Video Transcript: Women in Ordination
We have just talked about ordination in general. And now we're going to take up the question of women and ordination. And you are sure I'm sure you are aware of the resistance to the ordination of women. And sometimes, when you confront that, that resistance, you have to answer the question why ordain women, I'd like to start from the point why not, you know, half the human race, maybe, is also a good candidate for ordination. But that's not the way it works. So resistance to women in leadership, we've already looked at the household codes, the ideas of household management. And there I said that we have all of these elucidations of the ideal household that's male run, male controlled. At the same time, we know that it wasn't always like that, that there were households run by women, not only in Christianity, but in the society at large. And we just, we don't get very many references to them, because it's not the norm. And so the male writers don't want to talk about that. But in fact, it was going on. So the same with the whole question of leadership, we talked about women patrons, that was certainly an exercise of leadership. It was based on their social status, and their wealth, as leadership often can be. And so women, as well, as men were exercising leadership in the form of patronage. There is resistance to this leadership of women all along. If we go back to Aristotle, for a moment and his discussion in the Politics, he sees that the free, free born Greek man is born to rule. It's just, it's just part of his DNA, you know, he's going to rule, whereas the, it has to be a Greek, if for him. Nobody else who isn't Greek, and if he were alive in the time, when, when the Romans were in control, he would have said, No Romans either. And then when Paul says, Jew and Greek, he's including the Romans and the Greeks. So what Greek means is a whole thing that that changes with time too, but it was, but this this idea that some people simply are, are born to leadership, and others just aren't going to have it is deeply ingrained in this society. And some of it is gender based. Some of it is is based on status in birth, the family you're born into, but this kind of inequality, what we would call social inequality is deeply ingrained. And I said before, I don't think any author in this society could say that men and women were fully equal. They just don't have a sense of that kind of social thinking that that came later. But equal with acts as well, all one in access to salvation in Christ, yes, very definitely. But then when, when it's played out in society, not so much. So they lived with those kinds of ambiguities, just as we live with a lot of social ambiguities today, and maybe they're a little different, but we still have plenty of social ambiguities. So resistance to to women in leadership is based on all of that. And it is based on the whole idea of male honor, being courage and leadership. Female honor being shyness, silence, keeping silent and sexual propriety very much. So if you have an idea of women who should keep silent in society, and men who should speak that's a very gendered difference of ideal behavior. The these women patrons, did they speak out when they needed to? Of course they did. So we're talking again about ideals and reality So the idea that, that the leadership of women should be resisted in the Christian community is nothing new. This is not unusual at all. It is reflecting the norms of society that they knew. And, in Paul, you're probably familiar with some of these passages. In I Corinthians 11, for instance, in which you have this prolonged argument about how women should be veiled, how they should have their heads covered. The self respecting woman wore some kind of a veil headcovering in public, you already saw the images of those two patrons, Plancia Magnia. And Eumachia, they have their stola, which covers their head, they have covered heads. That's the way the respectable woman appeared in public in the traditional mode. Now, what's very interesting is that we have a lot of examples of a busts of women, Roman women, elite women, who don't have veils on their heads. And I think one of the things that was changing exactly at the time of Paul, was that it seems as if the more Romanized women and remember that the Paul's a Roman citizen, but he lives in the eastern Mediterranean. And that the the style was changing, it was becoming more acceptable for women not to wear veils, and he's talking about women who pray and prophesy in the Corinthian community in I Corinthians 11, very interesting, pray and prophesy. He's not talking about silent prayer. Everybody probably did silent prayer. He's talking about public prayer. Women who weren't supposed to speak in church, they're speaking in church. And so again, we have these anomalies of implications. So praying and prophesying, you do that publicly, you do that out loud, you do it speaking. All he's concerned about there he's not saying they shouldn't do that he's saying they should wear veils when they do it. And so we have women in Paul's churches, and in particularly in Corinth who are, who are speaking publicly in the church. But then in chapter 14:34-35, you know, you have this thing that seems to contradict that, that women should not speak in the church, they should be quiet, they should ask questions at home. And one interpretation of that, of course, is that these are ill informed women who are going to ask stupid questions. Well, but why would only the women ask stupid questions. You know, it's a hard passage to interpret. There's some manuscript evidence that it wasn't there in the original that it was added later. And that could well be because it really does seem to contradict what Paul says in I Corinthians 11. And then, of course, in I Timothy 2, you have the prohibition of women teaching or having authority over men. And again, women patrons had social authority over men who were their clients. So again, this is a kind of a conservative ideal, that doesn't always match what was really going