Titus 2:3 the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not enslaved to much wine, teachers of good things— 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.
I wanted to take some time to return to the problem of Feminism in the culture and in the conservative church. Really, in calling this Feminism we have allowed the enemy to control the language since there is nothing at Feminine about the different expressions of what we call Feminism. We would be better serve to call it “Lilithism.”
Lilith is an ancient archetype representing the dark side of the female nature. Lilith in ancient myth was often associated with themes of rebellion, independence, and sexuality. She is depicted as a figure who defied Biblical patriarchal norms, choosing autonomy over submission, and is linked to various myths across cultures, particularly in Jewish folklore where she is seen as a demon of the night.
We have seen a continue rise in Lilith behavior recently, especially with the Lindsey Clancy trial and with the rise of Lilith like women in the conservative church. We see Lilith like behavior in the statistics that find 70% of the marriages that end in divorce, end in divorce as initially filed by women. That number rises to 90% when it is college women who are in divorce proceedings.
However, in order to get at this we are going to look at texts that those who do Lilith thinking hate given their desire to overthrow all shreds of patriarchy. This morning we look at the Titus passage.
We note here that Paul is instructing Titus on how to speak to the church. Titus is responsible for putting all things decent and in order and that includes family life. This reminds us that Christianity is not merely a set of soteriological doctrines disconnected from every day life. Nobody wrote more on the core doctrines of the faith than the Holy Spirit inspired Paul, but here we see him writing about what the Christian life is supposed to look like as it is incarnated into the family. There is to be order and structure and that order and structure is to reflect God’s appointed hierarchy.
Remember, Crete, where Titus is working has a reputation, like most of the modern world, of being heathen. There are challenges to be faced. Family order has to be spoken to, and Paul does just that as he talks about what Titus is to teach and so expect from older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and bondslaves.
Now, these matters were important then and they remain important now. One reason they are so important is that our family orders demonstrate the attractiveness of our Christianity. If our family orders are all bumfuzzled and characterized by constant kerfuffle we communicate that the Christian faith is ugly and unseemly. OTOH if our family orders are godly and lovely, scads of people who have never known the peace and tranquility that Christian family life brings will say to themselves upon seeing our Christ ordered families, “whatever they have that creates that harmony of interest, I want to learn about.”
So, even though what Paul is writing here is not directly on matters of salvation, it is on salvation inasmuch as family orders like what Paul insists upon are the result of salvation visiting families.
Paul writes first to older women. Presumably these were women who had raised their children but of course “older women” today could be a woman in her 40s if she is in a context around women in their 20s. In this letter though, I’m confident we are talking about women who would have been eligible to make the widow’s list.
Paul writes here to older women on the need to be reverent. The word here literally means, behavior suitable to a sacred character. Well, what kind of behavior is suitable to a sacred character? Well, we might start with humility, deference, and respect. We might say that the character looked for is the opposite of haughty, snotty, or belligerent.
Peter in his epistle says something similar when in writing to women he writes about women having the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.
Now, we should say that reverent behavior does not mean that a older woman has to be mousy or a wallflower. It merely means that she’s not pushy where she shouldn’t be pushy. Of course, the modern feminist impulse mitigates against older women being reverent. “You’ve come a long way baby” includes the irreverence that is weekly seen on “The View” or can be read from any number of irreverent female journalists.
The Apostle pushes on and warns against older women being slanderers. Of course slander is speaking something untrue of someone to a third party. Elsewhere in Scripture it is called gossip. I quote Calvin here in order that folks might be outraged with Calvin and not me,
Talkativeness is a disease of women, and it is increased by old age. To this is added, that women never think that they are eloquent enough, if they are not given to prattling and to slander — if they do not attack the characters of all.
John Calvin
Commentary on Titus
I’m pretty confident that if Calvin were alive today and said that in a conservative pulpit in America he would be brought up on charges for being divisive.
Anyway, this admonition by Paul against slander is consistent w/ the rest of Scripture,
You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:16)
Proverbs 9:13, also applies uniquely to women,
“A foolish woman is clamorous: she is simple, and knoweth nothing.”
