Q
What do you think Paul meant by saying “Women will find salvation in having children” (1 Timothy 2:15)? It’s anyone’s guess. No one knows for certain. For a sampling of guesses, read the footnote associated with the phrase.
A
Here’s the footnote to 1 Timothy 2:15:
“Bible scholars can only guess what Paul meant when he said “women will find salvation in having children.” At first glance, it sounds like something a guy would say if he had never seen a woman deliver a baby.
Some scholars guess that since Paul had just finished using a metaphor about Adam and Eve, with Eve sinning, that Paul was making a point: God saved Eve and gave her a role to live out as Adam’s partner. Her unique job was to have children. With that in mind, Paul may have been telling the ladies to live out the role in life that God gave them, deferring to men.
Another guess is that Paul was pushing back on a heresy that taught that if the ladies wanted to be saved, they needed to liberate themselves from their conventional roles in life, such as having sex and making babies.”
Perhaps the most popular explanation is the second one mentioned in the footnote: “Paul was pushing back on a heresy that taught that if the ladies wanted to be saved, they needed to liberate themselves from their conventional roles in life, such as having sex and making babies.”
Otherwise, he might have been trying to say women should live out their proper role in life, which some liberated souls might mock as “barefoot and pregnant.”
Excerpt from the Leader’s Guide & Atlas for 1, 2 Timothy
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I guess us infertile adoptive moms are in a pickle????????
Bachelor Paul gives ladies more than one reason to ponder pickles.
2. Habitual freedom from enthusiasm, inordinate passion, or
overheated imagination; calmness; coolness; gravity;
seriousness; as, the sobriety of riper years.
[1913 Webster]
This is the definition of sobriety that I think Paul was trying to get woman to be. He aslo told widows if under 60 to marry and have children but over 60 to forget marriage.
I think Paul was telling women to have children but be modest in doing so.