CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
Historical Conclusions
The conclusions one reaches with regard to women and the church, are essentially of two kinds. First, historically, women have had far more involvement in the church’s mission and other ministries than has generally been realized. This has been true in some periods of history more than in others. It is always difficult to discern trends. It has not been the purpose of this book to set forth any kind of developmental theory. Nevertheless, certain observations seem justified. One is that there have been clear instances in which women have begun ministries, missionary endeavors, or Christian organizations only to be later displaced by men in leadership positions. Rather than men taking the initiative and women then trying to seize authority, which is the scenario that one might expect from some viewpoints, there are repeated occasions where the reverse has been true.
Another observation is that the equality and freedom of women discerned by many in the New Testament record seems to have diminished as church organization and hierarchical structure increased. This is not a simple linear decline as some have supposed, but an irregular development both geographically and chronologically. One fact stands out: where authoritarian and priestly roles emerged, women tended to be excluded. Where, however, ministry was emphasized as service rather than authority, there were outstanding examples of active women. Orders of virgins and widows and the emergence of monasticism provided circumstances for the exercise of various spiritual gifts for the good of the church and of people in need. Contrary to a popular contemporary supposition, no examples were found of heresy or other evil effects of women’s ministry that were the clear, sole result of the sex of the instigator. Cults have had their share of women members, but the leaders have usually been men. The proportion of cults originated by women are fewer than has been claimed. The major heresies of the early church were, of course, launched by men. It is impossible, therefore, to prove from history that women are more easily deceived than men, as some think 1 Timothy 2:11–15 teaches.
Practical Questions
The second kind of conclusion one might reach with regard to women and the church has to do with qualifications for ministry, and especially for ordination. Conclusions in this respect are inevitably affected to some degree by the way the questions are posed. It is sometimes claimed, for example, that there is only one question: Should Christian ministry, which by all testimony of Scripture is spiritual in nature, be limited by the sex of the minister, which is by nature a human distinction? That is certainly a basic and straightforward way of putting it. It puts the burden of proof on those who would imply that there is some distinction—physical, mental, social, or spiritual—that disqualifies a woman for certain aspects of ministry. It confronts them with one apparently unambiguous text: “There is neither…male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
The opposite approach is to cite the key passages that impose restrictions: “…women should remain silent in the churches” (1 Cor. 14:34) and “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). Then the argument runs: Woman is not inferior, but God himself has ordained a submissive role for her that excludes certain church activities.
The way the question has been posed naturally has varied from generation to generation. How was it posed in the first century? Some contemporary observers find it hard to suppose that Christians in the early years of the church thought in terms of restrictions at all. While, on the one hand, some emphasize that Jesus did not appoint any female apostles, others do not find that strange, given the disdain and lack of credence a woman apostle would have faced in that society. They emphasize the fact that Jesus did, contrary to custom, have women disciples. Jesus’ Great Commission, which church and missionary leaders usually repeat with great fervor, applies to all believers and includes discipling, baptizing, and teaching. (One looks in vain for any biblical prohibition against women baptizing, yet in how many churches can a woman baptize a person she has led to the Lord?)
With the emphasis in Paul on the bestowal of spiritual gifts on all believers completely apart from any mention of sexual distinction, could anyone in the New Testament church, it may be asked, have doubted that spiritual ministry was egalitarian? Given the number of women who were associated with Paul in his ministry, it seems to have been normal for women to be actively engaged in evangelism and associated ministries in the young churches. Paul did, after all, use the same language to describe female co-workers that he used for males.
Would there have been any challenge except from those whose Jewish or conventional Gentile moralistic sensitivities may have caused them to balk at the idea of women spokespersons? Is it possible that the restrictions Paul placed on women were made with this largely in mind? The reference in 1 Timothy 2:12–15 to the order of creation and the deception of Eve must not be neglected in such an approach. (See appendixes A and B.)
Some see in Paul’s references to the other churches in 1 Corinthians 11:16 and 14:33 an indication that anything the New Testament may say elsewhere about women’s spiritual ministries must forever be modified by Paul’s restrictions. Others see them simply as encompassing the churches that existed during the period of transition in which the early church was developing. Actually Jesus broke with custom in allowing women to learn and to follow with him in ministry, and Paul had female associates. The apparent restrictions in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy relate, on this view, to particular circumstances; therefore Paul did not foresee or intend a universal and timeless application. However, as time went on, and the church imposed various restrictions on women, the church fathers often cited Paul’s words.
One’s conclusions regarding the appropriate extent and nature of women’s ministries today tend to lean heavily not only on prior conclusions concerning the meaning and application of certain biblical texts, but also on ecclesiastical assumptions. These include perceptions of the significance of certain contemporary church activities and how they relate to those in past ages of the church’s history.
