Intimate Partner Violence, Male Headship & Reading 1 Timothy 2:13 as the basis for womens autonomy
This article is based on my paper presented at the 2023 Society of Biblical Literature Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
Does verse 13 of 1 Timothy 2, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” always mean that a man must lead and women are always subordinate in church and in a marriage? Does it mean that men have priority over women because Adam was formed first? Do women not teach men “in church” because men have an ontological prescience over women? Is that what the writer of 1 Timothy saying here? The seeming prescience of Adam at creation is a support for the idea that Adam has headship over Eve and therefore contemporary men/husbands have headship over women/wives. However, in recent times in Australia, this view of the relationship between men and women has come to be seen as a problem. In a 2021 report commissioned by the Anglican Church in Australia, a key finding was that, “Most clergy believed that Scripture is misused by the abuser in Christian families. Misuse of Scripture by the abuser was considered to be implicated at least some of the time by nine in ten clergy. The theology of male headship was seen as a factor at least some of the time for eight in ten clergy (seven in ten evangelicals, nine in ten Anglo-Catholics).”
What we really lack is data from the women themselves, but enough evidence has been amassed that points to misuse and abuse of Christian theology about gender and marriage as a significant problem in abuse cases in church-going families. Journalist Julia Baird has highlighted connections between complementarianism and domestic abuse in Sydney Anglican churches. She draws on research conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, which concluded that “the gender norms and beliefs surrounding male dominance and male superiority, created by power hierarchies … accord men greater status.” In research conducted with H. Gleeson, Baird was told by a number of evangelical women that they were told to endure domestic violence in the name of God. Some of these women were married to Anglican clergy. Here in Australia, there are a number of denominations that affirm complementarian theology on gender; the Presbyterian Church of Australia and the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican church are notable examples. In other denominations, while they don’t have an official position on gender relations, leaders and clergy are what could be described as ‘soft complementarian.’ For this article, I’m focusing on the Anglican Diocese of Sydney because of the wealth of information available. But I will be drawing on studies from other countries to build my case that the advice given by complementarian theologians, like Piper’s advice, mimics behaviours of victims and invites emotional abuse. After considering this, I will briefly discuss an alternative interpretation for “For Adam was formed first, then Eve,” before considering the resources available in 1 Timothy for women’s autonomy, which renegotiates her role in marriage and the church and possibly offers protection against abuses of power.
In 2009, evangelical John Piper was asked on his “Desiring God” blog page about how an abused wife should respond to her abusive husband. On August 19, he responded to her question. Now in all fairness to Piper, he didn’t have the full details of the case. But I think his response is a good starting point to see how complementarian theology and domestic violence are connected. Piper thought that the women’s response depended on the type of abuse. He said that if the husband was asking the wife to willingly go along with sin, he says that she has “a higher allegiance, namely to Christ.”
“Therefore, Christ’s word governs her life. And Christ has many words besides ‘Be submissive.’ ‘Be submissive’ is not an absolute, because her Lord has other things to tell her, so that if the husband tells her something that contradicts what the Lord tells her, then she’s got a crisis of, ‘To whom do I submit now?’ And clearly, she submits to Jesus above her husband. The reason she is submitting to her husband is because of her prior superior submission to the Lord.”
He goes on to say that in this circumstance the woman would say:
“something like, ‘Honey, I want so much to follow you as my leader. God calls me to do that, and I would love to do that. It would be sweet to me if I could enjoy your leadership. But if you ask me to do this, require this of me, then I can’t go there.’”
But in a situation involving some form of verbal abuse his advice is
“If it’s not requiring her to sin but simply hurting her, then I think she endures verbal abuse for a season, and she endures perhaps being smacked one night, and then she seeks help from the church.”
This response became notorious. He tried to rectify this with an extended blog post on his “Desiring God” site. Here he is clearer saying that an abusive husband disobeys Christ and that a woman can faithfully have recourse to the civil authorities. So thankfully John Piper thinks it’s ok for a woman to call the police if she is being physically harmed. His reply in this post is much more carefully thought out. He is much clearer that threatening or actual abuse was morally wrong and could be a crime. It was a crime in Minnesota at the time so he says that if a man expects “his wife to quietly accept his threats and injuries, he is asking her to participate in his breaking of both God’s moral law and the state’s civil law.”
