What the New Testament has to say about women in ministry

I concur with many of Mike Heiser’s exegetical observations. Details below the jump, according to the numeration of his points.

1. It is a plausible but not incontrovertible assumption that “Junia” in Romans 16:7 is a woman. If so, nonetheless, she was almost certainly an apostle in the sense of a missionary, and part of a husband-and-wife team. To suggest that she ran around and got up and preached in synagogues like Paul did, either on her own or side by side with her husband, seems unlikely. On the other hand, there is no reason to think she could not have spoken in exclusively Christian gatherings. According to Paul, women were to be allowed to exhort and admonish with divine sanctions – a good working definition of prophecy - so long as it was done in good order by someone whose gifts were subject to testing (1 Cor 11-14, to be read as a unit). If I am right about this, the situation would have been similar to that of a Chiara Lubich in the Catholic Church. Chiara was a very gifted teacher. The movement she founded, though held in suspicion by many in the hierarchy for decades, won over John Paul II. I heard her speak to huge audiences consisting not only of laypeople, but of priests and bishops. She had their rapt and reverent attention, and for good reason. Nonetheless, she was not a priest or a bishop, or ever suggested that such offices be opened up to women.
2. Kephale (head) in Paul’s letters is a metaphor which has to do with hierarchy (though it has other resonances as well, particularly in Ephesians 5). See the comments of Max Turner. Hierarchy, however, is understood in the Israeli military sense in the Bible. That is, if you have a position of greater authority, it’s up to you to be more exposed, more vulnerable. You don’t retire to a safe place behind the front lines, rather, you lead your subordinates, with the greater likelihood that you will suffer the consequences. If you are beneath someone’s authority, you can expect to be covered and protected by that someone, who will suffer on your behalf. Paul saw it as part of nature for men to protect women in this way, with angels, apparently, protecting both (Paul is hard to follow here), just as he saw long hair to be by nature a feminine thing, and short hair a masculine thing. If we choose to make a clearer distinction between nature and culture than Paul needed to in his situation, that would be because our cultural context is different than his own.  However, all of this has exactly nothing to do with the question of women in ministry. Christ stands in a hierarchical relationship to all believers, indeed, to the world as a whole; he proved that on the cross. Yet he sent out his followers to do the same things he did, without exception. It is even said that they would accomplish greater things than he did, and fill up what was missing in the vicarious suffering he accomplished. None of this is parceled out from the get-go into complementary realizations according to gender, though of course realization according to gender was and still is culturally constrained based on time, place, and other specifics of context. All cultures are complementarian to various degrees; all cultures are egalitarian to various degrees. The gospel, against both complementarians and egalitarians, is not about making culture more equal or more complementarian.  It’s about taking given cultural forms and making them into channels of faith, hope, and love.
3. I concur with Mike that the fact, for example, that Miriam was a prophetess in that she sang to the Lord in public; that Deborah was a prophetess, too, in that she sang the tribes of Israel into battle, is not much of an argument in favor of women admonishing and exhorting with divine sanctions in public. Nor is it ever suggested that women could be priests in the Old Testament. But it is clear that Moses longed for the day in which all the Lord’s people would be prophets (Numb 11:29); that Joel predicted that both men and women would be given the spiritual gifts necessary to act as prophets (2:28-29 = 3:1-2); that Peter expected that prophecy to be fulfilled with the gift of the Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 2:17-18); and that we then hear of prophetesses in the New Testament (Acts 21:9; I Cor 11). The evidence is strong, and not just from the New Testament, that God raises up women to admonish and exhort, perhaps especially for “such a time as this,” in the last days. One might expect such women to be unencumbered by the traditional chores reserved for women, such as managing a household and raising children, so it is not surprising that the prophets of Acts 21:9, Philip’s daughters, were in fact unmarried. In a sense, the whole idea that women in antiquity, given domestic organization at the time, could do things that required them to be out of the house on a continual basis, is a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, serving with prophetic gifts in worship, admonishing and exhorting in that context, was compatible with being a materfamilias; much easier of course if one were unmarried or widowed. The offices of elder and bishop, on the contrary, given the 24/7 on-call dimension of the roles, were unsuited to women with heavy domestic responsibilities. This remains the case today in many cultures, in all cultures to some degree. But, at a certain point in the reorganization of the domestic and professional spheres with which we are familiar in the West, notwithstanding the new problems such reorganization creates, a tipping point is reached, and a long series of professions once reserved for men, in practice if not de jure, become callings married women with children take on. Even cultural conservatives seem to have no problem with a mother with children like Sarah Palin becoming president of the United States and commander-in-chief. If that is the case, the argument against women being elders or bishops is not based on practicalities, but on the notion that being a pastor in the new covenant is equivalent to being a priest in the old covenant, which office was “arbitrarily” limited not only to males, but to males of a particular bloodline. But that is a problematic line of argument. In the new covenant, the priesthood of all believers is emphasized; furthermore, the threefold office, prophet, priest, and king, is likewise attributed to all believers.     
4. I concur with Mike that arguments from Ephesians 5 and the other household codes are irrelevant to the question at hand.
5. Arguments from creation order are not only irrelevant, but might be thought to boomerang. After all, birth order is characteristically overturned by God in the Bible. Or, as Jesus put it, the first shall be last, and the last will be first. 

