Really, I just could not do it justice. I think I have whined myself out.
1 Timothy 2:11-15
11Let a woman* learn in silence with full submission. 12I permit no woman* to teach or to have authority over a man;* she is to keep silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
This is the question: Does I Timothy state that a woman has no place in the ordained ministry because they are not to teach in the assembly? Or, in stead, is I Timothy addressing a specific pastoral concern in the church at Ephesus? This essay will be an exploration of possible ways of engaging this passage from traditional to modern feminist critique. We shall see that this passage has several possible interpretations ranging from the strictly didactic to an engagement in a wider narrative. There may be no single way to read it. Yet, we will discover a common theme of the interaction of normative societal structures and gender roles and Christian revelation.
An example of a traditional exegesis of this passage can be found in J. Ellicott's commentaries. Verse eleven, according to The Very Rev. H.D.M. Spence D.D., is a clear instruction of the role of women in the community at Ephesus. He reminds us that this injunction was questioned and eventually supported in Carthage (385 CE) with the further defining of the role of women as teachers. Women were allowed to teach other women in private. The public forum was relegated to men. It is unclear if he supports this stance. He simply mentions that it was the practice of the Eastern Churches.
In his exegesis of verse twelve, Spence suggests that this is actually an elevation of the status of women. By giving women a place to teach, that is, in the privacy of their own homes, they are elevated "out of the position of degradation and intellectual inferiority they had occupied in the pagan systems of the East and the West, and taught with all the weight of an Apostle." This is the fruition of "no male nor female," and yet it still upholds the cultural norms of the Greco-Roman tradition in Ephesus.
Verses thirteen through fifteen are Paul's exegesis of Genesis 3:14-20. Spence extols Paul's ability to enter such a discourse. According to Spence, Paul is once again upholding the right place of a woman in the cultural milieu of the time. This is a divine arrangement and not just a cultural accident. God first created Adam and then Eve. Throughout the three verses, Adam is given primacy. It is even stated that Adam, though he sinned, was not deceived by the serpent. This too, elevates the status of Adam and all men through him. Woman's salvation is through childbearing. The curse of Genesis is now the place of women in the world. They must "acquiesce." This curse, however, is rescinded through the divine Birth of Christ, through the motherhood of the Virgin. Spence equates salvation through the incarnation with the role of motherhood.
Luke Timothy Johnson, in his exegesis, has an interpretation that may be more palatable to the modern ear. Though he says that the injunction is clear, we must read I Timothy in its context. It is a letter to the church in Ephesus. So, Ephesians 5:21 must also play into an understanding of the role of women. This complicates matters immediately. If men and women (perhaps only husbands and wives) are to be subject to one another, what then is the purpose of this social ranking in the liturgy and teaching of the church?
Johnson has a couple of ideas. First, he suggests that there were specific troubles with the Gentile women in Ephesus and the popularity of an Artemis cult at the same time. It may simply be that Paul had a specific concern for these women in this community and how they may or may not conflate the various cultic practices and beliefs with Christianity. This is speculative, according to Johnson, and perhaps unsupportable. If this were the case, however, it would shed some light on the strength of the decree. This is the only reason it bears mentioning.
The second contextual option for Johnson is simply within the Pauline corpus itself. How is this letter consistent with the rest of Paul and his correspondence with the church in Ephesus specifically? For Johnson, it is another example of Paul's desire to demonstrate good social ordering. "[Order] in the household and the church is essential for witness into the world. He clearly perceives the issue of female leadership as fitting into this some way."
Thus, Paul's desire for structure is a reflection of culture and that culture is given a theological framework which redefines it. This still does not answer some questions that Christian feminist interpreters of scripture may ask. For Paul, it appears to be enough to theologically redefine the social ordering alone and not restructure the same order. Thus, for feminist interpreters, the question is: Is this cultural/social ordering one that Christianity has mistakenly proponed since the Greco-Roman structure has been conflated with the theological understandings of Paul? Perhaps it would make more sense to apply Ephesians 5:21 to our own context and redefine our current social order to reflect it. Perhaps an appropriate Christian action would be to have a social ordering that would reflect the theology of Paul and not continue to live into an existing social ordering with a theological redefinition.
This brings us to recent feminist critique on the role of women in the church ad how I Timothy has been used to deny women an ordained role. There are many critiques available. For the purposes of this essay, we will focus on two. The first is the place of "female eroticism" within how Christians view the ministry. Is ordained ministry asexual, masculine or feminine?
In Sex in the Parish, we read testimonies from various ordained women that their ministry is effected by their gender and what cultural expectations gender may play into people relating to them as pastors. How female ministers relate to parishioners in times of crisis may differ from how their male counterparts would. How women may engage in crisis or simply manage pastoral work may differ from how their male counterparts engage and manage the same situations. This plays out in liturgy as well. This is one woman's testimony.
As a female pastor I have become aware that I have been trained to be a priest, but I actuality, I am a priestess. I mediate Goddess, not God, and there are o guides within Christianity - no protections - no sanctions - that help me deal with Her power when it is unleashed. I feel as though I could spend the rest of my life exploring/rediscovering the art of being a priestess. Maybe then I could better understand the truest, deepest power of my own sexuality and the One who lies at the heart of it.
Mary Stewart Van Leeuwenn gives us a different read of Timothy (and Genesis) and the place of women in society. In her address to Wheaton College, she urges students to realize that issues around gender are going to be the cornerstone to how they live out their vocations either ordained or not. "[Your] Christian liberal arts education is going to be incomplete if you do not respect, ponder, and struggle with both the idea and the concrete realities of gender - whether or not this topic is acknowledged in the structure of the formal college curriculum."
Her exegesis states that neither male privilege nor female submission are the results of salvation through Christ and are, instead, signs of the curse in Genesis 3. The current social ordering is a sign of original sin. It is not the fulfillment of the Kingdom. The desire of many conservative evangelical Christians for a return to an era of "family values" is also a sign of original sin. Why would the gospel call humanity to a way of life that, per her argument, encourages absentee parenting by fathers and allows for women to escape responsibility for the decisions made on their behalf? This is not a sign of the Kingdom; instead, it is a sign of the curse.
What she appears to be attempting here is encouraging the students to move out of their particular polemic and ask deeper questions as they become the next generation of moral Christian thinkers. We cannot conflate American social structures with the Kingdom of God. They are not the same. Is this, however, contradictory to Paul's understanding of "right" social structure and the place of women in relationship with men? Not necessarily. It appears to be a conflation of Pauline ideals. This is, perhaps, how one can speak from the entire Pauline corpus at once as Johnson would desire. Van Leeuwenn is suggesting that we allow Paul's understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven ("neither male nor female") guide and critique how we create our social structures, and not simply redefine those orders without changing them.
In all four interpretations of this passage of scripture and the corresponding attitude regarding the place of women in society, we witness attempts to bring culture and revelation together. The more traditional view will conflate the two almost entirely, suggesting that both the structure and the theology are the results of Christian revelation. Other interpretations will attempt to extract the theology of Paul from its societal context to a greater or lesser degree. This is our task as interpreters of scripture. How will the revealed world of scripture be manifest in our societal structures? Will we attempt to replicate those structures? Will we allow them to simply inform our existing structures, or will we model our social structures after the theologies our communities glean from scripture. No matter where we find ourselves theologically, this is our task.
Posted by tripp at May 2, 2004 10:08 PMOh, Jesus. I think I'd best stay out of this one.
Posted by: Megan at May 3, 2004 11:30 AM