Women in the NT Church: The Movement Morphs into the Institution

 

Writing for Bible History Daily (biblicalarchaeology.org), Megan Sauter references an article by Holly Beers of Westmont College in which Beers surveys the first century culture that restricted women in the emerging New Testament Church. Both articles were too short to do justice to a topic which has inspired thousands of books. There isn’t one debate point on the topic that hasn’t already been chopped, baked, fried, and diced to oblivion. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Sauter’s spinoff on Beers. Sauter pointed out 5 ways that women served in the NT church: a] They served at the Passover meals, b] they offered prayers, c] they led hymns (1 Cor. 14:26), d] they read and interpreted Scripture (Acts 18:24-26), e] they performed acts of charity, ministering to widows, the sick, and those in prison. Actually, pretty bland stuff.

One of several NT passages that has caused such turmoil among theologians is 1 Tim. 2:8-15, in which Paul, or someone writing in his name, makes it very clear that all women are permanently under the rule of men because the inerrant narrative in Genesis reveals that Eve was created second, and she sinned first, suggesting that women are weaker than men and were never absolved of the sin of opening the gates of hell on earth. So, men are enjoined to pray, lifting holy hands, and women are to be restrained and modest in their apparel. If you believe that this word came directly from the mind of the Spirit of God, it follows that women must be painfully suppressed until the coming of Christ, and every woman who exerts any kind of authority like teaching or administration lives in sin, as do the men who allowed it. Of course, a great many authors have pointed to other passages that subvert that rigid interpretation.

I’m not going to rehash all the literary pretzels that authors have created to keep women in eternal bondage or to release them to ministry. I know the nature of God, I know Mesopotamian history, I can check the Hebrew and Greek with my resources. I did think of a few things that Beers and Sauter could have pointed out if they’d had more space to do so. Of course, I’m not the first to point these events out.

A] The prophecy in Joel 2 about the coming of the Spirit included women. This one is worth repeating in full because it contradicts all scriptures in the NT that silence women:

“And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.
And also on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days. (Joel 2:28-29)

B] The first person to preach to the Gentile city of Samaria was a woman. (John 4:1-26)

C] The first person to really understand that Christ would die was a woman. (Luke 7:36-50; John 11:1-3)

D] The last people to see Christ on the cross as He died included women. (John 19:26-27)

E] The first person to preach or announce the resurrection was a woman. (John 20:1-10)

F] There were women in the upper room when the tongues of fire fell on the disciples. (Acts 2:1-4)

“And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.
And also on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days. (Joel 2:28-29)

G] The first person in Europe to accept Christ and open her home to Paul’s preaching was Lydia, a business woman. (Acts 16:11-15)

H] In Megan Sauter’s list of ways that women participated in the NT church she mentions leading in prayer, but she misses something far more important, something that is supported by the Joel prophecy. Women prophesied. The culture and Paul demanded that they pray and prophesy with their head covered, whereas men were to pray with head uncovered, thus reminding women of their ultimate and eternal submission, but they did prophesy. (1 Cor. 11:2-12). Philip the Evangelist had 4 daughters that had the gift. (Acts 21:7-9)

The problem with women prophesying is that it is freighted with authority. A prophet may bring correction or command a different approach to a situation. They channel the Spirit of God. I’ll share a story about that.

When I was attending an Assembly of God Bible College in Sacramento, CA, a fellow student and I got into a discussion about the “women passages.” Rueben was from a very patriarchal church in Romania, and he shared this narrative. A woman in his church had the gift of prophecy and word of knowledge. She would occasionally approach people with a word from God. The pastor finally told her in no uncertain words that she was exerting too much authority and needed to stop, so she obeyed…for about a year. One day she went to the pastor and said, “You aren’t just suppressing me, you are quenching the Holy Spirit. If you don’t undo this command that you’ve given me, you will die in the next two weeks and your brains will be smeared upon the wall.” Well, the pastor wasn’t having any of that. He ignored her warning. One day within the time frame, he was walking on a street with a sidewalk and wall. A car veered off the road and crushed him against the wall, literally smearing his brains across it. (See also "The Ground Beneath Her Feet)

What a conundrum for the church! You have pastors and theologians and heads of denominations saying women can’t be pastors and can’t teach men because the Bible is the unchanging, inerrant word of God. No one dared to disagree (except me). The Catholic Church agrees. And yet, you have saints like Catherine and Theresa of Avila speaking prophetic truth to kings and popes. The male students in my Bible College were thoroughly confused. Trinity Life Bible College insisted that the Bible is inerrant, yet the male teachers often had grandmothers, aunts, sisters or wives with ministries, spiritual gifts, or secular jobs with a lot of responsibility. Some of the college teachers were women. I was one of them after graduation. The women often had short hair and the men long. No one covered or uncovered their head to pray or prophesy.

No one got struck by lightning.

So Paul was right when he said, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

In the books of Acts through Jude, we see the Movement of the emergent church—robust, inclusive, anointed—turn into the Institution of the Church. Rules, restrictions, hierarchies, titles, slanders, envy, heresies, and competition for status and recognition. These things are all necessary because humans are what we are and we need rules, tenets, officially sanctioned leaders, and boundaries.

As long as it all comes under the umbrella of love, it will all turn out OK.

This post can also be read at https://theologylighthouse.substack.com/publish/post/162791170?back=%2Fpublish%2Fposts and at https://medium.com/@janetkatherineapplebysmith/women-in-the-nt-church-the-movement-morphs-into-the-institution-a6074c0b747f.