Can Women Teach or Preach Scripture? What Does Scripture Say?

Question 1135.

Women teaching and preaching generates more heat in contemporary Christianity than almost any other practical question I am asked, and I understand why. Positions range from full egalitarianism, where no ministry distinctions exist between men and women at all, to a strict complementarianism that some apply so broadly it silences women’s voices well beyond what Scripture itself requires. I want to walk through what Scripture actually says about women teaching, present both major positions honestly rather than as caricatures, and then explain, with real humility, where I land and why.

This deserves courage to follow the text wherever it leads and enough grace to recognise that sincere, Bible loving believers land in different places on the details, even when they share the same high view of Scripture’s authority.

The dignity and giftedness of women, established first

Before addressing any restriction, Scripture establishes something foundational: women bear the image of God fully and equally with men (Genesis 1:27), are filled with the Spirit and given genuine spiritual gifts (Acts 2:17 to 18), and are named throughout the New Testament as vital ministry partners. Priscilla taught Apollos more accurately alongside her husband Aquila (Acts 18:26). Phoebe served as a deacon and was entrusted with carrying Paul’s letter to Rome (Romans 16:1 to 2). Junia is named among the apostles (Romans 16:7). The daughters of Philip prophesied (Acts 21:9). Any honest discussion of women teaching has to begin here, because a defensive, minimising posture toward women’s gifts is not what Scripture models, regardless of where one lands on the harder questions.

The egalitarian case, stated fairly

The egalitarian position argues that passages restricting women teaching are addressing specific, local, first century problems rather than establishing a timeless principle. Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” is read by egalitarian interpreters as responding to a particular situation in Ephesus, perhaps false teaching spread by untrained women recently converted from pagan cults dominated by female deities, rather than laying down a rule for the church in every culture and century. They point to Galatians 3:28, “there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” as evidence that the new covenant collapses distinctions that governed ministry roles under the old order. They point to Deborah judging Israel (Judges 4 to 5), Huldah confirming the authenticity of the newly discovered Book of the Law to King Josiah’s officials (2 Kings 22:14 to 20), and Junia’s apostleship as evidence that women exercised real teaching and leadership authority even within Scripture’s own narrative.

This is a serious position, held by careful, Bible believing scholars, not simply a concession to cultural pressure, and I want to represent it as its best proponents would represent it rather than as a caricature easy to knock down.

The complementarian case, stated fairly

The complementarian position, which I hold, reads 1 Timothy 2:12 to 13 as grounding its instruction not in a local Ephesian crisis but in creation order itself: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” Paul does not appeal to the false teachers’ behaviour or to Ephesian culture as his reason. He appeals to Genesis, to an order established before the fall, before any local first century controversy existed to explain away. That grounding in creation, rather than in circumstance, is what leads complementarian interpreters to read the instruction as a transcultural principle rather than a temporary corrective. The same pattern appears in 1 Corinthians 14:34 to 35 and in Paul’s consistent naming of male elders and overseers in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy 3:1 to 7, Titus 1:5 to 9), without any parallel provision for female elders anywhere in the New Testament.

On Galatians 3:28, complementarian interpreters note that the verse addresses equal standing in salvation, equal access to Christ and inheritance in him, rather than functional roles within the church or household, since the same Paul who wrote Galatians 3:28 also wrote the household codes distinguishing husbands and wives, and the pastoral instructions distinguishing male and female ministry roles, without apparently sensing any contradiction between the two. On Deborah and Huldah, complementarians note that Deborah’s function was civil, not the regular teaching office of Israel’s priesthood, and that both women exercised their gifts within, rather than against, the wider pattern of male priestly and prophetic leadership that Scripture consistently maintains across both testaments.

Where I land on women teaching, and why

Having weighed both positions carefully over years of study, I hold a thoughtfully complementarian view. The eldership and the primary, regular teaching ministry of the gathered church, the office that carries authoritative doctrinal instruction over the whole congregation, are reserved for qualified men, reflecting the consistent pattern of the Pastoral Epistles and Paul’s explicit grounding of that pattern in creation order rather than local circumstance. I find the creation based argument in 1 Timothy 2:13 more decisive than the situational reading, because Paul had a ready made situational argument available, the false teachers’ specific errors, and chose instead to reach back to Genesis. That choice tells me something significant about how Paul intended the instruction to function.

