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

women begs the question, is there any fundamental difference between men and women themselves, or ontologically?

As Jennifer Ferrara claims, citing John Paul II, there is a distinct and fundamental difference between men and women. In his “Catechesis on the Book of Genesis,” John Paul II claims that there is no basic, androgynous human model to which either male or female attributes are added but rather that there are male humans and female humans. Therefore, as Ferrara goes on to argue, there are male souls and female souls that are essentially different from each other. Eve is not just a feminized version of Adam, but rather a whole new different and complimentary creature that also can express the love and glory of God. Ferrara notes that,

Though John Paul II never speaks of male headship, he recognizes that inherent to their natures are differences in the way men and women express love for one another. Men have the more active role in the relationship: the husband is the one who loves while the wife is she who is loved and in return gives love. This special capacity to receive love is what is meant by feminine submission and is the basis of the image of the submission of the Church to Christ. Submission here means to be subsequent or responsive, not necessarily obsequious or subservient. For the man, a love modeled upon Christ’s self-sacrifice leads to a desire to provide and protect to the point of a willingness to give one’s life, both literally and figuratively. Men represent Christ in a way that women cannot because men’s relationship to creation is one of detachment and distance. They cannot fully share in the intimacy that women have with their children. Therefore, they better serve as an image of transcendent love, a love that is wholly other but seeks only the welfare of the other. As primarily relational beings, women are images of immanence and ultimately of the Church, which is prepared, at all times, to receive Christ’s love. The result is a mutual submission, even mutual dependence, that does not undermine the role of men in church or home (Ferrara)

I find this to be the most compelling argument against the allowance of women leaders in the church. It is an argument that is rooted in scripture, and it also makes assertions that I have experienced in the world. Furthermore, the author of this article is, herself, a woman and therefore arguing for an interpretation that is decidedly anti-feminist and thus, at least in that regard, to her seeming loss given a presupposition that feminist values and goals are the best. John Eldredge has written several books concerning how men and women ought to relate to each other, and one of the primary facts he asserts is the need for men to pursue women, the need of women to be pursued by men, and I have seen men and women, believers and non-believers, who believe this to be true. Even if that desire is not openly argued, it is lived in people’s lives. Ferrara draws upon a similar assertion, recognizing the difference of men and women in their ontology, and the difference in which both show and receive love, but also claiming that both reveal the love of God for His creation. Although the idea of “separate but equal” is thought to be pure and utter bunk by contemporary society, and the notion as it was spoken did not agree with how it was practiced in our country concerning the equality of black and white people, I nevertheless find it dangerous to allow cultural trends to have the final say in how we interpret and understand scripture.

However, we must look at the other side of the argument as well. There is a danger in asserting such an ontological difference between men and women, a danger that is raised by feminists who think that Christ is either insufficient or irrelevant.

The most significant piece to open up the debate is Rosemary Radford Ruether’s essay “Can a Male Savior Save Women?” Ruether raises the… question that Jesus-as-man precipitates: If salvation comes through the assumption of human nature by the divine, can one who is female be saved by one who is male? Or is the uterus an insurmountable blockade between women and eternal life? Clearly, for orthodox Christianity, the salvation of women has never been in question, at least not in the practice of the faith (Wilson)

Here we are led back to the question of women leadership as ordination. If only men are the bearers of the specific image of Christ, given the scriptural assertion and its common understanding that Christ leads man who leads woman, then only men have some essential characteristic through which they bear that image of Christ as redeemer and savior. Given its supposedly male basis and orientation, if not reinforcement, is such a redeemer even relevant to women? Can He save them at all? As Wilson points out, the answer throughout the centuries is an indubitable “yes,” at least in practice of the Christian faith. Indeed, even the Greek of the first chapter of John backs up the perspective that Jesus came to save both men and women for, as the apostle wrote, “the word became flesh (sarx),” not “the word became man (andros).”

Wilson goes on to argue that arguing for the differences between men and women, ontologically, are riddled with problems. For “the moment we say “women are gentle” we instantly think of men who are more so and women who are not at all; as soon as we assert “men are aggressive” contrary examples come to mind (Wilson).” We say that men enjoy camping and roughhousing, and counter to that runs the stereotype of the tomboy. We say that women are gentle and more emotional, and we immediately think of the image of a male guidance counselor or guru, someone who is a man yet deeply in touch with his feelings. Furthermore, in speaking of the differences between men and women we do not want to simply refer to mere biological differences either because we are speaking of the supposed difference of the soul, and not merely the body, although the latter may be shaped by God in accordance with the former that He has given us. Wilson asserts, therefore, that ultimately the argument for the ontological difference between men and women fails, although there may certainly be an existential difference between the two; they are essentially the same by existentially different.

