Appendix A: Women’s Ministry Elsewhere in Paul
Appendix A: Women’s Ministry Elsewhere in Paul
The biggest problem with interpreting 1 Timothy 2:11–15 as excluding women from teaching roles in the church is that Paul clearly commended women for such roles,[1] even though these roles made them far more prominent and equal to men than they would have been in Judaism in this period.[2] This poses a problem for those who believe that Paul wrote 1 Timothy but forbade all women to teach. It is also a problem, albeit a lesser one, for writers who deny Pauline authorship, since whoever wrote 1 Timothy would have to have known that Paul’s genuine letters commended women as ministers of God’s word.[3] The presence of these commendations, so striking in their culture, would not have been as easy to dismiss before church tradition had found ways to ignore Paul’s explicit commendations of women’s ministry.
PHOEBE, SERVANT OF THE CENCHRAEAN CHURCH
Romans 16 lists a number of women in prominent positions of service in the church. Although some scholars have questioned whether Romans 16 was originally part of Paul’s letter to the Romans (not whether it is genuinely Pauline),[4] the consensus is now that Paul wrote this chapter as the conclusion of that letter.[5] Most of those greeted seem to have been Paul’s friends whom he met elsewhere in his journeys and who had settled, as many people did, in Rome.[6]
Phoebe is clearly the bearer of this important letter to the Romans, since she is coming from Paul to them. Aside from the mail service used for official imperial business, there was no postal system in Mediterranean antiquity. Letters would be carried by friends or travelers who happened to be going in a certain direction,[7] and thus letters could take months to reach the addressees.[8] Letters would sometimes include a praise of the bearer, as here;[9] at other times, the subject of the entire communication would be in praise of the bearer.[10] Letters introducing or commending certain people constituted a standard type of letter, the “letter of recommendation,”[11] normally written by a person of higher or equal social status (a “patron”) to a peer, on behalf of someone of lower social status (a “client”).
Romans 16:1–2 is clearly a statement of recommendation on Phoebe’s behalf. Since she bears Paul’s letter, she may be called upon to explain anything ambiguous in the letter when the Romans read it, and Paul wishes them to understand that she is indeed qualified to explain his writing. He argues this point by citing her church offices.
Phoebe as a Diakonos
She is, first of all, a diakonos, variously rendered “minister,” “deacon,” or “servant,” of the church at Cenchraea. (The church in Cenchraea was probably a daughter church started by Paul’s work in Corinth.)[12] Although the term refers in some early Christian texts to a specific church office (where it is usually translated “deacon”), the nature of that office is never explained in the New Testament writings. Many churches today interpret the office in the light of the appointment of the overseers of tables chosen in Acts 6, who are said to “serve,”[13] even though the particular title diakonos is not used in Acts 6.[14]
If we think of Phoebe in this light, she certainly held a prominent role. In the synagogue community, those in charge of distributing help to the poor were highly regarded,[15] and sometimes were high officers in the religious community.[16] In Acts 6 these people play a prominent role in the community and are full of the Spirit and of wisdom (6:3, 5, 10); and the two examples that Luke articulates further become powerful preachers of the gospel, one of them a masterful expounder of the Scriptures (Acts 7–8).
