Video Transcript: Some Things We Don't Know

We are almost finished with this course. And in this segment, we are going to talk about some of the things that we don't know about early Christian women in their context. And we wish  we did. So it will be somewhat about families, and somewhat about the women themselves.  Five Points, five questions. First one was how was baptism understood? And how and where  was it done? Were children baptized, this is something that's very debated, we just don't have good evidence infant baptism, children baptism, adult baptism, we don't know. And this, of  course, involved women heavily because it had to do with life in the family. And it had to do  with how women were going to live out their their baptism, and how they participated in it. So the whole question of baptism, we do know that it was by immersion, that it was done that  way. And it is based on a ritual of immersion, that was developed in Judaism. And there is, of  course, ritual purification, which was also adapted as an initiation, right, especially for women who would not be circumcised. And they, the Christian group, adopted that, and and adapted  it into the ritual of baptism. But how did it involve women? And we've already seen that in by  the third century, when the ritual of baptism is highly developed, that, that, that the anointing of women, the anointing of the body of the newly baptized was done, we're not sure. We're  not sure exactly how certainly head, hands and presumably seat, which would mean that  practically, you got to get out of that water and walk up the steps to have your feet anointed.  So the the role of deaconesses, that that was so important for the role of deaconesses, to be  able to do that with women. But also, once baptized, what was the continuing instruction?  Was it different for women than it was for men? did they, as is done in some traditional  societies, instruct women differently, because presumably, women had different  responsibilities in the household? These are just open questions that we we wish we knew the  answer to. And we don't. Second question, what motivated these women to take on and join  roles of leadership? What motivated women first of all, to even become Christian, which is a  subset of what motivated anybody to become Christian men as well. And I think that there  were a number of things. I think that that one issue was the promise of life after death. Of  ongoing life in some way of full life restored. Now, they were not the only group that had  those kinds of promises. There were some other religious groups that that had ideas about  continuing life after death. But the the Christian way of talking about that, in the light of the  resurrection of Christ, I think must have been very appealing. I think a number of other things. Other reasons. Were there as well. I think one of them was the ongoing solidarity and support  that community showed for each other, the way they looked out for each other. And I think  that that whole motivation of joining a group that was solid, that was strong, that would stick  by each other. And I think that those were, were some of the main reasons why anybody was  motivated to join this group. And women, particularly, because I think there must have been  some kind of a camaraderie some kind of an understanding that that women were in this  together. And again, not in a unique way that that would exist in any really happy group of  people. But I think that they must also have felt a strong motivation of sisterhood. So I think  those are some of the elements that motivated women. But why take on leadership? Well,  because there were, it was something that was happening in the society, there were women  who were in business, there were women patrons, and to extend that into their life of faith, I  think, made perfect sense. So these are some of the motivations, I think, for why women  would join this group and take on leadership. Third, one is How did families negotiate the  multiple religious allegiances? We have asked this question a bit before. I had said that one  model for joining the group was that a whole household would come in together. But there's  plenty of evidence that that happened differently as well, that there were wives who became  Christians without their husbands. Interestingly, we can't I can't think of an example of a  husband without the wife. But there probably probably that happened as well. And there were slaves who joined the group without their slave owners and the rest of the household. I don't  know about children, there may have been children, but probably not without their parents. If  parents came, probably the children came and vice versa. But we do know, particularly of  husbands and wives who one is a member and the other one isn't? And how did they  negotiate all those different religious allegiances within their own life without within family  life? It's something that we we wish we knew more about, and particularly with regard to to  slaves, who, when they come into a house church meeting, are they seated along with their 

