Should Women Keep Silent in Church?

It is easy to take things people say right to your face out of context. It is even easier to miss the full meaning of a message that is written down or emailed to you. Consider then how easy it would be to misinterpret a conversation meant for someone else when you overhear only one half of the discussion. Add that to the difficulty of the conversation being in a foreign language that you don’t know and you are really going to have to work hard to come up with the correct translation. Finally consider that the conversation took place over 2000 years ago in a culture that has dramatically changed, with religious practices no longer in place, and dealing with issues that may be outside of our current cultural practices. Welcome to the difficulties of Bible interpretation.

Though it may be nice to simply crack open the pages of an English version of the Bible, presented in modern language by a publishing company, and read it as though we were the intended audience, it is rather naïve. Good Bible study means hard work. It includes understanding as much as we can about the author, the initial audience, the setting, the culture, the conversation, the relationships, and the issues before we can really make much sense of the meaning. Then we can carefully ask ourselves about the timeless principles involved and evaluate how they relate to us in our lives. Finally, we have the choice to apply them. This is all hard work, yet worth all the effort.

Some passages of scripture are harder to understand than others. I remember a few things that my college professor taught me about biblical interpretation, one was that the Bible doesn’t disagree with itself, so if it appears that it does our study isn’t complete. We need to dig deeper and use good Bible study methods to help find the intended meaning. One of the best tools is to let the passages we believe to be clear help us interpret the ones that appear to reside in shadows.

A passage that has inspired much debate and division through the years is 1st Timothy 2:11-12 (NIV) “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” A simple read of this English text would prompt a Bible-believing Christian to impose sanctions on the female gender when it came to speaking and teaching in a church meeting—a decision that many denominations and localized groups of believers have done. A more careful examination of this passage, in its original context, may put the desired meaning from the Apostle Paul to Timothy in a different light. And if that is the case, we may need to reconsider how we have applied what we have thought to be timeless truths through the years.

Jon Zens is a diligent student of the Bible and has done an impressive amount of homework regarding the historical context of this passage. In his book, What’s With Paul and Women: Unlocking the Cultural Background to 1 Timothy 2, he addresses the cultural misunderstandings about the role of women in the early church and examines this passage in the light of the rest of the New Testament teachings of gender roles. He suggests the following:

Scripture must be viewed and considered as a whole and within a context. Using any single Scripture to cancel out the combined impact of many Scriptures is, to say it in the kindest way possible, not a safe way to handle God’s Word. Those who use 1 Timothy 2:12 as a prooftext to shut down women’s ministry are guilty of using one Scripture to cancel out the clear and compelling biblical revelation of women ministering in many other settings.

He comes to this conclusion based on some important insights:

Hesuchia means “quietness,” not “silence.” Further, in 1 Timothy 2:2 the stated goal is for all believers to live a “quiet” life. In 1 Thessalonians 4:11 Paul instructs all the brethren, “strive eagerly to be quiet, to do your own business and work with your own hands.” The apostle tells those believers who are not working “to work with quietness and to eat their own bread” (cf. 2 Thes. 3:12).

If our interpretation of this word has been “silence” and not “quietness” what mistakes may we have made in our application of this scripture?

Zens takes a scholarly approach to his book, citing authors, providing notes, sources, and helpful information in the appendixes. Yet this is a very readable book, concise (under 100 pages), and yet complete. Here is what he covers in his study.

1. How the New Testament...Views Women
2. Two Preliminary “Why’s?”
3. The Immediate Context of 1 Tim. 2
4. Why Paul Touches On Apparel In Prayer
5. Quietness, Learning and Submission
6. Post-Apostolic Mistreatment of Women
7. Is Paul Concerned About Women Teaching?
8. Why Note Adam Came First?
9. What About Eve’s Being Deceived?
10. The Gospel Applied to Cultural Situations
11. Conclusion & Summary

Having read several other books on this topic (having been in a denomination that was struggling with applying this exact issue) I am thankful to have this book as a resource. I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest it as a tool for a better understanding of Paul’s writing to Timothy and a fuller understanding of what the Bible has to say about women in ministry.