But in both instances he has to dance around the problem that he believes that wives are required to submit to their husbands because God created them to submit. In Piper’s scheme a woman is ontologically submissive. This submission means that women are meant to be led by their husbands as Piper says in his first response; he has the woman say, ‘Honey, I want so much to follow you as my leader.” In Piper’s theological thought men lead and women follow. For John Piper every facet of life is to be permeated by the “creation order.”
This all pervasive view of gender relations can be seen in his essay in Recovering Biblical and Womanhood. In this essay Piper offers “a set of criteria to help a woman think through whether the responsibilities of any given job allow her to uphold God’s created order of mature masculinity and femininity.” A possible criteria he suggests is that “to the degree that a woman’s influence over man is personal and directive it will generally offend a man’s good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God’s created order.” It’s not just that the type of job that a woman holds that is problematic but the personae that a woman needs to inhabit in order to “affirm and receive and nurture the strength and leadership of men in some form in all her relationships with men” and in particular with her husband. In all interactions with all men, Piper says that he has “in mind culturally appropriate expressions of respect for his kind of strength, and glad acceptance of his gentlemanly courtesies. Her demeanor—the tone and style and disposition and discourse of her ranking position—can signal clearly her affirmation of the unique role that men should play in relationship to women owning to their sense of responsibility to protect and lead.” If we refer back to Piper’s advice to the woman in an abusive relationship, he makes it clear that he thinks that ordinarily the wife is always in the subordinate position and powerless. No matter what Piper says about men and women being equal but playing different roles when it comes to the actual interaction between a man and woman, the woman is always to be submissive otherwise she may offend the man’s “good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God’s created order.” The woman’s submissiveness is built into the personae she is to inhabit and this actually invites an abuse of power.
A worrying pattern connected to the idea of female submission was found by Helen Paynter when she interviewed Christian women who had been abused by their husbands for her book The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why You Don’t have to Submit to Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control. A number of representative comments from these women highlight their susceptibility to abuse in their marriages. For instance, one woman said, “The church taught me a passive way of being a Christian woman.” Another woman said, “I was groomed for abuse, and the church played a part in that grooming.” Paynter says in response to this last comment “of course, the church wasn’t trying to do that. It wasn’t aiming to set itself up in such a way that women felt crushed, worthless and useless. It wasn’t intending to establish a culture of male dominance that would give an abuser permission to cause harm.” I think we can see from Piper’s response to the question of DV that he doesn’t intend for a woman to suffer harm, but we have to seriously consider whether his teaching on female submission actually grooms women for abuse in their intimate relationships.
The studies that have been conducted point to Christian women’s vulnerability to intimate partner abuse. Interestingly, some studies indicate the rate of DV differs little between churches with a traditional view of marriage and those promoting an egalitarian view. However, views on what constitutes domestic violence have changed in recent times. Just by way of illustration Piper in 2009 saw domestic violence as an event, as most people did. It is now recognized that DV is a chronic condition. Smith, Smith, and Earp, when developing an alternative conceptualization-and-measurement approach, worked to base their methodology on battered women’s experiences. Using this approach, they describe how chronic emotional abuse could be punctuated by physical violent outbursts. As Gondolf said in 1987 that “the acts in themselves may not be as significant as the constellation of behaviors that create a subjective state of terror for the woman. Even when a battered woman is not hit, the possibility of being hit sustains a high degree of fear and uncertainty.” Smith et al recommended that the Women’s Experience with Battering scale, or the WEB scale, be used in ongoing research into women’s experiences of DV. Now it is this WEB scale that I would like to focus on for the moment.
