Sexuality in the Pauline text

Temiloluwa Adeniyi-Ipadeola
2 min readOct 25, 2020

Some of the text Assigned are too explicit and lewd for my personal principles so I skipped them, I did rather enjoy the short clip with Paul's inconsistency in celibacy verse marriage. I read and re-read the text on marriage Paul never said celibacy was a better option for being Christians neither didn’t I see anywhere he mentioned women childbearing is a way to earn salvation. instead, the text said, For Adam was formed first, then Eve; “and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” Understanding paul’s theology will help understand why he wrote this way otherwise why bother understanding Paul’s letter without grasping his theology.

This is a solid place for paul to redefine salvation by grace through faith and replace it with salvation by childbearing (sarcasm). And also what are the qualifier that follows his statement? faith, love, and so on, are still the condition and evidence of salvation and so I think this will be an exaggerated and inaccurate statement when we misunderstand paul’s theology saying women are saved by children bearing. After all, Paul does think it would be preferable to be single for men and women. Instead what is most accurate meant here is that the seed of eve will bring salvation to the world. “she(referring to eve) will be saved through childbearing” Paul switches from subjective singular pronouns to subjective plural pronouns “they” no longer referring to just one woman but what could be expected to be a reference to all women through history. It is here he says “if they continue in faith and love…” when we put it all together. It reads She(eve) will be saved through childbearing, which would be theologically accurate because Eve if she had faith in God after she transgressed would be saved through her childbearing in the person of Jesus Christ who is a seed of Adam and Eve as we all are. If Jesus Christ did indeed pay for the sin of the whole world then Eve’s if she had faith in God is also covered and has salvation through her childbearing. For if Eve never bore any children then no one today will exist. Adam and Eve would have died in their sin with no savior. This just a hypothetical argument.

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