argument is straightforward. In 1 Tim 2:12 Paul restricts “teaching authority” in the church to certain trusted male elders. To my mind, this is unavoidable (despite decent arguments to the contrary given by my egalitarian friends). But the conversation doesn’t stop there; we can’t simply assume that 1 Tim 2:12 is referring to what we call ‘sermons’. Two other pieces of evidence need to be considered. First, Paul explicitly distinguishes “teaching” from other kinds of speech in church. In Romans 12:4-8, for example, Paul lists “teaching”, “prophesying”, and “exhorting”, and says that each of them is “different” (diaphoros). Secondly, it is clear Paul expected women to “prophesy (and pray)” in church (1 Cor 11:5). The upshot of this is that there are at least three different kinds of speaking ministries in church, and the restriction in 1 Tim 2:12 refers to only one of them.

The obvious double-barrelled question is: What is “teaching”, and how do we know all of today’s sermons fall into that category, instead of the categories of “prophesying” or “exhorting”? In Hearing Her Voice I lay out the evidence that “teaching” (in Paul’s letters) refers to a specific task that cannot easily be equated with expounding the Scriptures. “Teaching” is transmitting and protecting—I like to use the expression “laying down”—the core body of apostolic doctrines. “Exhorting”, on the other hand (and perhaps “prophesying”), refers to something closer to (many of) our sermons, that is, urging God’s people to trust and obey the teachings of Scripture. If this is right, it would be inappropriate to restrict all Sunday sermons to men. “Teaching authority” in the local church may lay with an authorised elder, but that doesn’t mean trusted women shouldn’t also be giving sermons exhorting us in the power of the Spirit to heed the message of Scripture.

But Kevin critiques my view in a series of considered moves.

2. Teaching in the early church

First, Kevin says “we have to wonder why this highly nuanced reading has been lost on almost every commentator for two millennia.” I’m not sure what to make of this, because virtually every (technical) commentator notes that “teaching” in Paul’s letters, especially the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus), refers to the specialised activity of making sure the church learns the core body of apostolic doctrines. If there is anything fresh in my argument, it isn’t the historical-critical account of Pauline “teaching”; it is perhaps the way I ask whether every modern sermon is “teaching” in the same sense.

Kevin bolsters his point by asking why the early church, after the New Testament, did not continue to use “teaching” in this highly specialised sense. He offers the example of the Didache, written at the end of the first century. He says the word “teaching” in this document is used in a more generalised way. A couple of things are relevant. First, my argument isn’t that “teaching” always and only means the same thing across all Greek literature (or even everywhere in the Bible, let alone later Christian literature). My argument is that Paul uses the word in a specific way, and it is Paul’s usage that we have to probe in order to understand what he meant when he asked women not to “teach”.

Secondly, I’m not confident Kevin is actually right about the Didache. The very word ‘didache’ is the Greek term for “teaching”, and the Didache document claims to be—it isn’t, but it claims to be—an accurate account of the core doctrines of the apostles. The full title is “The Teaching (Didache) of the Lord for the Nations through the Twelve Apostles”. That’s why Didache 11:1 speaks of welcoming those who “come and teach you all these things that have just been mentioned.” The word “teaching” here has nothing to do with expounding the Bible, or expounding the Didache document itself. “Teaching” in this instance obviously just means repeating and laying down the apostolic doctrines this document claims to preserve.

It is true, as Kevin notes, that a few paragraphs later (Didache 11:10-11), the text speaks of a “prophet” engaging in “teaching”, but does this help Kevin’s case? It is well known that the word “prophet” came very quickly to refer to what we would call “an itinerant Christian speaker”. But is that how the New Testament, and Paul in particular, uses the term? I don’t think so. We have already seen that Paul carefully distinguishes between “prophesying” and “teaching” (as well as between “prophets” and “teachers”). But the Didache—written a few decades after Paul—implies that prophets do the “teaching”. How would that square with Paul’s view that women may “prophesy” but not “teach” (or with the fact that the evangelist Philip had four “prophesying” daughters: Acts 21:9)? It is surely more reasonable to say that the Didache provides evidence of a loosening, or conflating, of New Testament terms.

We should also note that the church missed, conflated, and invented loads of things throughout its history. Most of our complementarian churches today are happy to invite women to read the Bible in church, to sing songs, and to lead the prayers. That seems biblical to us today, but these activities were usually forbidden to women throughout church history. Indeed, some fine contemporary evangelicals, like Tim Challies of Grace Fellowship Church, continue to believe that women should not read the Bible in public.

3. Teaching in ancient Judaism

Kevin also disputes my account of Jewish practice at the time of Paul. In Hearing Her Voice I make the point that the Mishnah(the second sacred text of Orthodox Judaism) is a fixed collection of oral traditions from the rabbis. As such, it is a close parallel to what Paul called “teaching”. Kevin, however, insists that the Mishnah “explains and applies the Torah”. Thus, if the Mishnah is a good parallel to teaching (as I claim), teaching must be about explaining and applying the Bible.

I am not sure Kevin is correct, either about what the Mishnah claims for itself, or about how Jews—ancient or modern—understand the Mishnah. There is a whole genre of Bible exposition in ancient Judaism. It isn’t the Mishnah. It’s called Pesher (“interpretation”), and the Dead Sea Scrolls contain some excellent examples. The Mishnah is something very different. There are, of course, citations of Scripture in the Mishnah (just as there are in Pauline “teaching”), but the Mishnah purports to be a separate body of tradition sitting in parallel to the Jewish Scriptures. That is why Jews call it the “second Torah” and the “oral Torah”, as opposed to the first, written Torah. I urge readers to flick through a modern copy of the Mishnah. I am confident they will discover that there is hardly anything in its 1000 pages that looks like an “exposition” of an Old Testament passage.

Kevin also points to the synagogue service, where he says something approaching exposition of the Bible did take place. Actually, I say the same thing in my book. The difference between us is that Kevin reckons this synagogue practice provides the background for Paul’s concept of “teaching”, whereas I argue that this practice provides the background for Paul’s concept of “exhortation”. Preaching on the basis of a passage is typically called “exhortation” in the New Testament not “teaching” (see Acts 13:15; 15:31-32; Hebrews 13:22). And as I also argue in the book, this is why Paul urges Timothy, “devote yourself to the public reading, to the exhortation, and to the teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). These are three separate activities, and notice it is “the exhortation” (not “the teaching”) that follows the Scripture reading. To repeat what I said earlier, “exhortation” is “different” (diaphoros) from “teaching” (as Romans 12:4-8 makes clear), and “exhortation” has a lot in common with what we now call a “sermon”.