    My advice to traditionalists: keep the tried and true ways if you are so convinced. Beyond that, perhaps Gamaliel’s advice is fitting: if the permission granted to women in circles beyond your own to become elders and bishops is of human origin, it will fail; if it is of God, and you fight it, you will be fighting against God. 

Women in Ministry Series

Women In Ministry: Is There a Biblical View? (Michael Heiser)
Women in Ministry: Why The Issue Matters (John Hobbins)
What the New Testament has to say about Women in Ministry (John Hobbins)
Women as Ministers (Michael Heiser)
Women in Ministry: Response to John Hobbins (Michael Heiser)
Women in Ministry: A Response to Michael Heiser (John Hobbins)
Next Round (Michael Heiser)
Heiser incurs the wrath of McCarthy (John Hobbins)
A Thanks to John Hobbins on the Women in Ministry Issue (Michael Heiser) 

 

Comments

[Chris]

I'm not really keeping up with this too much but what is the relationship of:

Deacon -> servant -> elder?

I know Paul refers to Phoebe as a 'diakonos' typically translated deacon but I know it also means servant, so I doubt it's very clear as to the specific usage in Paul & Romans 16:1.

[Hodge]

Couldn't we say the same thing? "if the doctrine concerning woman's exclusion in circles beyond your own to become elders and bishops is of human origin, it will fail; if it is of God, and you fight it, you will be fighting against God."

Why do find arguments from created order to be irrelevant when Second Temple interpreters find them to be theological trump cards? Is Paul's claim that faith came before the law, and therefore has priority, also irrelevant? What about Jesus' claim to the Pharisees concerning divorce?

[JohnFH]

Chris,

Deacons and elders eventually became parallel tracks but the two terms do not co-occur in the New Testament; rather, we find deacons and bishops in tandem. See in particular 1 Timothy 3. It seems clear from that passage that bishops ranked above deacons; the former had a teaching focus, the latter, an administrative focus.

Hodge,

You can turn Gamaliel's advice around if you want, but I think my reuse of it is a closer analogy. G was laying down a maxim with regard to a novelty, the Christian movement. The move to allow women to be ordained elders is also a novelty. I hope this clarifies.

The creation order is not a compelling argument for the reasons I stated. Look at 1 Cor 11 and you will note that Paul relativizes the selfsame argument. One has to assume, based on the flow of Paul's argument, that the appeal to creation order is not resolutive. But if you prefer Josephus to Paul, that's your choice.

The pertinence of your other questions is far from clear. You are welcome to elaborate.

[Hodge]

Sorry, John. I've been working on a thesis that deals with what I call priority arguments in the Second Temple period, and as you know, you tend to think everyone knows what you're talking about when you've been immersed in an issue for so long.

The argument from created order is part of a larger argument that sees something instituted prior to something else as authoritative and trumping what is viewed as later accommodation to a lesser ideal. So I would actually argue that, for Paul, 1 Cor 11 is resolutive. We would not see it that way because our culture has different views concerning physical appearance and holiness (i.e., we tend to see God as unconcerned about physical appearance based upon texts such as 1 Sam 7). Whether one considers Paul's old Pharisaism to be spilling over into the text is another matter; but he uses a priority text again when it comes to faith and law in Gal. Jesus uses it in the divorce argument, creation versus Mosaic accommodation in the Deuteronomic law code. We use it all of the time in terms of the Bible or a particular constitution or establishing document. The author of Jubilees, of course, is an example of this on a much larger scale. So even if one sees the NT as the beginning of a progressive liberation that is not yet fully realized, even by the authors themselves, I think it is still important to take the priority argument for what it is: Paul intends to override any argument made from later cultural ideal by interpreting the order in which the humans were made as a divine expression of His desired ideal in terms of that relationship.

[Hodge]

BTW, I'm a silent reader of your blog. I've enjoyed it for the past couple years now, and am glad that you're blogging more now than in the past.

[JohnFH]

Now I follow you better, Hodge. And thanks for the conversation. You can be sure many are listening in.

What I meant in reference to 1 Cor 11 is that Paul undermines his own argument from priority in verses 11-12. How do you handle that?

[Hodge]

Thanks John,

vv. 11-12 are pretty choppy, as I'm sure you know. So this is a part of my thesis that is quite speculative and subject to much correction if needed. I appreciate any thoughts you can give, since I can chuck the following argument if needed.

A lot of translations supply words like "independent from" or "originate from" etc. It literally reads:

"However, in the Lord, neither woman apart from man, nor man apart from woman. For as the woman from the man, so also the man through the woman; and all things from God."

So the key element seems to be in what way man and woman are choris and ek concerning each other, and both ek in terms of God.

