I’ve noted several posts recently on the ongoing rumbling about the roles of women and men. In the UK this has followed the blackmailing letter Reform published for the General Synod: “Give us our own episcopal enclave or we’ll hurt you.” Elsewhere in the world it has different triggers. It never quite seems to go away, but periodically turns from cold war into hot war. John Hobbins is a self-proclaimed “egalitarian” who so likes winding up other egalitarians that many others – especially those for whom it is a personal rather than intellectual issue – think him a “complementarian”. (The language is tendentious in the way it classifies things.)
One of the features of the debate that makes it difficult to engage with is that there are several different arguments going on. On the catholic side it has been presented simply as an argument about priesthood, tradition and the authority of the church. On the UK evangelical side it has mainly been presented as an argument about the teaching authority of women in the church. On the US conservative side (mainly, but not simply evangelical) it increasingly seems to be a much larger question of the role of men and women, period: in home, in church and in society. That larger sense of a key battlefront in the so-called culture wars seems to me to be beginning to cross the Atlantic.
In the face of that diversity I’m going to confine myself here to a point of hermeneutics. Last week Rachel Marszalek posted the text of a letter to the Church of England Newspaper (a conservative evangelical paper). Rachel notes that:
When I first naively began to understand the debate some years ago, two things literally drove me to near despair, had it not been for wise counsel. The first was the supposition, that Ugley vicar proposes, that those women hearing God’s call must be liberal when it comes to the Bible, this is just not the case. I am conservative. Trust me, it is possible, although ‘post-conservative’ feels more apt.
The comment from John Richardson who blogs as the aforementioned Ugley Vicar demonstrated how single-mindedly conservatives claim that they and they alone own and understand the Bible:
I have not said that “those women hearing God’s call must be liberal when it comes to the Bible”. Indeed I could not, because I doubt that anyone liberal when it comes to the Bible would be called by God!
Now, there’s theological arrogance for you!
The point made in the letter Rachel quotes was in danger of getting lost in the spat, namely that individual verses in Scripture need interpreting in the light of the whole. The ongoing argument about the place of women often seems (I think wrongly) to be characterised as those aiming the cannon fire of broad themes against those digging last ditches in the shrapnel-scarred mud of individual verses.
There is, it seems to me, a fairly wide range of individual scriptures which might be held to support the role and ministry of women, from the characters scattered through Paul’s letters and the Acts and the ways they are referred to, to Mary of Bethany taking the man’s the role as disciple at the feet of rabbi Jesus – the better part over Martha labouring in the kitchen, to Jesus commissioning Mary Magdalene as apostle to the apostles. There is a host of individual verses that the conservative response simply ignores in favour of a handful of more obviously propositional statements of whose context and import one cannot be quite sure. This is not simply a one sided battle of themes against verses.
However, the broad themes do matter, and – at least as far as ministry is concerned – it seems to me there is a signal point often overlooked in the argument. The conservative view, and indeed the isolated verses cited from First Timothy (1 Tim 2:11-15) in its support, depend fundamentally on asserting that there is an order of creation, and that this is foundational to our understandings of the role of men and women in the church. (There are, however, significantly different readings of Genesis on offer than the conservative one behind this view.)
It would, I suppose, be possible to argue from this creation order to an order of gender roles in society, but I fail to understand how they apply to ministry in the church except by way of cultural accommodation. In Paul’s writings at least, and I would argue more broadly, ministry in the church is understood as the gift of the Spirit, and the life and being of the Church is understood as eschatological. It is that view which underlies his statement that “there is neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28). This is why the argument is not simply a trading of verses. It is not an equal fight between, in the red corner, “You are all sons of God in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26 – I keep the language of sons because while I think Paul is egalitarian here it is not in modern terms but in terms of an eschatological androgyny) and, in the blue corner, “Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Tim 2:13).
The adoption of human beings in Christ equally on the basis of God’s grace, and their incorporation into the community of the end times is an overriding theme of the gospel, focussed in the verse from Galatians. It is the interplay of broad theme and particular verse that means Galatians scores a knockout over Timothy, and not simply a victory on points. Ministry is meant to both reflect and nurture the life of the church. It is hard to see it doing so when it is so resolutely detached from the vision of God’s future, and so attached to the order of the Earth’s past.
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Hi Doug
Thank you for the sanity of this post!
Galatians trumps Ephesians
That didn’t appear in any essays when I was training, but it has been good to read that this week. My own trump card is on my blog.
And your blog is … ?
Doug,
Thanks for this. Insightful as always. There is, I think, cultural accommodation going on in 1 Cor 11 and 14 (which you do not treat) and 1 Tim 2. Paul says as much in 1 Cor 11.
Your suggestion of eschatological androgyny, on the other hand, I would think to be highly speculative.
