23: WOMEN TEACHING FALSE DOCTRINE? 181But where is the hard evidence that women were teaching false doc-
trine at Ephesus? The evidence we do have points in another direction:^6
(1) The only false teachers named at Ephesus are men, not women.
In 1 Timothy 1:19-20 we read of two men, Hymenaeus and Alexander:
“... holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have
made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and
Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not
to blaspheme.”
In 2 Timothy 2:17-18 we again encounter two men who are false
teachers, Hymenaeus and Philetus: “and their talk will spread like gan-
grene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved
from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They
are upsetting the faith of some.”
Then in Acts 20, Paul speaks of the false teachers that would come
to the church as “men” (Greek andres): “and from among your own
selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples
after them” (v. 30).
So all three of the verses in the Bible that specifically identify false
teachers at Ephesus show that the false teachers were men. All three of
these references are clearly to men, as all three are marked with mascu-
line gender in the Greek text. Yet the Kroegers nevertheless conjecture
that there must have been false female teachers in addition to these men
teaching false doctrine.
The Kroegers, after naming Hymenaeus, Alexander, and Philetus,
do not dispute that these names refer to men. However, they then add,
“We shall suggest that at least one of the individuals who was teaching
a different doctrine was a woman.”^7 It does not appear that they are
attempting to claim that any of these three names (which all have mas-
culine gender forms in the Greek text) refers to a woman, and no later
argument is made in their book (as far as I can tell) that one of these
names refers to a woman. The statement must mean, rather, that their
general argument suggests that there were one or more women in addi-
tion to these three men teaching false doctrine in Ephesus. But the fact
(^6) For more detailed treatments of this objection see Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and
Biblical Truth (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2004), 280-288.
(^7) Kroeger and Kroeger, I Suffer Not a Woman, 59-60.