Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals. Carlos R. Bovell
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how does what happened to Eve relate to every other woman’s ability to teach? Complementarians cannot keep silent here, though they will need to tread carefully as they offer their explanations. They would be wise not to perpetuate the myth that women are more easily deceived than men, especially considering past abuses and today’s cultural climate.27 But do they have any other options? In addition, even if that was what Paul was thinking, exactly how does Paul come to such a conclusion from his reading of the Eden narrative?28 One can imagine at least three main sources for Paul’s conclusion: his culture, his personal experience, and his knowledge of Scripture and tradition. It would seem that complementarians must insist that the prohibition is supported by Paul’s reading of Scripture since the other sources are so contingent and restricted that they cannot possibly bind the church throughout the ages. Though Paul’s reading is indubitably a cultural reading, complementarians must contend that it is not merely a cultural reading, but also a theological one. Hence, we shall, on behalf of a hypothetical complementarian, attempt to contrive an interpretation of the Eden narrative that offers the Pauline argument of 1 Tim 2.14 as evidence against women teachers without wholly succumbing to first (or twenty-first) century cultural pre-understandings. We should, however, be prepared to employ first (and not twenty-first) century hermeneutical methods.
III. Midrashic Interpretation vs. Evangelical Hermeneutics
Complementarians seem to implicitly argue that Paul’s exegetical proof is a legitimate one. We should note, though, that 1 Tim 2.14 is an instance of something like what Gerald Bray has called “scribal (or Pharisaic) interpretation.” One approach within Pharisaic interpretation that appears in our text involves “reading Scripture as a legal document, in which examples of behaviour could be taken out of context and made to apply in ways which went well beyond anything the text actually said.”29 In other words, with respect to the present text, Eve’s deception is being used as a “legal” precedent for Paul’s prohibition. Such exegetical whimsy would most certainly not be accepted from a present-day expositor. The question is, must complementarians substitute Paul’s obsolete line of reasoning with a modern one? Or asked another way, how can a post-Enlightenment thinker really take Paul seriously here? What are the obligations for complementarians to those who disagree with them with regard to accounting for Paul’s antiquated argument style?30 What does the fact that Paul actually employs such argumentation ramify with respect to the authority of Scripture?
These questions do not apply to egalitarians since they not only deny Paul’s argument, they deny his conclusion also. On the other hand, since complementarians accept Paul’s conclusion, they either have to explain how they can disregard an invalid argument while adhering to its conclusion or validate the ancient exegetical strategy to the satisfaction of contemporaries. The best option for the complementarian may be to circumvent these difficult questions altogether by offering an interpretation that explains the Eden narrative in a way that does not rely upon the interpretive method delineated above. We shall offer such an attempt after which we shall posit a conclusion.
In an attempt to consciously avoid the conclusion that women are more gullible than men, we shall take the tact that 1 Tim 2.14 argues the same point as 2.13. In other words, that Eve was deceived and Adam was not is directly related to the fact that she was created second and he first. Succinctly stated, though the woman was deceived and became the transgressor, Adam was held accountable. To begin, we note that when Gen 3.22 explains YHWH’s concern—“the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—the woman is not mentioned. Gen 3.24 relates how YHWH “drove out” the man, but again the woman is not mentioned. Presumably, the woman did not not “become like one of us” nor did she remain behind in the garden. Thus one might infer that the man is the one to whom the main responsibility had been given. It seems quite fair to say that as far as the creation account is concerned, the man is accountable to YHWH in a way that the woman is not. But all this has already been touched upon in Paul’s prominence argument from the order of creation where man was said to be primary with respect to something in a way that the woman was secondary. We shall consider the prominence argument in more detail in order to determine whether it can somehow be related to the deception argument.
An emphasis is placed on the fact that the woman transgressed because she was deceived. The commandment had not been given directly to the woman so readers might infer that she did not apprehend the commandment as well as Adam did. Perhaps, her addition to the commandment suggests this. It is curious, though, that the woman is not once admonished by YHWH for eating the fruit or even for being deceived: it was for giving fruit to the man that she is only implicitly rebuked by the narrator.31 Another oddity is that YHWH gives no reason for his judgment against Eve. It is as if her actions were incidental in spite of the fact that they proved so crucial. This leaves a gaping lacuna in the narrative that virtually every subsequent tradition naturally attempts to fill. For example, Jubilees adds to its retelling of the biblical account that YHWH “was angry with the woman also because she had listened to the voice of the serpent and eaten.” (3.23) Life of Adam and Eve, for its part, records Eve herself relating these very events: “Turning to me, the LORD said to me, ‘Since you have listened to the serpent and ignored my commandment, you shall suffer birth pangs . . .” (Apocalypse 25.1) The writer of the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra portrays Ezra as being upset with God over Eve: “If you had not given him Eve, the serpent would never have deceived her.” The Scriptures, though, are silent with regard to YHWH being angry that Eve had “listened to the voice of the serpent” or even that she had eaten.32 The length of the y k clause in Gen 3.17, especially in light of its absence in v 16, also supports the idea that the man was responsible to God in a way that the woman was not. Hence, Adam was the prominent figure in Eden on account of his being created first, on account of being given the commandment directly and on account of God’s holding him responsible. In sum, we have attempted to present a case where 1 Tim 2.13–14 offers two arguments that make the same point: God has elected men for certain things in a way in which he has not elected women. Men are responsible to God in a way that women are not.
In our exposition, we too have taken Adam and Eve to be archetypes for all humans in our interpretation. If an interpretation like the one offered here is representative of those that a complementarian would offer, it employs the same interpretive generalization that marks Paul’s exegesis. Still, we have not managed to explicitly address what role deception plays in the archetypical analogy. Why wasn’t God (as) angry at Eve? Because she was deceived? Partly. More precisely, and (unhappily) unavoidably, because it was expected that she would be deceived. Commenting on the narrator’s presentation of Eve’s decision and action, Von Rad wrote:
The narrator expresses no shock; he does not expect his reader to become indignant either. On the contrary, the unthinkable and terrible is described as simply and unsensationally as possible, completely without the hubbub of the extraordinary or of a dramatic break, so that it is represented from man’s standpoint almost as something self-evident, inwardly consistent!33
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