What do 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 say about women teaching men in church today?
A study of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1
This is the third article in a series walking through three passages cited most often by Christians who believe women shouldn’t teach men in church.
We’ve already taken a look at 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. If you haven’t read those articles yet, they’re a better place to start.
Now let’s see what 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 have to say about women teaching men in churches.
“Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. [2]Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, [3]not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. [4]He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. [5](If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) [6]He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. [7]He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.”
“The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. [6]An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. [7]Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. [8]Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. [9]He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”
A Plain Reading
A plain reading of these two passages in English clearly says that only men are qualified to serve as church leaders. Right?
Well, a plan reading actually says a lot more than that.
Most of our English translations say an elder must “be the husband of one wife” and “manage his household well.” In the NIV version that I posted above, an elder must be “faithful to his wife” and “manage his own family well.” Read most literally, this means only men who are currently married with children may become overseers or elders.
Let’s put this plain reading to the test.
Few churches in America today apply these texts that way. Churches that use these passages to exclude women from ministry roles usually don’t bar single men and men without children from those same roles.
There’s a much bigger problem with this plain reading approach too. If taken seriously, Paul, unmarried at the time he wrote these letters, would be disqualified from serving as an overseer or elder. And so would Jesus.
Also, just a few verses later, in 1 Timothy 3:8-13, Paul writes that a deacon must be “faithful to his wife.” But we know that Paul welcomed women to serve as deacons. He commends the deaconess Phoebe in Romans 16:1.
A plain reading of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 is highly problematic.
So, how should we understand these passages then?
What are these passages about?
1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 list the qualifications for church leaders. Titus calls these leaders elders (presbyteroi) and overseers (episkopoi). 1 Timothy only refers to overseers (episkopos).
These are the only two passages in the New Testament describing the kind of person who should be appointed as one of these leaders in a local church: He should be above reproach, faithful to his wife, not a drunkard, self-controlled, not violent, not greedy, he should manage his household well, his children should believe, he should be hospitable, self-controlled, and able to teach.
Are all these leaders men?
Read from an English Bible, it sure seems like it. Every pronoun is masculine. An overseer must be faithful to his wife and manage his family well. He must be hospitable. And on it goes.
But not a single one of those pronouns is in the Greek text. Why not?
Greek verbs don’t require pronouns the way English verbs do, and Greek verb endings indicate person and number but not gender like they sometimes do in other languages. So the English translators had to supply the pronouns that were missing. They went with “he.” The ESV translation of 1 Timothy 3:1-7, for example, includes seven male pronouns and three male possessives that Paul never wrote!
That choice was first made when the King James version was penned. At that time “he” was the ordinary way to refer to an unnamed person who could be of either gender. We see this throughout the King James version, like in John 3:3 where it reads “Except a man (tis, meaning “anyone”) be born again, he (not in the Greek text) cannot see the kingdom of God.” The English language has changed a lot since 1611.
Paul could have made it clearer that he was writing only about men. He did this two verses earlier when he addressed “the men” and “the women” in Ephesus (2:8-9). Paul specifies gender when he wants to. He didn’t want to in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
Paul also chose a gender-neutral word to introduce both of these lists of qualifications. The Greek phrase is ei tis, “if anyone.” We see it in 1 Timothy 3:1, and again in 3:5. It’s also found in Titus 1:6. The ESV and NASB translations keep “if anyone” in all three places. The NIV uses “whoever” in 1 Timothy 3:1, “if anyone” in 3:5, and “an elder” in Titus 1:6.
Paul could have written, “if a man desires to be an overseer.” But he didn't. Why?
The most compelling argument for male-only church leadership
Setting all this pronoun business aside, Paul clearly says that an elder must be "faithful to his wife." This is the most compelling argument for male-only elders and overseers I've ever come across. It’s the primary reason I believed for many years that women shouldn’t be church leaders.
