Bible Gateway Blog

The following is a Bible Gateway exclusive Sneak Peek and First Listen of No More Holding Back: Emboldening Women to Move Past Barriers, See Their Worth, and Serve God Everywhere (Thomas Nelson, 2019) by Kat Armstrong (@katarmstrong1). Order the book and unabridged audiobook on CD in the Bible Gateway Store.

By Kat Armstrong

Two chapters into God’s Genesis story of redemption, we find Eve, the first woman, hoodwinked by the serpent. She doesn’t exactly portray us as trustworthy. Since my childhood, I’ve noticed every storybook picture of the fall of mankind placed Eve in the center of the narrative as the one who was easily deceived. Her failures follow her to the New Testament, when Paul used the sin in the Garden to explain why first-century women in Ephesus were not permitted to teach men. Here’s what Paul had to say about it: “I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed” (1 Tim. 2:12–14 CSB).

Children’s storybook illustrations and the apostle Paul’s references paint a bleak picture of womanhood as it relates to following God’s instructions. Generations of respected church leaders and theologians influenced by misogyny made it even harder for me to see past Eve’s foolishness and resist taking it on as my own.

Marg Mowczko, a brilliant student of the Scriptures, compiled the following list of misogynistic quotes of early church fathers.

The renowned “Father of Latin Christianity,” Tertullian, wrote:
“And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.”

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