As a student, I lived through the crisis in Southern Baptist life around the ordination of women for pastoral ministry. It was that time as a student at Carson-Newman that I came face-to-face with the reality that the SBC wasn't the ecclesial home to which God had called me. (If you're not aware of those days and that struggle, I recommend this documentary as well as Bill Leonard's book, God's Last and Best Hope.) At that time, one of the driving questions -- though it was more a symptom of the cancer of biblical literalism as the only theological authority in the Church and that horrible idea of biblical innerancy -- this issue was one of the big ones ripping apart the fellowship of Christians as well as tearing at the souls of very gifted, called women I happened to know as a student. So I never took the question lightly: Does the Bible really affirm women's full participation in the Church?
Now, I've read the New Testament several times. And I know people like to use proof texts of whatever variety. I'm not doing that here. Instead, I want to acknowledge right up front: It's difficult to answer this question precisely to the extent that certain New Testament texts make the case itself difficult to make.
But let's be honest here: There's an even bigger issue in the New Testament that involves whether or not I -- as a Gentile man -- might ever be included in the Kingdom of God. That, after all, was the question that nearly ripped the early Christians apart. Just read the book of Acts. So the fact that I sit here today as a follower of the Jewish Rabbi from Nazareth, the dead and risen one, means that difficult cases aren't impossible with God.
Of all the New Testament writers, in fact, it's Paul that bears the load on this question. And he's the very man who made the case for my inclusion in the Kingdom! So do the statements that Paul makes in certain places necessarily limit -- for all times and places -- the participation of women in leadership and liturgy? Paul's a brilliant interpreter of Jesus, so I think it's only fair to hear him out on this question on his own terms.
Paul was right to commend the Corinthians for maintaining the traditions even as he delivered them (1 Corinthians 11.2). However, right after affirming them he comes to a topic significant to our subject, the covering of women:
Paul's advice in this passage matches his advice elsewhere in the letter. The Corinthians seem to treat rules for Christians elsewhere as not applying to them. They can make their own rules for morals, theology, worship, leadership, and the like. Paul tells the Corinthians (all of them, not just the women: "are you the only ones it has reached?" uses a masculine noun for "the only ones") to conform to the practices of other churches. They are not above the rules. American evangelicals like Baptists (and to a growing degree, United Methodists) could do well to pay attention here.
However, note that in this passage the women are not preaching, leading prophesying, or speaking in tongues here; they are trying to learn. So this passage is not about women in leadership -- no matter how many Baptists want to make this the issue in 1 Corinthians 11.
What strikes me about 1 Corinthians 11, though, is how pervasive the creation narrative is to Paul's way of thinking generally. Paul is commanding the Corinthians to respect the order of things in the old and fallen creation. (In this light, the phrase "even the law" fits. Elsewhere Paul goes back before the era of Mosaic law -- to Abraham, to Adam, etc. -- to make points that apply to communities of faith wider than Israel or to humanity in general. This would be an instance where he can appeal not only the whole created order but even the Torah to confirm his point.)
The Eden narrative is a story of human mutuality of male and female (Genesis 1.26, 2.18-24) which transgression and curse warp into mutual domination (3.16). God's word to the woman is that "your desire shall be [to dominate] your husband, and he shall rule over you". (See Genesis 4.7 for a parallel in which God advises Cain to master the sin that desires to dominate him.)
The world was not meant to be a theater for the battle of the sexes, but a garden for cultivating in partnership. Paul subtly points to this, and serves his overall agenda in this section of 1 Corinthians, by undercutting claims of male dominance in the very passage in which he is recommending head coverings:
How do things work between men and women "in the Lord"? A natural place to look is Ephesians, a letter that focuses with unparalleled intensity on what it is to be "in Christ" (Ephesians 1.1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, etc.). With respect to marriage, Ephesians describes the relationship in terms of the mutual, differentiated, mutual submission between Jesus and his Church. This is so foreign to American evangelical ears precisely to the extent that Paul is making a case for a different view of power.
Power, as the world understands it, resides with the person who has the "final say" in any decision. So the question is always, "Whose the one who makes all the final decisions?" The person who "leads" is the one who has the final word, the one who makes the final decision.
But that's not power as Jesus understands power. Power, for Jesus, is found in the one washing feet, in the one who serves. That's power as Christians understand it. Power is found in the love that gives its life away on the cross.
And I think this is Paul's point in Ephesians. If you peel back the onion, "Who's the real leader in the Church?", it's Jesus, and beneath him, our mutual submission to one another -- husbands, wives, children. If you peel the onion back and that's the question you eventually reach -- Who will be in charge? -- all you've exposed is the wormy rot at the center of your vision of leadership and power.
