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