Most New Testament texts that use this specific term, however, imply no definite office and apply the term generally to a minister of the word. Paul regularly applies the term to himself as an apostle of the true gospel (1 Cor. 3:5; 2 Cor. 3:6; 6:4; 11:23; Eph. 3:7; Col. 1:23, 25) and uses it also for his colleagues in the gospel (Eph. 6:21; Col. 1:7; 4:7; 1 Thess. 3:2; 1 Tim. 4:6).[17] He uses this term and its cognates in other ways as well, but he applies it most commonly to ministers of the gospel. Most readers would probably assume that meaning here if this passage did not refer to a woman and if it were translated the way it normally is in the New Testament. Based on the usual sense of the term in Paul, one scholar earlier in this century protested,
It is quite clear that Phoebe was one gifted by the Holy Spirit for publishing the glad tidings, or preaching the Gospel. . . . Why is it that the translators, when interpreting it [diakonos] for men, used the word ministers, when for women, the word servant?[18]
“Deacons” even in the narrowest sense of a church office had to have sound teaching (1 Tim. 3:9) and the same proven administrative ability as pastor-elders (1 Tim. 3:12; cf. 3:4–5), although it is not clear that they regularly taught as elders did (1 Tim. 3:2; 5:17). F. F. Bruce is probably right to insist that the term normally be rendered “minister.”[19]
The term appears in a Syrian inscription where it probably represents the Hebrew hazzan,[20] the synagogue official in charge of the building and Torah scroll and a salaried officer.[21] According to G. F. Moore, the hazzan sometimes lived in the same building where the synagogue met;[22] since owners of the homes in which house churches met would by definition be in charge of them, they may have filled the closest role to this office in the early church. Moore’s rabbinic evidence is later than our period, and we cannot be sure that it held true for Diaspora synagogues, but if our Jewish evidence for diakonos points anywhere, it is in this direction. If so, it may be significant that in later times those who held this synagogue office were required to be knowledgeable in the Scriptures and humble, and that in later times regular teachers sometimes filled the post.[23] They also were the officials charged with administering corporal punishment.[24]
At the very least, then, Phoebe held a position of considerable responsibility, prominence, and authority in her congregation. She probably taught the Scriptures as well, but if she did not, she was at least trusted with sufficient regard theologically to be placed in this prominent authority role in the church, and to be recommended to those who might depend on her to help them understand Paul’s letter to them.
Paul provides her with another tide in v. 2, which the RSV badly translates “helper.” The term means a patron, or a sponsor, one who supported the church or other group to whom the term is applied.[25] Jewish inscriptions testify that prominent and well-to-do individuals often served this function for the synagogues,[26] and that these individuals occasionally were women.[27] The title is one of authority and honor in antiquity, and those who wish to deny Phoebe prominence in the church at Cenchraea do a disservice to the natural sense of this text. Probably she was the owner of the home in which the Cenchraean church met, and thus its host.[28]
This need not mean that she was the teacher in this church, but it does indicate that she held a prominent and authoritative role, one in which Paul trusts and commends her. If an opponent of women’s ordination concedes that a woman may hold a position of authority but argues that it is nonetheless wrong for her to teach the Bible (as opposed to secular matters), this person should be clear about what he or she is saying: it is not a woman’s role of authority that bothers the objector, but her handling the Scriptures. It is thus her intellectual and spiritual reliability, not her position of authority, that is in question. If someone is actually willing to maintain the inferiority of women in their ability to interpret and expound Scripture, I would like to see this person debate the issue with some of my women colleagues—who, knowing them, would undoubtedly win the debate.
PRISCILLA, A WOMAN MINISTER
Paul’s greetings in Romans 16 contain other commendations as well. In fact, while Paul greets by name roughly twice as many men as women, he says something particular about as many of the women, and commends over twice as many of the women—nearly all of them he mentions—for their “work in the Lord” (16:1–2, 3, 6, 7, 12). Of the three men he commends for their work, two are mentioned in commendations alongside their wives (16:3, 7). It appears that Paul is aware of the prejudice against women’s contributions in his society, and therefore works all the harder to make sure that the praiseworthy among them receive their due.
One of these women is Priscilla.[29] According to Luke, Paul first met Aquila and Priscilla when he came to Corinth. They had recently been expelled from Rome under Claudius (Acts 18:2),[30] and came to the city in nearby Greece that probably had the largest Jewish population[31] and the most obvious ties with Italy.[32] Since people of the same trade often lived near one another[33] and formed guilds that met together around the worship of a common deity,[34] Jewish people who worshiped the one God would have been more than happy to have found another Jew of the same trade. Aquila and Priscilla thus invited Paul in, and if they were not Christians already, it was not long before they became Christians (Acts 18:18). This couple eventually instructed even Apollos, a man mighty in the Scriptures (18:24–26), indicating that a woman could teach with her husband at least in a private setting.
That Priscilla’s name is mentioned before her husband’s in Romans 16:3 and twice in Acts is noteworthy, because the husband was nearly always mentioned first unless the wife was of higher social status or neither party had any concern for status.[35] That she should have such status in society is not particularly significant, but that Luke and Paul should recognize it is much more important for our purposes. It is also noteworthy that 2 Timothy 4:19 preserves this recognition of status; those who think that the Pastoral Epistles were written by a post-Pauline chauvinist may have more trouble demonstrating the author’s chauvinism in texts not specifically related to the situation in Ephesus and Crete (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:15; 4:19, 21).
