Women in the Early Church and What it Means for Us - Part I

I have noticed a tendency in myself, and in others, to merely drift along in the realm of ideas, to take what we like and dismiss what we don’t, and to be at peace with whatever we decide. Very often we do this concerning issues that we have no particular or vested interest in, but we find to be of at least mild significance. We buy wholesale into the party line, or status quo, or whatever, without considerable thought or even any thought at all. Upon reflection, I find that I readily believed that men should be the only leaders in the church because of the supposedly “obvious” interpretation of various passages in the Bible, most notably the Pauline epistles. Now having said that, I am not going to take up the cause of radical feminism and declare that my research has opened my eyes to a world I never knew existed. I do want to point out, however, that sometimes, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. It is unfortunate that the church is only reacting to the truth of the essential equality of men and women as put forward by (sometimes even atheist) feminists, rather than purposefully seeking out the truth already within the scriptures and applying it to our lives. That such has occurred, however, is surely a reminder of God’s omnipotence; for I see a parallel between those Jews who rejected God in Christ and how the Gentiles came to dominate the church and, how the church has neglected the truth of essential equality given by God, only to have feminism come along to remind us. In the face of the civil rights movement, feminism, and other ideologies, the church has been forced to re-evaluate its stance on what role women should play in the church body. As we consider this question, we ought to look back to the person of Christ, and the early church itself, to see what Jesus told us (if anything) concerning the subject and how the early church understood that teaching.

Firstly, we ought to examine the cultural background that Jesus invaded with his message of the Kingdom of God, and from that basis we can move on to evaluate both sides of the issue at hand. Insofar as women were concerned, women were neither required nor encouraged to pursue education about scripture. Indeed, women earned merit by sending their children to the synagogue and their husbands to advanced Mishnah school. The Jews of first century Palestine certainly understood God to be the “highest good,” as the Greek philosophers of antiquity often spoke about. Women attended synagogue, but that is where their responsibility, concerning their own education, ended. Interestingly enough, men were discouraged from speaking with women “because women were not trained in the Torah. There was no more edifying topic then the law. For instance, Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion… said, ‘if two sit together and no words of the Law [are spoken] between them, there is the seat of the scornful… But if two sit together and words of the Law [are spoken] between them, the Divine Presence rests between them (Spencer, p. 55-56).” Thus, men should speak more with men, who know the Torah, as opposed to women, but they are not taught it in the first place. Hindsight is often more perceptive however and, not to engage in chronological snobbery, I am perfectly willing to admit that were I to live in that time and culture, I probably would not have believed any differently. Women were not taught the law in order to encourage them to remain as homemakers. Jewish culture at the time also saw women with a predisposition towards unchastely behavior and sexual immorality.

The women who did take part in public life was in danger of a charge of promiscuity… A woman who knew the law would become active in public thereby indirectly inviting sexual advances. Even women and unmarried men were not desirable as teachers of children because then the rabbis feared that the teacher and the parent of the child might resort to promiscuous behavior! Any man whose business was with women was told that he should not remain alone with women (Spencer, p.52-53).

Now, while we might understand this passage as venturing towards misogamy with our present-day perspective on gender and equality, we must also remember that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were strongly concerned with the holiness of the nation of Israel. However, it does seem fair to point out that while men are also undesirable to teach children because of the potential temptation to behave promiscuously, it is only unmarried men. Evidently women, whether married or single, were perceived as having a distinct weakness in their ability to stumble into and resist sexual temptation.

Having said that, let us address the conventional position of claiming that only men are called to be leaders in the church. Robbins, in his work “Scripture Twisting in the Seminaries,” is attempting to hold back what he perceives as a flood of feminist ideology invading Christian thought. And he may very well have been right about seminaries accepting too much of the feminist agenda wholesale without bothering to distinguish between what truths and falsehoods it endorses. He makes the bold assertion that “no Christian church allowed women to speak publicly (Robbins, p.6),” and furthermore that although women may prophecy, that they may not do so publicly either.