Back then I was what’s often labeled a complementarian. That’s someone who believes that men and women are spiritually equal but were created by God for distinct, complementary roles, and that only men may serve as leaders and teachers of men in the local church.
You see, I believe the Bible is not just human words about God. The Bible is words to humans from God. I take Scripture very seriously. And there was just no getting around this phrase “faithful to his wife.”
But then I discovered something. The most notable complementarian scholars, the men I looked to for guidance on this issue, didn’t rest their case on this phrase or on any part of these two passages.
Douglas Moo, a Calvinist New Testament scholar, wrote that it would go too far to argue the phrase “faithful to his wife” clearly excludes women from eldership. Thomas Schreiner, a Reformed Baptist theologian, wrote that these passages do not exclude women from serving as elders. And The Danvers Statement, authored by pastor John Piper and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, detailed the complementarian view in 1988. I read it. It doesn’t cite 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1 a single time.
Instead, complementarian theologians usually build their case against women leading and teaching men primarily from 1 Timothy 2. But that passage never mentions elders, overseers, pastors, or any other church office.
I began to wonder: if “faithful to his wife” means an elder must be a man, why don't these scholars, who know far more than I do, base their position on it? The answer surprised me.
What else could “faithful to his wife” mean?
The Greek phrase here is mias gynaikos andra, most often rendered “the husband of one wife.” But it’s literally “a one-woman man.” Scholars have suggested a few possibilities for what Paul meant by it.
Is he disqualifying polygamists? Probably not. Monogamy was the norm in Greco-Roman society by this point in history. The phrase does rule out polygamists, but that’s probably not Paul’s primary concern here.
Is he forbidding remarriage? That’s not likely either. A few pages later in this same letter, Paul tells younger widows to marry again (5:14). He permits remarriage in other letters too (Romans 7:1-3; 1 Corinthians 7:8-9, 39-40). So Paul probably isn’t requiring church leaders to stay single after a spouse dies.
Is he requiring marital faithfulness? Most scholars think so. In that world, married men commonly had sex with slaves and prostitutes, and society accepted it. The Christian community did not. A church leader should be faithful to his wife.
Is this about sexual faithfulness? Paul later writes that a widow qualifying for the church’s support must be “the wife of one husband” (5:9) — literally “one-man woman,” the mirror image of the phrase used in 1 Timothy 3:2. But a widow is no longer married. So the phrase can’t be describing her current marital status. It might be an idiom, a shorthand for sexual faithfulness that Paul applies to both men and women, married and widowed.
Is Paul describing the most common situation in his day? This is also a compelling possibility. Churches met in homes. Greco-Roman homes had heads. And in the first century, the head of a household was usually a man. And in the first century, the head of a household was usually a man. Paul writes about a male leader because the vast majority of church leaders were men.
Andrew Clarke has researched the leadership structures of the New Testament churches for more than thirty years and is the author of A Pauline Theology of Church Leadership. In a conversation with Preston Sprinkle, he offered this helpful illustration. He said that if you asked someone seventy-five years ago about their family doctor, you might ask whether he was any good and whether he treated his patients well. Nobody would hear those questions and think all doctors must be men. They would understand that you were describing the world as it was. You would be speaking generally. Most doctors were men at that time.
No one can be certain which of these readings is correct.
Regardless, one thing is clear to me now. "Faithful to his wife" does not necessarily, plainly, or explicitly disqualify women from church leadership. These passages describe the character of "whoever" serves as a church leader.
Do you have be an elder to teach the church?
These passages say elders must be able and equipped to teach (1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:9). They do not say only elders may teach.
The same holds for every qualification in these lists. Elders must be hospitable, but elders are not the only Christians who should welcome people into their homes. Elders must manage their households well, but elders are not the only Christians who should prioritize home life.
These lists describe the kind of person suited to serve as elder or overseer. They do not assign activities to elders and overseers exclusively.
Not every elder taught.