1. He makes me feel unsafe even in my own home.
2. I feel ashamed of the things he does to me.
3. I try not to rock the boat because I am afraid of what he might do.
4. I feel like I am programmed to react a certain way to him.
5. I feel like he keeps me prisoner.
6. He makes me feel like I have no control over my life, no power, no protection.
7. I hide the truth from others because I am afraid not to.
8. I feel owned and controlled by him.
9. He can scare me without laying a hand on me.
10. He has a look that goes straight through me and terrifies me.
Now items 6, 7, 8 look very much like the advice that Piper and other complementarians offer to wives, as we saw in Piper’s proposed model of interaction. Potentially, this could mean that research based on women’s self-reporting of abuse, especially emotional abuse, is under-represented because wives believe that such a state of affairs reflects their role in a marriage. In 2000, Coker et al, screened 1401 eligible women for intimate partner violence in Columbia, South Carolina. They found that “7.7% of the women currently involved in a relationship, and 17.7% in their most recent relationship, experienced sexual violence. In addition, more than one third of the violence assessed in a current or most recent relationship was classified as nonphysical psychological battering. This indicates that women
are experiencing vulnerability, loss of control and power, and entrapment as a consequence of their partner’s patterned use of abusive behaviors other than physical and sexual assault.” The demographics in this study were interesting. Those identifying as “white” were significantly associated with battering or emotional abuse without physical or sexual violence in any intimate relationship. Physical violence was associated with alcoholic dependency in the male partner and economic insecurity.
For now the research shows that rates of DV do not vary between evangelical church goers and the broader community. What the research has shown is that the response by women, who are victims of DV is different to the rest of the community. Women who attend congregations were divorce is frowned upon were less likely to separate and divorce because of DV and this puts them at greater risk of experiencing continuing DV. Mei-Chang Wan research team in 2009 found that couples who attended church services regularly were less likely to be in DV relationships. While Wang’s team considered that participation in the community may offer some protection for couples, they conceded that couples involved in DV were possibly less likely to attended church. The verdict is still out on this as later research showed there was little difference between these two groups. Much more recent research done by Peter Jankowski et al and published in 2018 suggested that religious affiliation to a conservative church tradition did not amount to monochrome views about gender and acceptance of myths about domestic violence. For instance, they note what they call a paradox, “that the same religious group is likely to have followers who hold religious beliefs about compassion and acceptance, whereas others adhere to intolerant beliefs that support IPV.” Therefore, there is the possibility that certain clusters of predispositions, including a rigid adherence to the gender hierarchy espoused by complementarians, could heighten the risk of domestic violence for women.
Certainly, women who have been subject to domestic violence within relationships where the husband holds to complementarianism report that their husbands had used that teaching to justify their abuse. However, the abuse might not be extreme forms of emotional manipulation or physical violence. As Kylie Maddox-Pidgeon points out, the pressure on a woman to conform to a prescribed gender role may be in itself abuse. Just this year, states in Australia enacted laws to treat coercive control as a criminal offense. The legal definition of coercive control recognises that domestic and family violence is a pattern of behaviour and not individual incidences. While there is no one definition of Coercive control the National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book describes perpetrators exerting power and dominance over victim-survivors in current and former intimate partner relationships.” Important for our discussion is this statement, “Coercive control is particularly prevalent in relationships where there is an imbalance of power. Professor Evan Stark has described coercive control as ‘a pattern of domination that includes tactics to isolate, degrade, exploit and control’ victims.” In complementarian theology, the woman in a relationship is always in a subordinate relationship to the men in her life whether in her marriage or in church and, if she follows Piper’s advice, in her workplace. As described by Piper she must always be led and can never make autonomous decisions except in the most extreme circumstances, and even then his advice is to turn to the men in her church for assistance. In 2021, Ruth Powell and Miriam Pepper found in their research into domestic abuse and the response of Anglican clergy in Australia that:
“Although unintended, Christian teachings sometimes contribute to and potentially amplify situations of domestic violence. Our analysis revealed that teachings related to marriage, gender and forgiveness may be reinforced by church leaders in ways that extend the cycle of IPV and create a situation of harm for people in abusive relationships. When assertions about how partners in intimate relationships should relate to one another, were understood as absolute norms for behaviour, free from context – whether taught by church leaders or internalised by those experiencing IPV in this way – the cycle of abuse was extended. Participants recounted feelings of self-doubt, self-blame, entrapment and shame that they directly attributed to certain discourses about intimate relationships. It was common for participants to say that their sense of obligation to uphold marriage vows was a contributing factor to persisting in an abusive relationship.”
Powell and Pepper’s findings indicate that certain Christian teachings about marriage can contribute to intimate partner violence. Certainly, their findings support earlier findings from the US that Christian women are reluctant to leave abusive marriages and this is particularly dangerous. Research has shown that coercive control of a women in a relationship is highly correlated with her becoming a victim of homicide. It is really time to think hard about the interpretations of our primary texts upon which much of our teaching on gender relations in churches is built.
