CONCLUSION
WHAT ABOUT MINISTRY?
The Pauline texts show a rather consistent view with regard to “ministry,” meaning serving the church and the world in a variety of ways. Everyone, man and woman alike, minister within the context of their own gifting by the Holy Spirit. At the crucial point of ministering by verbal gifting, Paul consistently says such things as “all may prophesy” (1 Cor 14:23), to which 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 bears corroborating evidence. Despite some voices to the contrary, Paul made no distinction between men and women in the use of any verbal gifting (prophecy, tongues, teaching, revelation, etc.). Gifting by the Holy Spirit was the only criterion, and the Holy Spirit was obviously gender-blind, since he gifted men and women at will.
When we move to the question of “offices” in the church, of course, we move into an arena where Paul supplies us with almost no evidence. The idea that there are some who serve as “priests,” and that they should be males (thus keeping alive the strictures of the older covenant!), would be about as foreign to Paul as one could get. In any case, it seems clear that “function” preceded the concept of “position.” That is, people functioned as prophets or teachers before they were called that; there were not preordained “offices” that they should step into.
Thus the ultimate question before us in the matter of “gender and ministry” is not whether women ministered — of course they did — but whether, given the cultural norm, they also stepped into roles of leadership (which in itself is a nebulous term in light of the Pauline evidence). That they did so in fact would be consistent with the radically counter-cultural sociology that found expression in the believing community, as outlined above.
Thus, one of the more remarkable moments in Paul’s letters (but seldom thought so by us, because we tend to read our culture back into the text) is his greeting at the end of Romans to Priscilla and Aquila (16:3-5). That he mentions Priscilla first, that he praises them because “they [plural] risked their lives for me,” and that he greets the church that meets in their, not Aquila’s, house, is sure evidence that something has already been transformed by the gospel.
This is also the significance of such passages as Colossians 4:15 (“Nympha and the church that meets in her house”) and Acts 16:13- 15, 40 (where the first believers in Philippi met at Lydia’s house). When a church met in this kind of household, where they would gather in the atrium, the semipublic area where business was regularly carried on, the householder would naturally serve as the leader of the house church. That is, by the very sociology of things, it would never have occurred to them that a person from outside the household would come in and lead what was understood as simply an extension of the household. To put it plainly, the church is not likely to gather in a person’s house unless the householder also functioned as its natural leader. Thus Lydia would have held the same role in the church in her house as she did as master of the household.
Other passages reflect the same reality, beginning with the evidence from Philippians 4:2-3. Euodia and Syntyche must have had ministry in the church because of the language Paul uses. They labored side by side with Paul in the gospel, as did the rest of his fellow workers, meaning the others who ministered in the church besides Euodia and Syntyche. Given this language, had these been men, everyone to a person would grant that they were leaders in the church in Philippi; and even now the only ones who think otherwise, think so simply because Euodia and Syntyche were women. Paul’s language is decisive here: they were leaders in the church in Philippi.
The well-known sociology of Macedonia41 corroborates this as well. Despite what was said above about women in public life, Macedonia was well-known as an exception to the norm; from way back women held significant positions in public life. It is therefore not surprising that evidence of their leadership in the church turns up in Philippi.
Similarly, in Romans 16:1-2, Phoebe is the diakonos of the church in Cenchrea, meaning she is the servant of the church. This is the same language Paul uses elsewhere of himself and others, in terms of their giving leadership to the church. In this case he adds that she has also been a prostatis to many people, including Paul. There is plenty of good evidence that this word in this case probably means that she has served as the “benefactor” of the church and of others as well.
Finally, in Romans 16:7 Paul singles out Andronicus and Junia, probably husband and wife, who were apostles before Paul himself. Despite attempts on the part of some to turn Junia into a man (only because she is here called “an apostle”), that simply will not do. No such name as junias is known to exist in the Roman world. She and her husband together served as apostles, pure and simple, although the term in this case, as it almost surely does in 1 Corinthians 12:27 as well, refers to a “function,” not an “office.”
The only exception to this consistent picture is the ad hoc, very case-specific instruction Paul gives in 1 Timothy 2:11-12. And this is clearly the “odd text out,” not the norm. In the context of 1 Timothy, the issue is not church order but false teaching. It is equally clear from the evidence of Acts 20 and from the evidence of 1 and 2 Timothy, that the false teachers are local elders who are going astray after false teaching. That is why Paul has such a problem in this letter, and why Timothy is in for such difficulty, because as a younger man he has to stop — even to excommunicate — the elders who are involved in the false teaching. The evidence of 1 and 2 Timothy together makes it further clear, that these straying elders have found fruitful ministry in the households of some younger widows. In 2 Timothy 3:8 in particular, they are said to have wormed their way into the homes of these women, weak-willed and silly women Paul calls them, who are always trying to learn but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
In 1 Timothy 5:13 Paul had earlier said of these younger widows, that they go about from house to house being phluaroi, which despite our English translations to the contrary, does not — in fact cannot — mean “gossips,” but “speakers of foolishness.” This word is used in all kinds of philosophical texts of people who “prate foolishness,” meaning, of course, who teach a philosophy different from the author. Thus these younger widows were going around from house to house passing on the foolishness of the false teachings. Paul’s admonition to them is singular: Because they have already gone astray after Satan (5:15), they are to marry (v. 14; over against his advice in 1 Cor 7:39-40), to manage their households well (assume the woman’s role in a married household), and “to bear children.”
This last piece of advice picks up from the companion passage in 2:11-15,42 where this is precisely how “they will be saved.” Thus in this singular place in the New Testament, these widows, who are in process of repeating Eve’s transgression through Satan’s deception, 43 are forbidden to teach or domineer. Rather, they are to get married and bear children?
Finally, I would like to remind those who think that this text controls all the others in the New Testament, that if one thinks verse 11 is a verse for all times and all circumstances, then why not verses 9 and 10 that precede it, and verse 15 that follows it, that says that women will be saved by bearing children?
Paul of course surely does not intend that these younger widows will be given eternal salvation by bearing children. This is simply a synecdoche; “bearing children” is one activity (to be elaborated in 5:14) that represents his greater concerns. They are to be “saved” in this case by no longer adhering to, and spreading, the false teaching. This is why he gives his later directive for them to get married, because by getting married they come back into a situation where they will not be spreading false teaching and thus fall prey (as Eve did before them) to Satan’s deceptions. What he does later in chapter 5, of course, is to have Timothy excommunicate the elders who are responsible for all this, thus indicating that the two groups in chapter 5 (widows and elders) are the ones causing the trouble for the church.
The point in all of this is that this one text,44 which has clear case-specific reasons for existing, should not be used to set aside the rest of the evidence. If we do not have more such evidence, we must remember that these texts were written in the first century, into a context like that described above. The wonder is that we have as many such texts as we do. What is significant about them is that the texts that do exist are not trying to “teach” or “correct,” they are simply stating what was in place, all of which was the result of the new creation.