The Importance of Perspective and Perception
It has become clear in the course of this survey of church history that one’s own perspective, on the one hand, and the way various ministries are perceived, on the other, greatly affect the conclusions reached.
Is preaching perceived simply as sharing one’s faith? Is it something equivalent to the prophesying Paul permitted women to do (1 Cor. 11)? Or does preaching by definition always include teaching? Is teaching to be seen as an act of authority or is it simply the proclamation of the Scriptures, in which the only true authority resides? Is teaching today the same as teaching in the New Testament period?
Such questions need to be placed alongside the questions concerning the meaning of the relevant biblical texts. Attention is sometimes directed to those texts in isolation, with little acknowledgment that the forms and perceptions of ministry today may be far different from what they were in the New Testament church. It is too easily assumed that all teaching today has the same weight that it did in the period before the New Testament was readily available, when teaching involved carrying the apostolic traditions of the words and deeds of Christ. The early teachers affirmed the truth of this tradition, bearing a witness that would not have been acceptable from the lips of women. Also in the early church, men who listened to a woman who taught or evaluated the teaching of others in the church would have had a far different perception of her than would men listening to a woman today. For we live in an age when women are educated and when whatever biblical text she might read is already in our hands, its meaning already widely taught in commentaries and other sources.
It is also important to recognize the variety of perceptions concerning the nature of authority. Although in many churches authority is vested, not in the preacher, but in an elderhood or some other board or council, or perhaps in the congregation itself, the preacher is still perceived as an, if not the, authority. It is strange that churches that claim Scripture as their only authority still tend to bar women from preaching or teaching on the grounds that they should not exercise authority. Observation of the contemporary scene even suggests that some who hold to the inerrancy of Scripture are in danger of setting up a parallel authority in the person of a Correct Interpreter of Scripture. This is especially strange when the same people insist on the perspicuity of Scripture (i.e., the clarity of its basic teachings) over against those who claim that it needs an authoritative interpreter.
In Jesus’ day there was a similar danger. Many gave the oral tradition of the rabbis equal status with the Scriptures. Jesus showed how in some cases tradition even had the effect of nullifying Scripture (Mark 7:13). One of the issues of the Reformation had to do with the authority of the Scriptures over against church tradition. One may well ask whether there is a subtle trend in some quarters of contemporary evangelicalism to elevate the pastor (or TV preacher, cassette-tape teacher, seminary professor) to a position of authority, a sort of Protestant magesterium. It is not unusual to find among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals a concept of the ministry that vests as much de facto authority in the pastor as do some hierarchical denominations. Most earnest preachers would recoil at that idea. But if women are barred from ministry because it is thought they should not have authority, one needs to ask what kind of authority is in mind.
Of course, if, as the most recent evidence seems to indicate, the “authority” Paul denied women by the use of the unusual verb authenteō in 1 Timothy 2:12 was not ordinary authority but an inordinate assumption of authority or some other unwarranted intrusion, the whole matter of women in contemporary positions of authority must be seen in a different light. The same would be true if it is established that Paul’s instructions were for a specific situation only. This would also affect the question of whether women should serve as elders or in other official capacities. In addition, those parachurch organizations that now bar women from positions involving teaching or leadership would need to rethink their policies.
It is not sufficiently recognized that in churches with a congregational form of government, if more than half the membership is female, women are already in authority. Here again the minister may be the one perceived to have authority, but in actuality, the minister’s very tenure could be in the hands of a female majority.
Other questions of perspective and perception include the matter of music ministry. Those who believe that women’s ministries must be restricted need to decide on what basis any restrictions are to be justified and where they should end. There was a time when boy sopranos were used so that women would not take the lead by singing the melody. Such restrictions would be unheard of today. But if a church holds that women are to be silent and not teach, that church will need to decide whether a woman should be allowed to sing a solo or be a choir director, when such ministries involve deciding what hymns to use. After all, hymns contain theology, and many were written by women. In most churches, of course, even traditional ones with respect to women’s ministries, music is (rightly or wrongly) not perceived as a teaching ministry.
Similar questions may be asked about the ministry of Christian education in a church that forbids a full teaching ministry to women. Would it be wrong for a woman to chair the Christian education committee? Does that responsibility mainly involve doctrinal teaching, or is it rather the use of administrative and educational skills? How is the position perceived? Does it bear any relation to the kind of teaching that Paul forbade (whether temporarily or permanently) to women?
What is the perception of women’s intelligence today? Not long ago there were reports of a new insistence in Iran that women thoroughly cover all but their hands and faces. The reason offered was that, after all, women have “smaller brains and smaller hearts” than men. Such perceptions are rare today. One that does persist, however (that women are more easily deceived than men), is based on an interpretation of Scripture (1 Tim. 2:14). This is nothing more than an inference from the historical fact that Eve was the one deceived; Paul did not say that women were deceivable by nature.