As discussed earlier, Piper in his 1991 essay in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood assumes that the women are designed to be ontologically subordinate to all men. This must be based on his understanding of 1 Timothy 2:13 because elsewhere in the New Testament it is only wives who submit to husbands. His working model is that men have primacy in all interactions women have with men because Adam was formed first. He’s generalised what most scholars understand as women’s participation in certain activities in church to all men universally. This is based on an ontological view of men and women’s relationships. Adam has primacy because he was created first and therefore all men have primacy as leaders in all aspects of life. But this flies in the face of the theological principle that grace trumps biological primacy: Isaac is chosen over Ismael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his other ten brothers, David over his brothers, Solomon over his all his brothers. Paul uses this very reasoning in Galatians in an effort to convince his followers not to return to observing the law but to participate in their freedom to associate together as Jews and gentiles, slaves and free, male and female (Gal 3:28).
The question, therefore, is why Paul/ Pastoral-Paul would return to the law to base his instruction on the relations between men and women in the congregation? The law plays an important role in 1 Timothy. The false teachers have deviated from the attributes that arise from love (1:5) while desiring to be teachers of the law (1:7). The writer assures his audience that everyone agrees that the law is good if it is used correctly and this seems to mean warning the lawless and disobedient about what is “contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel” (1:8–10). In my dissertation, I argued that the lawless and the disobedient are the false teachers, both those who have been removed (1:20) and those still operating in the community (1:3). So we can draw the conclusion that the false teachers think they are using the law correctly when in fact it condemns them because they are “without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions” (1:7). This means that when we turn to what the false teachers are teaching in chapter 4 we see that they are “forbidding marriage and [abstaining] from certain foods” (4:3). Pastoral Paul responds with a proof from Genesis that God “created [marriage] to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Tim 4:4). Using John Barclay’s mirror reading method, and secure in the knowledge that the false teachers are misusing the law, I think we can assume that the false teachers are using the creation story as a basis for their prohibition against marriage.
In 1987, Philip Towner proposed that the false teaching as described here in 1 Timothy 4 had elements of “an ‘eschatological’ dualism which regarded ‘foods’ (some at least) as belonging to the old order.” While we might be familiar with Paul’s exegesis of Adam in Romans, we are less aware of possible interpretations standing behind Jewish/Christian views of Adam in this era. Paul himself comes to our aid in 1 Corinthians 15:42–49. In this passage, Paul describes Adam “as a living being” and assures the Corinthians: “But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (1 Cor 15:46–47). It seems that some in Corinth were saying that Adam was formed first as a spiritual man, and this gives us some hints as to dualism suggested by the asceticism of the false teachers in 1 Timothy.
If we turn to Philo we see that his exegesis operates on many different levels. Alexander Wedderburn in his comparison of Philo and Paul on Adam in 1 Corinthians 15 did not find that Paul was arguing against a Philo-like interpretation of Adam. But what Wedderburn does conclude is that Philo provides indirect evidence of numerous Adam traditions and suggests that these Jewish traditions may foreshadow gnostic interpretations. In his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15: 45–46, Wedderburn argues that πρῶτον in verse 46 is best translated as an adverb ‘at first’ so that “the verse becomes a polemic against an unrealistic spiritualizing of this present life, a blending of heaven and earth that does away with the earthiness of the latter.” The similarity of this argument to the midrash of Genesis in 1 Timothy 2:13: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” is quite striking. It is possible that 1 Corinthians 15:45 is a pattern of argument (a topos), for 1 Timothy 2:13. In verse 45, Paul tells the Corinthians that Christ is the second Adam, echoing a tradition in Philo that this second Adam is “the Messiah … the coming man of God, either as an earthly Messiah or as the transcendent, angelic Son of Man in the heaven.”
