Mothers Saved in Childbearing? Part 2
Reprinted (with permission) from Faith Pulpit, March/April, 2010. See Part 1.
The Meaning of “She Will Be Saved in Childbearing”
In view of these considerations, what does the phrase “she will be saved in childbearing” mean? Several views have been offered:
(1) Women will be kept safe physically during childbirth.1 However, many godly women have died in childbirth. Moreover, the term “salvation” regularly has a spiritual meaning in Paul’s writings.
(2) Women in Paul’s day would be kept from teaching false doctrine through their maternal roles.”2 Nevertheless, “Paul roots his teaching deeply in the culture-transcending events of the Creation and Fall of man and woman. There is absolutely nothing in the passage which would suggest that Paul issued his instructions because of a local situation of societal pressure.”3
(3) Women will be saved through good works, represented by childbearing.4 Scriptures, however, teach that salvation is by God’s grace through faith in Christ―not by works (Eph. 2:8, 9).
(4) Women will be saved through the particular childbearing of Jesus.5 Those who hold this view link “childbearing” with Genesis 3:15 and emphasize the particularizing function of the article.6 The antecedent of “she will be saved” is Eve (who may represent “woman” generically), who then becomes Mary, the mother of Jesus. However, Parry pointedly observes, “It is difficult to believe that S. Paul would have alluded to the Incarnation in this obscure and cursory manner.”7 Moreover, Mary was not saved by giving birth to Jesus.8
(5) Christian mothers will be “saved,” or “delivered,” from the sin of exercising authority over men in the church because they give their time and effort in bearing children. This view interprets “she will be saved” as a woman’s deliverance from the effects of sin and childbearing as both bearing and rearing children.9 As Calvin explained, “the Apostle does not speak merely about having children, but about enduring all the distresses, which are manifold and severe, both in the birth and the rearing of children.”10
Conclusion
The grammatical and historical considerations lead me to prefer the last view. A Christian woman is “saved,” or “delivered,” from the sin of exercising authority over man in the church (specifically, teaching him) if she is faithful in her God-ordained role of bearing and rearing children. Moreover, her place in God’s overall plan of redemption (already implied in Gen. 3), is “preserved” through such a role. Paul selected childbearing because of its mention in Genesis 3, and “because of the emphasis of the false teachers who denigrated marriage and the maternal role of women.”11
Deliverance through motherhood has a condition: godly character. Although the passage deals with a woman’s church life, faithfulness to motherhood will affect her whole life.
The connection Paul made to the curse on Eve (Gen. 3:16) supports this conclusion.12 For the woman, her increased pain in childbearing becomes a blessing―her “salvation.” Childbearing will preserve her special role in God’s redemptive plan by keeping her from exercising authority over a man, which is her “forbidden fruit” in the context of church worship.
The coming of Christ allowed the woman to overcome her desire to rule over her husband (see Gen. 3:16b and 4:7). But also, childbearing (which multiplied in pain and sorrow due to the Fall) has taken a redemptive turn by playing a part in overcoming sin’s corruption of Creation. Not only is Eve’s prophesied Seed the Redeemer, but women in general are given a redemptive opportunity and purpose in their own (painful) childbearing.13
Application
Paul is not saying that all women must have children in order to be saved or to live a godly life. “He selects childbearing because it is the most notable example of the divinely intended difference in role between men and women, and most women throughout history have had children.”14 Although the term “childbearing” here refers strictly to bearing and nurturing children, we may apply it in its broad sense of nurturing children.
Christian married women who are not able to bear children may fulfill their motherhood role by adopting or by fostering children (cf. Eph. 1:5; Ps. 68:5). And all Christian women, married or unmarried, may nurture children spiritually as Paul did Timothy―Paul’s “true son in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2).
God’s Word differs greatly from our culture’s voices that belittle motherhood. God calls Christian mothers to rear godly children. First Timothy 2:15 should motivate all Christian women to bestow their God-given maternal instincts on needy children. With God’s help, we may rear children for His glory and look forward to our Savior’s commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Notes
1 H. A. Ironside, Timothy Titus and Philemon (Neptune: Loizeaux, 1947), 72.
2 David Scholer, “1 Timothy 2:9-15 & the Place of Women in the Church’s Ministry” in Women, Authority & the Bible, Alvera Mickelsen, ed. (Downers Grove: IVP, 1986), 200.
3 Douglas Moo, “1 Timothy 2:11-15: Meaning and Significance” in Trinity Journal 1, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 62-83): 82.