But I want to be just as clear about what this position does not mean. It is not a restriction of women’s spiritual gifts generally. Women prophesied in the New Testament church (Acts 21:9, 1 Corinthians 11:5), and I affirm that ministry, distinct as it is from the elder’s regular teaching office, without hesitation. I affirm women teaching other women (Titus 2:3 to 5), teaching children, leading in evangelism, exercising the gift of counsel and pastoral care, praying publicly, and, in many contexts, preaching and teaching mixed groups outside the specific office of elder exercising authoritative doctrinal oversight over the gathered church. Women teaching in these contexts is not just permitted. It is, in my congregation, actively encouraged and genuinely needed.

Distinguishing office from activity

The distinction I find most clarifying, and the one I think gets lost in the loudest versions of this argument on both sides, is between an office and an activity. Complementarianism, rightly understood, restricts a specific office, the elder’s authoritative teaching role over the whole gathered congregation, not the broad activity of women teaching, explaining Scripture, or exercising real spiritual authority in the many other contexts where Scripture actually commends it. A church that treats every instance of a woman opening her mouth to teach anyone anything as a violation of 1 Timothy 2:12 has misapplied the text as badly as a church that abandons the office altogether. Both errors, over-restriction and under-restriction, fail to read Paul’s instruction with the precision he actually wrote it.

This is why I try to be specific rather than sweeping when this question comes up in my own congregation. Can a woman teach a Sunday school class of adults, lead a Bible study, write theological material, or preach in a setting that is not the regular, authoritative teaching office of the local church’s eldership? In my reading of Scripture, yes, and women teaching in exactly these ways has strengthened, not weakened, the churches I have served. Is the office of elder, carrying final teaching authority over the gathered congregation, reserved for qualified men? Also yes, and I do not think that second answer requires apologising for the first.

A pastoral word to women wrestling with this

If you are a woman who has felt your gifts minimised by a church culture that treats complementarianism as a reason to sideline you altogether rather than as a specific, limited office restriction, I am genuinely sorry, and I do not think that experience reflects what Scripture actually asks of your church. The New Testament is full of women exercising real, Spirit empowered ministry: teaching, prophesying, serving as deacons, hosting churches in their homes, being commended by name for their labour in the gospel. A complementarian position that leaves you feeling silenced rather than genuinely valued and actively deployed has drifted from what Paul himself modelled in his own ministry partnerships with women like Priscilla, Phoebe, and Euodia and Syntyche, whom he calls fellow workers who laboured side by side with him in the gospel (Philippians 4:2 to 3).

How this actually looks in a local church

It helps to move from principle to practice, because abstract positions on women teaching mean very little until they shape an actual Sunday. In the churches I have served, women teaching happens constantly and visibly: leading women’s Bible studies with real theological depth, teaching mixed adult classes on topics outside the elders’ regular pulpit ministry, training children and teenagers in doctrine, writing curriculum used across the whole congregation, and occasionally preaching on a Sunday evening or at a midweek gathering in a context distinct from the elders’ ordinary teaching office. None of that requires reinterpreting 1 Timothy 2:12 out of existence. It requires reading it precisely, for what it actually restricts, rather than expanding it into a blanket silencing that the text itself never asks for.

I have also had to correct course in the other direction, gently telling well meaning members that a particular arrangement had, without anyone intending it, drifted into functioning as though a woman held the settled teaching authority of an elder over the whole church. Getting this balance right takes ongoing attention rather than a policy set once and forgotten, and I would rather do that ongoing work than let either extreme, silencing gifted women or dissolving the eldership pattern, take root by default. Elder teams that never revisit this balance tend to drift, almost always without noticing, toward one extreme or the other over a period of years, so I have made it a standing item my fellow elders and I return to deliberately rather than assume we have settled permanently. It is far easier to correct a small drift early than to untangle a settled, comfortable pattern years later, once expectations have hardened on either side. Vigilance here is simply part of faithful eldership, not evidence that something has already gone wrong. It is simply ordinary shepherding, done carefully, over a long stretch of years.