Similarly, in Ignatius’ Letter to the Trallians, the Docetists taught that Jesus only seemed to have flesh and so were most likely saying that he was an angel. Ignatius goes to great lengths to respond that Christ had flesh (Trallians 9.1–2) in a similar manner to the “hymn” of in 1 Timothy 3:16: “God … was revealed in flesh (ἐν σαρκί).” Using Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15 as a guide Paul seems to be addressing a teaching that the first human, Adam, was created first as a spiritual being and then only took on the flesh (1 Cor 15:46). This would make sense of the pursuit of an ascetic lifestyle because these believers sought to return to a true spiritual state as God had created them. But Paul insists that the physical came first then the spiritual in 1 Corinthians 15:46. So returning to 1 Timothy 2:13, if we take πρῶτος (first) to be referring to this first creation event, we would have “for first, Adam was formed then Eve.” In parallel with Paul’s exegesis in verse 46, Adam was formed as a physical being, made of dust (47), and then became spiritual, so that likewise Eve was formed as a physical/spiritual being made of the same stuff as Adam. What I’m arguing is the emphasis falls on the passive verb ἐπλάσθη (he was formed) not on the order of creation. Read in this way it becomes clearer that the writer of 1 Timothy is arguing that the men and women in the church in Ephesus (addressed in chapter 2) have no need for an ascetic lifestyle because their physical bodies were created by God to be sexual and this is good as the writer says in 1 Timothy 4:3.
Thus 1 Timothy 2:13 does not give primacy to men over women. The man Adam was not formed alone, but Eve was formed from his flesh. She is made of the same stuff as him. Their very nature is as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15, they were formed as flesh and spirit, which cannot be rendered. This is a theology of radical equality—they are of the same flesh and bone (Gen 2:23). Both are to be pious, but in gender appropriate fashion according to the culture; men are to be pious, praying without disputes while women are to be pious in their dress and their good works (1 Tim 2:8–11). Both are to speak with restraint in submission to the glorious gospel (1:10; 2: 1–2, 11). A wife is not to teach or domineer over her husband in order to get him to take up the ascetic teaching (1 Tim 2:12). In conclusion, there is no basis for women’s submission to all men as Piper would have it. In 1 Timothy she is an autonomous person responsible for her own response to Paul’s command to disavow the ascetic teaching and to conform his sound teaching. As the men are to respect each other in their dealings, the “likewise” of 2:9 would suggest that they should be respectful in their dealings with their wives as together “they continue in faith, love and holiness with restraint” (1 Tim 2:15). Thus the resources for living a “quiet and peaceable [domestic] life in all godliness and dignity” are there in 1 Timothy 2.
© Lyn M. Kidson 2023
Dr Lyn Kidson is an honorary research fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her dissertation was on 1 Timothy and was published by Mohr Siebeck (WUNT). Lyn currently works for the Australian College of Theology. Her website can be found here
1 Kevin Giles, The Headship of Men and the Abuse of Women: Are They Related in Any Way? (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020), 1–3; 74–77.
2 Ruth Powell and Miriam Pepper, National Anglican Family Violence Research Report: for the
Anglican Church of Australia (NCLS Research Report. NCLS Research, 2021), 40.
3 Shoshana Ringel and Juyoung Park, “Intimate Partner Violence in the Evangelical Community: Faith-Based Interventions and Implications for Practice,” Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work 27, no. 4 (2008): 341–360.
4 “‘Submit to your husbands’: Women told to endure domestic violence in the name of God”: ABC report posted 23 May 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/domestic-violence-church-submit-to-husbands/8652028
5 Presbyterians in Australia: Presbyterian Church of Victoria, “beliefs,” blog article, accessed on 24 October 2023: https://pcv.org.au/about/beliefs/; “Healthy Complementarianism A discussion paper for the Presbyterian Church in NSW and ACT From the Committee for Elders and Deacons July 2022,” PDF downloaded from pcnswwomen.org.au accessed 24 October 2023: https://resources.pcnswwomen.org.au/HealthyComplementarianism.FinalforDistribution.pdf. Anglicans in Australia: Mark Thompson, “Sydney Anglicans III. Complementarian ministry,” blog article on Anglican Church League, posted on June 26, 2012: https://acl.asn.au/sydney-anglicans-iii/; Jane Tooher, Embracing Complementarianism (Sydney: Moore College, 2022) see blog post from the Moore College website, “Mutual Male-Female Ministry in Church,” posted 13 October 2022: https://moore.edu.au/resources/mutual-male-female-ministry-in-church/; Matt Johnson, “Complementarian Practice in Church Life,” blog article from South Sydney Anglican Church, posted July 22, 2021: https://ssac.net.au/3767-2/;
6 Eg. David Starling, “Family Drama: The Household Codes in Narrative-Dramatic Perspective,” in Edwina Murphy and David Starling eds, The Gender Conversation: Evangelical Perspectives on Gender, Scripture, the Christian Life (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2016), 77–88.
