Pope Francis, considered one of the more progressive popes of the modern era, has recently declared that the Catholic ban on ordaining women will continue indefinitely. While many in and outside the Church had hoped the Pope’s liberal views would extend to female inclusion in priesthood and ministry, his declaration should not come as a surprise: the Catholic Church in particular has always grappled with a deeply patriarchal past and a tendency toward misogynistic policies. Gender-based doctrine like this, tolerated already due to the commonplace sexism of Western culture, often finds its justification in scripture, especially the New Testament. Theologians and church leaders frequently cite the ministry of Jesus and the epistles of Paul, for example, in explaining why women should be excluded from leadership roles and treated differently than their male counterparts. For this reason and others, many contemporary feminists and liberal thinkers reject the New Testament entirely as a sexist product of the patriarchal society in which it was written. By considering the role of gender in first the Gospels and then the Pauline epistles, this paper evaluates the reality of this characterization, exploring the ways the portrayal of Christ’s radical message both affirmed and rejected the oppression of women. A complicated reality emerges from this exploration: that the struggle between the drive to radical theological inclusion and the necessity of social order and orthodoxy produced a text with palpable and carefully-crafted tension, yielding completely to neither full gender equality nor complete patriarchy.
Let us first consider the Gospels. Because Jesus says very little about women in his sermons and parables, an assessment of the Gospels’ treatment of women must come from a consideration of the roles played by the female characters, namely, Mary Magdalene and the other followers of Jesus, and the women Jesus encounters in the course of his recorded ministry.
Mary Magdalene represents an interesting figure for a feminist consideration of the Gospels. So long misperceived and misrepresented – almost completely due to the Catholic Church’s decision to discredit her as a prostitute and sinner, one might note – Mary may be considered (perhaps with the exception of Jesus’s mother) the most significant woman portrayed in the Gospels; the Evangelists mention her twelve times, more than most of the apostles. Mary’s biggest role occurs during the resurrection, when she is named in all four Gospels as among the first to encounter the risen Christ.[i] Despite these appearances, however, none of the Gospels count her among the twelve disciples. Many scholars cite the absence of Mary or any other woman from the Twelve, in fact, as an indication of the gendered character of the New Testament.[ii] Though the exclusion of women from Jesus’s closest group may demonstrate that women are not suited to ministry, as many would argue, some scholars certainly contest this. In Women in the World of Jesus, Evelyn and Frank Stagg suggest that, because the Twelve also lacks Gentile or Samaritan representatives, the gender makeup of the disciple clan may have more to do with social necessity: “It may have been that custom here was so entrenched,” they write, “that Jesus simply stopped short of fully implementing a principle that he made explicit and emphatic: ‘whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.’”[iii] Mary Magdalene’s presence as an important figure, even in this patriarchal context, therefore represents a significant choice, and certainly one that favors a more inclusive message.
The characterization and function of the women Jesus encounters during the course of his ministry also provide insight into the relative gendered quality of the Gospels. Women certainly make up a significant portion of those with whom he interacts during his travels: women anoint[iv] and learn at the feet of Christ;[v] they are healed by his touch or words;[vi] and they receive recognition and forgiveness from him.[vii] Significantly, the first evangelist seen in the Gospels is a woman, the Samaritan at the well, who upon receiving the “living water” of Jesus converts her entire village with the story of her encounter with Christ.[viii] Like the Samaritan woman, many of the female characters in the Gospels occupy “lowly” or marginalized roles in society, and scholars disagree on the implication of this. Esther Fuchs, for example, claims that affliction and marginality is established in the text as a consistent feminine characteristic[ix] only to “demonstrate[e] the hero [Jesus]’s superiority.”[x] In support of her assertion, she notes the anonymity of most of these women and that they often disappear immediately upon completing their function.[xi] Because of this, Fuchs describes the role of the Gospel women as “limited if not marginal to the basic story line.”[xii] While this may be a fair characterization of many women in the text, it should be pointed out that the same can be said for most of the male characters Jesus encounters, with the notable exception of the Twelve. Other scholars view the lowliness of these women in much a different way. Rosemary Reuther argues that the lowliness of the Gospel women actually bodes well for their status before God: “Women play an important role in the Gospel vision of the vindication of the lowly in God’s new order,” she writes. “The role played by women of marginalized groups in an intrinsic part of the iconoclastic, messianic vision. It means that the women are the oppressed of the oppressed. They are the bottom of the present social hierarchy and hence are seen, in a special way, as the last who will be the first in the Kingdom of God.”[xiii] Further, Reuther suggests that, by making female many of the outcast who interact with Jesus, the Gospels act as “a witness against the system of patriarchal privilege.”[xiv] These women have a much broader significance, then, than Fuchs would recognize. Despite their limited and brief presence, women do appear, and in large numbers. The text, unable to create fully empowered women due to the gendered reality of Biblical society, utilizes women’s marginality to reinforce its message of radical inclusion in a socially oppressive environment.