Answering the strongest egalitarian objection

The strongest form of the egalitarian argument, in my view, is not the situational reading of 1 Timothy 2 on its own, which I find genuinely less persuasive than its proponents suggest, but the cumulative case built from Deborah, Huldah, Junia, and Priscilla: real women, Scripture insists, really did exercise real teaching and leadership authority, so why would the New Testament suddenly foreclose that pattern. It is a fair question and deserves a real answer rather than a dismissal. My answer is that none of those examples actually occupied the specific office Paul restricts in 1 Timothy 2 and 3, the settled, regular eldership of a local congregation exercising ongoing doctrinal authority over that specific body of believers. Deborah’s judgeship was a civil, national office outside Israel’s priestly and prophetic teaching structure. Huldah was consulted for a specific prophetic word, not installed as a regular teaching authority over the temple or the nation. Priscilla instructed Apollos privately, alongside her husband, not from a position of settled congregational authority. Junia’s apostleship, whatever its precise nature, functioned in a missionary and church planting capacity rather than as an elder holding teaching authority over an already gathered local congregation.

I do not think this reading requires explaining away the examples. It requires noticing precisely what office each woman actually held, which turns out, on close inspection, not to be the specific office 1 Timothy 2 and 3 describe. That is a careful distinction, not a convenient one, and I would ask any fair reader to test it against the text rather than against how the argument is sometimes caricatured on either side.

Why I will not let this become a culture war marker

I want to name something honestly: the debate over women teaching has become, in some circles, less a careful exegetical question and more a tribal marker, a shorthand for which broader cultural or political camp a church belongs to. I resist that flattening deliberately. Complementarian conviction on women teaching is not a proxy for believing women are less capable, less intelligent, or less spiritually mature than men, and I have known formidable, theologically sharper women than most of the men in any room I have taught in. Nor is a more permissive view on women teaching automatically evidence of theological drift or a slide toward liberalism, as some complementarian voices too quickly assume about every egalitarian brother or sister. Both caricatures let people avoid the actual exegetical work Scripture asks of us, and I would rather do that work honestly than reach for either caricature as a shortcut.

This matters practically because how a church talks about women teaching shapes whether gifted women stay engaged or quietly drift toward congregations, or away from church altogether, where they feel genuinely valued. I would rather lose an argument about tone than lose a gifted woman’s ministry because my church made her feel like a problem to be managed rather than a genuine gift to be stewarded well.

So, now what?

Wherever you land on the details of this question, hold it with the humility it deserves. I have tried to represent the egalitarian case honestly rather than dismiss it, because sincere, Scripture loving people read these texts differently, and shouting past each other serves nobody. I remain convinced, on the evidence of the text itself, that the office of elder and the regular teaching authority of the gathered church are reserved for men, while women teaching in the many other contexts Scripture commends should be welcomed, encouraged, and never treated as a threat. Test what I have written against the text yourself. I have tried, across this answer, to model the kind of careful reading I am asking of you: naming the strongest form of a position I do not hold, rather than the weakest, and letting the text itself, not my prior convictions, do the final arbitrating. That, after all, is exactly what Scripture asks every one of us, women and men alike, to do.

“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.”

1 Timothy 2:12-13, ESV

For Further Study

Charles Ryrie’s work on the role of women in the church remains a careful, textually grounded complementarian resource. Wayne Grudem and John Piper’s edited volume on biblical manhood and womanhood, though outside my usual dispensational circle of reference, offers the fullest complementarian case available and represents the egalitarian objections fairly before answering them. Lewis Sperry Chafer and J. Dwight Pentecost both wrote within a period when this question received less direct attention, but their broader ecclesiology assumes the pattern defended here. Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s writing on church leadership structures offers a helpful dispensational angle on how Old and New Testament patterns of male priestly and eldership leadership relate to one another across both testaments.