4 C. Spicq, Saint Paul Les Epitres Pastorales, Tome I, Etudes Bibliques (Paris: Gabalda, 1969), 383.
5 Kent, Pastoral Epistles, 114-116.
6 Ibid., 115.
7 John Party, The Pastoral Epistles (London: Cambridge University, 1920), 15.
8 Introducing her as a new player into the drama “unnecessarily complicates an already confusing passage” (Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 145).
9 “Childbearing” is not merely a synecdoche of a woman’s godly works (cf., Moo, “1 Timothy 2:11-15”:72).
10 John Calvin, The Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, William Pringle trans. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 71.
11 Thomas R. Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:9-15: A Dialogue with Scholarship” in Women in the Church: An Analysis and Application of 1 Timothy 2:9-15, Andreas Kostenberger and Thomas Schreiner, eds. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 119.
12 On contrasting v. 15 with vv. 11 and 12 or connecting it with vv. 13 and 14: “These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive” (Mounce, Pastoral Epistles), 147.
13 Paul Hartog, personal interview.
14 Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:9-15,” 118.
Martha Hartog is an adjunct faculty member at Faith Baptist BIble College, teaching women’s ministries courses since 2001. She holds BA and MA degrees from Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary. Martha has served as a children’s worker, pastor’s wife, librarian and is actively involved in women’s ministries. Martha helped her husband, John II, start Maranatha Baptist Church in Grimes, Iowa. Her husband and her sons, John III and Paul, teach at Faith. Martha and John live in Ankeny and attend Faith Baptist Church in Cambridge, Iowa.
- 49 views
Views 2, 3, and 5 regard child raising in 1 Timothy 2:15 as the activity of child raising and not the actual event itself of giving birth. This argues with the article’s conclusion which states: “the term ‘childbearing’ here refers strictly to bearing and nurturing children, we may apply it in its broad sense of nurturing children.”
If this were the case we would be looking for some kind of verbal structure for “childbearing” in this verse. Instead, Paul uses a noun, and even marks it out with a definite article. This is consistent only with 4, while views 1, 2, 3, and 5 all regard the noun as a verb.
https://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-2-No-4/Saved-Through-Childbearing
“Numerous references in 1 and 2 Timothy speak of a person’s need to guard what has been entrusted to him or similar expressions (see e.g. 1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 2:12, 14; 4:7, 15, 18). Conversely, Paul warns against following the example of those who “strayed” or “turned aside” from the right way (see e.g. 1 Tim. 1:6, 19-20; 2:14; 3:6, 7; 4:1; 5:12, 13, 15, 21; 6:9-10, 21). This list impressively demonstrates that underlying Paul’s writing to Timothy was a strong concern that believers under Timothy’s care be kept safe from the errors of false teaching (including life-style implications) and the false teachers themselves, who ultimately were instruments of Satan. Paul conceived of the pastoral task therefore as a struggle for the protection of believers from Satan and for God. If this be so, and ‘women shall be kept safe by childbearing’ is the likely rendering of 1 Timothy 2:15, what are women to be kept safe from? On the basis of what has been said thus far, and without much further demonstration, it can be argued that what women are to be kept safe from is being deceived, ultimately by Satan himself.”
“We’ve come a long way in our efforts to understand the true message of 1 Timothy 2:15 for women in Paul’s and our day. What we have argued is that Paul here expresses concern that women be kept safe from being deceived by Satan, and that he therefore encourages women to embrace and pursue their God-ordained calling centering around the family and the home. Our concern today should be, like Paul’s, that women discern and adhere to their God-given calling in life.”
“They learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.”Women are protected from temptation when they remain focused on their God-ordained role.
i don’t like the #2 dismissal, it seems strange. i think there were quite a few things going on specific culturally in the epistles (and other books) that we don’t know about very clearly.
i shy from her conclusion b/c I guess i don’t want to find my “salvation” from a particular sin based on an activity or value system, if you can get what I mean though i might not be saying it right.
i have to value taking care of kids as my escape from female chauvinism in the church?
If, for some reason, as a christian woman, my life never intersects with children, I am more likely to be dominant over men in the church?
I think really, Christ is sufficient for my escape from this sin.
would we then argue that Christ or God Himself gives us children as His means of escape for us?
i dont’ know. that seems kind of weird.
It’s hard not to take some things as a bit… insulting?… especially when you feel that it doesn’t apply to you. Some women are very good at self-regulating, but let’s face it- many aren’t without some external influence being brought to bear, such as marriage and child-rearing.