Aquila and Priscilla are praised for risking their lives for Paul,[36] and Paul indicates that they were sponsors of a house church in Rome, as Phoebe was in Cenchraea. Paul calls both of them his “fellow workers,” indicating that they share in the same work of ministry in which he is involved (cf. Rom. 16:9, 21; 1 Cor. 16:16; Phlm. 1).
JUNIA, A WOMAN APOSTLE
In Romans 16:7 Paul speaks of Andronicus and Junia, “who are of note among the apostles.” “Andronicus” is a Greek name borne by some Diaspora Jews,[37] and “Junia” is a Latin name that was also sometimes used by Jews.[38] Both are said to be Paul’s relatives (like Herodion in v. 11), and whether this means that they were close relatives[39] or only that they were Jewish,[40] they are certainly Jewish.
Since the text suggests that Junia was an apostle, some have debated whether “Junia” is really a feminine name; the RSV simply assumes that it is not by translating “men of note among the apostles”—even though there is little to support this translation but the opinion of the translators that a woman could not be an apostle. Although the name as it occurs here could be a contraction for the masculine Junianus,[41] there is no evidence for this in extant Roman inscriptions, and the most natural way to read the name is “Junia,” a common enough woman’s name.[42]
It is also unnatural to read the text as merely claiming that they had a high reputation with “the apostles.”[43] Since they were imprisoned with him, Paul knows them well enough to recommend them without appealing to the other apostles, whose judgment he never cites on such matters, and the Greek is most naturally read as claiming that they were apostles.[44] Paul nowhere limits the apostolic company to the Twelve plus himself, as some have assumed (see especially 1 Cor. 15:5–11). Those who favor the view that Junia was not a female apostle do so because of their prior assumption that women could not be apostles, not because of any evidence in the text.
If Junia is a woman apostle traveling with Andronicus, a male apostle, certain scandal would result if they were not brother and sister or husband and wife. Since most apostles, unlike Paul, were married (1 Cor. 9:5), the early church was probably right when it understood them as a husband-wife apostolic team.[45] There were husband-and-wife teams in some other professions, for instance, physicians,[46] so there is no reason to think that a couple could not have functioned as apostles together.
EUODIA AND SYNTYCHE
Paul’s repeated exhortations to unity in his letter to the Philippians suggest some division within the Christian community there. Although a variety of factors may have been involved in this division, we know of personal strife between at least two individuals, Euodia and Syntyche. From their names it is possible that they were merchants, like Lydia (Acts 16:14–15), who were no doubt making a substantial livelihood in Philippi.[47]
Although Paul’s words function as a letter of recommendation, it is to recommend the women as worthy of the church’s efforts toward reconciliation, or to recommend a third party (the “loyal yokefellow” he addresses)[48] to mediate between the two women.[49] Paul mentions only incidentally that they were women who labored with him in the gospel; we may wonder how many other women ministers remain unnamed in his writings simply because their ministry was not normally at issue with him.
When Paul declares that they “contended with him” and Clement and Paul’s other “fellow workers” (4:2), he employs a specific term that he earlier used to call the whole Philippian church to strive together in unity for the furtherance of the gospel (1:27). But the athletic imagery implied in the term is most frequently used for Paul’s own labors, and this text specifically connects their ministry with his and that of his other “fellow workers,” or ministers in the gospel. It is true that the specific nature of their ministry is not stated here, but the general nature is: they labored with him for the preaching of the good news, i.e., for the conversion of non-Christians to Christianity.