The proper, Christian issue about power isn't "Who will decide?" but "Let me serve you". If you peel the onion back and get to, at the core, the man on his knees washing feet, you know you're starting to think and act like a proper Christian leader.
[By the way, this question strikes at the heart of what evangelical Christians need to think about when they talk about marriage and relationships in the home. Which is why I say that the recent General Conference of the Methodists was so wrong-headed. It put the cart before the horse theologically.]
As a Christian believer in the heart of the New Creation (2 Corinthians 5.7), I recognize that I'm a member of the Bride of Christ, the Church. And as such, the whole Church is as vulnerable to the temptations of power as men and women are in their relationships. Back in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul put it this way:
Whether authority in the Church takes the form of meekness and gentleness, or boldness and aggression (2 Corinthians 10.1-6), Paul assures the Corinthians that it is a gift from God "for building you up and not destroying you" (10.8). In the Bride, a husband or father or employer is not to rule after the way of the old and fallen creation. The curse of Genesis 3 no longer applies in the New Creation. The relationships between husbands and wives that characterize the cultures of the Mediterranean at the time of the Paul's letters -- and also the cultures of the globalized West in the twenty-first century -- are not the way of the Church. These old creation relationships naturally affect relations in the community of New Creation. However, they are not to characterize or determine church relationships. The new relationships of Christian community heal and redefine all the social relationships of the old world (Galatians 3.28).
See, the problem with asking the question the way we do -- "Who can be in charge -- men or women?" -- really misses the big picture here. In baptism, we've been born into new relationships. Our relationships "in Christ" (that is, our baptismal relationships) surpass and determine our fleshly ones, not the other way around. Paul unlocks the doors that keep us separated from one another and guys like Philemon and women like Phoebe walk through them.
[This is just as true of ethnicity, by the way. There are nations in the Kingdom, but there's a unity that surpasses those divisions. That unity is created in baptism and sustained at a shared table. The unity of all believers in Christ transcends the divisions of humanity into peoples (for instance Jews and Gentiles), without erasing the continuing distinctions. It's hard for us nowadays to appreciate how revolutionary this change was. Yet it was precipitated not by overt teachings from Jesus or obvious indicators in the scriptures of the New Testament Church, but by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon uncircumcised God-fearers (Acts 10). Soon Gentiles -- prophesied as servants of the eschatologically restored Israel -- were taking leadership positions in that restored Israel, without becoming Jews! It took a while, but the Church came to understand this shift as a fulfillment of God's promised restoration of Israel's self-rule through the Messiah, not a contradiction. Under and alongside the King of Kings, all peoples reign (Revelation 2.36, 3.21, 22.5).]
The ones with whom Jesus shares his reign are men and women, slaves and freepersons, Jews and Gentiles. That's the point that Paul makes most forcefully in Galatians:
I've heard that silly suggestion over the years that it's inappropriate for a wife to be a church leader because the lines of authority between her and her husband would conflict. I have never once heard it logically extended so as to bar children from pastoring churches in which their parents would be members, or employees from pastoring churches with their employers -- though Ephesians goes on from wives obeying husbands to tell children to obey their parents and slaves to obey their masters. These "conflicts" are uncontroversial. In America, common civilians pastor presidents, senators, and judges. We've walked through these open doors years ago. What about the door of "no male and female"?
So what's the deal with the different way Paul seems to be speaking in 1 Corinthians vs. Galatians? And what about 2 Timothy?
Well, context makes all the difference when you're writing pastoral letters like Paul is always writing.
Let me say it again: Context! The difference is context. The Corinthians are becoming libertines. They are divided and disorderly. They are out of control. In response, Paul prescribes rules and obedience. These respect the presence of New Creation but do not deny the natural order against which the Corinthians are rebelling, and they acknowledge the continuing effects of sin that the Corinthians only imagine they have escaped. By contrast, the Galatians are becoming legalists. They are giving up their Christ-won freedom. In response, Paul prescribes liberty and authority. These respect the new order into which the Galatians have entered while acknowledging the continuing temptations to return to the rules that had promised salvation, however imperfectly.
With context in mind, I want to turn to the big texts that are often used to support the subordination of women. In order that we may "lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way", attractive to civil leaders and pleasing to a God who wants all to be saved (2 Timothy 2.2-4) -- for the PR of the Kingdom, so to speak -- the writer tells Timothy that
[I've always wondered just how literally we want to take the example of Eve. Because, as the first women, Eve makes the move to sin. But if we push 1 Corinthians even very far, the Church is in that role now. We, as Christ's bridge, are the wife. So that means the Church needs to guard against deception -- even by a culture that wants to enforce its rules on us. I think there's lots of room here to say lots of things that will make lots of American evangelicals uncomfortable, so I'll leave it for another day.]
