“ Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” –1 Timothy 2:11-12 (ESV)
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Complementarians believe Paul’s concern in verse 12 is that women should not teach men authoritatively in the church but submit to male leadership instead.[i]
They claim the phrase “a woman” refers to all women at all times and that Paul wants exclusive male headship authority in local churches.[ii] They see authoritative teaching as a special category which is the domain of qualified males only.[iii]
Since 1 Tim. 2:11-12 is the only passage which seems to forbid women from teaching or having authority over men, but it conflicts with Paul’s inclusion of women in leadership roles elsewhere, it requires careful examination.[iv]
Is this text so clear, uncomplicated, and obvious it should be applied to all women everywhere at all times?[v]
Three problems arise with a universal ban interpretation.
First, if forbidding women from teaching were an established rule, wouldn’t Timothy already know about it?[vi] Paul often reminds readers, including Timothy, of traditions they should already know. Yet this instruction seems to be new and specific to Ephesus.[vii]
Second, if we universalize Paul’s restriction on women teaching, we should also universalize his command that young widows remarry (1 Tim. 5:14).[viii]
I’ll address the third issue later.
The Problem Timothy Faces
The purpose of 1 Timothy is to help churches battling opposition to the gospel.[ix]
More than twenty percent of the content of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus focuses on false teachers and their heretical ideas.[x] The rest mostly entails how to set things right again in doctrine and practice.[xi]
1 Corinthians offers protocol for church gatherings, but 1 Timothy focuses on godly character and conduct in everyday life. The early church didn’t view the letters we now call “pastoral epistles” as a blueprint of pastoral rules for all churches at all times.[xii]
1 Timothy offers instructions for a specific problem, not a ministry model,[xiii] and 1 Timothy 2:12 isn’t addressing an issue of church meeting protocol.[xiv]
The dominant theme of 1 Timothy is how a new church should deal with members embracing false teaching and behaving badly while also rationalizing their actions with convoluted theology.[xv]
Instead of the meaningless discussions, idle gossip (1:4,6; 5:13), and teachings of demons (4:1b) going on in Ephesus, Paul wants his protégé to teach sound doctrine in word and deed (1:5, 11; 4:11, 13-16; 6:3). He wants to restore the Ephesian church, which had been damaged by false teachers.[xvi]
At least two male false teachers had been dealt with (1 Tim. 1:20), but false teaching was still spreading, mostly through women.[xvii] Part of the problem was that women usually received less education than men, including in the Scriptures.[xviii]
An even bigger problem was the spiritual environment.
Religious Culture in Ephesus
The most important deities in Asia Minor were female.[xix] The Great Mother goddess had many names, including Artemis, an idol that promised safety in childbearing and was called Savior (soteira) and Lord (kyrios).[xx]
Artemis’s devotees practiced astrology and magic.[xxi] The temple of Artemis in Ephesus, where thousands served the goddess, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.[xxii]
The Artemis myth included the idea of the goddess, the woman, as the source of man.[xxiii] In this cult, women could serve as priestesses and assume greater status than men.[xxiv]
Women who worshiped Artemis dressed in sexually provocative and extravagant ways, despised marriage and childrearing, and took over public speaking and teaching opportunities.[xxv]
Ephesus “…stood as a bastion of feminine supremacy in religion.”[xxvi]
The heresy of Gnosticism and its “upside-downing” of the Bible also infected the Ephesian church.[xxvii]
In one Gnostic text, men can only learn special hidden knowledge from women.[xxviii] Gnosticism emphasized the role of feminine mediator, which prompts Paul’s clarification,
“There is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the human Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5, CEB).”[xxix]
Some Gnostics were heavily involved in magic, and in ancient times women were considered purveyors of magic.[xxx]
In responding to the destructive doctrines infiltrating the church, Paul instructs Timothy to combat false teaching and promote godliness, purity and love (1 Tim. 1:3-5).[xxxi] He exhorts women to cultivate good deeds, not an extravagant, immodest appearance (9-10).[xxxii]
The word for “elaborate hairstyles” in verse 9 is plegmasin, a rare word referring to the plaited hairstyle of women who worshiped Artemis and imitated her look.[xxxiii]
Showing off wealth and dressing in sexually provocative ways is inappropriate for women professing godliness, but beyond that, Paul forbids the imitation of Artemis’s hairstyle and dress for women in the church.[xxxiv]
He wants their outer appearance to show a clean break from idolatry.
