# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S563
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS 568

in the public service of the congregation, for also this passage, as
shown by the context, is in the setting of the common worship
service. There is the same grounding of this prohibition in the
Order of Creation (v. 13). One passage thus re-enforces the other:
Paul interprets Paul. We say this confidently in the face of modern
denials of the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles.

2. V. 14 introduces a somewhat new thought, the priority of
Eve in sin (Genesis 3). Usually this passage is understood to
intimate that a woman, because of her greater trustfulness, is
more easily misled into false belief and so is less qualified to be
a public teacher of Christian truth. Zerbst takes issue with this
view and argues that the purpose of. the statement is not to excul-
pate Adam, but to indicate that the Order of Creation has not
been invalidated by the Fall. See Zerbst, p. 54 ff.

3. New is also the thought of v. 15. Here Paul again has the
idea of Creation Order in mind, but at the same time he counters
incipient celibate tendencies (see 1 Tim. 4:3), as he exalts wed-
lock and motherhood, if God grants that blessing, as the state and
calling in which woman normally is to exercise her Christian faith.
Of course, he does not make “motherhood” meritorious for salva-
tion (read Apology of Augsburg Confession, XXIII, 241).

4. Because of a modern interpretation speciously pleaded in
order to tone down the implications of Paul’s veto of woman’s
speaking in the church, namely, the interpretation already alluded
to (II, D, 2 above), that Paul forbids only speaking under emotional
excitement, while he allows calm speaking, we ask the reader once
more to read the two passages attentively. In the present passage
he will note that the “learn in quietness” (or in “silence”) is
explained in the next verse by: “I permit not a woman to teach,”
no qualifying phrase being added. He will also note that the
phrase “with all submissiveness” in v. 11 has its contrast in the
following verse in the words “nor to have dominion over a man.”
This latter negative statement corresponds to the positive state-
ment in 1 Cor. 14:34: “she should be subordinate.” See I, D, 5.

5. The rendering “to have dominion over a man” (v. 12) is
better than the King James Version: “to usurp authority,” although
this will do as a paraphrase in the context. The word (in Greek
it is authentein) is never elsewhere employed in the Bible and
is only rarely found in later Greek. It has an opprobrious conno-
tation, something like our “domineer over,” “lay down the law to,”
“dictate to,” “to lord it over” (our vulgar “to wear the pants”).
It would not have occurred to Paul to reverse the case and employ
the term with reference to man’s headship over woman (there

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