2 Timothy 2 ends with a promise (maybe just to women, though I suspect it's true for men, too): Such behavior -- trust and love and holiness all characterized by modesty -- will heal them from the transgression that made such strictures necessary.
Those rules and that promise fit the literary purpose of Paul's letter, which is to strengthen Timothy as he works in Ephesus to wean its church from myths, spiritualistic and superstitious speculations, and ill-informed teaching (1 Timothy 1.3-7). Other sections of the letter confirm the urgency of the task (4.1-10) and the challenges facing the young Timothy (4.11-16, 6.20-21) as he combats them. Our passage's allusions to aggression (see also 1.19-20, 3.3, 6.4-5), class snobbery and greed (see also 3.3, 3.8, 6.6-10, 6.17-19), inexperience (3.6), and deceptive and manipulative family politics (see also 3.4-5, 3.12, 5.11) also indicate a volatile and unhealthy environment. Other problems include welfare fraud (5.3-8), idle gossip and lax parenting (5.13-14), inconsistent and unjust church discipline (5.17-21), slaves growing disrespectful of their masters because of their common faith (6.2).
The passage's attention to the watchful eyes of outsiders and the city's authorities (see also 3.7, 6.14) suggest the missionary cost of these misbehaviors and even the threat of persecution. Christians can't afford to be seen as troublemakers!
This set of vices looks more "Corinthian" than "Galatian". So Paul sets out to teach Timothy the appropriate skills of "how one ought to behave in the household of God" (3.15). It's striking to consider that wives are being shushed in the very town in which Prisca and Aquila (note that her name precedes his in both Acts and Romans) once took the evangelist Apollos aside to correct his theology (Acts 14.24-28). Things have changed . It's a time for caution.
Here's the problem I have: Advocates for the full ordination of women will sometimes use Galatians as if it's the proof-text for settling this issue, and ignore the Corinthian context. And advocates against the full ordination of women, likewise, use 2 Timothy as a club text to beat their opponents into theological submission. And both end up being wrong.
The restrictions against women in leadership in 1 Corinthians and 2 Timothy are obviously general ("in all the churches", "in all places"), though they allude to a specific problem. And Galatians is the same way. We're dealing with "cultural" issues in specific contexts in which the Body of Christ finds itself in the world. You can pit Galatians and 2 Timothy against one another, but we will all lose. The Church's most treasured memory is to preserve both of these alongside one another, and we would do well to keep that memory.
We all have our own favorites, and those are okay. But we should never dismiss the others.
Here's my point: The first list speaks to every church. It proclaims liberation from everything in the old creation that would holds us back from full mutuality and participation in Christ. It states unambiguously that all that Christ is and has is now ours so that we will lack nothing. The second list also speaks to every church. It commands that we all use our power responsibly, regard our weaknesses and failings realistically, and honor the ways outsiders are likely to perceive and misperceive us.
We neglect the first list to our own peril. If we let the marks of the old creation define us, we negate the power of baptism to transform us into New Creatures. If women must stay silent -- not because of decency -- but because of some generalized sexual power of fallen principalities. If women are silent solely because they're women. Then you can be sure you've done nothing more than quench the Spirit. Christ breathed his Holy Spirit on all his people and anointed them to service. In his Kingdom, Gentiles and slaves and women all cover their heads -- with crowns. When the anointing falls on women, God is speaking just as God spoke when the unwashed and uncircumcised centurion Cornelius and his household spoke in tongues. Let those with ears hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
We neglect the second list to our own peril, too. If we let the enthusiasm for New Creation dull our discerning spirits about the nature and power of fallen creation. If women demand authority simply because they're women. Then you can be sure you've done nothing more than quench the Spirit. If women use their authority in ways that needlessly offend the sensibilities of outsiders and disrupt the exchange of gifts at the heart of Christian worship, we confess a god of confusion rather than of peace, a god to which the Holy Spirit can never testify. Sanctification is not a function of wishful thinking or brute force; it comes only through the will of God.
Here's what I'm trying to get folks to see: The whole landscape of biblical texts demands discernment not whether one or another set of texts applies -- they all apply, all the time -- but how both sets apply in a given culture. They certainly both apply here in America, where the arrogance among both conservatives and liberals of all denominations needs both a dose of Corinthian propriety and a dose of Galatian liberty.
