The Best of Intentions

North American scholar, Gordon Fee, is well-known among evangelicals for his New Testament scholarship. His commentary on 1 Corinthians is highly regarded, as is his manual on New Testament exegesis, and his recent large-scale volume on the Holy Spirit (God's Empowering Spirit).

Not all of Fee's work, however, is so well received. Questions are being asked about some aspects of his approach to New Testament interpretation, in particular as it applies to 1 Timothy 2. Glenn Davies examines some of these issues in a response to Fee's recent collection of essays called Gospel and Spirit.

In the opening chapters of this book, Gordon Fee makes some valid points about the excesses of ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘liberalism’ in interpreting the Bible. He rightly seeks to avoid both.

For example, the Bible is not simply a set of propositions from God to us, nor a set of laws which provide regulations for life. Rather, it is a collection of God's words to his people over different stages in history, using different literary genres as vehicles of that same word.

Even so, it must be recognized that the Bible does also contain ‘propositions from God’ and laws which are to be obeyed. One cannot escape, even in the New Testament, the necessity of taking God's commandments seriously (1 Cor 7:19), as indeed we take Jesus' commandments seriously (and not just the love commandment; cf. Matt 28:20). Evangelicals are often accused of having a Bible which descended from heaven intact without human contact. However, as much as we want to distance ourselves from such a caricature, we must not overlook the fact that at least part of the Bible (namely the Ten Commandments) did come in this way, “written by the finger of God” (Deut 9:10). And while evangelicals should not shy away from the human participation in the writing of God's word, we also want to assert the divine superintendence of that writing so that what stands written is truly God's word written. All that is written in the Scripture is what God ha said. It is not imprisoned in ancient history by virtue of its having human authors; it is his living active word to us.

It is at this point that I find Fee's reference to authorial intention to be defective. Although he would presumably not deny God's authorship of Scripture, he seems to restrict the meaning of authorial intention to the human author. For example, Fee's understanding of 2 Timothy 4:13 appears to suggest that the verse has no reference to 20th-century readers (p. 60).¹ Certainly, there is no way in which we, as today's readers, can fulfil Paul's request to bring him his cloak and parchments. But we should not isolate the human author from the divine author, and make the chasm between the first and 20th centuries deeper and wider than it really is. Paul's words are also God's living words, written down for his church. At the very least, this verse tells us something of the importance of the scrolls and parchments, as well as issuing a rebuke to those who think that all secular matters (such as books and clothing) are of no concern for the Christian minister.

We need to work hard at a text in order to understand it not just as Paul's words but equally as God's words. God knew and intended that his word would be preserved and read by us. Of course, this does not provide us with a blank cheque for importing whatever we wish into the text under the guise of ‘God's intention’. The divine intention is still expressed through the text, as a literary document, in its context. But the divine intention may still, at times, go beyond the awareness of human author (cf. 1 Pet 1:10-12).

The other methodological concern I have with Fee's position is his open-ended use of the word ‘redemptive’ as if this allows for liberty in situations not envisaged by the New Testament (e.g. p. 64). His remarks on abortion and divorce at the end of chapter 3 reflect his position quite well. He describes his ethic as one of ‘Gospel and Spirit’ and not one of Law. Yet this is too neat. The concept of law is not so easily removed—why else would Paul refer to the ‘law of Christ’? The principle of divorce, for example, is part of God's law (cf. Deut 24) and is also sanctioned at different points in the New Testament. We should not approach the question with some sort of loose, compassionate application in the name of the Spirit, but with faithfulness to God's revelation. More could be said here, but Fee's application of his ‘hermeneutical principles’ is instructive at this point, as it is with his exegesis of 1 Timothy 2.

Exegesis of 1 Timothy 2

Fee's description of the setting of 1 Timothy is highly probably, and I have no quarrel with him here. I agree that there is a cultural context for Paul's remarks in chapter 2, as there is for everything the apostle writes. The question which Fee studiously avoids is: What does the text say?

