Pastoral Epistles

2.1 Four interesting ideas/concepts/practices that you have gleaned through class interaction, presentation, lectures, reading and research

a) One of the interesting concepts I learnt was the interpretation of ‘saved through childbearing’. It is almost as simple as the woman being committed to her household management and chores, of which childbearing is but one of them yet is represented in a way for all. On one hand I would like to believe it is that simple but on the other, I am still doubtful but at least it is worth consideration.

b) Whether to interpret 1 Tim 3 v. 11 as a female deacon or as a deacon’s wife. It is interesting that John Mac Arthur took the view that the text was referring to a female deacon as he takes the view that a woman should not teach in a Church setting coming from his doctrinal background. I honestly would like to stand in the camp of the deacon’s wife but I have no qualms about women teaching or preaching in the church.

c) I’d think the part of the discussion in class on fearing of God or fear of sin was quite interesting. It occurred to me that we tend to serve that which we fear, and serve whom we love, it could also be that we’d love that which we fear, more often than not its observable. But it depends on how we qualify these three terms. But if we fear God, we’d serve Him, and we love Him and because of our love we serve Him. Another thing is we love our fear for God, sounds funny but come to think of it, if we have an appreciation of this fear of God, it’ll keep us from loving, serving and fearing sin.

d) I think that the process of doing the exegesis helped me think about the idea that our lifestyle is the best form of apologetics (or polemics) to which there will be to it nothing we will have to apologize for. If we do not conduct ourselves in a Christ-like manner, no matter how much we argue for our faith, there is vacancy for people to point a finger at “our Christianity” and us and there will be much apology to be made by others on our behalf when having to clear the name of Christianity. But if our conduct is blameless and people tries to find fault with our faith, there will be no grounds for them to make accusations on our faith because of our behavior.


2.2 Interaction with any other related outside reading, etc

In my reading of the New Bible Dictionary for the Origin of the Goddess of Diana with regard to Ephesus, it is interesting to note that it was believed she fell from the sky and she was a hunter but the religions of Asia Minor have somewhat made her into the goddess of fertility. However, Diana was however said to have been a virgin. Underlying these, I would think that the people in Ephesus regarded Diana (Artemis) highly and that is also probably the reason the culture had a high regard of women and that they had a higher social status.

2.3 And how each of them has changed your perspectives, or challenged you, or helped you

It helped me understand the background behind the Epistles to Timothy in Ephesus somewhat and how the women thought of themselves in the Church and why Paul had to tell them not to let the woman teach or exercise authority over a man.

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