Liberals would do well to learn that women do not have a right to speak in church any more than men do. Speaking, teaching, and leading in church are gifts that come and go as the Spirit blows. As God made skins to cover the shame of the first sinners, so the Spirit makes allowances for the suboptimal aspects of fallen communities when the alternative is leaving them behind. American liberals are often less patient. Some of its communities are so individualistic, so litigious, so achievement oriented, and so ferociously self-sufficient that they dismiss any suggestion of cultural deference. That is a sure sign that culture has in fact taken control. The culture of self-assertion threatens to imprison liberals in a fantasy of justification by self-realization that delights in offending traditional standards of decency. This new legalism is just as destructive to authentic faith as Galatian nostalgia for circumcision.
Conservatives would do well to learn that the Spirit does have a right to speak in church however he wills -- and further that Scripture describes that will as the intention to build up all believers through the abundant bestowal of his gifts. When Paul desires all the Corinthians to pray for the higher gifts of apostleship, prophesying, and teaching, he is not just addressing the men (1 Corinthians 12.27-31, 14.1). When women who lead, teach, or speak are automatically treated as blasphemously as Jesus once was for "casting out demons by the prince of demons", it's a sure sign that raw sexism rather than authentic discernment is doing the judging. This is not how Christ treats his bride! Ushering in the new creation means, by definition, that new and unfamiliar things will be happening. To judge them according to criteria from the old creation is to make the same mistake as the Galatians made when they decided to look back rather than forward. It puts the Church on the wrong side of salvation history.
I hope that you see that the question of women's leadership and ordination isn't a question of "concession" (as Conservatives charge Liberals) or "resistance" (as Liberals charge Conservatives). It's not a question about hierarchy or segregation or equal rights or affirmative action. The Spirit speaks and silences according to the needs of the Kingdom, not according to old creation. "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love" (Galatians 5.6). "Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6.15-16).
Am I saying that there might be circumstances in which it would be appropriate to limit the ordination to leadership from women? Yes, I am. Missionaries in a few Muslim countries could probably tell us a few. Yet in make that circumstantial case -- and here's where the Baptists were wrong in the 90s -- is to concede that there are other circumstances in which it's appropriate that women have leadership positions -- where Christ is leading and teaching and speaking through women in ways that build up his Body. And to use the technical political language of our original question, that means the Bible ordains the full participation of women in the life of the Church, including to roles of leadership. As a door once opened for Gentiles and Jews to cease from division, as another door opened for Christian community to overturn slavery and all other exploitation, so a door has long been open that leads out of the old order in and out of Eden and into a new order of mutual submission and exaltation. Churches that have walked through it have generally found it a blessing, and don't want to go back. That is testimony that all churches need to take seriously.
The Corinthians, the Galatians, and the Ephesians all found themselves ceding Christ's reign to cultural taboos that reigned more tenaciously and insidiously than they realized. These texts are not really on one side or another at all. They all stand in the Kingdom. They all offer grace in the face of the various manifestations of sin and death that linger, defeated, in the world that is being made new.
Now, I've read the New Testament several times. And I know people like to use proof texts of whatever variety. I'm not doing that here. Instead, I want to acknowledge right up front: It's difficult to answer this question precisely to the extent that certain New Testament texts make the case itself difficult to make.
But let's be honest here: There's an even bigger issue in the New Testament that involves whether or not I -- as a Gentile man -- might ever be included in the Kingdom of God. That, after all, was the question that nearly ripped the early Christians apart. Just read the book of Acts. So the fact that I sit here today as a follower of the Jewish Rabbi from Nazareth, the dead and risen one, means that difficult cases aren't impossible with God.
Of all the New Testament writers, in fact, it's Paul that bears the load on this question. And he's the very man who made the case for my inclusion in the Kingdom! So do the statements that Paul makes in certain places necessarily limit -- for all times and places -- the participation of women in leadership and liturgy? Paul's a brilliant interpreter of Jesus, so I think it's only fair to hear him out on this question on his own terms.