7 This page has been taken down from “Desiring God” but an audio file and transcript can be found on Cheryl Schatz’s blog “Women in Ministry,” August 21, 2009: https://mmoutreach.org/wim/2009/08/21/john-piper-on-submission-in-abuse/
8 John Piper, “Clarifying Words on Wife Abuse,” Desiring God, December 19, 2012: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/clarifying-words-on-wife-abuse
9 Ibid.
10 John Piper, “A Vision of Biblical Complementarity: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006), 31–59 (51).
11 Ibid., 51.
12 Ibid., 50.
13 Ibid., 50.
14 Nicole Knickmeyer, Heidi Levitt, and Sharon G. Horne, “Putting on Sunday Best: The Silencing of Battered Women within Christian Faith Communities,” Feminism & Psychology 20, no. 1 (2010): 94–113; “Violence Against Women,” World Health Organization, November 29, 2017, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women; Kylie Maddox Pidgeon, “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse: A Social Science Perspective on Whether ‘Equal but Different’ Is Really Equal at All,” in Discovering Biblical Equality Biblical, Theological, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives, 3rd Ed., ed. Ronald W. Pierce and Cynthia Long Westfall (Downers Grove: IVP 2021), 551–578.
15 Helen Paynter, The Bible Doesn't Tell Me So: Why You Don't Have to Submit to Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control (Abingdon: The Bible Reading Fellowship, 2020), 16–17.
16 Ibid., 17.
17 David M. Skiff, “Measuring Partner Violence Chronicity and Prevalence in the Religious Community: Contextualizing Marital Submission” (University of Rochester, 2009), passim.
18 Paige Hall Smith, Jason B. Smith and Jo Anne L. Earp, “Beyond the Measurement Trap: A Reconstructed Conceptualization and Measurement of Woman Battering,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 23 (1999): 177–193 (187).
19 Ibid.
20 E. W. Gondolf, “Evaluating Programs for Men Who Batter: Problems and Prospects,” Journal of family violence 2, no. 1 (1987): 95–108 (103).
21 Smith, “Beyond the Measurement Trap,” 189.
22 A. L. Coker, P.H. Smith R.E. McKeown and M.J. King, “Frequency and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence by Type: Physical, Sexual, and Psychological Battering,” American Journal of Public Health 90, no. 4 (2000): 553–559; cf. Peter J. Jankowski et al., “Religious Beliefs and Domestic Violence Myths,” Psychology of religion and spirituality 10, no. 4 (2018): 386–397.
23 Coker, “Frequency and Correlates,” 558.
24 Ibid., 558.
25 Jankowski et al., “Religious Beliefs,” 234–235.
26 Ibid., 235.
27 Mei-Chuan Wang, Sharon G. Horne, Heidi M. Levitt, and Lisa M. Klesges “Christian Women in Ipv Relationships: An Exploratory Study of Religious Factors,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 28, no. 3 (2009): 224–235; this could possibly relate to her pastor’s response see Ringel, “Intimate Partner Violence,” 350.
28 Wang, “Christian Women in Ipv Relationships,” 232.
29 Ibid., 232.
30 Maddox Pidgeon, “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse,” 554.
31 Jankowski et al., “Religious Beliefs,” 386–397.
32 Ibid., 395.
33 Ibid., 395; as also proposed by R. Drumm, D. McBride G Hopkins J. Thayer M Popescu J. Wrenn and G.L Hopkins, “Intimate Partner Violence in a Conservative Christian Denomination: Prevalence and Types,” Social Work and Christianity 33 (2006): 455–473 (248).
34 Ruth Powell and Miriam Pepper, “National Anglican Family Violence Research Report: For the Anglican Church of Australia,” (NCLS Research, Australia: NCLS Research Report, 2021), 54, 57; Maddox Pidgeon, “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse,” 552; Julia Baird, “Data Thy Neighbour,” St Mark's Review 243, no. 1 (2018): 7–24; Knickmeyer, Levitt, and Horne, “Putting on Sunday Best,” 102–103.