It is possible that Philippi allowed more prominence to women because of traditional customs in that region.[50] This would explain why women could help found this congregation and why Lydia plays a prominent role in Acts 16. Like many other women in this period[51] and some other women in Philippi, Lydia was a businesswoman, perhaps “the business agent for the luxury textile industry based in Thyatira in Asia Minor.”[52] She was surely well-to-do,[53] since she sold purple fabrics,[54] which was associated with wealth throughout the history of the ancient Mediterranean world.[55] Like many other well-to-do women supporting dependents or hosting the meetings of religious associations,[56] Lydia probably fulfilled the role of patroness,[57] providing housing for the apostles and presumably later for the church there.[58] Although this still cast her in a lower social role than men, her role was analogous to that of a wealthy freedman: she wielded some measure of economic power, and hence respectability within nonaristocratic society.[59]
Women may have been accorded more prominent roles in Philippi than in some other parts of the Roman world, but Paul himself seems satisfied with the ministerial competence of the women so employed in this city. To admit that regional custom affected the roles of women is to admit that women are permitted leadership roles when the culture provides them the opportunities to become gifted leaders.
PROPHECY AND OTHER GIFTS?
Paul plainly allowed women prophetesses (1 Cor. 11:5), and almost certainly commends a woman apostle (Rom. 16:7); women also labored with him in sharing the good news of Christ (e.g., Phil. 4:2–3). Rarely does Paul note that any of his fellow workers, whether women or men, were involved in teaching, although it is nearly certain that most of his fellow workers were.
Despite this fact, many interpreters today say that Paul may have allowed women prophetesses or sharers of the gospel, but he did not allow women to teach the Scriptures because this would have given them a position of authority.[60] Is it possible that teachers had more authority than prophets and apostles in the local churches? Paul expressly ranks prophets higher than teachers in the one list where he explicitly ranks some of the gifts (1 Cor. 12:29),[61] although teachers are above most of the other gifts, which are lumped together after them (1 Cor. 12:29–30). Both prophecy and teaching are ranked higher than the gift of administration,[62] and thus both are distinguished from it. And is it merely coincidence that in two of his other three lists, Paul lists apostleship and/or prophecy before any other gifts (Rom. 12:6–8; Eph. 4:11)? Paul encourages the Corinthians that prophecy is the most useful gift for them and includes among its functions that those who hear it may learn (14:31). His whole contrast between prophecy and tongues is that prophecy, like teaching, communicates something intelligible.
Arguments that Old Testament prophetesses were less authoritative than Old Testament prophets (and thus than NT prophets and teachers) have no evidence in their favor. One writer who opposes women’s ordination points out that people came to Deborah for judgment (Judg. 4:5), which makes her prophecy less authoritative than it would have been if she had gone to them.[63] The meaning of the text is quite the opposite, however; Deborah was not only a prophetess, but a judge of Israel (Judg. 4:4)—thus holding the highest position of authority in her time. That people came to her for judgment no more diminishes her authority than people coming to inquire of the Lord’s word from Samuel (1 Sam. 9:6–10) diminished his.
The same writer protests that Huldah did not prophesy publicly, but only to messengers sent to her by the king (2 Kgs. 22:14–20).[64] But it seems odd to assume, on the basis of the only text we have which refers to her, that she did nothing other than what is stated in that one text. Is Ahijah less authoritative because Jeroboam I sent his wife to him (1 Kgs. 14:2)? Is Elisha less authoritative because a king wanted to inquire from him (2 Kgs. 13:14)? What about Isaiah, the inquiry to whom most strikingly parallels the one to Huldah (2 Kgs. 19:2)? That a king would send to her and then obey her instructions indicates her authority, not her lack of it; that she alone was chosen indicates that she was probably the most prominent prophetic figure in this part of Josiah’s reign, even though Jeremiah had begun his early ministry (2 Kgs. 22:3; Jer. 1:2). Perhaps if the text had reported her prophesying in public, the same modern writer would have protested that she lacked the authority to prophesy to kings or the recognition to have messengers sent to her!
