4: SAYING THAT PAUL WAS WRONG 47Thompson’s procedure also effectively denies the authority of
Scripture for us today. Of course Paul’s use of Genesis 2 is a problem for
egalitarians because Genesis 2 shows male headship in marriage before
there was any sin in the world. Therefore it shows male headship as part
of the way God created us as men and women. And then (to make things
worse for the egalitarian position!) Paul quotes from Genesis 2 to estab-
lish male headship in the church (1 Tim. 2:11-14). This means that Paul
sees male headship in the church as rooted in the way God created men
and women from the beginning.
But Thompson has provided egalitarians with another way to evade
the force of that argument: he says that, with much caution, with care-
ful study, with prayer, we should study Genesis 2 as twentieth-century
interpreters. We should understand Genesis 2 “on its own terms.” And
when we understand the passage well enough, our understanding might
(at times) enable us to reject Paul’s interpretation. We can use Genesis 2
as the “arbiter” (or judge) of Paul’s interpretation.
Note what has happened here. We are interpreting Genesis 2. And
though Thompson may claim that Genesis 2 is the judge of Paul’s inter-
pretation, the actual result (in the article) is that Thompson’s interpre-
tation of Genesis 2 becomes the judge by which Paul’s interpretation is
pushed aside. Thompson’s argument means that our interpretation can
correct Paul’s interpretation of Genesis 2—and, by implication, we
could eventually correct Paul’s interpretation of other Old Testament
passages as well.
However, if the Bible is the Word of God, then these interpretations
are not just Paul’s interpretations; they are also God’s interpretations of
his own Word. There might be times when I cannot understand an inter-
pretation of the Old Testament by a New Testament author, but that
does not give me the right to disagree with his interpretation. If I believe
the Bible to be the very words of God, then I must believe that neither
Paul nor any other Scriptural author made mistakes in his interpretation
of the Old Testament, or gave us interpretations of the Old Testament
that we can reject in favor of better ones of our own.
The claim that Paul was wrong is another step on the path toward
liberalism.
(^13) Ibid., 347.