Gender – Good Question

Did God not want to be a woman?

Q. Why is Jesus male? Are women less? Is it embarrassing to be a woman? Could you imagine how a lot of us as women feel? If he is not, why does every man act like God front of women and Bible support him? So why didn’t God just vanquish us? We are not deserve to live. Even God doesn’t want to be a woman. Please help, I am Orthodox Christian, but I’m just that close to lose my faith.

God had to come to earth either as a man or a woman. But even though Jesus was a man, he showed great respect for women. Jesus was born of a woman, and he was known for the respect that he showed his mother. Even on the cross, he made sure that she would be cared for after his death.

Jesus taught women at a time when the other rabbis refused to teach women. He said that the women who followed him were his sisters.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared first to women. He told them to spread the good news of his resurrection. So Jesus chose women to be the first messengers about his resurrection.

Jesus protected women from abuses of the practice of divorce. He warned men not to look at women lustfully.

So if you are getting the impression that God does not value women, that is not coming from the teaching and example of Jesus. It is coming from men who are not following the teaching and example of Jesus. Pray for these men, that they will become more like the Savior they say they believe in.

But know that you as a women are created in God’s image. The Bible says of the creation of humans, “In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” So both men and women reflect the image of God. Jesus welcomes and values both men and women as his followers. He values you!

Why was a woman “unclean” for twice as long after having a baby girl?

Q. Why did God consider a woman unclean longer when she had given birth to a girl than a boy? Does it have to do with the Fall?

No, the law in Leviticus that says that a mother is ceremonially unclean for seven days after giving birth if her baby is a boy, but for fourteen days if her baby is a girl, has nothing to do with the Fall.

It’s actually a misunderstanding of biblical teaching to believe that the woman was primarily responsible for the Fall and so women in general are in some way more guilty in God’s eyes than men. I will first address this concern, and then I will share what I think is the real reason for this law.

Paul does write in his first letter to Timothy that “Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” However, when Paul says this, he is actually correcting a false teaching that was circulating in Ephesus and nearby areas. This teaching held that a deceptive god had created the physical world, including Adam, and that this god had pretended to him to be the supreme God. But Eve, or Zoe, or the pre-existing female principle, had opened Adam’s eyes to see that physical matter was a prison for the spirit (as was widely held in Greco-Roman philosophy) and that the god who had made it couldn’t really be the supreme God. Paul responds that Adam was not deceived, the Creator was the true God; the woman was deceived by the serpent to believe that God was somehow holding back on them or misleading them. I discuss all of this in much greater length in a series of four posts on this blog that begin here. Those posts link to an even more detailed discussion (17 posts), which begins here, on another of my blogs.

We need to appreciate that Paul speaks extensively in Romans and 1 Corinthians about how it was the transgression of Adam that brought sin and death into the world. He contrasts the deadly consequences of Adam’s disobedience with the saving effects of Christ’s obedient death. He says, for example, that “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,” and that while “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people,” “just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.” If Eve was actually responsible for the Fall, and Adam basically was not, then Paul’s arguments here have no force.

The Genesis account itself tells us that Adam was present with Eve while she was speaking with the serpent, and that they ate of the fruit together at the same time. So we should understand the Fall as something for which Adam and Eve were jointly responsible. Anything in the Bible that seems to suggest that God regards women differently from men therefore must have some other explanation.

We can typically find this explanation in the ancient historical context. For example, a little bit later in Leviticus than the law you’re asking about, the issue is addressed of how much should be paid to redeem a person who is vowed to the Lord. I won’t get into the whole background to that practice; let me simply observe that Leviticus specifies that the equivalent value for a man is fifty shekels of silver, while for a woman it’s thirty shekels. Does this mean that women are less valuable in God’s eyes than men?

No, it doesn’t. When we consider the entire passage, we find that these are the values for adults in the prime of life. By contrast, men over sixty are to be redeemed for fifteen shekels and women over sixty for ten, while children and teenagers are to be redeemed for twenty shekels if male and for ten shekels if female. We see that what is actually in view is the value of the person’s labor. And in this pre-industrial society, that was measured in terms of physical strength. That is why older men and teenage boys are redeemed for less than full-grown men; they’re not considered less valuable intrinsically. (Babies and children under five, incidentally, are redeemed for five shekels if male and for three shekels if female, reflecting their future labor potential.) So once we understand the historical context, we recognize that no value judgment against women is being expressed.

