When and where does Scripture permit women to teach both men and women together in the life of a church?
An urgent phone call from Carl several years ago showed me the answer to this question isn’t always obvious if you’re a complementarian. Carl, a student leader in the church’s college ministry, was enjoying a spring break trip in Florida with the college ministry. In the daytime, the group evangelized on a beach. At nighttime, they gathered for preaching and singing. Once or twice a woman preached to the whole group. Carl felt leery about this. So he called me, an elder in his church, back in Washington DC. “Is this okay?” he asked.
The Bible doesn’t explicitly address the variety of circumstances we find ourselves in, as with Carl and the college group. Rather, it gives us a spectrum ranging from illicit to licit. At the first end of the spectrum, Paul commands, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (1 Tim. 2:12). Apparently, there are some places in a church’s life where women teaching men is illicit—forbidden by God and therefore a sin.
At the other end of the spectrum, we hear about Apollos preaching in the synagogue. Right after, Priscilla and Aquila “took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). In other words, Priscilla, together with her husband, says to the mighty preacher Apollos, “You’re getting the text wrong, buddy!” In some sense of the word, she’s privately teaching him.
Where then is the line between these two examples? What separates licit from illicit teaching by a woman to a man? My goal in this piece is not to defend complementarianism. Rather, I’m writing as a convinced complementarian to convinced complementarians who need help with implementation and application.
I’ll answer the licit vs. illicit question with one basic principle: it’s illicit for women to teach in mixed settings when that teaching is connected to the gathered church.
When we move outside of that context, such teaching may be formally licit, yet questions of wisdom still matter. I’ll then offer five further considerations for whether such teaching is wise or unwise.
What Makes it Licit or Illicit?
1. Paul restricts woman from teaching at church.
I think the simple and intuitive answer that Christians have obeyed for centuries because it’s transparently on the pages of their Bible is that Paul forbids women from teaching at church.
The context of his command in 1 Timothy 2 is the gathered church (see 1 Tim. 3:15). Here’s the whole verse: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” Notice that last phrase. Is Paul instructing women to remain quiet everywhere—at home, on the college campus, on a picnic with Christian friends? Certainly not. Paul is more explicit about the congregational setting for these instructions in 1 Corinthians 14. Notice my italics: “the women should keep silent in the churches . . . If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (1 Cor. 14:34–35). We can leave for another day what “being quiet” at church does and doesn’t entail. Prayer? Prophecy? That’s not my concern. My point here is merely, when Paul forbids women from teaching or exercising authority over a man in 1 Timothy 2:12, he plainly, transparently, simply means at church—that is, in the church’s weekly gathering.
The easiest explanation is not always the best explanation, but it usually is, and so here. Women should not teach or exercise authority over a man at church. Doing so is illicit. It’s sin.
In turn, that would suggest that, for a woman to teach, instruct, or exhort a man outside of church is formally licit (leaving questions of prudence and manner aside for the moment). Why then was it acceptable for Priscilla to join her husband in teaching Apollos? A number of factors may be involved such as the presence of her husband or the manner in which she spoke. I’m not sure. Yet clearly her “explaining the way of God more accurately” didn’t occur in a gathering or service of the church. Likewise, if I personally began to flirt with unfaithfulness in my actions or my doctrine, I hardly think it would be sin for a woman (whether a fellow member or no) to approach me outside the assembly, open her Bible, point to a verse, and challenge me, “Jonathan, what are you doing?”
Now, we still need to have another conversation about whether or not any given moment of instruction, teaching, or preaching of Christian doctrine outside of a church setting is wise. After all, Paul grounds his church-located prohibition in creation design itself (1 Tim. 2:13). This means that, even outside the church, a woman preaching to men risks rubbing against the grain of a pattern God has woven into his design of the world. The lesson here is not, “Women teaching is wrong in the church but absolutely fine everywhere else.” That would make his church prohibition appear a little arbitrary.
Yet notice that, once we step outside the church gathering, the conversation has changed moral registers. We are no longer having a sin/righteousness conversation, but a wise/unwise conversation. We’ll come back to this change of registers in a moment.
2. Paul doesn’t restrict women merely from teaching as elders.
Yet now that we have the right answer to the question of when Paul’s prohibition to women applies, let me to turn to a wrong answer, which in turn might help us better understand why the simple “at church” is significant.
