I
remember well a discussion of Proverbs 31 that took place in one of my college
literature classes. The professor, along
with several of my classmates, used that well-known Scripture passage to
attempt to demonstrate that traditionally-held, Biblical roles for male and
female are, in fact, not Biblical at all.
They argued that the virtuous woman is a businesswoman, an entrepreneur,
a farmer, a designer. They were right,
she is all those things. What they
failed to recognize was that all of her work – from her spinning to her buying
a field – revolved around provision for her household. As a result of her work, her husband,
children, and servants were finely dressed, well-fed, and diligently
nurtured. The Proverbs 31 woman is an
exemplary “child-bearer.”
I explained in a previous column that the term
“childbearing” as it used in 1 Tim. 2:15 includes not only carrying and giving
birth to children, but rearing them as well.
I noted, too, that women who are not mothers can still be
“child-bearers” through their hospitality and nurture of strangers and
saints. But what does the text mean when
it says that this is the way in which women are saved?
Let’s consider first what it cannot mean. The word “saved”
in this context cannot refer to the grounds on which a woman is justified
before the Almighty God. Scripture is
clear that our salvation is not founded on our works: “For it is by grace ye are saved through
faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest
any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8). Acts
4:12 is one of many passages that clearly state that salvation is in Jesus
Christ alone, “for there is none other name under heaven given among men,
whereby we must be saved.” Jesus
affirmed this: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the
Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). This is
true for male and female, bond and free (Gal. 3:28). Additionally, we can be certain that Paul
does not intend to imply that child-bearing merits salvation by looking back
several verses in this very chapter.
There, in verse 5, he writes, “For there is one God, and one Mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
It
is following this line of thought that some define the “she” in 1 Tim. 2:15 text typologically, understanding the
pronoun to refer to Mary, the “second Eve” and the mother of Christ, through
whose Child-bearing all of God’s people – including herself – are saved. A variety of commentators suggest this
position, reasoning that since Jesus had no human father, women acquire a
special dignity by being the gender through which Christ came.[1] It’s true that Christ is referred to as “her seed” in Genesis 3:15, but since
Mary is not mentioned at all in the context, this interpretation seems a
stretch. It also looms dangerously close
to making “child-bearing” the work
which saves women. It is not the mere
fact that Christ was born that saves: His suffering, death, resurrection, and
ascension earned eternal life for us.
Another popular Christian author interprets
the passage also typologically, but differently: she suggests that the “Adam”
in the text is Christ, “Eve” is the Church, and the “childbearing” in which the
Church is saved is “fruit bearing in Christ” – i.e. good works. According to her, this interpretation “solves the
conundrum of thinking that Paul is saying that women are saved by giving birth
to biological children.”[2] It is also a view that, in her opinion, “reinforces
the profound mutuality of men and women,” for “both are church. Both are saved
by the type of union that results in spiritual children—the union with our
husband, Christ. Both must continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” Essentially, she takes a text that refers
directly to women and attempts to make it politically correct. Granted, her
perspective accounts for the reality that not all women are mothers. But we’ve already established that Paul does
not use the word “saved” in the sense which she implies, and the typological
way in which she reads the passage seems forced. Not to mention, even though fewer women are
choosing to bear children in our day, more women are still mothers than are
not.
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