To understand the background to the specific law you’re asking about, we need to first to appreciate what “unclean” means. It doesn’t mean “dirty” or anything negative along those lines. Rather, it’s a reflection of one of the two central thematic concepts in Leviticus. The default state of any created thing is that it is common and clean. “Common” means that something has not been set apart for a special purpose, that is, it has not been declared “holy.” If a thing is “clean,” however, it can be set apart and made holy; if it is “unclean,” it cannot, until it is made clean again. We might think of cleanness as “eligibility” for the special purposes of holiness.

As we look at the various laws regarding cleanness in Leviticus, we see that it has especially to do with the boundaries of the human body. If those boundaries are compromised in some way, then a person needs to restore them in order to become clean again. Skin diseases, for example, create a break in the outer boundary of the body. Some foods can cause uncleanness by passing into the body through its boundaries. And certainly having a baby represents a breach in the boundaries of the body, because someone who was on the inside moves to the outside.

In cases of uncleanness, Leviticus provides for a person to return to a state of cleanness after the situation that has compromised the boundaries is resolved, and this is typically accomplished through ceremonial washing, offerings, and a time of waiting, after which the person returns to the community. Since, for some reason, the waiting period after childbirth is twice as long for a baby girl as for a baby boy, the question becomes, “In what way would her birth represent twice the breach in the boundaries of the body?”

The Bible doesn’t give us the answer to that question specifically, but I would like to offer a couple of suggestions that would reflect the biblical culture. First, in ancient Hebrew society, a woman who got married moved out of her “father’s house” and went to live with her husband’s family. The double waiting period may have been intended to allow the mother to come to terms with the fact that her daughter might well “leave” her twice, first by being born, and then by getting married. (I often think of the waiting period as an opportunity for a person who was formerly “unclean” to settle into a new identity. We can recognize this as one of the purposes of the maternity leaves that modern societies offer; they’re not just for making practical arrangements to adjust to life with a baby.)

Another possibility would be that the baby girl was recognized as a potential mother herself, and so when she was born, in a sense her own child was also born with her. That would also represent twice the breach.

However, this is admittedly speculative, since, as I said, the Bible does not tell us the answer explicitly. So let me just conclude by observing one more significant aspect of the law here: The same offering is specified for either a boy or a girl. If having a baby girl really made the mother more guilty before God, then a greater offering would be required in that case.

Women in positions of leadership

Q. What do you think is women’s role in society in terms of positions of leadership?

I’ve devoted a series of four posts on this blog to the question of what the Bible teaches about women in leadership roles in the church. That series starts here.

Those posts are actually a summary of a longer series (17 posts, 10,000 words) that I did on the same subject for a separate blog. You can find that series here.

The bottom line for me is that there should be no restrictions within the church on what women can do, simply because they are women. And since I believe that the church is called to “live the life of the future in the present” (as Gordon Fee puts it), that is, to model the values of God’s coming kingdom even now, then I also feel that the church should help the surrounding society recognize and empower the gifts of women as well as men. This means encouraging them to fill whatever roles they can be most effective in and make the greatest contribution to the society, including leadership roles.

Are Christian men not supposed to cry?

A reader of my recent post about the Head Covering Movement also read a similar post on the Wartburg Watch about “Head Coverings on the Rise.” It explained how certain groups are promoting head coverings in an effort to distinguish male and female identities.

My reader was concerned to see comments there by Tim Bayly, senior pastor of ClearNote Church in Bloomington, Indiana and former Executive Director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, claiming that signs of “femininity in men” included “doubting themselves, using hedge words and phrases, wearing jewelry, abdicating authority, shedding tears,” and “being vain in their appearance.” My reader asked:

Wow – disturbing to see “shedding tears” listed as a violation of men’s roles!! How can they reconcile that with Jesus??

This is an excellent question, and a response to it provides a useful illustration of how the ideas of male and female roles that some groups are promoting owe much more to cultural influences than to biblical ones. A similar study could be done of some of Bayly’s other signs of “femininity in men,” as well as of his signs of “masculinity in women.” (These include “working out”–does God not want women to be physically fit? Even the so-called Proverbs 31 Woman is praised because “her arms are strong for her tasks”!) But a single study of praiseworthy biblical men shedding tears will have to suffice here.

