Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 35:4 (Dec 1992)
Article: 1 Tim 2:15: A Possible Understanding Of A Difficult Text
Author: David R. Kimberley

JETS 35:4 (December 1992) p. 481

1 Tim 2:15:
A Possible Understanding Of A Difficult Text

David R. Kimberley*

“Yet woman will be saved through bearing children,
if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty” (RSV).

Surely 1 Tim 2:15 ranks among the most problematic of texts in the entire NT. The blatant chauvinism that it appears to reveal and express has prompted a wide range of interpreters to give it high marks for difficulty. “This is one of the most difficult verses of the New Testament to interpret,” remarks Litfin.1 The text “must rank among the most difficult expressions in the whole of the Pastorals,” comments Guthrie.2 David Scholer, in the context of pursuing some of the many issues surrounding feminist hermeneutics and evangelical values, describes the reference to salvation by childbearing in 1 Tim 2:15 as “notoriously difficult.”3 There is no question that the passage raises numerous questions for the Biblical interpreter, all the more so in a contemporary climate where reevaluation of the roles of both men and women is taking place within society at large as well as within some sectors of the Church.

It will be my object to review how recent commentators have approached the text and to posit an apparently novel alternative that seeks to hear the point of 1 Tim 2:15 in the context of gnostic teaching. I shall do this by outlining what appear to be the prevailing interpretations of the text as represented by recent exegetes and then by reviewing apparent gnostic attitudes toward sexuality in general and childbearing in particular as illustrated in apocryphal NT works. I will then suggest that 1 Tim 2:15 may be understood to speak to those in Ephesus who had come in contact with and under the sway of erroneous gnostic teaching.

Lexically, two words are pivotal in understanding the verse. The first is sōthēsetai. In the synoptics sōzō is employed when saving faith has effected healing of the whole person. In the epistles it is used almost exclusively in reference to the saving activity of God, evinced by the use of sōthēnai earlier in 1 Tim 2:2.4 There is thus no escaping the conclusion

* David Kimberley is senior pastor of St. John’s United Church of Ch...