Piece 11.

Seen and not heard.

Does 1 Timothy 2 ban women from teaching in church? In the turbulent debate over women's ministry, 1 Timothy 2.12 is at the center of the storm.

According to the English Standard Version of the Bible, Paul writes, I do not permit a woman to teach... or to exercise authority over a man.

Rather, she is to remain quiet.

In other places in the New Testament, Paul affirms women as teachers.

Yes

... because there's a lot of information in chapter five.

So I'll just give a couple of examples.

But, but there are two other things I should say before I give the examples.

Um, first is that understanding who these women are is very helpful for understanding the letter, but it's not critical.

Even, even if my reconstruction were incorrect, all the basic difficulties in the complementarian interpretation would remain, such as the fact that the opening words of verse 12, "I do not permit," are not the words anyone would choose if they were introducing a general rule of conduct given by God, and the unsuitability of the rare word in verse 12 because overpowering someone is not in a church leader's job description, [chuckles] uh, and so on.

All the other points would still stand.

Yeah.

Andrew Wilkie is on it?

He was on the Intelligence Committee in that period when the Gillard government, and he obviously used his... balance of power there.

And as a person who's got intelligence background, he was well-suited.

But other than that, it's always been...

That Intelligence Committee has been in various forms around for quite a while, and it's always been solely Labor and the Coalition, as is this new Defence Committee.

And I think that's an issue in itself.

But even if you did have you know, Andrew Wilkie or some other people from other parties on there.

Is that right? Yeah.

Andrew, is there any evidence that arms supplied to the UAE are in fact going to Sudan?

I think the big question is there's no evidence that it's not, and given, um, even just what you've said in the introduction, it's pretty hard to believe that it's not.

Um, and the one group that can demonstrate that it's not is the government, who indeed have a, a obligation, uh, a legal obligation under, um, the, uh, International Arms Trade Treaty, which Australia supported establishing and signed up to, not to sell weapons that are likely to be used for major human rights abuses.

Uh, it starts to stretch credibility that, uh, given the amount of weapons we send to the UAE or sell to the UAE and that they provide almost without doubt to the Rapid Support Force, uh, which is, uh, you know, one of the warring sides in Sudan, uh, it's pretty hard to believe, frankly, that, uh, Australian weapons aren't being used there unless the government denies it.

And obviously a lot of people, including Australians for War Powers Reform, but people in Senate estimates and, uh, others have been, uh, basically asking the government to confirm that this isn't happening, and you'd think if it wasn't happening, they'd simply say, "Yes, it's not." Uh, and instead they're not saying very much at all.

Yes.

So they do that, and then they've got a double, you know, if that starts to waver, they've also got the national security, um, one, which tends to be the ultimate trump card and say, "Well, we can't tell you 'cause it's national security, and it'd compromise that." And you know, that's not entirely without validity, but it obviously can just be used as an excuse to avoid any sort of transparency.

And you know, these are genuine issues that...