Of the New Testament, no books have received more feminist criticism than the epistles of Paul, which are seen by many as the clearest indication of the Bible’s sexism and misogyny. Discussions of the gender dynamics of Paul often cite comments made in Galatians, 1 Corinthians, and the Pastoral epistles. Because a nuanced evaluation of the Pastoral epistles would require an exploration of authorship beyond the scope of this paper, here we only considers individually the first two of the three in assessing Paul’s legacy as it relates to women.
In Galatians, the verse most frequently quoted is 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Many interpret this baptismal reordering as a radical call to overturn orthodox social hierarchies and establish equality as the standard for churches. For example, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, a Catholic feminist theologian, sees the verse as a dismissal of patriarchy in the church and an argument that “irrespective of their procreative capacities and of the social roles connected with them, [women] will be full members of the Christian movement in and through baptism.”[xv] Krister Stendahl agrees, claiming that the verse forges a “new unity” that “manifests itself in the social dimensions of the church.”[xvi] However, many scholars vehemently disagree with such a characterization of Paul’s words, claiming that Galatians 3:28 calls not for social reform but a new eschatological view of gender difference.[xvii] “Paul was not calling for any social reforms,”[xviii] argues Madeleine Boucher. Because “Paul fully intended that women and slaves remain in the subordinate place in which he thought God had put them,”[xix] these scholars suggests, “the baptismal reunification formula […] has not produced any radical reassessment of the social roles of men and women in the congregation.”[xx]
The Galatians verse certainly stands in contrast to many of Paul’s other assertions about women, especially those found in 1 Corinthians. In the epistle to the Church at Corinth, two particular passages are most frequently mentioned in relation to gender: the passage beginning at 11:3 calling for women to cover their heads in church, and the passage beginning at 14:33 calling for the silence of women in church. In the first passage, feminist theologians are quick to note the emphasis Paul makes in “balancing statements about women with corresponding statements about men,”[xxi] which they argue prevents “implications of social dominance [or] subordination.”[xxii] Scholars describe Paul as stressing simply symbolic distinctions here;[xxiii] while the different expectations of women are underscored in the passage, the very necessity of a dress code for prophesying and praying women attests to the growing reality of equality. John Yoder explains this tension eloquently: “the retention of the veil when a woman would rise to speak in the congregation also become[s] a symbol of that double movement: first of the enfranchising impact of the gospel upon women, in that she may rise to speak and can function religiously as far more than simply a member of the household of her father or husband, and secondly of her acceptance of the order of society within which her role is to be lived out.”[xxiv]
The next passage, in which Paul insists upon female silence and submission in church, provides a confusing contradiction to the earlier comment. If women are not permitted to speak in church, why did Paul lay out earlier the complicated reasoning for how they should cover their heads when they engage in prophesying and praying? For this reason, and because “nowhere else in the authentic epistles does [Paul] speak in such authoritarian tone as in the words ‘it is not permitted,’”[xxv] some have suggested that 1 Corinthians 14:33-36 is not authentically Pauline, but rather a later interpolation in the tradition of the Pastorals.[xxvi] Because a thorough consideration of the authorship of these verses is beyond the realm of this paper, it is prudent here to assume Pauline authorship, if only for the sake of argument. If the passage was indeed penned by Paul, it is difficult to contest the obvious sexism it implies. However, given Paul’s tradition of honoring and valuing women, seen both in Galatians and in his greetings to multiple female church leaders throughout his epistles, it is possible to interpret these Corinthians verses as an unfortunately sexist, but albeit pragmatic measure created by Paul to protect this particular established community from accusations of “Christian madness.” As Fiorenza explains, “it is not theology but concern for decency and order which determines Paul’s regulation concerning the behavior of pneumatic women and men in the worship service of the community.”[xxvii] Meeks agrees that “Paul’s prevailing concern is with order,” arguing that, according to Paul, “functional distinctions which belong to [the early Christian] world may [only] be disregarded so long as the results lead to the ‘building up’ of the community.”[xxviii]
