LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2010, Page 315

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315

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

authority, that is, the spiritual authority of the church as established
by God (AC XXVIII),51 the entire church possesses the Office of
the Keys from God, but only certain men (i.e., pastors) may publicly exercise it on behalf of the entire church. Women are not to
exercise the unique authority of the pastoral office. Only men may
be pastors and hold other church offices that are charged with assisting the pastor in carrying out his pastoral authority.52
Men and women together thus give honorable witness to the
Creator who made them for each other in the beginning. Paul does
not base his instruction on a false notion of intellectual inferiority
or mere accommodation to time-bound cultural norms. He grounds
his instruction on the original creation and fall recorded in Genesis
2–3: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not
deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”
The very sequence of the original creation of Adam and Eve indicates the creator’s will. To this Paul adds an example to avoid. Listening to Satan rather than the Word of God, Eve instead gave in to
the serpent’s deception (see 2 Cor 11:3) and became a transgressor.
Nothing here, however, implies that women bear a greater guilt
before God or are more easily deceived than men, an erroneous
deduction made by some of Paul’s contemporaries in Judaism and
by many in the Christian tradition. On the contrary, Adam, who
was not deceived by the serpent, willfully disobeyed the Word of
God. Paul attributes the entry of sin into the world to Adam (Rom
5:12–21). Furthermore, Paul’s sternest and most explicit warnings
in the pastoral letters are against false teachers who are male, not
female (1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 2:17–18; 3:5–9).
Far from denigrating woman, Paul goes on to speak of her high
calling. With a possible allusion to Eve as “the mother of all living” (Gen 3:20),53 the apostle says “she will be saved through childbearing” (1 Tim 2:15). Here he affirms the vocation of motherhood
as God-pleasing within the new creation. “Through child-bearing”
here should not be understood as “the means of salvation but as an
important God-ordained role of women established in creation that
is not set aside through redemption.”54 Paul commends marriage
and motherhood later in this epistle (1 Tim 5:10, 14), even though
marriage was disparaged by some (1 Tim 4:3). Motherhood is a
wonderful way through which God continues to act as our Creator
and bestows on women a unique honor.55 As the Lutheran Confessions remind us in their commentary on this verse (1 Tim 2:15),
“Thus the duties of a woman please God on account of faith, and a
believing woman who faithfully serves in these duties of her calling
is saved” (Ap XXIII, 32).
In conclusion, the English Standard Version appropriately gives
1 Timothy 2 the section title “Prayer for All People.” At the outset
Paul makes known his overwhelming desire that the church—men
and women—pray for all people, “that we may lead a peaceful and
quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim 2:2). This is
pleasing to “God our Savior who desires all people to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God,
and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. …” (1 Tim 2:3–6).
The Apostle’s instructions are given so that the church will adorn
its public life with godliness and dignity, and the Gospel of God’s
Son will be preached and believed without hindrance.

Summary Reflections
on Man and Woman in the Bible
We have considered key scriptural texts that speak to the manwoman relationship using the framework of the creeds, which
confess the creating, redeeming, and sanctifying work of the Holy
Trinity. The Triune God makes humanity in His image. He makes
a single humanity composed of many very different persons, origi-

nating in the first man and first woman. Humanity (the tapestry) is
personally created in God’s likeness, reflecting Him as His beloved
companions, relating and responsible to Him, given a dominion to
exercise rightly from the One who holds all dominion. Humanity
is personally created as male or female. This is a gift, not a choice,
so that we might “be fruitful and multiply.” The very act of the first
creation of man and woman shows the intention God has for His individual persons to dwell in community with one another. Thus the
tapestry’s pattern is clearly seen—different persons interwoven together into the whole, beautifying and strengthening the other. This
is true for the marriage God gives. This wholeness and harmony are
also what God intends to be true for all humanity.
The Triune God redeems humanity despite our fall into sin and
separation from Him and from one another. What is true for our
first parents is true for us all. In sin, we add to and subtract from
God’s Word, losing it as we seek to “improve” it, and—more importantly—losing the One Whom we no longer hear or heed. The
fall from Him is the fall from life, the loss of the eternal life He
intends, and the demise of the life even now which would meet
our deepest needs. So it is that even the two who are one flesh tear
apart from one another: she is deceived by the Tempter’s lies to
forget the Word of God which was intended to bless her and her
husband; he blames God and also attacks the one who is, in effect,
his own body.
The destruction is so complete that only a new Adam, a new
Man, can repair it. He comes in the person of Christ, the person
of the Word made flesh. He takes on our human flesh to restore
the torn flesh that is reflected in the violent and destructive ways
God’s persons-made-for-community treat one another. This is true
not only in wars with “the enemy and stranger,” but even in violence and hate between the two-person unity of man and woman.
It is His flesh—the flesh that is torn, suffers, and dies—which, in
stunning paradox, heals the torn flesh and tapestry of humanity.
So also, it is only by such forgiving, selfless, submissive love, that
man and woman find their personhood and their community with
one another fully and graciously restored, in marriage and in every
relationship made whole by Christ.
That restoration begins as the worn and dirty tapestry of humanity is washed, sanctified, and renewed in the waters of Baptism. By
the power of Word and Spirit, male and female persons become
fully the persons God intended. Beginning here and completed in
the resurrection, embodied males and females find that we have
been made living stones and holy priests. Whatever our place in
life, we have new dignity, and in every place in life it shows its
effects. Man and woman now find God’s original earthly intentions to be more beautiful than our wildest dreams, for we come
to know the goodness of serving one another according to who we
are as persons, united in the community Christ creates, whether in
the home or the church. Submitting to one another, we also submit
always to Christ and so accept in faith the particular responsibilities
He gives to us here and now, as father or mother, husband or wife,
brother or sister, employer or employee, citizen or governor, pastor
or parishioner. Structure becomes wholesome, not hierarchical in
any power-grabbing sense. Order remains, but people are newly
transformed in the way of Christ’s holiness. Such is the transformation reflected in the tapestry that God is weaving in His people.
This is what the Bible says of the embodied persons—male and
female—whom God has made and longs to redeem and renew.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis observes that God became
human not simply to improve His human creatures, but to produce
something new—creatures who are His very sons and daughters.
“It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like
turning a horse into a winged creature.” Christ’s work, says Lewis,

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