First, as my reader observed, Jesus himself shed tears openly. Not only did he weep over the death of his dear friend Lazarus (even though he was just about to raise him from the dead!), he wept openly when he saw Jerusalem from a distance and sensed its impending fate–destruction at the hands of the Romans.

If we consider Jesus our example, as all Christian men and women are supposed to, then he must provide an illustration for both sexes of the freedom to express godly emotions openly. Indeed, as historic hymns illustrate, the tears Jesus shed on earth have long been understood as a consolation to all who still mourn here:

Jesus wept! those tears are over,
But His heart is still the same;
Kinsman, Friend, and elder Brother,
Is His everlasting Name.
Savior, who can love like Thee,
Gracious One of Bethany?

When the pangs of trial seize us,
When the waves of sorrow roll,
I will lay my head on Jesus,
Refuge of the troubled soul.
Surely, none can feel like Thee,
Weeping One of Bethany!

But while Jesus, in his incarnation, is the supreme biblical example of a godly man, he is not the only praiseworthy man who weeps in the pages of Scripture:

• Esau, often held up as a “man’s man” in the Bible (“a skillful hunter, a man of the open country”), wept when Jacob stole his birthright, and he and Jacob wept together when they were reconciled.

• Jacob wept when he thought his favorite son Joseph had been killed. Joseph wept when he was reunited in Egypt with his brothers who had betrayed him and he discovered that they were repentant. (In fact, “he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it.”)

• When David and his men–tough guys all–discovered that the Amalekites had raided their city of Ziklag and carried off their families, they “wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep.” David and his friend Jonathan “wept together” when they were forced to part because of the violent jealousy of Jonathan’s father, King Saul.

• Nehemiah wept when he heard that Jerusalem still lay in ruins.

• Peter wept when he realized that he had betrayed Jesus.

• The elders of the church in Ephesus all wept as they said goodbye to Paul for the last time. (Apparently even church elders weeping together isn’t inappropriate, according to the Bible.)

Many other examples could be given, but the point should be clear by now. To suggest that there is any Scriptural basis for arguing that godly men shouldn’t cry overlooks a broad range of positive examples throughout the Bible, including most notably Jesus himself. If we are concerned about appropriate roles and identities for men and women, we need to be informed by God’s word about this, not by cultural assumptions.

Does the Bible tell women to wear head coverings?

I recently learned about the “Head Covering Movement” through a post asking about it on the Christians for Biblical Equality Facebook group. In response to this movement, I’d like to use this post to make clear what I believe is the biblical teaching on this subject:

Women who wear head coverings are choosing to do something that the Bible says they should always be free to choose.

But they are not doing something that the Bible commands all women to do.

This is the conclusion of a detailed study I made some years back with Laurie C. Hurshman on Paul’s teaching about the subject of head coverings in 1 Corinthians. The study was published in Christian Ethics Today and it was later reprinted in Priscilla Papers, the journal of Christians for Biblical Equality. I will summarize it here; you can read the longer version at the link just provided.

Paul’s assertion that “a woman ought to have exousia over her head” is the key statement in his teaching about head coverings, and the meaning of the word exousia is the key to understanding this statement.

Paul uses this term frequently in 1 Corinthians in both the noun form (exousia) and in the impersonal and personal verb forms (exesti and exousiazein, respectively). Everywhere else in the epistle, the term refers to authority exercised, specifically in the sense of “being able to do what one wishes.” (In the examples below, the English translations of this term are italicized.)

– When correcting the Corinthians for going to temple prostitutes, Paul says, “I have the right to do anything” (probably quoting the Corinthians’ slogan back to them) “—but I will not be mastered by anything. More literally, “I can do whatever I wish, but I will not have anything do whatever it wishes with me.”

– In the very next section of the letter, when discussing the Corinthians’ belief that it was somehow spiritual to abstain from sexual relations in marriage, Paul writes, “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” Again, more literally, “the wife does not have the right to do whatever she wishes with her own body, nor does the husband with his body, but they are to share their bodies with one another.”

– As Paul continues his discussion of marriage and addresses engaged persons, he says that the one who “is under no compulsion but has control over his own will” can postpone marriage. Once more, the reference is to one who has the freedom and the power to do what he wishes with his own will.

– When talking about food offered to idols, Paul acknowledges that those who are spiritually strong may eat this food without danger, but he immediately adds, “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” Exousia here means the freedom and ability to eat the food without stumbling.

