The Authentic Traditional Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-14
What is the historic traditional interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-14? The complementarian and egalitarian interpretations are both of recent vintage and responses to cultural shifts.
In her book An Historian Looks at 1 Timothy 2:11-14: The Authentic Traditional Interpretation and Why It Disappeared (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), Joan G. Brown explores the “traditional interpretation” of 1 Timothy 2:11-14 through the lens of major Protestant commentators from the Martin Luther to Charles Hodge, from the early sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. She argues that the “authentic traditional interpretation” applied this text to civil and social order whereas contemporary traditionalists (who exclude all female audible and visible leadership in the assembly based on 1 Timothy 2:12) and complementarians (who primarily exclude women from preaching and ruling authority in congregational leadership based on 1 Timothy 2:12) do not. More recent views have shifted away from grounding social order in the creation ordinances (as it relates to male and female), while applying them to the home and church. This is a new interpretation. Culture, Brown argues, is responsible for this shift more than exegetical prowess.
Moreover, many who articulated the “authentic traditional interpretation” also believed that the kingdom of God is not bound by the natural law that governs the social order because God gifts women in extraordinary ways (beyond natural law) for public leadership in the community of faith. That conclusion is disputed by contemporary traditionalists (no voice for women leaders in the assembly) and complementarians (typically excluding mostly preaching and some more). What happened? Why did the traditional interpretation change? Brown attempts to answer that question.
Her research discovered (pages 28-29) that earlier interpreters grounded the subordination of women to men in the creation ordinances and the fall. This natural law applies to civil order and society. Women are inherently inferior to men and are prohibited from participating in the social order since they are not emotionally or constitutionally equipped to be leaders. The complementarian New Testament scholar Daniel Doriani also noted that until recently the historic record of the church affirmed the “ontological inferiority of women.”[1] In other words, women—as historically viewed by the dominant church traditions prior to the late nineteenth century—are inferior to men. This is not a mere “role” differentiation (which is language that does not enter the mainstream until the 1970s) but ontological difference (including, for many, the secondary or derivative status of women as divine imagers of God).
Consequently, public leadership (e.g, civil government) and public speaking (in whatever social or civil venue) were not sanctioned. These Protestant exegetes and leaders believed women were excluded from leadership in the civil order because natural law was grounded in creation and the fall, according to 1 Timothy 2:11-14. This would exclude female political leaders as well public professions such as college professors, medical doctors, lawyers, etc.
At the same time, according to many of these traditional leaders (e.g., the Reformer John Calvin, the Puritan Matthew Poole, and the Methodist Adam Clarke among others), this exclusion is not organic to the kingdom of God because God’s kingdom is spiritual and animated by the gifts of God’s Holy Spirit. Within the spiritual kingdom God, according to Scripture, calls women to function as prophets and leaders (whether Deborah, Miriam, Huldah, Anna, Phoebe, prophets in Corinth, etc.). Some of these Protestant interpreters read Galatians 3:28 as making this very point, that is, while the social order may not permit women to speak, in Christ they are gifted to exercise whatever God gifts them to do, including gifts of speech. However, in deference to civil order and society which are grounded in natural law and the dominant practice of culture, the church calls men to lead so that the church does not scandalize the culture in which it exists.
In other words, there was a time in the history of interpretation when women were excluded from leadership in the church because the social order required men to lead rather than women, and the church did not want to offend that social order and subvert the church’s missional interests. This is further complicated by the way authors assumed or argued for a two-kingdom theory: the kingdom of nature/world/civil and the kingdom of God. The former is grounded in natural law, but the latter is grounded in Christ. Since the kingdom of God exists in the world and does not want to give unnecessary offense, it defers to the social order as a missional strategy so that the gospel might have a hearing.
Exclusion from leadership in the social order is also the typical understanding within the Stone-Campbell Movement, especially among churches of Christ. However, the movement tended to exclude women in public leadership in both the home and church (with some significant exceptions, of course). For example, in 1874, D. G. Porter (Christian Quarterly [October 1874], 489-90) concluded women have no right to vote “unless, indeed, it is proposed to proceed upon what seems the absurdist of all principles, namely, subordination at home and in the Church, but independence and equity abroad. We call this proposition absurd, because it would seem that if woman can be equal to man in authority anywhere, it must be at home and in the Church; and that her equality here, if indeed that ought to be her position, must be the foundation of her equality in external affairs.” Porter argued women should be excluded from voting because they should be subordinate to men in society just as they are in the home and church. He contended that the principle of equality is more rationally applicable within the church than in broader society. To him, the link between society and church/home was both biblical (based on 1 Timothy 2:12-13) and logical, and if society embraces the equality of women and men, then the church and home must as well. He was against public leadership by women in both, including voting.