Firstly we should note what Paul wrote in 1st Timothy 2:11-12, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." To "Usurp authority "(Greek authentein) is to assert one’s own authority, instead of remaining subject to a higher one. This is the opposite from "learning in silence with all subjection," as women are instructed to do. The word "Silence" (Greek hesuchia) means giving calm subdued attention as in Acts 22:2 "And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence:" So for women to keep silence, it requires their calm subdued attention to what the men are teaching (http://www.bibleweb.org/TruthAbout/ta37.htm).

This theme of a woman’s silence is also supported in the Bible, as Robbins makes reference to how Paul teaches that although a woman may learn and their desire for knowledge ought not to be dismissed, she is not to publicly learn. Indeed, “women praise God by remaining silent in church meetings (Robbins, p.17).” The key theme in Robbins interpretation of the role of women in the church is that of silence, at least vis-à-vis men.

Those who defend the position that women should not function as leaders in the church, whether that entails ordination or not, find a similar exhortation, on Paul’s part, prescribing silence for women once again. Among the many problems facing the Corinthian church, one problem was the disorderliness of worship and the exercise of spiritual gifts. Concerning the latter, Paul ends his instruction on orderly worship with a command, “women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church (NIV, 1 Corinthians, 14:33-35).” The point seems fairly obvious, perhaps painfully so, for someone wishing to defend that women may also be called to positions of leadership in the early church.

It is important to point out, however, that no one maintains that women may never speak, at all, during church (at least, not that I have encountered). Indeed, “there is no restriction given when singing or reciting Psalms or prayers as a community, with one combined voice (http://www.bibleweb.org).” The question at hand is not one of perpetual silence, but of authority, and if women are allowed to hold any over men. Thus it seems to me that in those instances where there is no opportunity for a woman to act in such a way as to assume authority over a man, then she is allowed to speak, pray and sing as she pleases.

But how did the early church fathers understand the role of women in the church? As we will see, there is still much to be said concerning the aforementioned epistles and others as well, but the comments of the patristic fathers seem rather distinct and plain, if not condemnatory, towards those who believe that women may have any position in church leadership. Irenaeus, in his work “Against Heresies,” cites the following problem with Gnostic heretics,

Pretending to consecrate cups mixed with wine, and protracting to great length the word of invocation, [Marcus the Gnostic heretic] contrives to give them a purple and reddish color. . . . [H]anding mixed cups to the women, he bids them consecrate these in his presence.
"When this has been done, he himself produces another cup of much larger size than that which the deluded woman has consecrated, and pouring from the smaller one consecrated by the woman into that which has been brought forward by himself, he at the same time pronounces these words: ‘May that Charis who is before all things and who transcends all knowledge and speech fill your inner man and multiply in you her own knowledge, by sowing the grain of mustard seed in you as in good soil.’
"Repeating certain other similar words, and thus goading on the wretched woman [to madness], he then appears a worker of wonders when the large cup is seen to have been filled out of the small one, so as even to overflow by what has been obtained from it. By accomplishing several other similar things, he has completely deceived many and drawn them away after him (Against Heresies 1:13:2, http://www.catholic.com/).

As the Catholic Church relies both on scripture and the tradition of the early church fathers in the forging of its doctrine, Irenaeus’ writings, among others, are used to defend their stance against the leadership of women in the church. There are many such passages written by the patristic fathers that are used by the Catholic Church to support their position, of which at least one other is worth mentioning, although I think all of them are significant, they would be beyond the scope of this paper.

[W]hen one is required to preside over the Church and to be entrusted with the care of so many souls, the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude of the task, and the majority of men also, and we must bring forward those who to a large extent surpass all others and soar as much above them in excellence of spirit as Saul overtopped the whole Hebrew nation in bodily stature (The Priesthood 2:2, http://www.catholic.com).

These passages, and other patristic writings, do seem to point out a significant difference between men and women; namely the issue of authority, and that men are to hold such over women concerning the leadership of the church. The epistles 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians seem to show such a claim to be a fairly bold and plain assertion on Paul’s part as well. Fundamental to any doctrinal and scriptural difference between the roles of men and