Arguments that the New Testament writers viewed prophecy as less authoritative than it had been in the Old Testament (and thus less authoritative than teaching) are unpersuasive.[65] Given Agabus’ “Thus says the Holy Spirit” (Acts 21:11) and the formulas in Revelation 2–3, which are our clearest examples of prophecies in the New Testament (not exceptions, against some writers),[66] we cannot maintain Grudem’s distinction between Old and New Testament prophecy (New Testament prophecy being understood as on a lower level and prophets being replaced by apostles).[67]
Nor does Paul feel free to disregard Agabus’ prophecy in Acts 21:11 (cf. 11:27–30), which is a warning, not a command, in contrast to the position of some writers.[68] Agabus’ prophecy may admit some poetic license, but this is typical of the writing prophets (e.g., Isa. 37:29).[69] Efforts to reduce New Testament prophets to a role subservient to New Testament teachers wrongly assume that only the latter would draw on the Bible—although even Old Testament prophets used the law and earlier prophets. This diminution of biblically-based early Christian prophets’ authority flies in the face of explicit New Testament teaching to the contrary (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 2:20; 3:5; 4:11).
Admittedly there must have been different levels of prophecy; Agabus (Acts 11:27–28; 21:10–12) undoubtedly commanded more respect in practice than the disciples just beginning to prophesy in Acts 19:6. But while someone with less knowledge of Scripture and less experience in the prophetic gift must have functioned at a lower level of practical authority than a more mature prophet, the same contrast could be made between less informed and more mature teachers. Deborah and Huldah both demonstrate that women could qualify for the highest-level prophetic roles; the only barriers to such development in the gift in the early church would have been the same cultural obstacles women in Paul’s day faced in becoming skilled teachers—lack of education in the Scriptures and culturally-defined male prejudice.
Although early Christian tradition is clear on the role of prophetesses (e.g., Acts 2:17–18; 21:9),[70] as is the Old Testament (Exod. 15:20; Judg. 4:4; 2 Kgs. 22:14; Isa. 8:3; Joel 2:28–29 ET), not all Jewish circles were so eager to admit women as prophets. A late rabbi suggests that the matriarchs were prophetesses,[71] and the prophetesses Deborah[72] and Huldah[73] were still respected in early Judaism. The end of the Testament of Job, which may reflect Christian influence, portrays Job’s daughters as prophetically endowed.[74] But while Josephus calls Deborah a prophetess, he fails to inform his Greek readers that she was judging Israel;[75] and another late rabbinic tradition limits Huldah’s prophesying to the women.[76]
Is it not more likely that women appear in teaching roles in the New Testament less frequently not because they were women but because teaching requires more training in the Scriptures than the other gifts, and this training was less frequently possessed by women? In addition, as we noted in passing above, Paul rarely designates any individual as a teacher, whether male or female; that he speaks of men and women laboring together with him in ministry, however, allows that some of both did so.
FEWER WOMEN THAN MEN?
Some writers have objected that most apostles in the New Testament were men and most prophets in the Old Testament were men. From this they conclude that it is normative for men to lead.[77]
This position has two serious weaknesses. First, it fails to take into account cultural conditions that anyone who observes the modern church would have to take into account today. If the percentage of a given gender (or race, culture, etc.) in one period should determine the norm for all periods, some other periods of church history leave men (and certain races, cultures, etc.) in a rather bad light. Many of the mission fields opened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were pioneered by single women;[78] does this mean that men are less capable missionaries, able only to take over after women have done the initial work?
The same might be true if we pressed examples on race or culture. Unfortunately for Gentile Christians, most ministers in the biblical period were Jewish. Does this mean that only messianic Jewish believers should minister for Jesus today, or do we admit that culture and how God was working with people in that period of history may have had something to do with it?
Today I find most black American Christians far more aware of urban ministry needs than most white American Christians. Similarly, a larger percentage of white American Christians are involved in overseas missions than black American Christians (due in part to the lack of finances in the black church in the formative period of white American missionary expansion). Does this mean that God tends to call black Christians to U.S. cities, and white Christians overseas? This is doubtful. I do have white friends serving in the inner cities and black friends serving as foreign missionaries, and both are clearly called and used by God. Elward Ellis and other African-American missions specialists have repeatedly shown the need for more African-American missionaries overseas, who often can approach other cultures from a different perspective than white Christians do. But our different backgrounds affect the range of options we are likely to consider, and while the percentages are changing (Urbana 91 was an encouraging sign of this), it is still important to provide everyone with more options than their own cultural setting immediately brings to their attention.
