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Monday, February 20, 2006

Saved by Childbirth in 1Tim. 2:15

Rick Brannan blogs on exegeting the difficult Greek of 1 Tim. 2:15. We have had at least one blog post on this topic in the past here at BBB, but it is good to revisit the topic when other bloggers have discussed this verse. As for myself, unlike Rick Brannan and Aaron's Corner to which he links, I am skeptical that Paul was saying anything in 1 Tim. 2:15 that suggests that a woman's primary role in life is childbearing or nurturing children, as biblically important as those roles are. Paul himself praised women who were entrusted with the gospel and helped share it with others, so surely he saw women's role in evangelism and discipleship as vitally important, along with childbearing and child nurturing, the latter of which is also a biblical role for fathers.

UPDATE: Rick has followed up with a post that clarifies his ideas on 1 Tim. 2:15. He and I have exchanged email messages and I can see that I probably should not have used the word "primary" above. I struggled with what word to use to try to characterize the gist of Rick and Aaron's posts. Perhaps one of you can suggest another adjective that would be more accurate for what they were saying.

2 Comments:

At Mon Feb 20, 12:08:00 PM, Blogger Suzanne McCarthy said...

Luther said
"She shall be blessed" Children are a blessing!

 
At Tue Feb 21, 06:49:00 AM, Blogger Dr. David Ritsema said...

I agree. I think that talking about "roles" of men and women in texts like these does not help the discussion much. I am convinced that we know far too little about the ancient world to talk about the universal roles of women in Judaism or Greco-Roman society. We can even come up with a consensus about the role of women in the world today. There is a great diversity which varies not only from country to country, but from person to person.

 

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