{"id":1470,"date":"2022-03-14T08:10:37","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2022-03-14T08:10:37","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T12:10:37","slug":"paul-and-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/14\/paul-and-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul and Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jan Lievens: Aposteln Paulus.\rNM 7087<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the minds of many, the apostle Paul\u2019s version of the Good News has been nothing but bad news for women.
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Two infamous texts stand out.\u00a0
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The first is I Corinthians 14:34-35, where he asserts that \u201cwomen should remain silent in the churches.\u00a0 They are not allowed to speak, but must remain in submission.\u201d\u00a0 Then in I Timothy 2:11-15 Paul writes, \u201cI do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.\u201d\u00a0
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For the better part of two millennia, these texts have functioned as Exhibit A and Exhibit B for males-only church leadership.\u00a0 The Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity (which represent 50% and 15%, respectively, of the world\u2019s Christian believers) have never wavered from that conviction.\u00a0
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A few Protestant groups have empowered female leadership.\u00a0 But the majority have declined to do so.\u00a0 After all, Paul could not have been more clear.\u00a0 He put a No Girls Allowed<\/em> sign on the clubhouse of Christian ministry.
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Case closed.\u00a0 Right?<\/em>\u00a0
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Here we should pause to affirm that even church traditions that prohibit female ordination are enthusiastic about the contributions of women.\u00a0 Historically, two-thirds of all missionaries have been female, not to mention at least three-quarters of all Sunday School teachers.\u00a0 On any given weekend in North America there are far more women than men in church sanctuaries.\u00a0 Women have always been on the leading edge when it comes to prayer, devotion, and practical care for those in need.
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Over the centuries, therefore, pastors and theologians have insisted that women must be inferior on other grounds.\u00a0 Their arguments have been astonishing.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Because women have less physical strength than men, they must be incapable of leadership.\u00a0 They are, of course, emotionally unstable (the word \u201chysterical\u201d is etymologically derived from the Latin word for womb). \u00a0Because they cannot understand difficult subjects, they shouldn\u2019t bother pursuing higher education.\u00a0 Since Eve was tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, women are the moral ruination of men. \u00a0And the most painful assertion of all: \u00a0Because women aren\u2019t men, they cannot accurately discern the voice and the will of God.\u00a0
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One by one, such arguments have been demolished by examples of female leadership in secular culture over the past 75 years.\u00a0 Women are clearly capable of listening, learning, and leading the way (not to mention the fact that men are quite capable of descending into moral ruin all by themselves).
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When it comes to church leadership, however, myriads of people who \u201ctake the Bible seriously\u201d remain unconvinced.\u00a0 They would never in a million years smear dabs of White-Out on those Pauline texts, even if we wish they weren\u2019t there.
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But what if there are biblical<\/em> reasons for embracing the spiritual leadership of women?\u00a0 And what if they come from the pen of the apostle Paul himself?
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If we\u2019re willing to consider the contexts of I Corinthians 14 and I Timothy 2 \u2013 acknowledging the likelihood that those verses are addressing specific crises that were relevant to those specific times and places \u2013 we can see that Paul\u2019s actual leadership practices<\/em> are surprisingly different from the \u201cmales-only\u201d label he has long worn.\u00a0
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That stands out dramatically at the end of Paul\u2019s longest and most celebrated letter, his correspondence with the fledgling church in Rome.\u00a0 \u00a0
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In Romans chapter 16, the apostle sends personal greetings to 29 church leaders.\u00a0 Ten of them are women.\u00a0
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The first name he mentions is Phoebe, who is identified as a deacon (vs. 1-2).\u00a0 Paul asserts that she is entitled to the same kind of financial support as other Christian mission workers.\u00a0 Many Bible scholars believe that Phoebe leads off Paul\u2019s greetings because she is his emissary, having personally carried this letter to the Roman Christians.\u00a0
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In verse 3 he writes, \u201cGreet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus.\u201d\u00a0 We know from other New Testament texts that Priscilla and Aquila are married and have played a key role in Paul\u2019s missionary efforts around the Mediterranean.\u00a0 What\u2019s notable is that Priscilla\u2019s name precedes her husband\u2019s.\u00a0 In the ancient world the key member of a partnership (not unlike modern law firms) typically came first \u2013 and that was rarely a woman.\u00a0
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In verse 7 Paul greets a man named Andronicus and a woman named Junia.\u00a0 They are Jewish believers who are \u201coutstanding among the apostles.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing how little attention has been paid to the fact that Paul \u2013 the man so often accused of relegating women to second-class status \u2013 is here acknowledging a female apostle.
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Apostles (apostoloi<\/em>) are literally those who are \u201csent out\u201d with the Good News.\u00a0 In all four gospels, it is women (not men!) who discover that Jesus\u2019 tomb is empty.\u00a0 They are commissioned on the spot by the angel to go share what they have learned.\u00a0
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Women were God\u2019s very first sent-out<\/em> ones.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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It may be that after twenty centuries, followers of Jesus are finally realizing just how true that still is.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the minds of many, the apostle Paul\u2019s version of the Good News has been nothing but bad news for women.\u00a0Two infamous texts stand out.\u00a0\u00a0The first is I Corinthians 14:34-35, where he asserts that \u201cwomen should remain silent in the churches.\u00a0 They are not allowed to speak, but must remain in submission.\u201d\u00a0 Then in I Timothy 2:11-15 Paul writes, \u201cI… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}