Paul was right to commend the Corinthians for maintaining the traditions even as he delivered them (1 Corinthians 11.2). However, right after affirming them he comes to a topic significant to our subject, the covering of women:
The head of every husband [or man] is Christ, the head of a wife [or woman] is her husband [or man], and the head of Christ is God. Any husband [or man] who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any wife [or woman] who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head — it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife [or woman] will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a wife [or woman] to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a husband [or man] ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.) That is why a wife [or woman] ought to have an authority on her head, because of the angels (11.2-10).After anticipating contention on this point on the part of the Corinthians (11.13-16), Paul then goes on to fight abuses of the Lord's Supper (11.17ff). After developing a positive account of how the Church should work -- harmoniously, like a body energized by the Spirit's diverse gifts (chapter 12) and characterized in all things by love (chapter 13) -- he returns to problems in the ways the Corinthians are practicing those gifts (14.1-33). One of those problems appears to be interruptions from talkative wives:
As in all the churches of the saints, the wives should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a wife to speak in church. What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached? (11.33b-36).This is a puzzling passage for several reasons. A number of commentators treat them as something other than Paul's own words. I'm unpersuaded by their reasons. Both their topic and vocabulary match that of their immediate context. For several chapters Paul has been criticizing church practices that are indecent or disorderly (14.40). Wives at home (which in the Greco-Roman culture is their domain; cf. 1 Timothy 5.14 where women "rule their households") may have been asking questions in house-church meetings in ways that are interrupting and disrupting church meetings.
Paul's advice in this passage matches his advice elsewhere in the letter. The Corinthians seem to treat rules for Christians elsewhere as not applying to them. They can make their own rules for morals, theology, worship, leadership, and the like. Paul tells the Corinthians (all of them, not just the women: "are you the only ones it has reached?" uses a masculine noun for "the only ones") to conform to the practices of other churches. They are not above the rules. American evangelicals like Baptists (and to a growing degree, United Methodists) could do well to pay attention here.
However, note that in this passage the women are not preaching, leading prophesying, or speaking in tongues here; they are trying to learn. So this passage is not about women in leadership -- no matter how many Baptists want to make this the issue in 1 Corinthians 11.
What strikes me about 1 Corinthians 11, though, is how pervasive the creation narrative is to Paul's way of thinking generally. Paul is commanding the Corinthians to respect the order of things in the old and fallen creation. (In this light, the phrase "even the law" fits. Elsewhere Paul goes back before the era of Mosaic law -- to Abraham, to Adam, etc. -- to make points that apply to communities of faith wider than Israel or to humanity in general. This would be an instance where he can appeal not only the whole created order but even the Torah to confirm his point.)
The Eden narrative is a story of human mutuality of male and female (Genesis 1.26, 2.18-24) which transgression and curse warp into mutual domination (3.16). God's word to the woman is that "your desire shall be [to dominate] your husband, and he shall rule over you". (See Genesis 4.7 for a parallel in which God advises Cain to master the sin that desires to dominate him.)
The world was not meant to be a theater for the battle of the sexes, but a garden for cultivating in partnership. Paul subtly points to this, and serves his overall agenda in this section of 1 Corinthians, by undercutting claims of male dominance in the very passage in which he is recommending head coverings:
Nevertheless, in the Lord woman not without man nor man without woman; for as the woman from the man, so also the man through the woman. But all things from God (1 Corinthians 11.11-12).I have left verbs out of these sentences because they're not in the Greek. It's left to readers to infer the tense. I think the right inference requires that we not overlook a critical phrase in that passage: "in the Lord". That is, "in the Lord Jesus" -- in Christian community. What do relationships between husbands and wives, men and women look like in Christian fellowship, which points forward to the goal of creation and not just backward to the source? Paul goes to lengths to describe them concretely as 1 Corinthians progresses, and we will return to his argument, but for the moment let's set aside this narrative to appeal to a different letter to a different audience -- and perhaps even from a different author -- for an answer.
How do things work between men and women "in the Lord"? A natural place to look is Ephesians, a letter that focuses with unparalleled intensity on what it is to be "in Christ" (Ephesians 1.1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, etc.). With respect to marriage, Ephesians describes the relationship in terms of the mutual, differentiated, mutual submission between Jesus and his Church. This is so foreign to American evangelical ears precisely to the extent that Paul is making a case for a different view of power.
Power, as the world understands it, resides with the person who has the "final say" in any decision. So the question is always, "Whose the one who makes all the final decisions?" The person who "leads" is the one who has the final word, the one who makes the final decision.
But that's not power as Jesus understands power. Power, for Jesus, is found in the one washing feet, in the one who serves. That's power as Christians understand it. Power is found in the love that gives its life away on the cross.
And I think this is Paul's point in Ephesians. If you peel back the onion, "Who's the real leader in the Church?", it's Jesus, and beneath him, our mutual submission to one another -- husbands, wives, children. If you peel the onion back and that's the question you eventually reach -- Who will be in charge? -- all you've exposed is the wormy rot at the center of your vision of leadership and power.