What Paul Disallows in 1 Tim. 2:12
False teaching by women was going on so much in Ephesus that restrictions had to be placed on women teaching,[xxxv] but here’s evidence that these were specific to Ephesus at that time:
1. In other passages, Paul affirms women teaching (Titus 2:1-3; 1 Cor. 14:26; Col. 3:16).[xxxvi] Note that Priscilla taught Apollos, spiritual gifts are not gender specific (Rom. 16:6-8), and Paul’s female co-workers did apostolic labor and led churches.[xxxvii]
Timothy himself was instructed in the faith by his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:5).[xxxviii]
2. Other than in 1 Cor. 14:34, the verb “permit” is never used in the New Testament for a universal command. Rather, it is used to indicate temporary permission for a specific situation.[xxxix]
The only command in 1 Tim. 2:11-12 is the phrase, “A woman is to learn.”[xl] That women should learn, with the implied goal of eventually teaching, was a revolutionary command in Paul’s day.[xli]
3. The word for “authority” is the rare verb authentein, used only once in Scripture.[xlii] Complementarians define authenteo as a positive term for authority,[xliii] but authenteo had a negative meaning until at least the third century.[xliv]
The meaning “to assume authority to teach a man” has the best lexical support and fits the context.[xlv]
4. The way Paul normally uses the conjunction oude is to join separate expressions which reinforce a single idea.[xlvi] So he combines “to teach” (didaskein) and “to assume authority” (authentein) into a single rule—teaching combined with usurping authority is by its very nature unauthorized.[xlvii]
5. The opposite of self-authorized teaching is, “…instead, she is to remain quiet,” paralleling 2:11, “…quietly with full submission.”[xlviii] Hesuchios (quiet) in 2:2 implies compliance to the law, not resistance; harmony with others, not hostility; and peace, not argumentation. [xlix]
A woman can teach with a calm spirit, but she cannot be in “quietness” while bullying a man.[l]
Now for the third and most important reason NOT to interpret 1 Tim. 2:12 as a universal ban on women teaching:
As Andrew Bartlett notes, if indeed the passage refers to a creation-rooted prohibition revealing God’s will for men and women—a prohibition which is sinful and rebellious to disobey—why would Paul say, “I do not permit?”[li]
That wording doesn’t work for an “always, everywhere” kind of rule.
Nowhere in the Bible does a writer of Scripture say, “I do not permit” when stating a timeless, universal prohibition of sinful behavior which God himself has already established.
Nowhere.
1 Timothy 2:12 is a temporary solution to a particular problem—not a universal ban on women teaching.
[i] Andrew Bartlett, Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts (London: IVP, 2019), 220, 223. Bartlett is a lawyer with a theology degree. See Thomas Schreiner, “A Response to Craig Blomberg” in Two Views on Women in Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 192. Schreiner states that “a woman should not teach or exercise authority in the church.” Also see Douglas Moo, “What Does it Mean not to Teach or Have Authority?” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Rev. ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 179. “The submission in view here is …submission of women to male leadership…not just to husbands, but to male leaders in the church.”
[ii]Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Tim. 2:9-15 in Women in the Church: An Interpretation and Application of 1 Tim. 9-15 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016),
184. Moo refers only to the plural “women” in his essay on 1 Tim. 2:8-15 arguing against women teaching men in the church. See Douglas Moo in Recovering Biblical Manhood, 180-182.
[iii] Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Tim. 2:9-15” in Women in the Church, 192.
[iv] 4 Philip B Payne, Man and Woman: One in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 291.
[v] Lucy Peppiatt, Recovering Scripture’s Vision for Women (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 142.
[vi] Craig Keener, Paul, Women and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992), 112.
[vii] Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives, 112.
[viii] Nijay Gupta, Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2023), 167.
[ix] Kroeger, Richard Clark and Catherine Clark, I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in Light of Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1992), 42.
