1 Timothy 2:15

[Bulldog]

"Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."

This seems to say that women are saved by giving birth.

Is this true?

 

[SirFei]

If you read the passages before 1Tim 2:15, It is talking about women's role in the Church (1Tim 2:9-14). Summary of those passages say that women are to be submissive to men and not seize the authority of a man's leadership in the Church, as like told in Eph 5:22-33 (roles of both men and women in a marriage) where women are to follow the men as they are head of the house.

In 1Tim 2:15, Paul is writing here to not think low of women or think of them as a second-class position. This is NOT the case at all! "..She will be saved in childbearing..." meaning that women bring the joyous life of a child into this world, something of great importance and respect, not to mention the role of motherhood. It is rewarding, Paul writes, and that raising children is a personal, wondrous, and joyous experience. Only those who would take these passages and skew them to look down on women are those who are blind. I hope that answers your question... I tend to ramble and possibly not get to the point.
God Bless!

~Marc

 

[Bulldog]

Thanks for the answer,

 

[Crazy Liz]

Actually, the context of this verse is very important, and if one can't adequately explain this verse, one really can't adequately explain the statement earlier in the chapter that Paul was not, allowing women to teach that they were spiritually superior to men.

This is one of the most difficult passages of the NT to interpret, for several reasons. Many doubt that Paul actually wrote the pastoral epistles. I personally have some difficulty with this position, as the church has for a very long time held them to be canonical, regardless of authorship, and because after studying them, I think 2 Timothy really sounds to me like Paul's writing. It fits with Philippians, and seems to have been written about the same time. Anyway, that is only the first of many problems. The second is that the word translated "usurp authority" is not found anywhere else in the NT, and is very rarely used in any other Greek writings available to us, so the meaning of this word is unclear. Third, the syntactical structure using two infinitives, is problematical. The consensus of the better manuscripts use a different word order than the Textus Receptus, from which the KJV was translated (compare the two Greek texts as shown in the Bluelette Bible). 1 Timothy 2:12 and 2:15 are two of the most obscure verses of the whole NT, and very, very difficult to interpret. Katherine Kroeger has done the most thorough and scholarly research into this passage. I recommend you consider some of the other possible interpretations before reaching this conclusion.

 

[ChrisB]

As our pastor often quotes "A text without a context is a pretext"