The proper, Christian issue about power isn't "Who will decide?" but "Let me serve you". If you peel the onion back and get to, at the core, the man on his knees washing feet, you know you're starting to think and act like a proper Christian leader.
[By the way, this question strikes at the heart of what evangelical Christians need to think about when they talk about marriage and relationships in the home. Which is why I say that the recent General Conference of the Methodists was so wrong-headed. It put the cart before the horse theologically.]
As a Christian believer in the heart of the New Creation (2 Corinthians 5.7), I recognize that I'm a member of the Bride of Christ, the Church. And as such, the whole Church is as vulnerable to the temptations of power as men and women are in their relationships. Back in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul put it this way:
I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if some one comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough (11.2-4).You see, in this relationship with Christ as the head of the Church, we're all on the feminine side of that partnership. And, likewise, we're all on the masculine side because we share control. That's why it really shouldn't be a surprise when Paul lists women with whom he shares ministry and who support his ministry to such an extent that they make him possible. Lydia with respect to her household's early support of Paul's mission (Acts 16.14-15, 40, Philippians 4.15-16), Junia with respect to apostleship (Romans 16.7), Prisca with respect for her work alongside Paul and her husband Aquila (Romans 16.3), and so on. These women, like Paul, are also on both the "male" and "female" sides of the relationship in Christ.
Whether authority in the Church takes the form of meekness and gentleness, or boldness and aggression (2 Corinthians 10.1-6), Paul assures the Corinthians that it is a gift from God "for building you up and not destroying you" (10.8). In the Bride, a husband or father or employer is not to rule after the way of the old and fallen creation. The curse of Genesis 3 no longer applies in the New Creation. The relationships between husbands and wives that characterize the cultures of the Mediterranean at the time of the Paul's letters -- and also the cultures of the globalized West in the twenty-first century -- are not the way of the Church. These old creation relationships naturally affect relations in the community of New Creation. However, they are not to characterize or determine church relationships. The new relationships of Christian community heal and redefine all the social relationships of the old world (Galatians 3.28).
See, the problem with asking the question the way we do -- "Who can be in charge -- men or women?" -- really misses the big picture here. In baptism, we've been born into new relationships. Our relationships "in Christ" (that is, our baptismal relationships) surpass and determine our fleshly ones, not the other way around. Paul unlocks the doors that keep us separated from one another and guys like Philemon and women like Phoebe walk through them.
[This is just as true of ethnicity, by the way. There are nations in the Kingdom, but there's a unity that surpasses those divisions. That unity is created in baptism and sustained at a shared table. The unity of all believers in Christ transcends the divisions of humanity into peoples (for instance Jews and Gentiles), without erasing the continuing distinctions. It's hard for us nowadays to appreciate how revolutionary this change was. Yet it was precipitated not by overt teachings from Jesus or obvious indicators in the scriptures of the New Testament Church, but by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon uncircumcised God-fearers (Acts 10). Soon Gentiles -- prophesied as servants of the eschatologically restored Israel -- were taking leadership positions in that restored Israel, without becoming Jews! It took a while, but the Church came to understand this shift as a fulfillment of God's promised restoration of Israel's self-rule through the Messiah, not a contradiction. Under and alongside the King of Kings, all peoples reign (Revelation 2.36, 3.21, 22.5).]
The ones with whom Jesus shares his reign are men and women, slaves and freepersons, Jews and Gentiles. That's the point that Paul makes most forcefully in Galatians:
Now that faith has come, you are no longer under a custodian [like the Law of Moses]; for in Christ Jesus you are all children [literally, sons] of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he [or she] is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate .... Through God you are no longer a slave but a son [or daughter], and if a son then an heir (3.25-4.1,7).This isn't just directed at men, either. And it's not about some future. This is here and now, in the Church. Women hold full title to that inherited claim of leadership.
I've heard that silly suggestion over the years that it's inappropriate for a wife to be a church leader because the lines of authority between her and her husband would conflict. I have never once heard it logically extended so as to bar children from pastoring churches in which their parents would be members, or employees from pastoring churches with their employers -- though Ephesians goes on from wives obeying husbands to tell children to obey their parents and slaves to obey their masters. These "conflicts" are uncontroversial. In America, common civilians pastor presidents, senators, and judges. We've walked through these open doors years ago. What about the door of "no male and female"?
So what's the deal with the different way Paul seems to be speaking in 1 Corinthians vs. Galatians? And what about 2 Timothy?
Well, context makes all the difference when you're writing pastoral letters like Paul is always writing.
