Does God have one unique law?

If complementarians are right in their interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12, then God must have one completely unique law. This “law” forbidding women from teaching the bible to men is not like any other law in the bible.

All of God’s laws have several things in common. Every law is able to be traced back to its origin in the Old Testament.

All prohibitions that are God’s law written in the New Testament are traceable back to the Old Testament law.

But it is an odd thing about the law about women not teaching men-

It cannot be traced back to the Old Testament. There is no connection there at all! Now isn’t that odd? The 1 Timothy 2 “prohibition” about stopping women from teaching the bible to men is a unique law, the only”law” that cannot be traced back to the Old Testament!

An untested law?

Now because this “law” is untraceable back to the Old Testament, it cannot be tested. When Paul was teaching the Bereans, he commended them for testing everything that he taught them. What did they test his teachings by? In Acts 17:11 it says:

Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

So where would the Bereans have tested out this new law from scripture? There is no scripture at all in the Old Testament that confirms that women are not to teach the bible to men!

Other options?

What other options do we have to interpret 1 Timothy 2:12? We can interpret it in context as a prohibition against a false teacher teaching false teaching, (Paul had already told Timothy he left him in Ephesus to stop the false teachers from teaching false doctrines – 1 Timothy 1:3). If we used that interpretation, then we can find plenty of verses to confirm this prohibition from the Old Testament.

This interpretation fits perfectly with the Old Testament law.

In part two of “Does God have one unique law?” we will discuss another way that complementarians have made 1 Timothy 2:12 into a unique law that is not able to be tested by scripture. Click here to go to part two.