Questioning: Women Roles In the Church

Questioning: Women Roles In the Church

Does the Bible really say what we think it says about women?

One of the things that I greatly enjoy doing is asking questions. I love testing boundaries and pushing on the status quo. Over the past few months I have written many blog posts in what I have chosen to call the “Questioning” series. These are all posts about questioning various aspects of church culture, from the way we view evangelism to whether we are truly welcoming. Just because something was doesn’t mean things should be.

A fair warning, this week I want to question something that may get a bit close to home for some of you. With this being Mother’s Day week… I want to take a look at the way the Church has viewed women roles. This has historically been a hot topic within church circles, resulting in many being hurt (on both sides of the debate). That said, it is not my intention here to tell you what to think. My hope is that I can invite you into a larger view of the world. So often issues that we think are black and white are really shades of grey. It is my opinion that this is one of those issues. If you come out the other side and disagree with me on this… that is totally fine.

Historically the view has been that women should be excluded from specific roles in the church, namely leading, preaching, and teaching adults. Some churches are more strict on this than others, but traditionally women are limited to serving in hospitality, children, and sometimes music.

A lot of this is because of what Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:11-15: “Women should learn quietly and submissively.  I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly.  For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve.  And it was not Adam who was deceived by Satan. The woman was deceived, and sin was the result. But women will be saved through childbearing, assuming they continue to live in faith, love, holiness, and modesty.”

According to Paul… women should sit quietly while the men do all the teaching and leading. They should know their place. The problem is… I don’t think this verse means what we often assume it means. The truth is the New Testament doesn’t even follow this teaching.

If you want to hold the traditional view that women should be excluded from teaching/preaching/leading… than you have to reconcile what we see women actually doing in the early church. There are many examples of women in the early church leading.

One that jumps out to me is Priscilla in Ephesus. Acts 18:24-26 says this: “Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John.  He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.”

What is going on here? You have a learned and educated man who had a stellar reputation… who was corrected by a woman. The fact that Luke includes her in this is important! Socially, this was not the norm. There must have been something about the early church that empowered someone like Priscilla to speak the powerful truth of Jesus to someone as highly regarded as Apollos.

She isn’t alone. Lydia in Philippi is another great example! (Check out her story in Acts 16:11-15). A wealthy woman, she ends up being one of the first believers in what goes on to be regarded as one of the healthiest churches in the first century… and don’t miss the fact that she played a HUGE rule in getting things started. I don’t think it is a far fetched idea to believe that she taught and preached about what the Risen Jesus had done in her life.

There are several other cases (Junia, Mary, the way Jesus treats women throughout his ministry, the story of the empty tomb just to name a few). There are tons of things online you can read about many of these stories. For time and space… let’s move on.

The question now becomes… what on earth do we do with what Paul writes to Timothy in light of what was really going on in the first century church? Was Paul wrong? I wouldn’t go that far.

The Bible is complex. One of the frustrations I often have as someone who studies this thing is that we don’t always get the full picture. The New Testament is filled with letters written by an individual to a group of people in response to a question, situation, or problem. The frustrating part is, we don’t always know the other side of the story. So when Paul is writing to Timothy here in 1 Timothy… we don’t get the full story from his one sided correspondence. We are often tempted to oversimplify a complicated thing to help make sense of it. That isn’t to say we throw it all out because it doesn’t apply… but I think we need to gain a larger view of the entire scope before we make sweeping judgements. To help, it sometimes helps us to look at history.

Is there a chance here that Paul is writing to a specific situation looking through the lens of a first century man? Scot McKnight, a widely respected New Testament scholar, writes this about why Paul might be writing these things: “The big point Paul makes is not to ‘keep women silent’ but to ‘teach the women.’” and later he sums up the whole situation with: “a new group of Roman women were advocating counter-Christian ideas. Paul was concerned about the reputation of the Gospel and the respectability of Christian women for fear they might be associated with the offensive side of such behaviors. So Paul turns to the women in Ephesus - in particular, to a group of young widows. He urges them to live a life of holiness and to learn before they start teaching.'“ (These quotes are from his book “The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible”). The gist of it is… there were women in the first century who were creating chaos and Paul is concerned the gospel could end up getting thrown into the mess.

This mindset helps clear up a lot of the inconsistencies. We can easily see how what Paul writes to Timothy and the way women actually behaved within the early church go hand in hand. One thing is clear throughout the New Testament: The Jesus Way is constantly upsetting the cultural norm that said women were nothing more than property. Within the Jesus Way women were valued, celebrated, and held in high regard. Part of the amazing thing about the Jesus Way is that in Him people find purpose (all people, not just men). The big question is: is what Paul writes in 1 Timothy meant to be a permanent thing for all women… or a specific thing written to a specific situation? Hence why this ends up being a whole lot more gray than black and white.

Speaking personally, seeing that this issue is a gray area… I would rather lean on the side of empowering people to live out the giftedness that they were created with. That is what it means to find life in Christ. Whether man or woman… let’s celebrate people using their gift to point people to Jesus.