Let me say it again: Context! The difference is context. The Corinthians are becoming libertines. They are divided and disorderly. They are out of control. In response, Paul prescribes rules and obedience. These respect the presence of New Creation but do not deny the natural order against which the Corinthians are rebelling, and they acknowledge the continuing effects of sin that the Corinthians only imagine they have escaped. By contrast, the Galatians are becoming legalists. They are giving up their Christ-won freedom. In response, Paul prescribes liberty and authority. These respect the new order into which the Galatians have entered while acknowledging the continuing temptations to return to the rules that had promised salvation, however imperfectly.
With context in mind, I want to turn to the big texts that are often used to support the subordination of women. In order that we may "lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way", attractive to civil leaders and pleasing to a God who wants all to be saved (2 Timothy 2.2-4) -- for the PR of the Kingdom, so to speak -- the writer tells Timothy that
I desire that in every place the men [husbands?] should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. Similarly women [wives?] should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman [wife?] learn silently, submissive in every way. I permit no woman [wife?] to teach or to have authority over a man [husband?]; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman [wife?] was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through the childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with modesty (2 Timothy 2.8-15).So there we have it, right? Rules. (1) Men, no brawling in church and (2) women, draw attention to yourself with good acts rather than expensive clothes. (3) Everyone get along. Men shouldn't quarrel and women should be submissive rather than bawdy. Because (4) the original order matters and women (or wives -- the Greek has the same word) shouldn't have authority over everyone.
[I've always wondered just how literally we want to take the example of Eve. Because, as the first women, Eve makes the move to sin. But if we push 1 Corinthians even very far, the Church is in that role now. We, as Christ's bridge, are the wife. So that means the Church needs to guard against deception -- even by a culture that wants to enforce its rules on us. I think there's lots of room here to say lots of things that will make lots of American evangelicals uncomfortable, so I'll leave it for another day.]
2 Timothy 2 ends with a promise (maybe just to women, though I suspect it's true for men, too): Such behavior -- trust and love and holiness all characterized by modesty -- will heal them from the transgression that made such strictures necessary.
Those rules and that promise fit the literary purpose of Paul's letter, which is to strengthen Timothy as he works in Ephesus to wean its church from myths, spiritualistic and superstitious speculations, and ill-informed teaching (1 Timothy 1.3-7). Other sections of the letter confirm the urgency of the task (4.1-10) and the challenges facing the young Timothy (4.11-16, 6.20-21) as he combats them. Our passage's allusions to aggression (see also 1.19-20, 3.3, 6.4-5), class snobbery and greed (see also 3.3, 3.8, 6.6-10, 6.17-19), inexperience (3.6), and deceptive and manipulative family politics (see also 3.4-5, 3.12, 5.11) also indicate a volatile and unhealthy environment. Other problems include welfare fraud (5.3-8), idle gossip and lax parenting (5.13-14), inconsistent and unjust church discipline (5.17-21), slaves growing disrespectful of their masters because of their common faith (6.2).
The passage's attention to the watchful eyes of outsiders and the city's authorities (see also 3.7, 6.14) suggest the missionary cost of these misbehaviors and even the threat of persecution. Christians can't afford to be seen as troublemakers!
This set of vices looks more "Corinthian" than "Galatian". So Paul sets out to teach Timothy the appropriate skills of "how one ought to behave in the household of God" (3.15). It's striking to consider that wives are being shushed in the very town in which Prisca and Aquila (note that her name precedes his in both Acts and Romans) once took the evangelist Apollos aside to correct his theology (Acts 14.24-28). Things have changed . It's a time for caution.
Here's the problem I have: Advocates for the full ordination of women will sometimes use Galatians as if it's the proof-text for settling this issue, and ignore the Corinthian context. And advocates against the full ordination of women, likewise, use 2 Timothy as a club text to beat their opponents into theological submission. And both end up being wrong.
The restrictions against women in leadership in 1 Corinthians and 2 Timothy are obviously general ("in all the churches", "in all places"), though they allude to a specific problem. And Galatians is the same way. We're dealing with "cultural" issues in specific contexts in which the Body of Christ finds itself in the world. You can pit Galatians and 2 Timothy against one another, but we will all lose. The Church's most treasured memory is to preserve both of these alongside one another, and we would do well to keep that memory.
We all have our own favorites, and those are okay. But we should never dismiss the others.
Here's my point: The first list speaks to every church. It proclaims liberation from everything in the old creation that would holds us back from full mutuality and participation in Christ. It states unambiguously that all that Christ is and has is now ours so that we will lack nothing. The second list also speaks to every church. It commands that we all use our power responsibly, regard our weaknesses and failings realistically, and honor the ways outsiders are likely to perceive and misperceive us.