Some authors draw the licit/illicit line in between two types of teaching—between the teaching of an elder and the teaching of a non-elder. Ordination functions as the line, then, which in turn yields these two types of teaching. Tim Keller, for instance, distinguishes a unique form of “elder teaching” that proclaims the church’s official doctrine with other forms of teaching that men and women both can do. John Frame, too, distinguishes “between the special teaching office, which consists of the ordained elders, and the general teaching office, which includes all believers.” Andrew Wilson refers to all of this as Big-T versus little-t teaching.
1. Editor’s Note: This month, Christ Over All has identified women preaching under the authority of the elders as “functional egalitarianism,” even as those who hold this position will eschew the label “egalitarian.”
These three men, then, effectively interpret Paul as saying, “I don’t permit a woman to teach with the authority of an elder.” If she teaches, she must do so under the authority of an elder. Now, Keller and Frame, like most committed Presbyterians, limit “preaching in an official worship assembly of the church” (Keller) to ordained elders. Yet these three open the doorway to women teaching in Sunday Schools and elsewhere. Furthermore, when non-Presbyterians adopt this same elder vs. non-elder teaching structure apart from a Presbyterian view of ordination, that structure becomes an excuse to ask women to preach in the main assembly “under the authority of the elders.”[1] In short, the structure becomes an excuse for doing the opposite of what the text says.
2. Furthermore, this approach treats an elder’s teaching as fundamentally distinct from anyone else’s teaching at church. Elders, from this “elder-rule” perspective, are said to define and defend doctrine in a unique way. In such a framework, whether presbyterian, anglican, or independent elder-rule, elders effectively possess the keys of the kingdom. They define the church’s baseline doctrine, such as what shows up in a statement of faith. And they distinguish this from more every-day teaching. We might analogize the distinction here to the authority to draft a nation’s constitution verses the authority to write case laws. Big-T teaching is like drafting the constitution for a country. Little-t teaching is closer to writing everyday case laws, which will change more often. Not all proponents of elder-rule will follow this path, but I predict this will be an increasingly popular one in an era clamoring to let women teach. Creating these two tiers of teaching and tying the tiers to elder authority—elders write constitutions; anyone else can pass case-law—allows a church to both affirm 1 Timothy 2:12 and let women teach. While I agree elders possess authority in their teaching, nothing in Scripture says they alone can teach. Nor does any passage teach that the elders defend and define doctrine in a manner that the rest of the church does not. In fact, as a convinced (elder-led) congregationalist, I believe the priesthood of all believers and the New Testament teach that the entire congregation possesses this job. For instance, why else would Paul prosecute not just the elders, but the “Galatian churches” for departures from the gospel? He even tells those congregations to anathematize an angel or apostle who shows up with another gospel, never mind an elder (Gal. 1:2, 6–9).
The larger problem with the Big-T vs. little-t view of teaching is that, when a person steps into the pulpit or Sunday School lectern and opens a Bible, teaching is teaching is teaching. The teaching binds the conscience because the Bible binds the conscience, whether an elder is teaching or not. People sitting out in the pews don’t hear that teaching and then think to themselves, “Okay, so this is the official Big-T teaching so I really need to pay attention, whereas last week it was little-t teaching so I only kinda had to listen.” The two-tier structure, in other words, overemphasizes the teacher and underemphasizes the Bible as well as the key-wielding, Christ’s-embassy-on-earth significance of the gathered church (see Matt. 18:20; 1 Cor. 5:4).
If a person opens the Bible to teach in the gathered church, that person is doing what we call . . . teaching. Tom Schreiner writes, “Teaching explicates the authoritative and public transmission of tradition about Christ and the Scriptures (1 Cor. 12:28–29; Eph. 4:11; 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 3:16; James 3:1) . . . it is the heart and soul of the church’s ministry until the second coming of Christ.” To divide the forms of teaching we receive while gathered as the church—to establish a kind of first- and second-tier teaching in that location—undermines any Bible teaching that’s not given by an elder.[2]
3. Yet elder authority and the authority of teaching at church are related.
Having said all that, I don’t want to discount the significance of elder authority as we seek to understand what “teaching” entails. The Greek text in 1 Timothy 2:12 makes it lexically unlikely that “teach or have authority” is a hendiadys—two words that communicate one idea.[3] I say that because this suggestion seems to be growing in popularity. But the two ideas of teaching and having authority are surely related. Elders should “exhort and rebuke with all authority,” says Paul elsewhere (Titus 2:15). And while I would not restrict non-elders from preaching or teaching in a church’s main gathering as my Presbyterian friends do, I do agree that, ordinarily, elders do the work of preaching and teaching in church gatherings. Others might step in from time to time, such as a young man-in-training. Yet primarily it’s the elders’ job.