Because of the obvious contradictions and nuance contained in Paul’s epistles, his legacy on the issue of women is difficult to parse out. What can be said, however, is that Paul took extra care always in speaking on the status of women in the church. He may not have advocated immediate social change,[xxix] but his “devotion to […] eschatological (or spiritual) egalitarianism”[xxx] is hard to refute. It is likely that Paul may have gone further in his campaign for women’s rights in the church had it not been for the social and practical necessities of his day; his letters demonstrate his being caught between a drive for the new and radical and the need for older and more traditional structures to sustain the creation and success of his first-century religious organization.[xxxi] Fiorenza explains, “Paul wanted to maintain the tension between the new and the old, the age to come and this age. On the one hand, the old hierarchy associated with men and women, slaves and free had been overcome; on the other, wholesale emancipation from societal constraints is illusionary enthusiasm that hinders the advancement of the gospel and threatens the unity of the church.”[xxxii]
Because the New Testament is a nearly two thousand year-old text, its perspective on social issues may appear outdated and, yes, oppressive to a modern audience. The exclusion of female leadership in the Gospels and the discriminatory rules set out in 1 Corinthians present a Christian worldview less radical and gender-inclusive than many contemporary liberals might hope. Because of societal pressure, the authors of the New Testament were forced to strike a balance between the more feminist and egalitarian spirit inspired by Jesus’ ministry and the necessary constraints of first-century society. In considering the Gospels and the Pauline epistles, scholars, church leaders, and lay people alike must begin to view the text of the New Testament, not just a theological document, but a historical one as well, and to consider the proclamations of Paul and the other seemingly sexist characteristics of the Bible as products of their time, necessary elements in the creation of the church, but never the once-and-for-all position of the Christian faith. The future of women in the church is in the hands of those who study and reinterpret the text we Christians hold so dear. As Fiorenza explains, “we will either transform Biblical history and religion into a new liberating future, or continue to be subject [forever] to its patriarchal tyranny.”[xxxiii]
[i] Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:9, Luke 24, John 20:1.
[ii] Stagg, Evelyn, and Frank Stagg. Woman in the World of Jesus. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978, 123 and Fuchs, Esther. “Moses/Jesus/Women: Does the New Testament Offer a Feminist Message.” Cross Currents 49.4 (1999): 469.
[iii] Stagg, Evelyn, and Frank Stagg, 124.
[iv] Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 7, John 12.
[v] Luke 10.
[vi] Luke 8, Luke 13, among others.
[vii] John 8.
[viii] John 4.
[ix] Fuchs, Esther. “Moses/Jesus/Women: Does the New Testament Offer a Feminist Message.” Cross Currents 49.4 (1999): 469.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid., 463.
[xiii] Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston: Beacon, 1983, 137.
[xiv] Ibid.,138.
[xv] Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983, 211.
[xvi] Krister Stendahl, The Bible and the Role of Women (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 33.
[xvii] Boucher, Madeleine. “Some Unexplored Parallels to 1 Cor 11,11-12 and Gal 3,28: The NT on the Role of Women.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 31.1 (1969): 57.
[xviii] Ibid., 57.
[xix] Ibid., 56.
[xx] Meeks, Wayne A. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.” History of Religions 13.3 (1974): 206.
[xxi] Allison, Robert W. “Let Women Be Silent in the Churches (1 Cor. 14.33b-36): What Did Paul Really Say, and What Did It Mean?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 10.32 (1988): 32.
[xxii] Ibid.
[xxiii] Ibid., and Meeks, Wayne A. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.” History of Religions 13.3 (1974): 202.
[xxiv] Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972, 185.
[xxv] Allison, Robert W., 43.
[xxvi] Brown, Raymond, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. London: G. Chapman, 1988, 812.
[xxvii] Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, 33.
[xxviii] Meeks, Wayne A. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.” History of Religions 13.3 (1974): 202.
[xxix] Schottroff, Luise. Let the Oppressed Go Free: Feminist Perspectives on the New Testament. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993, 26.
[xxx] Allison, Robert W., 29.
[xxxi] Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. “Discipleship and Patriarchy: Early Christian Ethics in a Feminist Theological Perspective.” The Annual Society of Christian Ethics 2 (1982): 150.
[xxxii] Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, 207.
[xxxiii] Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. “Discipleship and Patriarchy: Early Christian Ethics in a Feminist Theological Perspective,” 150.
To Marvelous Light 