Article by Jonathan Leeman, Editorial Director of 9Marks, and an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D. C. (original source here – which includes links to the articles cited)

In case you’re just tuning in, a good in-house conversation among complementarians is going on between John Piper, Thomas Schreiner, and Andrew Wilson over whether or not women can teach in a church gathering under the authority of the elders. In order, see Piper here, Wilson here, Schreiner here, Wilson here, and Piper again here. Previously, Tim Keller has also presented Wilson’s side of things here, while John Frame has offered that same side here. (I’ve been told this conversation at Mere O is good, but I haven’t listened to it.)

Everyone agrees that there are times when women will open their Bibles and instruct men, as Pricilla does with her husband Aquilla when instructing Apollos (Acts 18:26). And everyone agrees that there is a certain kind of teaching that women must not do, based on 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.”

The question is, what are the criteria for saying when we are in the first domain versus the second domain? What’s the fence between one side and the other?

There are two things I hope to contribute here. First, I’d like to offer the simple observation that what seems to be driving the different approaches to 1 Timothy 2:12 are Presbyterian versus congregationalist conceptions of teaching and authority. And any congregationalist who agrees with Wilson or Tim Keller or John Frame is relying upon a Presbyterian understanding of teaching and authority (which is not to say a Presbyterian must adopt Wilson’s position). Second, I’d like to offer a more congregationalist distinction between authoritative teaching that occurs in the context of the gathered church, and teaching that occurs outside it.

WHAT THE PLAYERS HAVE SAID

Andrew Wilson distinguishes the two domains described above by distinguishing two different kinds of teaching—what Wilson calls big-T versus little-t teaching. Big-T teaching involves “the definition, defense, and preservation of Christian doctrine, by the church’s accredited leaders.” Little-t teaching is “a catch-all term for talking about the Bible in a church meeting.” Or: “explaining the Scriptures to each other in a peer-to-peer way, according to gifts.”

Wilson’s theological distinction between two different kinds of teaching is hardly unique. He’s backed up by no less than luminaries Tim Keller and John Frame.

Keller writes,

Elders are leaders who admit or dismiss people from the church, and they do “quality control” of members’ doctrine. These are the only things that elders exclusively can do. Others can teach, disciple, serve, witness…We do not believe that 1 Timothy 2:11 or 1 Corinthians 14:35-36 precludes women teaching the Bible to men or speaking publicly. To ‘teach with authority’ (1 Timothy 2:11) refers to disciplinary authority over the doctrine of someone. For example, when an elder says to a member: ‘You are telling everyone that they must be circumcised in order to be saved—that is a destructive, non-Biblical teaching which is hurting people spiritually. You must desist from it or you will have to leave the church.’ That is ‘teaching authority’—it belongs only to the elders.

And Frame writes,

Reformed theology has often distinguished between the special teaching office, which consists of the ordained elders, and the general teaching office, which includes all believers…Your committee unanimously holds that scripture excludes women from the special teaching office. Scripture plainly teaches this limitation in I Cor. 14:33-35 and in I Tim. 2:11-15. But scripture says with equal plainness that women are not excluded from the general teaching office…Paul in [1 Cor. 14:33-35] essentially forbids to women the exercise of the special office….I Tim. 2:11-12 also limits the teaching of women, but…here too Paul has in mind the special office rather than the general.

Schreiner, on the other hand, says teaching is teaching is teaching. He writes,

Teaching explicates the authoritative and public transmission of tradition about Christ and the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 12:28–29; Ephesians 4:11; 1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Timothy 3:16; James 3:1)… it is the heart and soul of the church’s ministry until the second coming of Christ.”

Piper’s distinction between the two domains is, honestly, a bit vague for me. He writes,

It seems to me that, as men and women relate to each other in the church, men are to lead, on the analogy of the way a husband leads at home (Ephesians 5:22–33)…Thus when I think about how this leadership by men is expressed in the church, I see the regular preaching of the word of God in the weekly worship gathering as the heart of that leadership.

To risk reading into Piper (and in a direction favorable to my own view!), he is saying that teaching is exercising authority, and that in the church’s gathering only men should teach because teaching is an exercise of authority.

TWO KINDS OF TEACHING VS. TWO KINDS OF SETTINGS

To summarize the two sides, Wilson, Keller, and Frame distinguish two kinds of teaching. Wilson calls it big-T versus little-T teaching; Keller calls it authoritative versus non-authoritative teaching; and Frame calls special versus general teaching. The point is, the teaching of an elder is somehow more authoritative than the teaching of any other church member. So you have more authoritative teaching and less authoritative teaching. (In once sentence in his essay, Frame says that what’s at stake is the “occasion” of teaching. But nothing else in his article fills out this idea. Everything else he says distinguishes not between occasions but between kinds of teaching.)

When this side turns to 1 Tim. 2:12, they might either argue that “to teach and to exercise authority” is a hendiadys (reading two words as saying one thing, like “nice and cozy”)—in spite of Kostenberger’s fairly thorough refutation of this position. Or they might say that the context of chapter 3 suggests Paul has a special category of authoritative teaching in mind here. Continue reading →