He contents that the ad hoc character of the letter allows us to reduce Paul's injunctions to an exhortation to women to keep their accepted position in society (i.e. first-century society). Hence,

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... almost certainly Paul himself did not intend these instructions to address all Christians in all churches universally. All of these instructions, including 2:11-12, were ad hoc responses to the waywardness of the young widows in Ephesus who had already gone astray after Satan and were disrupting the church. (p. 61)

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However, the problem with this line of thinking is that Paul does not restrict his prohibition to widows (let alone those widows who were being seduced by Satan). Rather, his restriction is a prohibition on all women. Is this not overkill on Paul's part? In the same vein other commentators (e.g. Scholer) claim that Paul is arguing against false teachers. Yet, if Paul is merely addressing the problem of false teachers, why merely restrict women? Are we to believe that there were no male false teachers in Ephesus (or, for that matter, no godly women)? Furthermore, Paul's prohibition is only a restriction concerning women teaching men. Do we presume that Paul was happy for women (or widows) to teach other women in a false or disruptive manner?

There is something terribly wrong with Fee's reconstruction at this point. His concern for the setting ignores the argument of Paul, viz, that since Adam was not deceived, whereas Eve was, women should not teach or exercise authority over men. Paul is arguing on the basis of gender, grounded on an understanding of God's word in Genesis.

Fee asks why 1 Timothy 5:13-16 is not treated in the same way as 2:11-15 (p. 60), since many who consider the former to be ‘culturally relative’ do not so consider the latter. We might reply that 1 Timothy 5 ought to be treated in exactly the same way as 1 Timothy 2—the principles relating to our conduct in the household of God (cf. 3:15) should be drawn from Paul's instructions to Timothy. We should look after widows and encourage godliness amongst them as Paul advises. There may be some cultural accommodation in fine detail, given, for example, that the stage now undertakes on our behalf some aspects of the care of widows (something it did not do in the first century). But no matter how we apply these principles, we must recognize the need to apply them, and such application should be on the agenda of our church life. The same can be said of 1 Timothy 2. The principles for roles of men and women in church are fairly clear in the passage. Yet it will need to be applied to our particular situation, taking into account, for example, that we now have a system of institutional ordination to complicate the scenario. However, again, we are concerned with the application of abiding principles which are in themselves quite clear. In 1 Timothy 2, of course, there is the added emphasis given us by the appeal to Genesis. Fee would have us believe that Paul's allusion to Genesis was incidental. But what does this mean? Should we say this also in 5:18 with regard to Deuteronomy? Are all Old Testament references which we find inconvenient to be marginalized as ‘incidental’?

In the concluding section of his chapter on 1 Timothy 2, Fee discloses his ‘clincher’: “To deny women to minister and teach in the church is to deny clear gifts of God himself” (p. 64). With respect, this is complete nonsense. It is a logical fallacy, as the following two illustrations show. Firstly, Fee admits that Paul was prohibiting women teaching in Ephesus (but that his prohibition is not applicable to us). Could not this same ‘gifts’ argument have been used against Paul? If God had gifted these women, who was Paul to prohibit them? Secondly, and similarly, in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul restricts prophets from speaking in certain situations. The God-given ability to prophesy does not automatically mean that it has to be exercised. Indeed 1 Corinthians 12-14 is chiefly about the loving, godly exercise of gifts, including knowing when not to use them. Such a restriction does not deny the gifts of God. It merely outlines the God-given ways in which the God-given gifts may be exercised.

In the end, I can't help thinking that Fee's own words (on p. 41) are an indictment of his method of dealing with women preaching in 1 Timothy 2:

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... The difficulty I have with liberal hermeneutics remains. I do not see any hope for a corrective to their autonomy over the text. They may be corrected by reasonable arguments, but reason still prevails, not the text of Scripture itself. What one doesn't like in Scripture, one may simply disregard or interpret to fit one's presuppositions.

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But precisely because evangelical hermeneutics places the final authority in the text itself, there is always the hope that God the Holy Spirit will have his way and disabuse us of our prejudices and call us to obedience to God's will. Because the authority is intrinsic to Scripture itself, the evangelical by theological predisposition should always be open to reformation.

To be evangelical is to be always open to Scripture. I was prepared to read something new in Fee's book which might convince me otherwise. I was disappointed. To my mind he has not done justice to the text, which in his own words must remain supreme.

Endnotes

¹ “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments” (2 Tim 4:13).