Women in Early Christianity

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The most fitting word with which to describe the Church Father’s attitude toward women is ambivalence. It is important to note that both men and women were God’s creation. However, the society has perceived women as weak human beings both mind and character. In contrast there are women who have displayed dauntless courage, undertook prodigious feats of scholarship.

The fact that in I Corinthians 2, Paul calls men “the image of God” but does not so designate women was taken by the Fathers to mean women lacked some essential quality males shared with the Godhead.

Most of the research on women in early Christianity has grown out of the contemporary debate over the ministry and priesthood of women, with the result that the literature is heavily weighted in favor of first – century Christianity.

Perhaps the single largest category of studies on women in early Christianity has been that devoted to the attitudes towards women, and the roles and status in the Pauline communities, particularly as evidenced by the letters of Paul.

The first letter to timothy, probably written in the second century, is believed by many biblical scholars to be the work not of Paul but of someone influenced by Paul’s teaching. In addition to a lengthy discussion about widows, deacons, and bishops, the letters contains what can be seen as the most negative statements in the New Testament about women.

Women are told that they are not to teach or exercise authority over men, but to keep silence. The author uses contemporary Jewish interpretation of the fall – that it was caused by Eve – as the basis for these limitations. The Didascana Apostolorum, a set of instructions ordering the ritual and moral life of the church as well as its policy, was probably composed in northern Syria in the beginning of the third century.

It lays down, for example, a liturgy for public penance, for rules for the election of a bishop, procedures for the ordination of priests, and moral instruction. Of interest here is its provision for the appointment of women as deaconesses. They are to be helpers to the bishop, appointed particularly for a ministry to women.

The church is instructed to use them as visitors to Christian women in non – Christian homes and as assistants in the baptismal ritual, anointing the heads of women and receiving them from the water.

Women when widowed were entitled to the support of the church if they were sober, chaste, pious, and the wives of only one husband. They were not to discuss doctrine lest they misconstrue it.

The church, in fact, was not to allow any woman to teach. Such teaching, the document argues, would be contrary to the example set by Jesus and the biblical injunction that women be subjected to men. Widows furthermore were to remain within the confines of their homes to pray for the church.

The apostle Paul has been the principal target of those who accuse the Christian churches of having taught the subordination of women to men and of having thereby sort of canonized this subordination. The accusation is based on certain passages in Paul’s letters which are set apart and isolated from the context of Paul’s vision of the church.

The vision of koinonia, communion of all men and women who, by the Spirit, have in baptism been immersed into death of Christ in order to participate also in his resurrection. The target texts are mainly the following:

Ephesians 5: 21 – 32 which establishes an analogy between the union of husband and wife in marriage with the union between Christ and the church;
I Corinthians 11: 3 – 15 which seems to establish a descending hierarchy with the union between Christ and the church;
I Corinthians 11: 3 – 15 which seems to establish a descending hierarchy from God to man and from man to woman;
I Corinthians 14: 34 with the famous injunction “the women should keep silent in the churches,” an injunction that is taken up again in I Timothy 2: 11 – 15.

A detailed exegesis of these texts would go beyond the limits of this study. The catholic scholar, Annie Jaubert, has in any case already done this, and her conclusions have been taken up and everybody by Professor Veselin Kesich, of St. Vladmir’s orthodox seminary, crestwood, new York. I shall make full use of the works of these two new testaments scholars.

We must first of all note the specific character of these texts. They are pastoral exhortations addressed to a precise milieu that the apostle intends to evangelize.

These men and women have been baptized into Christ, but they have still to learn, over and over again, to live according to the spirit of Christ in the concrete conditions of their existence, to harmonize their lives with the appeal that they have received, “with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love” (Eph 4: 1 – 3).

This naturally concerns in particular the very important realm of marriage and conjugal life. Just like every other part of Christian existence, interwoven as it is with diverse personal relations, marriage must be set in the context of the mystery of Christ.

Therefore the instruction concerning marriage is preceded by a general exhortation in which the following statements must be understood: “be filled with the Spirit………singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart….be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ ” (Eph 5: 19 – 21). By omitting this prologue, we misinterpreting all of St. Paul’s teaching on marriage.

In I Corinthians 14:34 is considered by some exegetes to be a latter addition to Paul’s original text. However that may be, this passage does not aim at condemning women to silence in worship services of the church.

Such an interpretation has been held by many for a long time, but it is in contradiction with chapter 2 of the same letter. How could Paul, on the other hand, invite women to dress decently when they prophesy in the church assembly and on the other, forbid them to speak?

The famous mulieri taceant, as understood by John Chrysostom, was aimed only at the disorderly chatter of certain women or perhaps the excessively exuberant manifestations of their piety that risked creating disorder. A great number of women are named in Paul’s letters and in acts as being his co – workers.

Although it is sometimes difficult to know just exactly what their ministry consisted of, these women played an important role in building up and in the life of the Pauline communities. The couples Prisca and Aquilas, the wife always being named first, is the typical example of this collaboration.

In Timothy, Paul or one of his disciples acting in his name takes up the problem of women’s dress in the liturgical assembly which was apparently agitating some people and provoking criticisms and discussions.

Repeating the injunction of I Corinthians 14:34 and justifying it by a rabbinic exegesis of the second creation story and Eve’s culpability, the author adds, “Yet the woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty” (I Tim 2:15).

He is obviously not trying to make biological maternity women’s sole vocation but rather to honor her in the function that is hers alone; bringing children into the world. The point is directed against certain heretical Gnostics who disparaged sex, marriage, and procreation.

The acts of Thecla are a legendary account of the adventures of Thecla, a woman converted to the Christian faith through the preaching of the apostle Paul. Paul himself appears on the fringes of the story, as a socially disruptive evangelist who converts women to a life of strict asceticism and sexual renunciation, much to the chagrin of their husbands and friends.

Thecla is portrayed as the daughter of a woman named Theocleia and the fiancée of a prominent citizen of the city of Iconium, Thamyris. Listening to Paul as he preaches his message of chastity, Thecla becomes enthralled and decides to become Paul’s follower, renouncing her family and abandoning her fiancée.

In response, Thamyris has Paul arrested. When Thecla then refuses to fulfill her social obligation of marriage, she is condemned to be burned at the stake. But she is miraculously delivered from martyrdom and joins up with Paul on his journeys.

In conclusion, the scriptures are a collection of texts from various sources and reflect all the rich variety of human situations. It is therefore not possible to find in them a simple and uniform model for the relationship between man and woman in their identity or otherness.

Even less are we asked to follow literally the Old Testament regulations in this area, regulations that were the expression of the Word of God for milieu that is no longer ours.

We are called upon rather to grasp the spirit of these texts underneath the letter and to uncover the dynamic purpose which constitutes their unity and which also supplies to our own situation. In trying to make the scriptures a living reality for today, we do not mean to make it say simply what we want to hear.

Works Cited

Behr-Sigel, Elisabeth. The ministry of women in the Church. Rome: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990.

Grenz, Stanley James and Denise Muir Kjesbo. Women in the church: a biblical theology of women in ministry. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

Jewett, Paul King. The ordination of women: an essay on the office of Christian ministry. London: Eerdmans, 1980.

MacHaffie, Barbara J. Readings in her story: women in Christian tradition. New York: Fortress Press, 1992.

McInerney, Maud Burnett. Eloquent virgins from Thecla to Joan of Arc. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

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Women in Early Christianity

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