In many cultures, the local Christians are now producing more cross-cultural missionaries than the West is—a fact which should not surprise North American and other Western Christians since the gospel did not originate with us. But in many countries, local Christians do not want to minister to certain other people groups, because their own culture makes it difficult for them to recognize this option. In some African tribes, African Christians conditioned by generations of intertribal hostility are convinced only slowly that a rival Muslim tribe is actually capable of being reached with the gospel. Generation gaps, education gaps, and culture gaps produce some of the same evangelical skepticism for reaching unreached people groups in Britain and North America as well.
The solution in these cases is not to throw up our hands and say, “God calls whom God wills, and many peoples never hear the gospel because God doesn’t want them to.” The solution is to recognize that God does want people to hear the gospel (e.g., 1 Tim. 2:4–5), and that we need to make it easier for God’s servants to hear God’s call to go to them. Engineers, doctors, teachers, and others cannot use their skills in urban or overseas missions unless they are made aware of the great need for their skills and of ways to get them there. U.S. Christians raised by parents who want them to “make it” may never consider forsaking “making it” in this life for the work of the Kingdom, unless they are made aware of the need. Young ministers having trouble finding positions in churches may never consider planting new churches unless someone starts them thinking about it.
Many of the women in the New Testament body of Christ were not mobilized for all the work of the Kingdom the way they could have been because their culture did not present this as a readily available option, and, as we discussed above, women usually did not have the same opportunities to learn the Scriptures as men did. In the Old Testament prophetesses were never portrayed as unusual, but they were rarer than male prophets probably in part because the traveling groups of prophets where individuals developed their charismatic skills did not mix genders and so were made up only of men.[79] In other words, it was not women’s gender per se, but the place of their gender within their culture, that limited some of their ministry.
If someone replies that Jesus would not have given in to social constraints in choosing only male apostles,[80] we may point out that no slaves or Gentiles were among the apostles, either. If Jesus’ choice of apostles was not influenced by social constraints, are Gentiles then forbidden to minister the word? He did, of course, see to it that the gospel was proclaimed to the Gentiles after his resurrection. But guess what gender the first messengers of his resurrection gospel were (Luke 24:1–11)?
The second problem with the view that male dominance in certain areas means that those are exclusively male areas is that its logic is severely distorted. No one would argue this analogy to make other points: for instance, to say that a certain mission field is dominated by Baptists but includes a few Christian and Missionary Alliance workers is not the same as saying that this field ought to include only Baptists.
If opponents of women’s ministry concede Miriam, Huldah, and especially Deborah (a judge of Israel) as “exceptions” whose prophetic ministry also gave them authority in Israel, they have given away their own position; once they admit that “exceptions” to their rule exist, they have forfeited their right to pass judgment on any particular woman’s call. Of course, they may then wish to institute quotas to provide that only a few women may be called, but if they use the same criteria to restrict the call of male ministers, we will have a leadership crisis of major proportions in a relatively short period of time!
Is it not possible that, even today, the fact that men outnumber women in many ministries of the church is due in part to the limitations we have placed on women? In ancient Rome equal education was normally denied women, and their resultant lack of eloquence in “male” disciplines reinforced male convictions that women were unfit for those disciplines. Similarly, in the nineteenth century even free blacks were denied equal education, but they argued that, if given the same opportunities whites had, they could achieve the same place in society. As Clarissa Lawrence, a black vice-president of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, cried in Philadelphia’s 1838 female antislavery convention:
Faith and prayer will do wonders in the anti-slavery cause. Place yourselves, dear friends, in our stead. We are blamed for not filling useful places in society; but give us light, give us learning, and see then what places we can occupy.[81]
Perhaps some percentages remain skewed in the body of Christ only due to unequal opportunity. If so, justice as well as faithfulness to the Lord of the harvest demands that we find ways to make opportunities more widely available.
Appeals to biblical percentages based on ill-reasoned arguments would not be so tragic if they did not affect so many lives. But those who turn some people back from their call—whether some senior pastors who have crushed the spirits of young ministers, church leaders who have broken the will of their pastors, or officials or teachers who discourage women from ministry—will also be held responsible by God for the lives that went untouched because some people God called to touch them never obeyed the call. Meanwhile, those who turned their back on their call will also answer to God for obeying men rather than God. This is not a trifling matter. May the Lord of the harvest help us to understand and apply the word of God rightly.