3. Sometimes people argue that “teach or have authority” is a hendiadys—two words that communicate one thing, as when the NT authors refer to “flesh and blood” (e.g. Eph 6:12; Heb. 2:14). Andreas Köstenberger (pp. 145–52) persuasively argues, however, that (i) hendiadyses, in the ancient and biblical literature, typically occur with “and” not “or”; (ii) they are well known cliches (like “flesh and blood”), while “teach or have authority” is not; and (iii) the two words in a hendiadys are typically separated only by the conjunction “and,” not by a whole phrase, as is the case here (the Greek text literally reads “To teach for a woman I don’t permit or to have authority”). Staring at the Greek, in other words, it’s really, really hard to assume Paul is forbidding only one thing, not two.
Along these lines, I think Andreas Köstenberger is probably right when he argues that the relationship between “teaching” and “authority” in 1 Timothy 2:12 is the relationship between a specific example within a category and then the general category. It’s similar to the specific-to-general relationship we encounter when Paul teaches Gentiles “not to circumcise their children [specific] or walk according to our [Jewish] customs [general]” (Acts 21:21).
It’s not surprising, therefore, that if Paul is going to restrict women from holding the office of church elder, he would also restrict them from teaching at church. Nor is it surprising that, if he’s going to restrict women from teaching at church, he’s also going to restrict them from the office of elder. The activity and the office, though distinct, are mutually implicating or involved.
4. A theology of the gathering plays a crucial background role in this conversation
Let me make one more comment here which is not absolutely necessary for our present purposes, but which has been the theological engine humming quietly in the background of my mind as I wrote the above.
The humming theological engine behind this conversation, as I say, is the fact that the gathered church bears the keys of the kingdom. Unfortunately, folks in our pragmatic, individualistic, multi-service and multi-site age lack any understanding of the significance of the gathering.
At best, the gathering, in most Christian’s minds, represents that place we go once a week both to use our spiritual gifts to serve others and to receive the encouragement and nourishment of others. What’s missing, among other things, is any recognition that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and that the gathering itself speaks. And speaking with the keys of the kingdom in hand, it teaches with God-given authority.
If we were to do a theology of the gathering, we would observe that the gathered local church is where heaven and earth overlap (also here), as they overlapped in the Garden, the tabernacle, and the temple. The gathering is where the landless holy nation acquires geography, the invisible church becomes visible, and the kingdom of God establishes an embassy. The gathering is where two or three—or two or three hundred!—gather in Jesus’s name to exercise the keys of the kingdom, and where Jesus specially locates his presence, such that it uniquely speaks for him (Matt. 18:20; 28:19-20).
As such—and this is important—you can declare the words of the gospel on Tuesday evening in your neighbor’s living room (“Jesus Christ died and rose for sinners”), and you can repeat those exact same words Sunday morning in the pulpit (“Jesus Christ died and rose for sinners”), and in both locations those words possess the authority of Scripture. Yet the words possess an additional layer of authority in the latter location: they also possess ecclesial authority (cf. 1 Cor. 5:4).
Why? Because: when those words are spoken from the pulpit at church, they possess the power not just of the Bible, but of the entire congregation through the keys of the kingdom. The whole church, by virtue of accepting those gospel words, makes a public, church-establishing and church-defining statement: “Yes, we believe those words. They define us. And to be one of us you must believe these words, too.” Spoken from the pulpit, then, they bind the whole church and make the church a public, visible reality on earth.