– As Paul continues this discussion of food offered to idols, he uses the term exousia several times to describe his own rights as an apostle so that he can illustrate the principle of voluntarily giving up rights. He asks, “Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us? . . . If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?” But then he adds that “in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights.”

– Finally, in his discussion of the resurrection, Paul describes how Jesus will destroy every opposing “dominion, authority and power.” In this case exousia describes a being who exercises authority.

Since exousia means authority exercised consistently throughout 1 Corinthians, there’s no reason to believe that when Paul talks about head coverings, the same term means authority submitted to, without any qualifying language indicating that Paul has suddenly given it an opposite connotation.

No, Paul is saying that “a woman ought to have freedom of choice regarding her head,” as Gordon Fee translates this statement in his commentary on 1 Corinthians. In other words, she should be free to wear a head covering, or not, based on her own convictions before God.

The NIV translation is quite accurate here: “A woman ought to have authority over her own head.” By contrast, in my view, translations like the ESV, “A wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head,” badly miss the point. They turn a proclamation of freedom into a restriction. (The words “a symbol of” appear nowhere in the Greek; they have been added by the ESV translators.)

So why did this question arise in Corinth in the first place? I think it’s a reasonable deduction that if Paul is insisting on a woman’s freedom to wear a head covering if she wishes, it’s likely that the Corinthians were forbidding women to wear head coverings for some reason. (There’s a fuller discussion of one possible reason in the published version of our study and in my guide to Paul’s Journey Letters.)

But whatever the reason, since the essential point of Paul’s statement is freedom, it would be just as incorrect today for anyone to require women to wear head coverings as it was for the Corinthians to forbid this. The principle should be, as Paul wrote to the Romans about all such matters of individual conviction, “Each one should be fully convinced in her own mind.”

So if a woman feels that she is honoring God (and perhaps her husband, if she’s married) by wearing a head covering, no one should forbid or discourage this. But if a woman feels that she does not need to do this in order to honor God (or her husband), no one should require or even encourage this. But full information about the choice, based on a sound interpretation of the relevant biblical material, should be provided to all who are interested.

And then, “A woman should be free to wear a head covering, or not, based on her own convictions before God.”

“I do not permit a woman to give a man a white feather”

One concern may remain from my argument (developed starting with this post) that Paul’s apparently broadly restrictive comments in 1 Timothy actually have a narrower, local focus—that women representing a false teaching are not to argue with or authoritatively “correct” someone who is presenting the true teaching. While this may be the original context, Paul still says that women, as women, aren’t to relate to men, as men, in a particular way. So aren’t his restrictive comments universally applicable? If he had really only wanted to stop the spread of a false teaching, wouldn’t he just have said that no one (meaning either man or woman) was to advocate this specific false teaching?

An analogy from history may be helpful here. During the First World War, the “Order of the White Feather” was founded with the aim of shaming men into enlisting for military service by getting women to present them with a white feather, symbolic of cowardice, if they were not wearing a uniform. While the concern was local (context-specific in time and place), this was still an exercise in encouraging women, as women, to relate to men, as men, in a particular way. The women considered themselves to be acting on behalf of their sex in appealing to the bravery and chivalry of men to protect them and their country.

The “Order of the White Feather” soon became controversial and unpopular. Government officials who were actively promoting the war effort, civilians in military employ, and even soldiers who were out of uniform because they were home on leave were publicly accused of cowardice by being handed white feathers. Men who were not suited for military service may well have been shamed into enlisting and ultimately killed in situations where others might have survived. Vital industries were deprived of needed workers.

So we can easily imagine a factory owner, for example, issuing an order applicable on the factory premises such as, “I do not permit a woman to give a man a white feather.” Even though a local situation is in view, the order needs to be stated in such general terms because it concerns something that women are doing, as women, in relation to men, as men.

I believe the same thing was going on in first-century Ephesus. If the belief was that women were the physical origin and source of spiritual enlightenment for men, it makes sense that they were being encouraged, as women, to re-enact the role of Zoe/Eve in bringing spiritual enlightenment to men, as men, by correcting their supposedly mistaken view of the creation order. This explains why Paul would speak to a local situation in such general terms. And it shows that his statement does have a limited local focus, even though it is worded this way.

My conclusion, once again, is that the Bible does not say women can’t be in church-wide positions of teaching and authority.