הֹֽמִיָּ֑ה (hō·mî·yāh)
Verb – Qal – Participle – feminine singular
Strong’s 1993: To make a, loud sound, commotion, tumult, to rage, war, moan, clamor
It may be the case that these older women, for whatever reason, had too much time on their hands and as a result filled that time with slandering. Remember, Cretans were known for “always being liars.” (1:12).
By way of a personal observation here, let it be said that older women do not have a corner on the market of slander. It is true, Paul writes what he writes here but elsewhere the Holy Spirit warns all believers off of slander,
James 4:11 – “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.”
Now, let us pause here before pushing on for just a moment and notice how insulting all this is to our modern sensibilities. From here it is only going to get more insulting to our modern sensibilities, shaped as they are by four waves of feminism washed over us by over 100 years of changing ideology.
We have now multiple generations of women who heard the quote 1st uttered in 1976 by Pulitizer prize winning historian, Laurel Ulrich, “Well behaved women seldom make history,” and having heard the quote have resolved to not be “well behaved.”
Now, before pressing on with the text we want to pause a moment and ask ourselves, why does a passage like this find both men and women recoiling with such hostility? A hostility that is only going to build as we look at the rest of the passage. Well, as I’ve already said, the reason for the hostility is that we have embraced a different conception of Christianity than what we find in the Scripture. We have had several worldview changes that make passages like this uncomfortable for us to hear.
I remember when I was 17 I had a Bible as literature class in High School with Mrs. Arends. One day after class my friend, who was a Pastor’s son, and I decided to have a conversation with Mrs. Arends about the Apostle Paul. We started quoting some of Paul,
Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. 1 Corinthians 14:34
A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet. I Tim. 2:11-12
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God I Cor. 11:3
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord… Eph. 5:22
Finally Mrs. Arends snarled at us and said … “Well, that was the Apostle Paul.”
You see, somehow Paul was less inspired than the rest of Scripture and so should not be relied upon for truth. People really don’t like these passages and the reason for that is we no longer have the worldview of Scripture. We no longer thing Biblically. We find it offensive that men would be better at being men then women and that women would be superior to men at being women.
Well, this started in the garden of course, but in modern times this hostility to Titus 2 and other passages begins with the Enlightenment and first wave Feminism. Prior to the Enlightenment, which at the time was also interestingly enough called “the Illumination,” it was presupposed that men and women were distinct. But the Endarkenment, which began what some historians refer to as “the Age of Revolution,” begins and a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft (the mother of Mary Shelley) writes a little book titled, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” It was a book that had imbibed the principles of Rosseau and the French Revolution. This book argued for the equalization of human rights for all people. This was consistent with the egalitarianism of the Endarkenment and the French Revolution. This insistence was here that people, whether men or women, are cogs or integers that can be changed in and out without concern about the Christian teaching regarding God ordained differences between men and women. All people are individuals and all individuals have the same rights and so men and women should not be treated differently. Men and Women, for example, should have the same political rights insisted Ms. Wollstonecraft. Compare that mindset with the Christian world that found Calvin saying,
“It is the dictate of common sense, that female government is improper and unseemly.”
— John Calvin
Commenting on 1 Corinthians 14:34
In Mary Wollstonecraft’s day that mean the end of schooling that was distinct for boys vis-a-vis schooling for women. Up until the Endarkenment it was believed that boys and girls were different and so they received different educations. Male education focused on logic, ideas, and preparation for the work force. Women’s education prepared them for marriage, motherhood, and domestic necessity.
The world was changing and part of that change was the end of thinking that could pen what God had penned here it Titus. But let it be said that women are not equal to men and men are not equal to women. Woman was made to be a helper suitable to the husband. Scripture never envisioned women to compete with men in the workforce and it wasn’t that way until industrialization as combined with the welfare/warfare state which gave rise to Rosie the Riveter and her daughters. Scripture never envisioned that 28% of congress right now would be women. Indeed, Scripture teaches that it is a curse of God to be ruled by women and children.