The conclusion to be drawn is that all human beings, males and females alike, bear the same image of God and the same human nature. Jesus Christ took the flesh of human nature and made it wholly his own. In the unity of the Church, a Gentile is as much an image of the Jewish Christ as a Jew; a slave is as much the image of the freeborn Christ as a citizen; a woman is as much the image of the male Christ as a man. It is arbitrary to slice up the unities in one way and not in the other. It is a bizarre fixation on gender that requires male body parts to represent Christ. In fact, it is a denial of Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection alike to say that women cannot stand in persona Christi (Wilson).

Having just written a short paper on the difference between worldly knowledge, such as that garnered by science and philosophy, over and against revelation as given by God, we cannot conclude purely on the basis of philosophy that the case is closed. But it does stand to reason that there is not also a scriptural basis for the allowance of women as leaders in the church. Having met Ferrara’s challenge with Wilson’s assertions about the impossibility of discerning the ontological difference between men and women, and the problems in making such a claim, we can move back to deal with the far stronger claims of the patristic fathers.

Although Irenaeus seems distinctly concerned with women in his work “Against Heresies,” it is worth noting a few other items that might prove to be the point of his ire. First and foremost, he is writing concerning the “ministry” of one Marcus the Gnostic, who, because of his identity as a Gnostic, marks him as a heretic who has adopted scriptural teaching and is using it for his own purposes. He also refers to the “Charis,” as a female, and offers some sort of prayer for the hope that this Charis will provide her secret knowledge to those who participate in his services. This emphasis of secret knowledge is a Gnostic belief, and any knowledge prized over and above the saving grace of Jesus Christ is idolatrous, if not heretical. However, it seems fairly obvious that it is Marcus who is receiving the brunt of Irenaeus’ critique, and not those women in his service, although they certainly are not helping matters any.

I think that Chrysostom’s writings, and others like it, are far more problematic as they are distinctly blunt and plain. There is no “wiggle room,” such as it is, in interpreting Chrysostom as there may be with Irenaeus. I would like to add that I don’t mean “wiggle room” in any negative fashion, I am not trying to purposefully misinterpret him, but rather trying to determine if his words are, truly, a warning against women in leadership. It is significant to note that although Chrysostom includes all women from the role of “presiding over the church,” although he rules out women de facto, he also rules out a large number of men. As he is also writing in 387 C.E., I wonder as to how much he and other patristic fathers are influenced more by a desire to divide the laity from the clergy, then men from women. When we examine 1 Timothy, we find that Paul lists all three of the offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon and sets the criteria for these positions as being a strong Christian character. In I Clement, we then see that leaders are to be appointed and later on, in the Didache, the leaders (Deacons and Bishops) are elected. Ignatius, circa 117 CE, identifies the offices by the officers’ names, and draws the parallels between the bishop and God, the presbyters and apostles, and the deacons with the ministry of Christ. Furthermore, he also claims that “without these officers, no group can be called a church.” Finally Irenaeus, writing in the late second century, writes of an increasingly bishop-centered church, asserts that all churches should follow the roman model, which replicated the rule of Imperial Rome, and claims the Roman church has the authority and the tradition of Peter and Paul as founders to back up their own authority (Rosell). Here, we see the steady move towards the reverence of a strong apostolic tradition and the rising divide between clergy and laity, perhaps strongest when Ignatius claims that without church officers, there is no church; a rather cavalier statement that dismisses the laity out-of-hand, however ennobling he may have tried to sound. While the calcification of the ascendancy of clergy may explain Irenaeus’ assertions, Chrysostom is not so easily side-stepped. Though we may have helped set the context of his argument, we still cannot ignore that he does dismiss all women from positions of leadership within the church. We must then turn back to the Bible itself.

We must first take the Genesis creation story into account, and see if the root of male leadership is inherent to how we were made. Considering Genesis 1:26-27, Spencer writes,

’The Adam’ is a ‘they.’ The clause ‘he created him’ is parallel to the following clause ‘he created them.’ ‘The Adam’ is a ‘male and female,’ By having the one ‘Adam’ represent the two ‘male and female,’ the writer has emphasized the essential unity and diversity of Adam and Eve. Thus, if ‘Adam’ is made in the image of God then ‘male and female’ have been made in the image of God… in order to understand God’s nature, males and females together are needed to reflect God’s image. The image of God is a double image (Spencer, p. 21).