It's All About the Benjamins

Jump to Comments This originally started as a comment on Matt’s blog, (link here). I know this is really long, but I’d appreaciate it if people read the whole thing.

[[EDIT: Maybe this is way too long and involved and boring for people that don’t have to deal with words like exegesis and hermeneutics on a regular basis. Sorry about that. ]]

[…] I was watching the thing [the election of the Pope] on TV while it was happening, and the first thought that I had when I saw Benedict XVI emerge on the balcony was that he didn’t look much like my preconcieved notion for the next pope would.

Not being a catholic, I don’t know a great deal about ex-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, but apparently he was in charge of enforcing Catholic Doctrine or whatever, and that his own personal stances on whatever aren’t necessarily the same. Then again, this is crap spouted by the likes of commentators on Fox News and MSNBC, who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

Anyhow, the whole priestly marriage / role of women in the church is always an odd one. As a protestant, I’m obviously used to the whole idea of the guy giving a sermon (whatever one deigns to call him) having a wife and kids, but the women leading worship has always been a sticking point. The Anglican Communion and some charismatic low protestant groups have females in worship-leading positions.

Instead of just coming up with my own opinion on fiat, I decided to ground this in all the scholarly concepts I’ve been getting from my hours of Theology classes here at Harding. POORLY-EXECUTED THESIS PARAGRAPH, I CHOOSE YOU!

So, based on exegesis from the New Testament Epistles and other early sources, how are women depicted in the early church? Are they ever explicitly given any sort of worship-leading positions? Are they ever specifically denied from attaining these posititions from a theological standpoint? From a cultural standpoint? What’s the big deal about them leading worship, anyhow?

The two primary mentions of women in a worship service are Pauline in nature– that is, [the Apostle Paul / St. Paul / Saul, later called Raúl Paul] wrote about them. These occur in 1 Timothy 2(frequently cited by anti-female-clergy advocates) and in Romans 16.

Before I actually get to those, though, let me cite something written by Pliny the Younger in corrispondence to Emperor Trajan. It’s pretty cool, and is actually relevant.

I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for exectution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornnness and unshakable obstinacy ought not go unpunished….
They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery….
This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths

Pliny the Younger, Letters selections from 10.96 ¹

So, we can see that outside evidence shows that less than a century after the Crucifixion there were women with the title of deaconness. What’s that, deaconness? Well, it’s the English -ess form of deacon, from the Greek “diakonos”, meaning servant, waiting man. Deacon in the New Testament sense is a title of a person in the church, which Paul defines in 1 Timothy 3:9-13 thus:

8 Deacons likewise must be serious, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not greedy for money; 9they must hold fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. 10And let them first be tested; then, if they prove themselves blameless, let them serve as deacons. 11Women [or “Their wives”, or “Women deacons”] likewise must be serious, not slanderers, but temperate, faithful in all things. 12Let deacons be married only once, [Greek: “be husbands of one wife”] and let them manage their children and their households well; 13for those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

NRSV ²

Yeah, okay, what does this have to do with anything? Well, it has everything to do with that thing in Romans 16. “Συνίστημι δὲ ὑμι̂ν Φοίβην τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἡμω̂ν, οὐ̂σαν [καὶ] διάκονον τη̂ς ἐκκλησίας τη̂ς ἐν Κενχρεαι̂ς [….]”³ See? Okay, for those of you that can’t read koine Greek, that says “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon [or “minister”] of the church at Cenchreae […]” (ed note: this doesn’t correspond with Greek brackets; καὶ means “and”, the “minister” bracket is a NRSV footnote). Right here we have some evidence of Phoebe doing something that may be her conducting worship services.

Well, then, where does the male-only thing come from?

8 I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; 9also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, 10but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. 11Let a woman [Or “wife”] learn in silence with full submission. 12I permit no woman [Or “wife”] to teach or to have authority over a man [Or “her husband”]; she is to keep silent.

1 Timothy 2:8-12, NRSV

Oooh, this is tough. Paul says starts this off stating that what he is about to say applies universally. But there’s obviously stuff in here that only applies to Hellenistic culture at the end of the 1st century– braided and jewel-encrusted hair was the sign of conspicuous consumption at the time; certainly it’s reasonable to believe from the context of the rest of the sentence that Paul is exhorting the women to refrain from ostentatiousness, not that having braided hair and the like is inherently unchristian. This is just basic hermeneutics, here.

What about the meat of the text, though? this is certainly the place where most protestant churches (and assumably the Roman Catholic Church) get the no-women-priests doctrine. Well, as the NRSV footnotes show, there’s some alternate considerations that should be made to the historical English rendering of the text (that women in general must not have any authority over men in general).

What would the reasoning be behind this? I think it’s best to consider Hellenisitic culture at the time. If Athens is any example (and it is), women, especially married ones, didn’t ever leave the house (excepting a few special holidays), and didn’t recieve any sort of formal education. Submssion of wives to their husbands is a common theme in Paul’s works (with the husband having coequal obligations to the wife!), and the combination of this with the idea of not having uneducated individuals (in this case, women) who weren’t versed in basic Hellenistic concepts such as rhetoric or public speaking is a sensible explination for this passage, especially due to the fact that it wouldn’t jive if Paul is commending a woman leader at one point and completely outlawing them at another.

This is just my current little thought-expiriment on the subject. I don’t claim that I have all the answers, or even very many. I think that in addition to being a religious text for me, the Bible is also an interesting document for historical and literary study, which is why I enjoy writing essays about stuff like this so much (and is the reason why what was originally going to be a few sentences in comment to something Matt said turned into a de facto essay).

Finally, I’m not the Pope– I don’t have a hearts and minds of a billion people and 1500 years of doctrine that may or may not jive with the core of Christianity to deal with. The one final thought I would like to leave with– I hope that this pope, like John Paul II, is the kind of person who, when it comes between choosing to do [what he believes to be] the right thing, and choosing to do something that pleases people, he chooses the former. If he makes a decision on something like this, I really hope for everybody — Catholics and Anglicans and Church of Christies and the Amish and Zen Buddhists and those people that marked “Jedi” as their religion on the last UK Census — that the prevailing opinion of progressive minds or whatever isn’t a factor in making these kinds of decisions.

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1: As quoted in Strobel, Lee: The Case for Christ, pp 83-84. Latin text at Perseus. Alternate English translation of 10.25ff (Chapter 10, section 25 and following) here.
2: The Bible, New Revised Standard Version. (Online here.) Bracketed text is from footnotes.
3: Greek NT texts from Perseus.