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, please do that first.

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.”

— 1 Timothy 3:1-7

“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.”

— Titus 1:5-9

A Plain Reading

Some argue for a "plain reading" of these two passages. We should take Paul's words at face value, they say. Only men can be elders, and only elders should teach the congregation. So, only men can teach the congregation.

Let's put this plain reading to the test.

Almost no church in America today applies a plain reading of these texts. Churches that use these passages to exclude women from ministry roles usually don’t bar single men and men without children from leading and teaching the congregation.

They’ve decided that “faithful to his wife” doesn't require a wife, and that “his children” doesn’t actually require children. They’ve actually moved beyond a plain reading of the text.

We all should.

We’ll get into why, but first, let’s zoom out.

What are these passages about?

They’re lists. 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 are lists of qualifications for church leaders. Titus calls these leaders elders (presbyteroi) and overseers (episkopoi). 1 Timothy only refers to overseers (episkopos).

For now, let's set aside the question of what exactly an elder or overseer was and did back then. We'll come back to that later — and what we find may surprise you.

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: They should be above reproach, not a drunkard, not violent, not greedy. They should be hospitable, self-controlled, and able to teach.

Are all these leaders men?

If you're reading from an English Bible, it sure seems like it. Every pronoun is masculine. An overseer must be faithful to his wife and manage his own 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 do in some languages. So the English translators had to supply a pronoun. They chose “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 made sense when the King James version was penned. For most of the English language’s history, “he” was the ordinary way to refer to a 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. But Greek hasn’t.

Paul could have made it clearer that he was writing only about men. Two verses earlier he addresses “the men” and “the women” in Ephesus (2:8-9). Paul specifies gender when he wants to. He didn't want to here.

Paul also chose a gender-neutral word to introduce both lists. 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 and “an elder” in Titus 1:6.

Paul could have written, “if a man desires to be an overseer.” He didn't. Why?

But what about “faithful to his wife”?

This is the one Greek phrase in either list that does use gendered language. The Greek phrase here is mias gynaikos andra, most often rendered “the husband of one wife.” It’s literally “a one-woman man.”

Paul uses the mirror image of this phrase a few chapters later. In order for a widow to receive benevolence, she must be “a one-man woman” (5:9).

That the phrase isn’t telling us she's a woman. And it’s not telling us she was married either. “Widow” has already done that. So it must be adding something else, and interpreters have suggested two possibilities.

The first is sexual faithfulness. She was faithful to her husband while he lived and has not been with another man since he died. The second is that she had been married only once and never remarried, which was a real concern in some early churches.

Whichever reading we take, we have to apply it consistently to the masculine version of the same idiom in 1 Timothy 3:2. If “one-man woman” doesn’t mean a widow must be female and married, then “one-woman man” doesn't mean an elder must be male and married either.

Here's a second clue. Paul uses this same Greek phrase again when he writes about deacons in the same chapter. “A deacon must be faithful to his wife” (3:12). Again, “a one-woman man.” But Paul also calls Phoebe a deacon of the church at Cenchreae (Romans 16:1). Other women served in that role too. So Paul can't be excluding women from being deacons, unless he’s contradicting himself.

Here's one last thing to consider. Suppose we strictly apply a plain reading of “one-woman man,” so that only married men qualify for church leadership. Then we have to read and apply the other qualifications in these lists the same way. And that's problematic.

The same passage requires a leader to manage his own household and to have children who believe. If “one-woman man” excludes women, then these requirements also exclude unmarried men, men without children, men with only one child, and every male slave and servant, since none of them could lead a household in the ancient world.

And that excludes Paul. He was not married when he wrote these letters. He had no household to manage. If a plain reading is strictly applied, Paul was not qualified to serve as an elder in any church he planted.

These passages do not plainly or explicitly restrict church leadership to men. They describe the character of "whoever" serves as a church leader.

Do you have be an elder to teach?

These passages say elders must be able and equipped to teach. They do not say only elders may teach.

The same holds for every qualification in these lists. Hospitality is a qualification for elders, but elders are not the only Christians who should welcome people into their homes. Managing a household well is a qualification too, but elders are not the only Christians who should prioritize home life. These lists describe the kind of person suited to lead. They do not assign activities to elders exclusively.

Not only were elders not the only teachers in the early church, but we know that not every elder 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.

In fact, we know that teaching was something many people did in the early church. In the same short 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 a certain gender or position. Teaching was not the exclusive task of a few with a certain title (Romans 12:7; 1 Corinthians 12:28).

Now, some argue that these examples I’ve provided describe lesser forms of teaching. They say that 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, 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 even was an “elder”?

Now let’s return to a question we set aside earlier. What was an elder in the first-century church, and what did they do?

Here’s what we know and what we don’t.

We know that titles overlapped. Paul tells Titus to appoint presbyterous (elders), then immediately gives the qualifications of the episkopos (overseers), as if describing the same group of people (Titus 1:5-7). In Acts 20, Paul calls for the elders 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 people 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 by location and changed over time. 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’re studying 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 on the Roman government, even borrowing words like “diocese.”

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 tremendous.

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 lead within a local church. They do not plainly or explicitly limit leadership to men. And they do not restrict the teaching of the congregation to elders, overseers, or to men.

Some pastors and theologians hold the view 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. This view is called complementarianism. It is telling that the most notable complementarian scholars do not rest their case on these two passages.

Douglas Moo, a Calvinist New Testament scholar, has written that it would go too far to argue the phrase “one-woman man” clearly excludes women from eldership. Thomas Schreiner, a Reformed Baptist theologian, has written that these qualification 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, codified the complementarian view of gender roles in 1988. It does not cite 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1 a single time.

Instead, complementarian scholars tend to build their case on 1 Timothy 2, which does not mention elders, overseers, pastors, or any other church office.

In 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9, Paul is laying out the qualifications for “whoever” would serve as an elder or overseer in the local church.

What’s next? Next, I’ll offer short answers to just a few of the follow-up questions I’ve been asked about women teaching men in church.