Or, to put it another way, James A. Allen, a leading evangelist in Nashville and future editor of the Gospel Advocate, wrote: “It is the law of nature, and the law of God, that the influence of woman must be exercised through man, and when she takes the reins in her own hands it works evil to both man and woman by lifting her out of the sphere in which she was placed by the Creator. . . God has not created her to take the lead or occupy the platform or religion” (Gospel Advocate [December 19, 1907] 812, emphasis mine). Allen and, we might add the Gospel Advocate staff, opposed suffrage because of 1 Timothy 2:11-14.
These two Stone-Campbell authors represent the hardline traditionalists who excluded women from all public speaking in both society and church due to creation ordinances. While this was not the exclusive understanding in the Stone-Campbell Movement, or even among Churches of Christ, it was standard in southern churches of Christ. This includes David Lipscomb (see this blog). However, Lipscomb argued for a wide latitude for the participate of women in private settings, including teaching Bible classes at the church building that including men and women.
In the late nineteenth century, this perspective flip-flops (page 63). Traditionalists in the late nineteenth century began to read 1 Timothy 2:11-14 as applying only to the church and home and did not apply it to the social order. The creation ordinance was limited to church and home. Consequently, while the consensus previously applied 1 Timothy 2:11-14 to the social order, new interpreters applied it only to the church and home, and not to the social order. The complementarian Doriani calls this a “reinterpretation” of 1 Timothy 2:11-14.[2] Churches of Christ also participated in this flip-flop where were only prohibited from public leadership in the church but not in society.
Brown’s book explains this flip-flop. Both enlightenment culture (where women increasingly participated in the social order) and the revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in first and second Great Awakenings (where women often participated audibly and visibly in the leadership) contributed to the flip. The abolition, temperance, and suffrage movements also opened the doors for women to participate in the social order, and ultimately, they were slowly accepted and even ultimately elected to roles in the social order by the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries participated in the revivals as readers, exhorters, song leaders, and even sometimes preachers among other public sorts of leadership.
The flip came when the church began to accept the cultural shift towards women leaders in the social order but resist the rise of women leaders in the ecclesial sphere. Traditionalists (those who wanted to exclude women from public leadership) began to interpret 1 Timothy 2:11-14 as prohibiting women from public leadership in the church but did not apply the creation ordinance as it was traditionally understood—they no longer applied it to the social order. Consequently, women were expected to be silent in church, but they could now exercise authority over men in the civil and social sphere.
The historic “authentic traditional” interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-14 taught that women are inferior in nature, emotionally unfit for leadership in the social order, and excluded from public leadership in the social order. Yet, this tradition of interpretation opened doors for female leadership in the church by God’s giftedness (including women preaching in the medieval era), though the church typically did not exercise those gifts due to potential social scandal.
The recent rise of complementarianism in the mid-to-late twentieth century (whether “hard” [traditionalist] or “soft” versions) where women are not regarded as inferior for leadership in the social order, are thought emotionally fit for leadership in the social order, and are not prohibited from public leadership in the social order by 1 Timothy 2:11-14 is a new interpretation. It is not the historic, traditional interpretation of the church. Yet, this new interpretation now explicitly excludes women from public leadership in the church (to varying degrees depending on who the complementarian is) while opening wide the doors to female public leadership in the civil and social order.
It appears traditionalists, historically, succumbed to cultural pressures in much the same way many accuse egalitarians of succumbing to cultural pressures. Whereas the traditional position excluded women from leadership in the social order until the cultural movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (e.g., temperance, “new woman,” suffrage, etc.), the cultural shift seemingly changed their mind and the creation ordinances began to be applied only to the home and church.
In other words, complementarians have been influenced as much by culture as complementarians accuse egalitarians of being so influenced. None have escaped the impact of cultural influence.
[1] Daniel Doriani, “History of the Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2,” in Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15, ed. By Andreas J. Kõstenberger, Thomas R. Schreiner, and H. Scott Baldwin (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 257.
[2] Doriani, 258-59.
May 24th, 2025 at 7:22 pm
When God created Eve the Bible tells us that it was because he was alone.
Eve and Adam were formed from the same flesh and Spirit to be one.
Eve’s fall for Satan’s seduction was no or more gregious than Adam’s.
They both were expelled from the presence of God.
Throughout the subsequent lineage of our Savior,
women outside and inside of the fold of God’s chosen people
played significant roles fulfilling God’s plan:
. Rahab saved her family and the Israeli spies.
. Deborah, the prophet was also a “general” of God’s army
. Hanna sacrificed her son to become the proffit annointing Saul and David
. Anna’s secret prevented a massacre
Elizabeth (John’s mother) and Mary (Jesus’) along with Mary Magdeline and JoAnna
Through faith followed God and became pillars in the early church.
The NT mentions prophetesses, Aquilla and pricilla, deaconesses
When man excludes women because of original sin
Or if women act to devide or disrupt the church
Both should repent, seeking forgiveness.