I don’t buy the argument that Galatians trumps 1 Timothy. That assumes what you need to prove, that Galatians 3:28 is about abolishing biological and/or cultural distinctions of the kind Paul elsewhere upholds. As you know, virtually the entire pre-modern tradition of interpretation is against the “egalitarian” exegesis. Which doesn’t yet settle the question, because of the positivity of the notion of cultural accommodation in Scripture. But that is not how you argue.
This is not to say that the “neither … nor” of Galatians 3:28 does not change the way male and female and slave and free are to relate to one another. It does for Paul, but along the “radical-conservative” lines Paul (or a successor) suggests in Colossians, Ephesians, and in the Pastorals. It does again, in a more fundamental way, insofar as Paul invites his readers if married to live as if they weren’t, to use their status as slaves if that is what they are for the greater glory of God, and so on.
I don’t think anyone has ever disproven Troeltsch’s judgement that Paul was a love-patriarchalist. It is no accident that many clear-eyed feminists has seconded T on that score. If they are on target, then it looks as if you are “improving” on the Bible in your interpretation thereof. The pastor in me sympathizes. The exegete in me rebels.
For the rest, you make an unfounded assumption when you say that I blog on these issues to “wind up” fellow egals. I would like to reason with them, and some of them are game.
I have always staked out a middle ground on this issue, which makes me persona non grata for those who are caped crusading egals.
My deepest reasons for staking out a middle ground is the pastoral offense I take at the demeaning, dehumanizing, and demonizing politics of those on both ends of the comp-egal spectrum.
I have been pastor to traditionals, neo-traditionals, and egals in terms of marriage dynamics. I take offense at the suggestion that traditional and neo-traditional men are equivalent to slave-owners and traditional and neo-traditional women equivalent to children who have never grown up. I take equal offense at the suggestion that women in the pastorate are by definition liberal, or that egalitarians in their own conflicted way can give glory to God, as I would say complementarians in their conflicted way can do likewise.
Sorry to go “meta” on you. But there I sincerely stand.
On the androgyny question, John, I strongly recommend Dale Martin. On most of your other points, I’m well aware that if I were writing an essay or book I’d be ring-fencing this with all sorts of other arguments, and a much greater interaction with traditional interpretations. I still think the main point stands – interpretations which argue from the eschatological heart of the gospel have more to say about ministry than those which argue from the order of creation. The whole argument presupposes a modern context which raise questions the tradition had barely considered. This, however, is a blog post, and not an essay or book, so one point at a time.
Oh, and I’m sorry if I mischaracterised you as someone who likes “winding up other egalitarians” – but the tone of your posts on the topic, at least to these British ears sounds extraordinarily belligerent for someone seeking to explore a reasonable middle.
I agree with your emphasis, Doug, on the centrality of eschatology in ethical construction in the context of the Christian faith. That is really the read thread that runs through the diversity of ethical proposals in the New Testament, from Jesus to Paul to 1-2 Peter + Jude.
I have been pointing to the prophecy of Joel reprised by Peter in the inaugural sermon of the Spirit-filled church as grounds for openness to the possibility of women in the pastorate. That and the fact that, as recounted by Acts, it is in the nature of things that as followers of Christ we will be caught off guard by things the Spirit does without our prior acquiescence. All of this falls into the category of (realized) eschatology as well.
I also consider myself in the middle, since I have not yet started soliciting funds to help other women escape from their own patriarchal arrangements. I don’t actually consider ALL complementarians to be doing something immoral. However, those men who wish to dominate their wives have a powerful weapon in the complementarian theology. They are quickly able to prove that the wife must be deprived of any semblance of free will, because this is God’s will for her.
If one suggests that giving equal rights to women is also a dangerous weapon, let me say that we are back in the dark ages which I inhabited for many years.
Tim Keller argues passionately that monarchy would be the best form or rulership, according to the scripture. But he also argues that because of sin and abuse all must have access to places of power, and rulers must submit to elections.
If men want democracy for themselves, why do they not offer it to women? Why would men not defend the right of women to have equal rights with men? Why do men always want something for themselves that they are so happy to see women deprived of?
I should add that Keller supports democracy in society because of sin and abuse, but he supports rule and submission in the home without making the claim that there is no sin and abuse in the home.
Most women claim that the very idea of subordination is abusive, regardless of whether there is a significant amount of deprivation and violence alongside. I always love to see men share their favourable opinions of subordination in the home. Sure, it happens to men too and I don’t mean to play this down, but not in the name of God. Men don’t have to assent to the notion that their misery in the home is God’s best intentions for your life.
If a man feels subordinated and violated in his own home, he rightly feels that he is suffering injustice, but women are taught that this is their eternal lot.
I hope you understand that this is about spiritual and psyshological damage, and not just about who can hit the hardest, although we know the answer to that one.
I regret that I do not have the time to commit to the exegetical discussion going on here.
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