35 Maddox Pidgeon, “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse,” 552.
36 NSW: “Criminalising coercive control in NSW”: https://www.dcj.nsw.gov.au/children-and-families/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/police--legal-help-and-the-law/criminalising-coercive-control-in-nsw.html; Queensland: “New laws target coercive control”: https://www.qld.gov.au/law/law-week/new-laws; Western Australia is undertaking a review of its Domestic Violence laws which include aspects of coercive control: “Legislative Responses to Coercive Control in Western Australia Discussion paper”; The Attorney-General’s Department is proposing a national framework, “Coercive control”: https://www.ag.gov.au/families-and-marriage/families/family-violence/coercive-control
37 Australian Law Reform Commission and New South Wales Law Reform Commission, National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book, (2023), https://dfvbenchbook.aija.org.au/case-database/. : “Coercive Control.”
38 Ibid.
39 Powell, “National Anglican Family Violence Research Report: For the Anglican Church of Australia,” 57.
40 Miriam Pepper, Ruth Powell, and Tracy McEwan “The Impact of Marriage Norms and Gender on Anglican Clergy Actions in Response to Domestic Violence,” Religions 14, no. 6 (2023): Article 730.
41 Lyn M. Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men: Rhetorical Strategies of 1 Timothy 1, WUNT 526 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 191–217.
42 Ibid., 206–207; 214–217.
43 Lyn M. Kidson, “Fasting, Bodily Care, and the Widows of 1 Timothy 5:3–15,” Early Christianity 11, no. 2 (2020): 191–205.
44 J. M. G. Barclay, “Mirror Reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 31 (1987): 73–93.
45 P. H. Towner, “Gnosis and Realized Eschatology in Ephesus (of the Pastoral Epistles) and the Corinthian Enthusiasm,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 10, no. 31 (1987): 95–124 (108).
46 A. J. M. Wedderburn, “Philo’s ‘Heavenly Man,’” Novum Testamentum 15, no. 4 (1973): 301–326 (307).
47 Ibid., 306.
48 Ibid., 306, 324–326; “the heavenly man” in Gnostic texts see Jeffrey A. Trumbower, “Traditions Common to the Primary Adam and Eve Books and on the Origin of the World (NHC 11.5),” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 7, no. 14 (1996): 43–54.
49 Wedderburn, “Philo’s ‘Heavenly Man,’” 302.
50 For a discussion on what a topos is see Kidson, Persuading Shipwrecked Men, 184–186.
51 Wedderburn, “Philo’s ‘Heavenly Man,’” 318.
52 Lyn M. Kidson, “Naming 1 Timothy 3.16b: A ‘Hymn’ by Another Name?,” NTS 69 (2023): 43–56 (53).
53 Ibid.
54 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 93; Dorothy Sly argues that in Philo’s anthropology that a man could live in a higher realm and like God be asexual: Philo's Perception of Women, Brown Judaic Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 98–99.
55 Cf. 1 Timothy 2:1; πρῶτος in 1 Tim 2:13 is in the nominative.
56 ἐπλάσθη is the same Greek word as used in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, Genesis 2:7: “And God formed (ἔπλασεν) the man of dust from the earth” (trans. Lancelot C. L. Brenton, ed. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English (Peabody: Hendrickson 2011). πλάσσω means “formed, made.”
57 As Wedderburn found in his study of Philo: “Philo’s ‘Heavenly Man,’” 313; cf. Susan Niditch, “The Cosmic Adam: Man as Mediator in Rabbinic Literature,” Journal of Jewish studies 34, no. 2 (1983): 137–146 .
58 Lyn M. Kidson, “Aussie Men, Roman Men, and Fashioning the Evangelical Man from 1 Timothy 2,” in Reading the New Testament in a Global World, ed. E-M. Becker J. Herzer A. Standhartinger and F. Wilk (Tübingen: Narr Francke 2022), 169–192; T. Christopher Hoklotubbe, Civilized Piety: The Rhetoric of Pietas in the Pastoral Epistles and the Roman Empire. (Waco, TX: Baylor Press, 2017), 83–93.
59 Cynthia Long Westfall, “The Meaning of Αὐθεντέω in 1 Timothy 2:12,” JGRChJ 10 (2014): 138–173; Cynthia L. Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016), 290–294. Bibliography
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