As for My people, children are their oppressors, And women rule over them. Isa. 3:12
What prompted all this change was a worldview revolution – 1st wave feminism – came sweeping in, and made passages like the one in Titus grating to our modern ears. What happened then is that the Church reinterpreted Christianity in order to cohere with the new anthropology bequeathed to us by the Endarkenment. No longer would it be the case that younger women would be “admonished to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands.” That was not going to be the norm.
Indeed, out of this 1st wave of feminism arises one Elizabeth Cady Stanton who will write in her 1895 the Woman’s Bible, that traditional forms of Christianity were largely at fault for the vast inequalities that women faced in society. This work further challenged traditional translations and interpretations of Scripture that argued for differences between men and women, or ignored women, or placed men in a superior position to women.
Another woman from this first wave of feminism
“Matilda Joslyn Gage, criticized Christianity explicitly in her book, ‘Woman, Church, and State.’ In this work Gage contends that much of ancient society was matriarchal and that Christianity was detrimental to this previous age, imposing an oppressive patriarchal regime upon the Western world. Christianity therefore is the greatest contributor to female subjugation. Another example of the post-Christian influence on early feminism is found in the one who is likely its most famous proponent – Susan B. Anthony. Though a Quaker, in her younger years, she moved gradually toward non-dogmatic religiosity and supported the formation of churches where ‘no doctrines should be preached and all should be welcome.;”
Jordon B. Cooper
The Makers of the Modern Mind – p. 381
Well, that is just 1st wave feminism. Before we are done looking at this text in the next couple weeks we will see the anthropology that the 2nd-4th waves have given us that has made us as Western Christians so unbiblical when it comes to male female roles.
For now, let us continue to consider the Biblical mindset when it comes to God’s teaching on women,
“The text says that the older women must not be enslaved to much wine.”
In the ancient world water often carried disease and so wine, being fermented as it was, was often the libation of choice. Of course all believers are instructed to not be drunk with wine but to be filled with the Spirit.
The idea in the text seems to be one of addiction. We know that wine was not inherently evil because Paul can advise Timothy elsewhere to “take a little wine for your stomach.” So the problem here is not wine but rather an addiction to wine.
In the ancient world wine was used to take the edge of nagging aches and pains, and inasmuch this counsel is being given to older women wine was no doubt taken for things like arthritis or stomach ailments. Enslaved here means (doulovw / doulo ) means “to be held and controlled against one’s will. This communicates the idea of addiction. If Paul were alive today in Michigan he might write instead, “older women must not be enslaved to any pharmaceuticals,
The modern world is not so different than the ancient world. While they may have taken too much wine, we today become slaves of other addictions. The Rolling Stones made bank by singing about “Mother’s Little Helper,” in 1966 … quoting,
What a drag it is getting old
“Kids are different today,” I hear every mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day
We must all remember that we are temples of the Holy Spirit and as such we must not be slaves to intoxicants or vaccines but rather we must remain slaves of Christ.
Finally, for our purposes this morning the Apostle writes to Timothy that the older women must be teachers of good things. Now, it’s clear from the context that when Paul writes this that he is talking about older women having a particular audience and context for this teaching of good things.
That audience is the younger women and the context is their home life. The audience is not all members of the Church in some kind of congregation wide teaching capacity. The context is not the church but family order.
Theoretically, at least, the old women are experts at domestic life and so they have a responsibility to teach younger women. Now, of course that teaching is not to be overbearing or bossy but encouraging and uplifting. We might add here that younger women should see it as a privilege to have older women in their lives from whom they have the opportunity to learn from. Clearly, the passage indicates that the older women are to be helping the younger women on how to be good wives and mothers. These are the good things. There is a real skill in running a home and family… the art of domesticity. And the older women are to teach these good things.
Now, we must end by noting that it is both men and women who are responsible for the rise of Lilithism and 1st wave feminism. Just as Adam in the garden abandoned his responsibility giving way to Eve’s leadership, so many men are likewise responsible for where we are today in Church and culture.