It doesn’t say “husbands shall be saved through loving their wives,” but the point would essentially be the same—expressed differently.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
As we approach Mother’s Day, I am reminded that moms are given great tasks. When it comes to spiritual influence, God gave men the task of teaching in the church. He said that “woman are saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15).http://stuffoutloud.blogspot.com/search?q=1+Tim+2%3A15] Here’s the whole post.
What did he mean? I think he meant that a woman’s way of repairing the damage of the fall takes place through her influence on her children. She was not given the task of leading the church through teaching, but of raising her children to not follow in the ways of Eve, who for the pleasure of the moment brought a world full of hurt.
"I pray to God this day to make me an extraordinary Christian." --Whitefield http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com
I am blessed with a glorious wife who has given birth to 4 wonderful children, standing alongside me and raising them in the fear of the Lord. But 1 Timothy 2:15 is not about women raising godly children!
“Childbearing” is a noun, not a verb in the verse. It refers to the event of childbirth, not the action of child raising.
As wonderful as motherhood is, and as much as we are all blessed when mother’s love Christ and raise their families to love Christ, that simply can’t be what Paul is referring to in this passage.
This passage is a good example of application driving interpretation. In reality, no one is hurt by interpreting it as raising children.
But what we miss when we do that is handling the text as it stands written, and letting it speak in its own words.
I’m not personally totally convinced of the latter yet, but close.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Synecdoche is indeed being used, but as in all synecdoches, the part that represents the whole has to be inferred by the verb. For example, in the phrase “their feet run to evil” (Pro. 1:16), the feet express the whole - the whole body running to evil. It is the whole body that does evil, not just the feet. As you can see, the synecdoche here is impossible to infer except by the verb, “runs.”
So too in 1 Timothy 2:15 we infer the synecdoche from the verb. In this case, the verb is quite strong: “saved:” “The woman is saved through the childbearing.” The childbearing is a part of what expresses the whole.
At this point we are given two choices. Either “the childbearing” represents the whole of a woman’s faithful life of child raising, or “the childbearing” is the event of Mary giving birth to Jesus and represents the whole of His sinless life and death on behalf of sinful women.
If the first, then the verb “saved” must mean “preserved.” If the second, then the verb means “saved.” Preserved is the lesser used and weaker of the two uses. “Saved” is the much more widely used and stronger of the two uses. Simply based on the verb alone we ought to try to see how its primary sense fits.
If you look at 1 Timothy 2:15 in the original, you’ll notice that this secondary sense doesn’t fit with Paul placement of “sozein” in v. 15 - it is the very first word of v. 15 and quite emphatic. Paul wanted it to be read emphatically as “saved.” This becomes clearer when contextual factors are taken into account. 1 Timothy 2:14 closes off, “the woman was deceived and became a “transgressor” (ESV). Paul is not discussing how a woman reverses the Fall (as the other view requires), but how a woman is saved from transgression.
Here then is a second grammatical reason for why the interpretation that “a woman is preserved from transgression by raising children in the faith” is incorrect. The verb saved emphatically means “saved.” The first reason is what I mentioned above: the childbearing is a noun, not a verb.
When we mistakenly, I believe, interpret 1 Timothy 2:15 as teaching that a woman is saved by raising children, we then must immediately jump in with all sorts of qualifying statements about what that doesn’t mean. That in itself is telling. We must say, “oh, but this doesn’t apply to a woman who is infertile.” And, “oh, if you came to faith late in life, after child bearing years, it doesn’t apply to you.” And, “oh, salvation here doesn’t mean salvation, but perseverance.” And what shall we say to the truly saved woman who professes to love Christ, but was a single mother, and perhaps did a poor job of raising her children in the faith? Perhaps she was a new Christian when her children were young teenagers, and they now fully follow the world in their adulthood. Is the Christian mother lost? “Oh no,” we say. So you see, we can’t really let this verse stand on its own when we interpret it as teaching “preserved by child raising.” We have to rescue it with qualifying statements.
The simpler explanation by far is that Paul is referring to a childbirth, or as he writes, “the childbirth,” i.e., the miraculous and singular birth of Jesus Christ through which women are saved. This interpretation has no fight with its grammar. It regards the noun as a noun, and “sozein” as an emphatic verb meaning salvation in keeping with the context. It recognizes the definite article before the noun “childbearing” for what it is: a definite article.