Now, I don't think the translations are problematic, since one could say that Paul is arguing for a higher view of women here, even if a subordinate role is to be designated to them because of the created order; but I do think that the subject matter is not necessarily one of origin, but distinction. In other words, there is no male without female because the male is identified in contrast to female and vice versa. So I think Paul may be arguing that gender distinctions, and therefore head coverings versus no head coverings, are needed to keep these distinctions in place. God is, of course, distinct from everyone and all things (both male and female) are in distinction from Him. So I might translate it this way:

However, in the Lord, "woman" is not distinguished apart from "man," nor is "man" distinguished apart from "woman." For as the woman gains distinction from the man, so also the man is distinguished through the woman; and all things are distinct from God.

I admit that this is idiosyncratic and there are factors within the text, such as the appeal to creation in the first place, that give credence to the translation of "originate from" and so forth; but I think it makes more sense in this context to see Paul as discussing gender distinctions and why they are important to maintain. In the end, however, as stated before, even if the translations are to win the argument on that one, I don't think Paul's argument is undermined by his lifting of women to a respectful status as those who give birth to men (since this is not a priority argument--i.e., God did not create or establish an order of gender through childbirth, since the man was already created). So I would still see it as an argument that tells men to respect women as mothers from whom they were born, even if they exist in a subordinate role.

[Hodge]

I should also clarify that I think what gives credence to my view is the fact that Adam is not born of Eve, i.e., the man is not born of the woman; so we are no longer talking about the original couple here. Hence, in what way would woman be taken out of man? It's possible that Paul is extending his interpretation of Gen 2 to Gen 4ff., but if it does not refer to the original man anymore, then it should not be taken as a statement of the woman's equality with the original man, since he is no longer in view. So there are problems for the traditional understanding of this text.

[JohnFH]

I think it's high time that Paul's arguments are examined afresh. I see you doing that, Hodge, and it is an excellent endeavor.

My own sense is that you will find analogues, not only to Paul's argument from priority, but to his other arguments, those of vv. 11-12 and v. 16 for example. 11:11-12 seems to be a reboot of the argument made in 7:3-4, but if so, the argument cuts the other way with respect to the argument from priority. Regardless, where else in Second Temple literature is the argument for mutuality (on your hypothesis, distinction) made in these terms? If Paul is the only one who does this (I doubt it), that would make the argument his specific contribution to the debate.

Beyond that, I would note the anti-climactic structure of Paul's argument. I don't think you can ignore this. That is, he sets forth his most compelling arguments first, then qualifies them, and finally, makes an appeal from custom (a weaker argument). Maybe I am missing something, but this is unusual for Paul. What does the structure of his argument say about the argument itself?

[Hodge]

Thanks John,

Very good points to ponder. I think Paul does contribute something to the argument, but I'm not sure how much, as it seems to already exist (as you already guessed).

E. Pseudo-Phocylides ll. 210-12:
"If a child is a boy do not let locks grow on (his) head.
Do not braid (his) crown nor the cross knots at the top of (his) head.
Long hair is not fit for boys, but for voluptuous women.
Guard the youthful prime of life of a comely boy,
because many rage for intercourse with a man." (210-14)

Philo discusses the man who arranges his hair like a woman (as well as putting on perfume/make-up as an androgynon, who has disgraced himself, society, and nature (H. Philo 1. De Specialibus Legibus 3.37-42). In Vit.Cont. 59-63, he repeats this about the effeminate man who he views as androgynos, the distinctions having been destroyed by changes in external appearance.
He calls the woman who does this a gynandros (De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 100, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres sit 274, De Virtutibus 20-21).
He states:
“The true man should maintain his masculinity, particularly in his clothes, which as he always wears them by day and night ought to have nothing to suggest unmanliness. In the same way he trained the woman to decency of adornment and forbade her to assume the dress of a man, with the further object of guarding against this blending of man and woman (hos androgynos houtos kai gynandrous phulaxamenos).” In other words, to guard against a loss of gender distinction.
Of course, these arguments are geared toward pederasty, but the point is being made that pederasty is wrong because of its destruction of gender distinction rather than vice versa.

You’re right to point out that it is unusual for Paul to argue this way, but it does seem that is what he is doing. He gives the stronger argument from created order at first and then ends with the weaker lex naturalis of the Stoics that is based upon, not the created order as it is known from Scripture, but as it is observed. Of course, his arguments that usually build are often much larger than this one. It’s a rather short argument as it is; but it does seem that the additional argument of lex naturalis is similar to one of Paul’s digressions. In this case, however, he doesn’t seem to get back to a climactic point, perhaps, because he has already made it at the get go. Then he ends with the custom argument, which as you have noted, is the weakest of them, unless he is declaring church practice as based upon apostolic teaching, and therefore, authoritative in some way (as he most likely is). But I'll be thinking more on the structural issue, as it's an important point to consider.

My understanding of the text in terms of the traditional view (i.e., respect for women as mothers, but not as those in authority) would have some support from fragments of the Damascus Document found in Cave 4, where those who disrespected the Mothers were punished for their disrespect, but not as harshly as those who rebelled against the Fathers, simply because the Mothers did not have authority and the Fathers did.

Thanks again, John.