Does the Bible say that women can’t teach or have authority over men? (Part 3)

In my last post I suggested that we can best understand what Paul says he doesn’t want women to do, when writing in 1 Timothy about teaching and authority, if we appreciate as clearly as possible what he does want them to do. For that, we need to look at the words he uses.

Paul uses two forms of the same Greek root. When he says that women should “learn in quietness,” he’s using the noun form, hēsuchia. When he says that women should “be quiet,” he uses the verb form, hēsuchazō.

When we look at all the ways that hēsuchia and hēsuchazō (as well as the adjective from the same root, hēsuchios) are used in the New Testament, we discover something interesting. (You can follow the whole word study in several posts starting here.) While the root sometimes describes complete silence, the absence of speech or sound, it more often describes a person refraining from saying something they otherwise might. In other words, it signifies that a person doesn’t object, or stops arguing.

One typical example is in the book of Acts. After the apostles in Jerusalem heard Peter’s explanation of why he preached the good news to Gentiles, “they fell silent, and they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life'” (ESV). Clearly this is not silence in the sense of no speech, because the apostles continue speaking. Rather, it means “they had no further objections,” as the NIV translates the phrase.

We know from Paul’s other letters that he does not want women literally to say nothing in gatherings of Jesus’ followers. He tells the Corinthians, for example, that each person in their community, without qualification, should have something to share in worship, and he specifically describes women praying and prophesying. So we need to recognize that in the passage we’re considering in 1 Timothy, and in the similar one in 1 Corinthians about women being “silent” (where Paul uses the synonym sigaō in place of hesuchazō), what Paul is actually saying is that women shouldn’t argue or object.

But what would women in particular have wanted to argue about or object to in this setting? I believe that Richard and Catherine Kroeger, in their book I Suffer Not a Woman, have correctly identified the point of dispute. It was the myth, prevalent in the Mediterranean world of Paul’s day, that the woman (Zoe or life in Greek, identified with Eve by syncretistic teachers) was created first and brought spiritual life to the man by showing him that the creator of the world was not the true, supreme God.

Paul’s comments here would be a correction of that myth. In other words, by saying “Adam was formed first,” Paul is actually countering the content of this false teaching. He’s not citing primogeniture as a reason why men should be in charge of women.

So what Paul does want women to do is “be quiet” or “not argue,” that is, not dispute this point, particularly in gatherings of the community. What he doesn’t want women to do is publicly and authoritatively “correct” a speaker, which they may have felt was a duty to their own gender. (I’ll talk about this more in my next post.)

In my view, Paul’s use here of the infinitives didaskein (“teach”) and authentein (“be in authority” [?]) together is well suited to convey the idea of public correction. The verb authentein appears only here in the New Testament, so we have no parallel uses that can confirm this is what the verb itself means. However, this kind of correction is described in Galatians, where Paul says that he “opposed Peter to his face . . . in front of them all.” The same kind of thing happens more privately when, as described in Acts, Priscilla and Aquila invite Apollos to their home and “explain the way of God to him more adequately.”

If this is really what Paul’s comments in 1 Timothy mean, then they have a specific, local focus: women representing this false teaching about the respective origins of men and women are not to argue with or authoritatively “correct” someone who is presenting the true teaching. (The example of Priscilla shows that Paul’s comments don’t even apply to women “correcting” men generally, but are limited to this specific issue.)

While many applications can be drawn for the present day from the way Paul addresses this situation in 1 Timothy, one application is not that no woman should be in a church-wide position of teaching or authority. When we understand the historical and literary context of Paul’s words, we realize that the Bible does not teach this.

Does the Bible say that women can’t teach or have authority over men? (Part 2)

In my last post I argued that we need to understand Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” as something more than an isolated proposition. When we do pay attention to its literary and historical context, one of the first things we notice is that Paul immediately gives a reason for saying this: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.”

So what? Why does it matter that Adam was formed first? Some have argued that Paul is invoking a principle of primogeniture, that is, the senior status and authority of the firstborn. Thomas Schreiner, for example, notes that Paul is alluding here to a passage in Genesis, which he says it’s one that “the Hebrew reader would be disposed to read . . . in terms of primogeniture,” implying a principle of male authority. Others have made similar arguments.