Now, to combine points three and four, the elders lead out in this whole process. Elder authority works in and through this larger idea of ecclesial authority. They lead the church in its congregational use of ecclesial authority (see Don’t Fire Your Church Members and Understanding the Congregation’s Authority). Yet hopefully this fourth point gives you a better sense of why the location—the gathering—is so significant. Like the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, Belgium, the physical, visible gathering itself represents an embassy of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
5. If the line between illicit and licit teaching is locational, it’s useful to think in concentric circles
So how do we put all this together for applying the tenets of complementarianism in different settings?
I find it helpful to think in terms of concentric circles. At the center of the circle—the bullseye—are whole church gatherings overseen by the elders. Teaching in this setting comes bearing the authority of the whole church as well as the authority of the elders.
As such, the clearest moment where 1 Timothy 2:12 applies is a church’s main, weekly gathering. If a church gathers a second time, say, on Sunday evening worship or for a Wednesday night Bible study, I’d argue it basically applies in those locations, too. Why? Because the teaching that occurs in those locations represents the teaching of the church which binds everyone. In these settings, I’d argue that it is illicit—sin—for women to teach.
But now let’s take one half-step outward from the center to the Sunday School classroom. The whole church is not present, which is why I call it a half-step outward. Still, the Sunday School class’s proximity to the main service as well the fact that those classes are often taught by elders means the church regards it as a ministry of the church and the elders. Folks typically regard what’s taught in Sunday School as binding on the whole church. (This is especially true if those lessons are part of a core curriculum or hosted on the church website). For that reason, I’d argue that, in all likelihood, it remains illicit for women to teach here. At least it’s very unwise.[4]
4. A possible exception might include a panel discussion or a couple teaching a marriage or parenting class. But notice the difference in format. Whereas preaching involves the authoritative proclamation of the Word, the Sunday School hour might include a dialogue format that is fundamentally different from the preaching event in the gathered assembly.
Now let’s take another step outward to the weeknight small group or community group. Again, folks often regard the teaching of these groups as the teaching of the church and the elders, at least if they’re counted as church-sponsored small groups specifically held for members. Usually elders train and oversee the small group leaders. For these reasons, I’m still willing to say it may be illicit for women to teach, but I say that with a shade less confidence than I did the Sunday School class. And I’m leaning a shade more into the wisdom/folly register rather than the illicit/licit register.
Questions of wisdom, for their part, remain relevant both because of the small group’s connection to the church and because creation design remains a factor. For instance, suppose a husband surrenders leadership of the group to his wife. His leadership in the home and hers in the small group push in opposite directions. If, however, we want to build up the church (the household of God) in a way that coheres with the created order, then we don’t want these two forms of leadership working against each other, where the husband leads the family in general but for two hours a week his wife leads their small group in particular. If the church is the place where the new creation is revealed, experienced, modeled, and proclaimed, I want home and church, insofar as both are represented in the home Bible study, working together.
We could take still more steps outward toward the church evangelistic Bible study, or the Christian conference, or the seminary classroom. Each step of the way I’ll become less convinced the illicit/licit conversation is the right one to have, while the wisdom/folly conversation is the right one. At each step, though, creation design remains a factor as do these institutions’ connection to the church. And we may well conclude, that while it may not be sin for a woman to teach, doing so is unwise, as well as unhelpful.
For instance, I don’t understand why some parachurch ministries adopt practices directly contrary to what Paul commands for the church, say, by asking women to lead Bible studies of men and women. They might plead, “We’re not the church!” which is true. Yet don’t they realize these Bible studies train men and women to step back into the churches and begin to question their practices as well as Paul’s teaching?
With all of this in mind, think back to my phone conversation with Carl when he called me from Florida about women teaching in the college group’s weeknight gatherings. What did I say to him? I told him that I believed such teaching was formally licit. I wasn’t convinced that the women were sinning by teaching, or that he was sinning by listening. After all, this was not a whole church gathering, where members gather weekly for the preaching of the word and the celebration of the ordinances. Therefore, he could finish out the week without feeling guilty. That said, I also told him I did think it was unwise, and that I would speak to the ministry leader and encourage him to change tactics.
What Makes it Wise or Unwise?
The inevitable question follows: what makes such teaching occasions wise or unwise? Presumably, it was wise for Priscilla to join her husband in instructing Apollos. Meanwhile, I would deem women teaching on the Florida college trip as unwise. How then do we distinguish between wise and unwise exercises of women teaching men outside the church gathering?