household? Or are all the slaves in the back, which would have been the normal thing,  actually, in most cases, outside of a Christian context, that the slaves would be back there?  And they, they, they'd kind of get the last of the servings of the food, you know, the way they  did it? Or did they integrate slaves into their household group and say, we're all together  here. We're all the same, and if so, when they came home, they went back to the other way of doing it. So how did they? How did they deal with all these differences? And I did say  something about Tertullian's treatise to his wife and the, the differences, she spells out that if  she were as a Christian, to marry a non believer, there would be all of this disjointed activity  in the household where she wants to do one thing, and he wants to do something else. And  that it would just his argument is that it just wouldn't work. But we know people were doing it  that way. We can, we can see that in I Corinthians 7. So that disjointedness was already  happening with the hope, I think, I know that the Christian members were hoping to convert  others in their household. And you have that argument in I Peter 2 that the believing wife of  the unbelieving husband, by her virtue, by her submission, by her doing things, the right  traditional way, might convert her husband. You, you'll have an example of that even Oh,  much, much later. Remember that Augustine, his mother, Monica was a Christian. His father  was not. And by Monica, by her holiness by her virtuous behavior, really, pretty much  persuaded Augustine's father to become a believer. So you have an example there of how  that works. And I find that really interesting. This is a little sidetrack, but I find that interesting that that their wifely submission is a missionary strategy. It is to conform oneself to the social  expectations with the hope of bringing about the conversion and therefore being the  missionary and remember, remember these women which we've looked at just recently now  Who actually converted the husband or was the teacher of the husband was the leader in  Macrina's case of converting her brother, her younger brother, that not by submission in this  case, but by living the integrity of their lives, they were able to, to bring about conversion. So  they, they really are missionaries, when they when they do that they're they're evangelizing.  So all of that is involved in those multiple religious allegiances that they had to live with, and  that perhaps you do as well. So if you do, then there's nothing new about that. The fourth  point is how was leadership exercised. And we've been looking at that from different  perspectives. And we have some idea, we have some, some general ideas of how it  happened. I haven't gone into theories of the development of, of organized ministry. Just  briefly, what we think happened was that, let's say we have a number of house churches in a  city, they have some kind of mutual organization, maybe they have a committee meeting  once a month, or something where a delegate or a leader from each of the house churches  goes, and they meet together, and then they come back, and they tell the news. And  eventually, there is someone who is is delegated as a superintendent, or you know, an  overseer, a coordinator, whatever you want to call them, for all of these house churches, and  that person probably has a title episcopos, which is Superintendent or overseer. And  eventually, that evolves into what we then know as the bishop, the the monarchical,  organizer. And as Christian meeting and worship moves out of the household context, into a  larger gathering, in more of a hall context, and that's happening, certainly in the second  century, then you have this one figure who emerges as a leader of all of the Christians of that  city. And then you move into the structure of Bishop and presbyters and deacons and  deaconesses. So that's it. That's kind of a nutshell of how we think it all evolved. But it didn't  all just happen overnight. It didn't just say it, suddenly everybody in every city is doing this. It  all happened very gradually and responded to the needs that were there. So how are women  involved in this? Women Certainly were, as we've seen, some of the the first leaders of the  hosts of house churches, especially. And as the the meeting the Christian meetings evolved  out of the house context, into the public, larger group. I think the leadership of women lost  out. Because in the larger public context, the expectation in most cases was for male  leadership. Then you have the arising of the deaconesses, who are a particular kind of  ministry. And that's, that's a new flourishing of women's ordained ministry. And there are  there are some historical purists who want to say that the ordination of deaconesses was not  the same as the ordination of deacons. But, you know, really, the evidence suggests that it  was the prayer is different, but slightly different, but really, that they were both what we 

would say sacramentally ordained, I think it's pretty clear. And I think it is to most historians  of this development. I'm always tempted to think that when when someone goes against the  grain of a majority interpretation in an issue like that, especially related to gender, that it's  not so much an intellectual convention, conviction, as it is, this is the way you would prefer to  keep it, that there was some that there's some kind of perhaps unconscious, wanting, fear,  fear, fear of change and wanting to keep things the way they are, or keep things in a more  negative sense with regard to gender equity. And the final question, how they negotiated  between expectations of public and private life. Public and private, are terms that at least in  the West have specific meanings today. The house is private. business is public, public  libraries, public parks, etc. I haven't said anything about this before, but the understandings  of public and private were quite different then. Because a lot of business was really carried on in in elite households was carried on in the household. And the, the notions of public and  private were much more fluid, public had to do with politics. Where you bought your your food in the market, that was not a public thing. Public meant politics. So the the, the meanings are  different. But at the same time, they they did have to negotiate between those two worlds.  And, and there's been a number of studies on this when Christians met in a house church, but did they understand that as public or private, and if it was private, as as household, the  leadership of women is natural, and it is not questioned? To the extent that they understand it as public, public leadership was male. And that would possibly be behind some of the  resistance that we get even in the Pauline letters. And little bit later, resistance to female  leadership. It has been argued by some that it's because they see this meeting of the house  church because people are coming in from elsewhere than the household itself, that they're  seeing this as public and therefore there's resistance to to the leadership of women. Well, be  that as it may, these are all some unanswered questions, and I'm sure that you have many  others yourself. These are the ones that occurred to me now, at this time, and I share them  with you