Second of four pieces reflecting on some of the cultural threads at work in the mistreatment of women, particularly within the church. Read part 1.

Any theological discussion should wrestle with the foundational relevant Scripture before going much further. In the case of how women are regarded in the church, this starts at the very beginning.

There, we see man and woman clearly intertwined, right down to these two words themselves (in the Hebrew). In a world that did not yet know sin, the first man defined the first woman with a poetic exultation: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman [‘ishshah], because she was taken out of Man [iysh]“ (Gen. 2:23). Whatever the relationship between men and women that emerges through the rest of Scripture, the opening of our story marks us out as inseparable yet distinct parts of a revelation of God’s image, set apart from the rest of the animals, fulfilling and completing His creative work.

The language in this passage is revealing and instructive. All other men forever will be born of women, but this first woman is formed by God from the man. When she is revealed to Adam, his hymn of praise says that she is of him, to be with him as companion and “help [‘ezer, a word most often used in the Old Testament to refer to God Himself]” (vv. 18, 20), not for him as a subordinate laborer (as the animals).

In context, God brings forth woman in the midst of His commissioning of man to cultivate and care for the garden. He purposes to provide completion for the man, and then to show him his need by bringing all the rest of the creatures before him to name and describe (vv. 18-20). Once the woman enters the picture, they are naked and unashamed (v. 25), in respect and awe for this harmonic revelation of the image of God. We are told, as well, that this is the foundation of marriage the rest of us (2:24). In the flow of this text, it is almost as though God creates woman to cultivate and care for man, changing him for the better, drawing out his fullest flourishing without deforming his nature, just as man is called to care for the garden.

If, then, there is any allowance in Scripture for a consumeristic relationship between the genders, it is not in Genesis.

In the New Testament, the go-to text that describes with relative clarity (in contrast to the hermeneutical difficulties of, say, 1 Cor. 11) a subordinate role for women in the church is 1 Timothy 2:11-14, where the Apostle Paul bluntly states that women should “learn quietly with all submissiveness,” and that he does “not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” This is a hurdle to women’s ordination to authoritative roles within the church that those of us who hold to biblical inerrancy are reluctant to leap, even in light of reasonable cultural hermeneutics of the peculiar circumstance of Paul’s writing to Timothy (under the shadow of the cult of Ephesian Artemis).

But this passage in no way excuses a demeaning understanding of women (or even an exclusion of women from various and sundry other official roles within the organized church). Are women, being excluded from leadership, somehow also excluded from respect, from a voice, from community life? Are male leaders, having attained that station, no longer obliged to listen to anyone outside of the inner ring, anyone “beneath” them? May it never be!

Look at Paul’s own application toward his female co-laborers, women like Phoebe, Prisca, Junia, and Mary, whom he praised and sent public greetings from (such as in Romans 16). These are not insignificant relationships, but friendships and partnerships in mutual submission to the ministry of the Gospel. Look at how Paul (in the same letter as above!) urges Timothy to speak to women as mothers and sisters “in all purity,” even when rebuking them for sin.

This is not even to mention Christ’s admonition to the disciples on how one is to bear power and authority within the kingdom community: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45). We’ll reflect further on Jesus’ own relationships to women in a subsequent post.

I’m attempting to speak primarily from Scripture here, for the benefit of my theologically conservative tribe—who perhaps most need to hear this message now—but the weight of church history bears witness as well. As Gracy Olmstead has pointed out, “In American evangelicalism, traditionalism uncoupled from a robust understanding of church history has been bad for women. For all the conservatism of their beliefs…. [they] have done a poor job conserving or appreciating their ecclesiastical past, and have not always passed on the rich tradition of female leadership and protection of the abused that has existed throughout church history.”

No serious hermeneutical framework, whether egalitarian or complementarian, should ever find in Scripture the license or encouragement for men to treat women as inferiors before God. If any manmade system of interpretation lends itself to the defense of those who would dehumanize others, its proponents ought to be willing to continually examine their view against the Bible to plug the holes that let such evils leak in. At God’s throne, worldly distinctions (even those based in created differences) between members of the household of faith are not determinants of anyone’s worth. Quite the opposite—those whom the world would disinherit and demean are made heirs of the promise (Gal. 3:23-29).

Any justification for the culture and behaviors being revealed in this season is found only in the way of the world, not in the text of Scripture. That these patterns are present within the church is a manifestation of sin (both individual and systemic) and should be condemned as such.

This should all be fairly obvious, but some of our sins, particularly those reinforced by our culture, can become so entrenched as to all but blind us to their presence in our hearts and congregations.

Part 1: Tasteless, but Excusable?: Dehumanization, Women, and the Church
Part 3: Cultivation v. Coercion
Part 4: A True and Better Way to Be

Image: Saints Andronicus and Junia, Byzantine Icon