Nevertheless, some today not only accuse women of being the ones to start heretical cults (a charge rebutted above) but also use this as a reason for not permitting women to teach men. Once again, perceptions enter in. What would be the difference between a woman teaching a man and her teaching a woman? One might well suppose that women should not teach other women, who, on the assumption that women are more easily deceived, would be unable to know if they were being deceived by their women teachers. Should children and new converts on mission fields and at home be protected from women teachers? Yet it is these who most proponents of the deceivability theory would allow to be taught by women. Thus once again it is easy to lose perspective.
It is clear that perceptions about women’s ministries today are far from uniform, objective, or even necessarily theologically related. One needs perspective, the ability to stand back and study a scene in proper relation and proportion to its background. That is what a historical work should facilitate. It is also important to view one’s own position, not in comparison with a few selected representatives of other positions, but with the whole spread of opinions. It is possible, for example, for a moderate traditionalist to appear extreme when compared with a Mary Daly but not when compared with a John Robbins. The same is, of course, true in reverse, with people who are nowhere near an extreme position being called “radical feminists.”
This book has been written from an open centrist position. It has sought to present fairly the entire range of views from, say, a Mary Daly or Naomi Goldberg to a John Robbins. Our own views are at neither end of the scale. We think it is important to open windows of understanding for the reader, windows on women in the history of the church and on the changing perspectives from which they have been viewed. We also consider it important to gain a new perspective from the standpoint of history on contemporary viewpoints. This helps one to understand better the reasons for differing positions and also to evaluate one’s own position more objectively.
One conclusion that seems inevitable from the preceding survey is that dogmatism is no longer an appropriate way to approach the subject of women and the church. Positions must, of course, be taken by those in responsibility, but even a strong position need not exclude the acknowledgment of legitimate and sincere differences. These differences concern both the interpretation of Scripture and its application to contemporary circumstances. This is not a matter of conservatism versus liberalism. That terminology is erroneous both as regards theology (one’s view of women and the church cannot be predicted simply from one’s view of major doctrines, including the doctrine of Scripture) and as regards history (theological conservatives have been feminist, and liberals have been traditional with respect to women).
Today there are some independent Fundamentalists who grant a great deal of freedom to women in various ministries, including teaching in Bible schools, while there are others who claim that one cannot hold to the inerrancy of Scripture and be a feminist. The terms conservative and liberal should be discarded with respect to the question of women and the church. Since for the greater part of church history it has been assumed that ordination should be restricted to men, it is accurate to call those who agree with that point of view traditionalists. If labels must be used, the alternative position is perhaps best called feminist or, within the church, Christian feminist.
Differing Views of Ordination
The fact that the ordained ministry is something of a touchstone in these discussions calls for a few comments on the subject at this point.
One major problem regarding women in ordained ministry is the divergence of views among Christians as to what ordination actually means and implies. Is it a recognition of spiritual gifts? Is it permission to preach or to teach? Is it permission to preside at the Lord’s Supper? Does it bestow a rank and grant authority over the church? Who should be ordained—pastors, bishops, elders, Sunday-school superintendents, missionaries? Can a female commissioned missionary carry on a teaching ministry not allowable by ordination to a woman at home? It is apparent that no single sweep of the pen can underline the right answer to the question of women in ordained ministry. Different denominations will answer the question in different ways.
The vigorous discussions among both Roman Catholics and Protestants are well known. Some further consideration is needed on ordination and authority so that informed decisions can be made. It is important to know some of the exegetical and historical factors involved. These will be presented in appendix C.
Ministry and Servanthood
The purpose of this book has not been to press arguments but to survey history and open windows of insight. It is clear that women have had significant ministries in a remarkable variety of ways throughout the history of the church. It can reasonably be suggested on the basis of this survey that when men have severely restricted the ministry of women, one of the possible causes was a loss of the concept of ministry as servanthood and the substitution of an understanding of ministry as the possession of rank and authority. It has been easy for the church to forget that the Greek term for ministry (diakonia) is related to the verb “to serve” (diakonein). Jesus took a towel and washed the disciples’ feet. When his disciples asked about their ranking in the coming kingdom, Jesus reminded them that Gentiles sought power and status. Christians—both male and female—should, like the Son of Man, come to serve, not to be served. Questions about authority in the church, and particularly about the ministry of women, might be resolved more biblically if attention were given to the fact that “ministry” means “serving.”
With that definition in mind, a most appropriate response to the biblical and historical survey just completed is not for either men or women to grasp at ministerial status or authority, but rather to encourage one another in faithful service to the glory of God.