Sep 18, 2008
Women, Teaching, and Publishing
In Coffeehouse Theology I take a pretty strong stand in favor of women teaching in the church. For myself, it was meeting a female missionary who was the only teacher to a tribe in Papua New Guinea that convinced me it was no longer tenable for me to be skeptical of a woman teacher. However, I now have another instance that I believe reveals the weakness of any view that restricts women from teaching men in church.
Have you ever read a book on Christianity or theology by a woman? I was thinking of the wonderful writings or Ruth Bell Graham and realized that while she may not be permitted to stand up in a church and teach on a Sunday morning, countless Christians have read her teachings and benefited from them.
So why would Christian men, who don’t believe women should teach men, pick up a book by Ruth Bell Graham? Because they inherently know that a woman is every bit as qualified to teach men. Add a pulpit and suddenly things change…
For more on this check out Mike Morrell’s piece.
Ed,
What do you do with the order of creation? Both Jesus and Paul refer to Gen 1-2 to support their arguments,thus make those chapters hermeneutically important, and those chapters are about God’s intended order for the creation. How do you handle that?
Now, it right to ask what does marriage have to do with women in the ministry and the fact that God has given them great brains (which I think they have). My take on this is that ideally men would be in the lead – always. I know this is, today, radical! And I admit, it sounds odd to me. But is it helpful for men and women trying to obey God’s intent for marriage to see a woman minister, clearly leading and teaching men? I suspect not. The order of creation argument is a difficult one for we 21st century folks, but we need to take seriously that both Jesus and Paul use it.
A side note to deal with patrarchial abuse, and husband abuse (which is, of course, well validated): If you have not read Bryan Chappel’s book Each for the Other I recommend it to you. He thesis is that there is order in the relationship but that there are boundaries around the principle of male leadership and female submission (very, very helpful). Chappel, rightly I think, sees marriage as a team effort.
Rev. Steve Newton
[Reply]
I suppose we could debate the meaning of these passages, though in my mind it is of tremendous importance to note the roles of Huldah and Deborah in the Old Testament. They were both prophets and then Deborah led as a judge. God didn’t seem to have a problem with letting women lead spiritually in those roles. Why would there be a sudden u-turn?
Even if someone was created first, Genesis makes it clear that God’s image is reflected in both the male and the female. Perhaps arguments can be made about one being in authority over the other, but I don’t think the text demands that reading. In fact, I come away from it believing that both men and women are equally important in their reflection of God. This fullness of God’s image levels the playing field in my eyes.
And if we’re talking about the created order, we need to look at 1 Corinthians 11:11-12
” 11In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. ”
That text seems to cancel out any arguments about the one being created first being superior. In addition, there are some very plausible interpretations of a passage like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 such as Ann Bowman’s study in the book Two Views on Women in Ministry, where she advocates for a positive directive for women to learn in a certain way, rather than banning them from teaching outright (288-299).
There is no doubt in my mind that an argument can be made from scripture for keeping women away from teaching. However, I think a much stronger and consistent case can be made for women in roles of teaching and leadership. If God permits women to be prophets and leaders at one point and then restricts them from such offices in the NT, I think we have a major interpretive problem. There are plausable ways to read Paul and Jesus so that the consistency of the Bible can be maintained.
However, my point in this post was to call attention to the roles that women play in teaching men through books and blogs and articles. If a man reads a book or article by a woman, isn’t she teaching him? Is it really all that different from her teaching from the pulpit, let alone reading her book to men from a pulpit on Sunday morning? I love the fact that Mark Driscoll endorsed a book called Practical Theology for Women… as if he can really ban women from teaching in his church, while he himself reads a book from a woman–who is teaching him–and can then recommend it.
I think we overlook this because of context and traditions. We learn from female authors, so why not learn from female preachers? If we’re really afraid that God would ban women from teaching men, why aren’t we reading about more men who refuse to read female books and blogs on Christianity?
[Reply]