Not only were elders not the only teachers in the early church, but we know that not every elder actually taught. Later, Paul tells Timothy that elders who lead well deserve double honor, “especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Timothy 5:17). Teaching was not the exclusive work of elders, and not all elders taught.
Many other people taught.
In fact, we know that teaching was something many people did in the early church. In this same letter to Titus, Paul tells older women to be kalodidaskaloi, or teachers of what is good (Titus 2:3). He tells the entire Colossian congregation to teach and admonish one another (Colossians 3:16). He describes a typical church gathering where each person brings a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation (1 Corinthians 14:26). He lists teaching among the gifts the Spirit distributes, with no mention of these gifts being given only to men in a particular position. Teaching was not the exclusive task of a few with a certain title (Romans 12:7; 1 Corinthians 12:28).
Authoritative teaching?
Now, some argue that the examples I’ve just provided from Scripture describe lesser forms of teaching. They say elders alone provided a separate, authoritative kind of teaching. But the New Testament does not mention this separate category of “authoritative teaching.” Paul uses the same word, didaskō, to describe what elders do, what both men and women do, and what the whole congregation does.
Paul required that elders be able to teach, but not all elders taught, and elders were not the only teachers in the first-century church.
What was an elder then and who is an elder today?
These passages are not only used to restrict women from serving as elders, but also a variety of other “leadership” and teaching roles — from pastor to finance committee chair to Sunday school teacher. Perhaps we should have started with this question then: What was an elder in the early church?
Here’s what little we know (and don’t know).
We know that titles overlapped. Paul uses two different words for the same church leaders in a single passage. He tells Titus to appoint presbyterous (elders), and then, in the middle of listing their qualifications, he switches to episkopos (overseer) as if they’re the same group (Titus 1:5-7). In Acts 20, Paul calls for the elders (presbyterous) of Ephesus and tells them the Spirit made them overseers (episkopous), and that their work is to “shepherd” (the verb, poimainō) (Acts 20:17, 28). Peter does the same thing (1 Peter 5:1-2). Three words describe one group of people. Elder, overseer, and those who shepherd do not appear to have been three different offices.
We know that no individual is ever called a “pastor.” The noun poimēn appears once as a gift Christ gives the church (Ephesians 4:11), and never as anyone’s title. Some Greek scholars argue that Ephesians 4:11 should be read as “shepherd-teacher,” describing teachers who nurture and nourish those they teach, rather than establishing a separate office of shepherd or pastor.
We know that titles and leadership structures varied across locations and times. By around 110, Ignatius of Antioch was urging churches to gather around a single “bishop” (episkopos), the same word translated “overseers” in the passages we’ve studied together. Ignatius wasn’t using a new title. He was using an old one in a new way. In the fourth century, after Constantine linked church and state, the church began modeling its structures and titles after the Roman government, even borrowing words like “diocese.”
We’re using these titles in new ways. We know “elder” means different things in different churches today. Some churches have elder boards made up of lay people who function something like a board of trustees. Others require a pastor to go through a formal process to become an elder before he can teach or carry out certain duties. Others use these texts as qualifications for all pastors, seeing pastor, elder, and overseer as different words for the same thing. Still others think an elder is anyone leading or involved in the spiritual formation of others, such as volunteer small group leaders. The variation across denominations, and around the world, is enormous.
So here’s the problem.
Before a church can say these qualifications apply to elders, and elders alone, it has to decide who counts as an elder. That decision is ours to make. It isn’t in the text. Paul never tells us what these leaders did on a given day, and the words he uses for them don’t line up neatly with the titles we’re using today.
What these passages do and do not say
These two passages describe the character of a person suited to serve as an elder or overseer. They do not plainly or explicitly limit that role to men.
These leaders should be able and equipped to teach, but teaching the congregation is not the exclusive gifting or responsibility of elders, overseers, pastors, or men.
Paul is laying out the qualifications for "whoever" would serve as an elder or overseer in the early church.
