With news of the Southern Baptists voting to oust two churches with female pastors (H/T: whiteguy1), we can expect an outpouring of polarization, both celebration and anger. Few people have weak opinions on the subject.

This is a good opportunity to discuss one of the passages used to justify denying women pastors: 1 Timothy 3:2.  With this in mind, the article above quotes Aaron Anglin, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Vandervoort in Polk County, who stated that the ousting aligned with this scripture:

“God’s word says that the office of a pastor is for the husband of one wife,” he said. “The Bible’s clear on it, and we can just simply stand behind the Bible as the authority and as God’s word.”

This view is quite common. In his piece, “Why “Husband of One Wife” is better than “One-Woman Man”“, Rick Brannan makes the same case when he analyzes and compares 1 Timothy 3:2 and 5:9:

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;

 

Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man.

Using the convention of translating “man” as “husband” and “woman” as “wife” (the word for each in Greek is the same), we can agree with Brannan that the first example is “one-wife husband” and the second example is “one-husband wife.” From this Brannan concludes:

The phrase, both in 1 Tim. 3:2 and 5:9, is not formulaic or aphoristic, but changes form to emphasize the primary member in the relationship under discussion. In 1 Tim 5:9, the primary subject is the widow, who is also the wife. In 1 Tim 3:2, the primary subject is the overseer, who is also the husband.

But this conclusion is invalid, an error of deductive logic. Given the following targets of a discussion—men only, women only, or a mixed audience—the rules in Greek, which is a gendered language, are plain.

1. If men only are the target, the masculine gendered form must be used.
2. If women only are the target, the feminine gendered form must be used.
3. If men and women are the target collectively, then the masculine gendered form must be used.

Thus, by simple application of logic, if the masculine gendered form is used it means that #1 or #3 are correct. The use of the masculine gendered form cannot tell us any more than that.

Now let’s examine Brannan’s argument:

[The phrase] changes form to emphasize the primary member in the relationship under discussion. In 1 Tim 5:9, the primary subject is the widow, who is also the wife.

This is not a valid deduction. Because the primary subject of 1 Timothy 5:9 is the widow, the feminine gendered form must be used. There is no choice in the matter. The decision to use this form is entirely because the subject is the widow. One cannot conclude from this that the phrase changed from the masculine form “to emphasize the primary member in the relationship” The direct subject under discussion is a female—a widow—and so the feminine form had to be used. There was no other choice: regardless of the intended emphasis, that word choice would have been used. The use of the feminine gendered form does not emphasize anything, it merely is what it is according to the rules of the language.

Now let’s examine the other half of Brannan’s argument:

[The phrase] changes form to emphasize the primary member in the relationship under discussion. In 1 Tim 3:2, the primary subject is the overseer, who is also the husband.

That the overseer is the husband begs-the-question. Consider this alternative gender-neutral translation given in the NRSV:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher…

The only explicit mention of a man—as distinct from a woman—is in the contested phrase. Under the rules of the language, if Paul wanted to say the idiom “married only once”, he would have said “one-wife husband.” So too if he wanted to say “be a man married to a single woman”, he would have said “one-wife husband.” Regardless of whether a man only or a man and woman were the subject of discourse, the same language would have been used.

When the feminine form is used, the result is always unambiguous. But when only looking at grammar, the use of the masculine form is always ambiguous, and requires the examination of context to resolve to ambiguity. Thus, the changing of form to the feminine only serves—at the very most—to emphasize that the subject under discussion is a female. If this was already known—as it was with the widow—then it doesn’t provide any particular information at all. The same is not true if the change of form is to the masculine form, which provides no emphasis at all, but is a way one might show de-emphasis—gender neutrality.

To illustrate the point directly, “one-husband wife”—as an idiom for monogamy—can only apply to women due to the language construct used. There is no ambiguity. But “one-wife husband”—as an idiom for monogamy—can apply to men only or it can also apply to women and men equally. There is inherent ambiguity. The two forms are not grammatical mirror images.

Brannan’s argument is thus logically invalid.

This is one of those cases where intuition fails in our translation. In English, we would never say “husband of one wife” or “one-wife husband” if we meant to also say “wife of one husband”—i.e. “monogamous”—but this is not the case for the Greek, where such a usage is permitted. To make the case that “one-wife husband” is not a gender neutral idiom (as translated in the NSRV), Brannan must instead use an argument which takes context into account.

Additional Reading

Fallacious examples, like Brannan’s, only serve to suggest that Aaron Anglin’s claim that “the Bible is clear on it” overstates the case, but I nevertheless remain unconvinced by the arguments presented by either side. For more information on the issues surrounding this passage, see the following articles:

• Marg Mowczko, “Paul’s Theology of Ministry: 1 Tim. 3:2 and Priscilla“
• Philip B. Payne, “Does “Man Of One-Woman” In 1 Timothy 3:2 Require That All Overseers Be Male?“
• W. Tyler Sykora “Deacons’ Wives or Deaconesses? 1 Timothy 3:11 Reconsidered“