Paul and his terrible PR team: women in leadership part 4

A lot of fingers get pointed at Paul. There are a lot of people out there who see him as an arrogant church leader on a power trip with an inflated sense of God’s anointing who was heavy handed and likes to have a good go at churches. Without careful reading, it’s perhaps understandable why people feel like this; he does sound angry quite a lot. However, particular ‘angry’ statements always need to be put in context of Paul’s thinking shown in all his writing.

When it comes to gender roles, there are a couple of comments that seem to give no room for women to be on the same level as men with leadership. The most direct of these appears to be in 1 Timothy 2 v12 in which he says:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a wife to teach or to assume authority over her husband; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

Not only does this seem a little harsh, but the reasoning appears to be pretty whacked too. Women can be saved through childbearing? What the?! The woman has to remain quiet because she was made second and was the one who was deceived? Surely Paul isn’t arguing like this. Surely. Let me suggest we can look at this differently, like this:

If you read the beginning of the chapter, you can see that the point Paul is trying to make is that people should be quiet when they get together so that everyone can learn. If you hold this at the forefront of the reading then it might change things. And also note that Paul is using the creation story here, but for the agenda above, not to put women in their place. He wants everyone to learn.

So, to put it simply, women should be quiet so they can learn. In the first creation, Adam was formed first and Eve second. Adam was taught, but Eve wasn’t, and this led to her deception. To avoid this sort of deception happening again, teach the women this time! After the deception, God promised Eve that she would be the bearer of the Saviour, which through Mary she was, and now he stand as an example for other women to bring forth God’s word to the world.

This kind of interpretation is the only one that will really work with the rest of Paul’s writing. In Romans 16we see Paul referring to Priscilla as a minister (a word often used for Jesus) and a fellow worker equal to her husband, Aquila. In the same chapter we also see him calling Junia an apostle and one third of the people mentioned at the end are female which people are called to submit to, female workers, not merely male. This goes hand in hand with statements in Galatians saying ‘there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free for you all one in Christ Jesus’. To turn this passage in 1 Timothy into a damaging doctrine that stifles the role of women in church is to do something anti-Pauline and completely unnecessary. What a shame that so many people proof-text passages and end up with positions that oppress people – in this case, half the population! Reading the Bible properly is important stuff y’all.

I would like to acknowledge a lot of great work by Roger and Faith Forster on this issue, from which I’ve grabbed a lot of this stuff from.

Ladies, do your thing! We males need to learn to be led by you as well!

gender roles and gender distinctions: women in leadership part 2

I don’t enjoy confrontation but sometimes it seems I’m really good at it, or invite it in certain situations. One of these moments took place while having lunch at a conference. I ended up sitting at a table with a bunch of young guys that I’d never met before. They were already in a deep discussion about complimentarianism and egalitarianism. One of these guys was adamant that in a marriage there were some things that only men could do and other things designed for women. He told me that men and women were made differently, and so clearly they weren’t allowed to have the same jobs. Men were to provide for the family, to lead and make important decisions while women were to look after the children, make food for the family and to submit to the husband in the important decisions. He told me this was the biblical view.

But I just couldn’t understand the logic jump. Sure, men and women are clearly different, physically and psychologically. I don’t disagree with that. In fact I’m into it, because I don’t find the male body particularly attractive. But how do you go from observing these differences to asserting that there are clear and distinctive gender roles? I asked my new friend this, and he couldn’t answer, but he got so mad that he started shaking, all the while continuing to make these assertions. Really interesting stuff.

It is quite a common argument, though, that it is clear from the way men and women are made that there are self-evident gender roles.

I’ve found that a lot of the theology behind this thinking is based on the creation story, the foundational narrative of the bible where the scene is set. Eve has received a bit of a slap on the wrist by lots of people throughout the ages and her actions have been used to justify thinking that says that women can’t be trusted to lead well. Eve has been seen as the Devil’s gateway, the one who was easily deceived and has shown us just how easily women can be turned astray. I’ve heard a few people tell me that women are too driven by their emotions and don’t reason as well as men. This sounds more like the thinking of the ancient Greeks than Jesus to me. The reality is that this just doesn’t work out in the real world. There are many great examples of women in leadership and heaps of examples of men that have led badly. General statements like this simply don’t work.

Those that look to the creation story as an archetypal example for the way that the sexes work forget a few basic details. Firstly, Eve wasn’t around when the commandment about the fruit was given! It looks like her deceit is actually the fault of Adam who doesn’t seem to have passed this important information on. In Romans, Paul says that sin entered the world through Adam, not Eve. And if Adam is supposed to be the leader, why is he following Eve? Naughty Adam. If you continue to look closely you might also see that only Adam was expelled from the garden. Eve chose to follow Adam. It sounds like she was actually pretty cool. The text seems to further indicate that Eve is actually not too bad: it is her seed that will eventually crush the serpent’s head, not Adam’s.

Why is this important? What I’m trying to get at, is that the text that sets the foundation for what human beings are and how they are to live seems to look less favourably on Adam than it does Eve. It seems like Adam is presented as the one who leads badly. Most importantly though, in no place is it prescriptive for gender roles. Childbirth seems to be the only distinctive.

So don’t let anyone come at you with an argument that says “It is just the way things are, men are made to lead women”. These people haven’t read their bibles closely enough, or maybe they have read other things into these stories. They don’t seem to have listened to and looked at the life of Jesus. Jesus is who we will look at next time.

Jesus likes the ladies. It’s good.