[Aaron Blumer] I don’t think noun vs. verb makes much difference here. A noun is required because it’s the object of “in” but the noun itself refers to activity.The preposition in the original is “through,”not “in.” A woman (1 Timothy 2:15) is not saved in the the birth of Christ, but through the birth of Christ, pointing to His vicarious life and death on her behalf.
Interpreted this way, the verse is evangelistic and points a woman away from herself and over to Christ. It teaches a woman who loves Christ that just as her salvation was due to Christ’s life and death, so also the woman’s continuance “in faith and love and holiness, with self-control” (1 Timothy 2:15) will come from Him as well. Every saved woman is responsible to persevere in her faith, but even her perseverance will indeed come from Christ, even as their initial salvation did.
The correct interpretation of this passage must, in my opinion, consider those women who in the providence of God are childless.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
In the case of this passage, what allows “childbearing” to stand in for something bigger is that “save” may also be interpreted in a variety of ways. So “save” only constrains “childbearing” if you constrain “save” first.
Rob, about the childless, I think it is not the problem it may seem to be. Paul does’t say “every woman who ever lives is saved through childbearing,” so I think the view the article presents holds up. In this case, we’re making that assumption that Paul allows for some unstated exceptions. We have a very similar problem with Peter’s “weaker vessel” reference (I’m thinking it’s 1 Peter 3:7-8 or so). No matter what sort of weakness we take that to be referring to, not all women are “weaker” than all men. He is expressing a general principle that fits most cases.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Aaron Blumer] Synecdoche isn’t really that complicated. Often a noun is used in reference to a larger noun of which it is a part. There is no verb dependency, though I’d agree there is context dependency. For example, people say “I’m going to church.” The meaning of “church” there is more than either the building or the people but in usage represents all the activities and people as well as the place. The “going” isn’t part of the synecdoche.
In the case of this passage, what allows “childbearing” to stand in for something bigger is that “save” may also be interpreted in a variety of ways. So “save” only constrains “childbearing” if you constrain “save” first.
Rob, about the childless, I think it is not the problem it may seem to be. Paul doesn’t say “every woman who ever lives is saved through childbearing,” so I think the view the article presents holds up. In this case, we’re making that assumption that Paul allows for some unstated exceptions. We have a very similar problem with Peter’s “weaker vessel” reference (I’m thinking it’s 1 Peter 3:7-8 or so). No matter what sort of weakness we take that to be referring to, not all women are “weaker” than all men. He is expressing a general principle that fits most cases.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
But allow me to show you that the verb is critical to the synecdoche’s meaning, in both your example, and 1 Timothy 2:15.
Aaron, if I tiger-maul your synecdoche example from “I’m going to church,” to “I’m church,” the synecdoche is in shreds. Your synecdoche requires the verb to be intelligible, even to a tiger. To further express your synecdoche’s dependence on the verb, let’s change the verb in your example from going to building: I’m building a church.” The synecdoche you proposed is gone, for now the noun church can only mean a physical building, and not refer to the larger whole, such as the people, or the various church activities, including it’s languid pot luck suppers with Aunt Emma’s sour pickles. Your synedoche is gone because its meaning depended on the verb.
Now, bringing it back to 1 Timothy 2:15, the verb save is very emphatic in the Greek. When a Greek author makes a verb emphatic, he intensifies its meaning. In 1 Timothy 2:15, the idea then is “she shall really be saved.” We get it: she will be fully and totally saved from deception and transgression (1 Timothy 2:14). Praise God.
But 1 Timothy 2:15 doesn’t make any sense when the intensified verb save is translated preserved; It offends even the most stodgy of church pot lucks. After all, what does “she shall really be preserved” mean? Pickled? :Sp
C’mon. Not even Aunt Emma enjoys that.
In any case, the possibilities for the meaning of save are multiple. Martha summarized them in part 1 and footnotes some good places to explore. Then very briefly supports her conclusion here in part 2. Personally, I find the idea of “delivered from the sin of usurping authority over men” to answer well to the context as well as Coleman’s observation in [URL=http://sharperiron.org/article/mothers-saved-childbearing-part-2#commen…] comment 3[/URL].
Interestingly, she sites Moo against the idea of overly broad synecdoche (childbearing=woman’s good works in general), so I suppose we’re talking about how much to narrow it. I don’t have Moo on the passage. Would be interesting to see what he says on the snyecdoche idea in particular.
Would also be interesting to see more of Calvin’s development of the idea if he goes any deeper into it.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Discussion