timmopussycat
Puritan Board Junior
First, the imperative may carry over as in "I do not allow" or it may be that Paul intended to be understood as writing "I am not permitting" thereby implying a departure from his normal practice.
If Paul merely intended this to be a one time prohibition pertaining specifically to this church, why then does he make an appeal to creation order in the next verse? "For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression." It seems odd that Paul would appeal to a universal truth and condition merely to justify a command to a particular church in light of a particular situation.
That oddness is precisely the reason why I am no egalitarian. But the grammatical ambiguity is present in 1 Tim 2:12 and by being present it technically opens the door to the possibility that Paul is using that universal truth to justify a departure from his normal practice. While there are a number of points made in Scripture that suggest that women in the NT may have had something of a teaching role vis a vis men at some times in contrast to the traditional view of 1 Tim 2:12, there is, as previously noted no corresponding ambiguity in the scriptural texts dealing with homosexuality. It is universally condemned both in orientation and action and that's why one cannot call the pro women hermeneutic the same as the pro gay hermeneutic. The difference is also why the attempt to produce what DMcFadden calls an "academically acceptable argument" justifying the progay position is doomed to fail.