Now it is true that God establishes primogeniture as an important principle within Israelite society, which was supposed to be a model for the surrounding nations. Nevertheless, in his own inbreaking work of redemption, God repeatedly disregards this principle. For example, he chooses Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his ten older brothers, Manasseh over Ephraim, Gideon over his older brothers, David over his seven older brothers, and so forth. So why would God uphold primogeniture as a governing principle in the community of Jesus’ followers, which is the very embodiment of his inbreaking work of redemption in our world today? (Indeed, the book of Hebrews describes this community as the “church of the firstborn,” suggesting that all members share this status corporately.)

Since this initial consideration of the context doesn’t really account for Paul’s statement, I propose taking a different approach. Let’s read the entire sentence in which it appears. Our English translations don’t always bring this out, but this famous statement is not an entire sentence in itself, but part of a larger one. It’s actually a dependent clause within that sentence, not even its main point. (So it shouldn’t ever be used as an independent proposition.)

Paul says (in the NIV translation, but following the punctuation of major critical editions of the New Testament), “A woman should learn in quietness in full submission; I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” In other words, Paul is primarily asking women to do something (“learn in quietness,” “be quiet”), and he only describes what he doesn’t want them to do secondarily, to help explain what he does want them to do.

It seems to me, therefore, that we can best understand what Paul doesn’t want women to do by appreciating as clearly as possible what he does want them to do. I’ll take this up in my next post.

Does the Bible say that women can’t teach or have authority over men? (Part 1)

The prophetess Huldah answers the high priest Hilkiah’s questions about the Scriptures. Was she allowed to do this?

It’s not difficult to read between the lines of my study guides (to Paul’s Journey Letters or to Paul’s Prison Letters, for example) and recognize that I believe there should be no restrictions on what women can do in communities of Jesus’ followers. In the guides I acknowledge this as a question on which believers can legitimately differ, and I make every effort to explain both points of view so groups can discuss the issue amicably. But I think my personal sympathies are probably pretty clear.

I’d like to make them even clearer here. When a friend of mine saw this post in which Steve Holmes said that for him to defend the ministry of a woman like Phoebe Palmer “would be as ridiculous as a worm trying to defend a lion,” my friend commented how valuable it was for her to hear male biblical scholars affirming the ministry of women. And so, particularly to encourage women who feel called to ministry, I want to add my own (male) voice in support of their calling.

In recent months, at the request of some friends, I’ve been blogging privately on this topic so we could discuss it together confidentially. We’ve reached a point of resolution in our conversations, and so with their agreement, I’d now like to share my reflections publicly here. The material from this formerly private blog is too long (17 posts, nearly 10,000 words) to appear in its entirely in this venue, so I’ll summarize it instead. But I’ll provide links along the way to those fuller discussions, for those who are interested in pursuing specific points in more detail. If you’d like to see it all (except for the original participants’ comments, which have been removed), it starts with this post.

Those discussion are more wide-ranging, but in these posts I’d like to focus more narrowly on the biblical statement that is most often taken to support restrictions on what women can do. Paul writes in 1 Timothy, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” Doesn’t that settle the question?

Actually, whether it does depends on what the Bible is and what we’re supposed to do with it. If the Bible is essentially a collection of propositions, and if we’re supposed to isolate and collect these propositions in order to answer questions that we pose to the text ourselves about belief and practice, then this statement speaks pretty clearly and decisively to the question, “Should there be any restrictions on what women can do in communities of Jesus’ followers?”

Some further statements that apparently take the same position, although less explicitly, can be brought in for support (for example, “The head of every woman is man”). Other biblical statements that seem inconsistent with this working conclusion can be accounted for somehow (“Deborah . . . was leading Israel at that time . . . and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided”). But other passages aside, if we take this approach to the Bible, the statement in 1 Timothy is the definitive one that seems to settle the matter.

The problem is, the Bible is not a collection of propositions that we are supposed to isolate and collect in order to answer questions that we pose ourselves. The Bible is instead a library of complete works, of greatly varying kinds, that as a whole tell the grand story of God’s initiatives over the course of human history to redeem fallen humanity, culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ. (Seen in this way, the Bible has many more questions for us than we have for it, starting with, “What are you doing to join in this grand story?”)

Because this is the true character of the Bible, no biblical statement is true or valid in isolation. Each one appears in the historical and literary context of an entire work of literature, itself placed within a grand overarching story, and so no biblical statement makes sense in isolation. If we really want to understand what Paul meant by his statement in the first letter to Timothy and what its implications are for us today, we need to situate it in its historical and literary context. That is what I will seek to do starting in my next post.