We neglect the first list to our own peril. If we let the marks of the old creation define us, we negate the power of baptism to transform us into New Creatures. If women must stay silent -- not because of decency -- but because of some generalized sexual power of fallen principalities. If women are silent solely because they're women. Then you can be sure you've done nothing more than quench the Spirit. Christ breathed his Holy Spirit on all his people and anointed them to service. In his Kingdom, Gentiles and slaves and women all cover their heads -- with crowns. When the anointing falls on women, God is speaking just as God spoke when the unwashed and uncircumcised centurion Cornelius and his household spoke in tongues. Let those with ears hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
We neglect the second list to our own peril, too. If we let the enthusiasm for New Creation dull our discerning spirits about the nature and power of fallen creation. If women demand authority simply because they're women. Then you can be sure you've done nothing more than quench the Spirit. If women use their authority in ways that needlessly offend the sensibilities of outsiders and disrupt the exchange of gifts at the heart of Christian worship, we confess a god of confusion rather than of peace, a god to which the Holy Spirit can never testify. Sanctification is not a function of wishful thinking or brute force; it comes only through the will of God.
Here's what I'm trying to get folks to see: The whole landscape of biblical texts demands discernment not whether one or another set of texts applies -- they all apply, all the time -- but how both sets apply in a given culture. They certainly both apply here in America, where the arrogance among both conservatives and liberals of all denominations needs both a dose of Corinthian propriety and a dose of Galatian liberty.
Liberals would do well to learn that women do not have a right to speak in church any more than men do. Speaking, teaching, and leading in church are gifts that come and go as the Spirit blows. As God made skins to cover the shame of the first sinners, so the Spirit makes allowances for the suboptimal aspects of fallen communities when the alternative is leaving them behind. American liberals are often less patient. Some of its communities are so individualistic, so litigious, so achievement oriented, and so ferociously self-sufficient that they dismiss any suggestion of cultural deference. That is a sure sign that culture has in fact taken control. The culture of self-assertion threatens to imprison liberals in a fantasy of justification by self-realization that delights in offending traditional standards of decency. This new legalism is just as destructive to authentic faith as Galatian nostalgia for circumcision.
Conservatives would do well to learn that the Spirit does have a right to speak in church however he wills -- and further that Scripture describes that will as the intention to build up all believers through the abundant bestowal of his gifts. When Paul desires all the Corinthians to pray for the higher gifts of apostleship, prophesying, and teaching, he is not just addressing the men (1 Corinthians 12.27-31, 14.1). When women who lead, teach, or speak are automatically treated as blasphemously as Jesus once was for "casting out demons by the prince of demons", it's a sure sign that raw sexism rather than authentic discernment is doing the judging. This is not how Christ treats his bride! Ushering in the new creation means, by definition, that new and unfamiliar things will be happening. To judge them according to criteria from the old creation is to make the same mistake as the Galatians made when they decided to look back rather than forward. It puts the Church on the wrong side of salvation history.
I hope that you see that the question of women's leadership and ordination isn't a question of "concession" (as Conservatives charge Liberals) or "resistance" (as Liberals charge Conservatives). It's not a question about hierarchy or segregation or equal rights or affirmative action. The Spirit speaks and silences according to the needs of the Kingdom, not according to old creation. "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love" (Galatians 5.6). "Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6.15-16).
Am I saying that there might be circumstances in which it would be appropriate to limit the ordination to leadership from women? Yes, I am. Missionaries in a few Muslim countries could probably tell us a few. Yet in make that circumstantial case -- and here's where the Baptists were wrong in the 90s -- is to concede that there are other circumstances in which it's appropriate that women have leadership positions -- where Christ is leading and teaching and speaking through women in ways that build up his Body. And to use the technical political language of our original question, that means the Bible ordains the full participation of women in the life of the Church, including to roles of leadership. As a door once opened for Gentiles and Jews to cease from division, as another door opened for Christian community to overturn slavery and all other exploitation, so a door has long been open that leads out of the old order in and out of Eden and into a new order of mutual submission and exaltation. Churches that have walked through it have generally found it a blessing, and don't want to go back. That is testimony that all churches need to take seriously.
The Corinthians, the Galatians, and the Ephesians all found themselves ceding Christ's reign to cultural taboos that reigned more tenaciously and insidiously than they realized. These texts are not really on one side or another at all. They all stand in the Kingdom. They all offer grace in the face of the various manifestations of sin and death that linger, defeated, in the world that is being made new.