10 Kroeger, 42.
[x] Kroeger, 42.
[xi] Kroeger, 42.
[xii] Gupta, 166.
[xiii] Gupta, 167-168.
[xiv]Bartlett, 235.
[xv] Kroeger, 46.
[xvi] Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy (Cape Town, South Africa: The Spiritual Bakery Publications, 2022), 130.
[xvii] Keener, Paul, Women and Wives, 111-112.
[xviii] Keener, Paul, Women and Wives, 112.
[xix] Kroeger, 50.
[xx] Bartlett, 241-242.
[xxi] Bartlett, 241-242.
[xxii] Kroeger, 52.
[xxiii] Peppiatt, 150.
[xxiv] Kroeger, 70-71.
[xxv] Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 198-199. Payne and Huffaker explain, “The people were lured by promises of fertility, sexuality and protection
during pregnancy and childbirth.” Philip B. Payne and Vince Huffaker, Why Can’t Women Do That? Breaking Down the Reasons Churches put Men in Charge (Boulder, CO: Vinati Press, 2021), 141. See Acts 19:34 where the crowd chants, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians” for two hours.
[xxvi] Kroeger, 54.
[xxvii] Kroeger, 60-61.
[xxviii] Kroeger, 73.
[xxix] Kroeger, 71-74.
[xxx] Kroeger, 63.
[xxxi] Bartlett, 211.
[xxxii] “… Also, the women are to dress themselves in modest clothing, with decency and good sense, not with elaborate hairstyles, gold, pearls, or expensive apparel, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess to worship God (1 Tim. 2:9-10).”
[xxxiii] Peppiatt, 148.
[xxxiv] Peppiatt, 148.
[xxxv] Payne, Man and Woman, 334.
[xxxvi] Payne, Man and Woman, 328-334.
[xxxvii] Kroeger, 55.
[xxxviii] For the meaning of teach, didaskein, see Kroeger, 80-82.
[xxxix] Payne, Man and Woman, 395.
[xl] Peppiatt, 154.
[xli] Kroeger, 75.
[xlii] Linda Belleville, “An Egalitarian Perspective” in Two Views on Women in Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 82. For an in-depth treatment of authenteo, see Payne, Man and Woman, 361-397, Bartlett 268-270, Gupta
170-173, and Terran Williams, 131-138.
[xliii] For example, Blomberg concludes that Paul’s prohibition in 1 Tim. 2:12 is a prohibition of women elders based on the verb authentein. (Craig Blomberg, “A Complementarian Perspective” in Two Views on Women in Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 170. However, as Belleville points out, the more positive meaning he employs (“to hold authority over”) did not exist at the time when Paul wrote. All early Latin, Coptic and Syriac versions translate the word as “domineer,” which best fits the cultural context of the Artemis cult in Ephesus and the problem of false teaching. See Belleville, 201.
[xliv] Belleville, 86. New Testament scholar Cynthia Westfall’s analysis suggests a definition of authenteo as “…the autonomous use or possession of unrestricted force.” In other words, one person overrides another person’s self-interest, or even harms or compels them, by imposing their will on them. Rather than a positive or even neutral definition of authority, this suggests domineering. Cynthia Westfall, “The Meaning of Authenteo in 1 Tim. 2:12.” In Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, vol. 10 (Hamilton, Ontario: McMaster Divinity College, 2014), http://jgrchj.net/volume10/JGRChJ10-7_Westfall.pdf, 166-167.
[xlv] Payne, Man and Woman, 396. Bartlett clarifies that this word was used in the same sense in astrological lore, which was part of the false teaching wealthy women were promoting. Bartlett, 285.
[xlvi] Payne, Man and Woman, 338-342.
[xlvii] Payne, Man and Woman, 351.
[xlviii] Payne, Man and Woman, 353
[xlix] Kroeger, 68.
[l] Payne, Man and Woman, 353.
[li] Bartlett, Andrew (2026, August 7). Finding the Big Points: What Really Matters in the Biblical Equality Debate [Workshop presentation]. Christians for Biblical Equality Conference, Chicago, IL.