Let me offer five quick questions to ask yourself:
1. Will the hearers be tempted to treat this as the official teaching of the church or will they recognize that the teaching merely represents one person’s opinion?
If there’s any chance that such teaching might be construed as the teaching of the church and its elders, it’s probably unwise.
For instance, I assume most members of my church’s small groups regard the teaching in those small groups as “church and pastor supported.” Therefore, if one of my fellow elders proposed that we ask a woman to teach a mixed small group, I would argue that that would be very unwise. However, suppose I am teaching such a small group, and a woman in the group raises her hand and adds her two cents on what the text means. I would say she has the freedom to do so, because no one in the group will be tempted to confuse what she is saying with the teaching of the elders and the church. They would recognize that this is her personal take.
2. Might you be teaching lessons that will create future problems for pastors?
Carl recently reminded me of something I told him in that phone call several years ago. Apparently, I told him to consider whether the college ministry was preparing female college students to go back and be unhappy members of their local churches, particularly if they are not allowed to teach to mixed adult groups in their churches. In other words, what kind of precedent was asking women to teach setting? Again, I’m speaking in the wisdom register, not the sin/righteousness register. You might disagree with me. Still, I stand by that counsel. We always need to consider what precedents we’re setting in people’s minds. It’s foolish not to.
3. Are you encouraging women in God’s calling on their lives?
This is another version of the previous question. God does not call women to teach or preach in the church’s main gathering. He has other good callings and opportunities. What are they? Rather than encouraging them in something they’re not called to do in a church, we should always be looking for opportunities to equip and employ them in what God does call them to do, including teaching other women. When you’re examining a particular opportunity for a woman to teach, therefore, ask yourself, will this opportunity strengthen her ability to do what God does call her to do in the church?
4. Likewise, does giving this particular teaching opportunity to a woman risk discouraging a young man from teaching?
Part of discipling young Christian men is teaching them to take the initiative in leading others toward godliness. Every young man who wants to marry and have children should learn this lesson. And any young man who aspires to be a church elder, which is a good desire, should learn it. Along these lines, therefore, I believe churches should feel the burden to create cultures where young men feel the burden to teach God’s Word.
For instance, I just watched a movie on World War One. If the movie’s history is correct, young men felt a special burden and concern to protect their countries in the first half of the twentieth century. That is a good burden and one that, I dare say, has dissipated. Whether or not you agree with me on the goodness of that particular burden, I do think that Christian men should feel some burden to teach. Therefore, I don’t want to establish any structures or practices that would discourage it. Instead, I want to participate in cultivating a church culture where young men are excited for the opportunity to teach in teenage and college settings. Men who care about teaching the Word of God serve men and women alike.
5. Do you love and trust God’s plans for the teaching of the church as outlined in 1 Timothy 2:12, or are you tempted to apologize for it and get as close to the line as you can?
Growing up in church, I remember fellow church high school students asking “how far” we can go physically with members of the opposite sex. Our church youth leaders responded by saying, if we’re wondering how close we can get to “the line” without crossing it, we’re having the wrong conversation. Instead, we should coach our hearts to love God’s law, trust that it’s good, and seek to live by it.
Sometimes I feel like conversations about complementarianism can feel like that. Deep down, we don’t like the restrictions of 1 Timothy 2:12. We don’t entirely trust it. Steeped in the strange new world of expressive individualism, we think of the boundary as a burden, not a blessing.[5] We instinctively assume that it hinders life and steals opportunity.
5. Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022).
Insofar as that’s the case, we’ll constantly push against it. We’ll question it. We’ll try to explain it away. And when that’s the case, we will continually work to shrink the circle of its application. We will then have a harder time adjudicating whether or not an application of it in the “licit zone” is wise or unwise. After all, we risk letting an ideological burden drive us instead of trust in God’s good law and Word.
And God Said It Was Very Good
At the end of the day, God’s creation designs and laws are good, even very good! They are life-giving. They bring blessing. Love for his Word and law therefore, in the style of Psalm 19, which borrows language from Genesis 1–3, must precede all our conversations about men, women, and when any of us can teach. In that regard, there is no difference between leaders and followers, teachers and listeners. We must all submit, even as the incarnate King Jesus led the way.