on. So there certainly is plenty of resistance. That that is mirrored is is reflected in Paul's letters. And it goes on later on in the church and someone who has often pointed out is Tertullian, poor Tertullian. He was married, first of all, he had a wife and he but he comes out with some of these really awful things about women. And the My favorite one is that that he says women are the devil's gateway, because Eve who seduced Adam, and that's also in the I Timothy passage. A note on this very interesting that in all of Jewish biblical passages and exegesis this idea of blaming Eve is very late. The first reference to it is in Sirach, which is second century BC. Before that, there is no suggestion of that and and Paul in Romans 5 when he's writing about the effects of sin, he blames Adam It's Adam who transgressed, you know. So the idea of blaming Eve is, is relatively late in the literature. And as I said, Tertullian was married. And I always imagine his wife sitting in the congregation while he's saying this, and saying, Oh, just wait till I get him home. So, so Tertullian, you know, is one of our, he's a poster child for, for this resistance to the leadership of women. And there's another piece that that enters in here. And that is about Montanism. Montanism was a charismatic removement. Not removement, sorry, charismatic movement. I meant to say movement and revival and it came out of the removement. It was a charismatic movement or a charismatic revival. That happened in Asia Minor in present Turkey, in the second century, middle of the second century. And it was quite widespread. It was, it was not heretical. It was a charismatic movement within the mainstream church, that put priority on prophecy, highly, highly. Had an emphasis on prophecy on contemporary prophets, that the prophecy was not something just in the Old Testament. It wasn't something just in the in the New Testament, which by now they had some sense of apostolic writings. And, but prophecy continues in our day. The male leader in this group was Montanus, and he gives his name to the movement, but it is well known that really it was a trio of leaders and the other two were women. Their names were Priscilla, and Maximilia. And some of the people who opposed this group, were contentuous of it precisely because they had women in leadership. These were women prophets. And the whole movement was known for that, for its acceptance of women in leadership, Tertullian, at some point in his life became a Montanist. In his later years, he embraced this movement. And then one wonders if he would have said the same kinds of things that he said earlier about women about women being the devil's gateway, etc. That was before his Montanist days. Because once he became enthusiastic about this movement and the belief in his prophecy, it was also apocalyptic. The end of the world was going to come in, we're going to come within our lifetime. And it was going to begin in a specific place a little village called Papusa in Asia Minor. And and Tertullian embraced this, this group, this belief, and he would have had to backtrack, I think, on a lot of the things that he had said. So one of the ways in which mainstream non Montanus Christian leaders, writers, could inveigh against women in leadership was by saying, women are in leadership in this group, look with what they've done. They are not reputable. We don't we don't accept them. And see, this is what happens when you put women in leadership. So that actually was done, it was argued. And so you had another situation there in which the Montanists, which were a very widespread group, at one point, they certainly had spread to Rome and to North Africa. To Carthage were Tertullion was they probably were also in Gaul, in France. So they were they were a widespread group there for a couple of generations, and then they kind of died out because, of course, the end didn't come the way it had been predicted. But they they also furnished the handy foil for church leaders, male church leaders who opposed ordaining women and having women in women, women in leadership. They can think and use the example of the Montanists. So, we have here, no surprise that it is a male centered society, and that the common assumption was that men were better leaders that, that women just couldn't do it, except for the exceptions of prophecy and martyrdom, which we've already seen. But for the, the ordering of things, the perception was that men were the ones who were supposed to do that. And in many cultures, that's, of course, still true. And let me just say something about order and charism, too, because in many church history, by many church historians, they're talking about the balance of this Ordo is order, it's an ordination is part of that it's the designation of leadership, it's the organization of leadership, to keep things going smoothly, and well run. Charism is the spiritual gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit. It's the it's the spirit of prophecy. And it's a spirit of knocking things off balance a little, because one of the functions of prophecy is to challenge that order. It's to challenge the way things are done. Prophecy opens up new possibilities. It makes people look at what what could be. And there's a true sense of prophecy and there's false prophecy. And so it requires discernment, to see if what this prophetic thing is, is suggesting, if that's a good way to go. So women very definitely associated with prophecy. With the question of order, you've got this resistance for all the reasons we've talked about all of the traditional reasons that we've talked about. And so, in the church, it's the balance of the two. That, that keeps the church authentic, faithful to Jesus, who himself was recognized as a prophet, you know? So, it's the, it's the balance of the two, that that brings it all together. And, and women are very much part of that. And often leading the way in terms of prophecy, leading the way as ordained women. But with with this difficulty that comes out of the culture, and with which we still struggle