Chapter 1
The Fractured Church
The greatest social revolution in the history of humankind has occurred in this century. It is not so much the scientific, nor technological, nor any political revolution, but rather the radical change in the status of women relative to men. Possibilities have exploded for women today that their great-grandmothers could scarcely have imagined. They have been granted, by law, all of the rights and privileges that have been traditionally the exclusive province of men. They have a voice and a vote in every public assembly. They have access to education in all fields of human inquiry. They have found open doors in all occupations and every profession. They have distinguished themselves as educators, authors, artists, administrators, executives, scientists, researchers, engineers, pilots, astronauts, physicians, attorneys, performers, reporters, newscasters, and judges. They have served ably in Congress, as governors, on the Supreme Court, and as heads of state.
For the first time in human history women, in Western civilization, have achieved full equality and relative parity with men in virtually every area of society — except the church! The church remains — with few exceptions — the last bastion of institutional discrimination against women.
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Women, for instance, continue to be locked out of the priesthood and positions of authority in the Roman Catholic church, as well as all branches of the Eastern Orthodox churches.
The Southern Baptist church, Protestantism's largest denomination — with nearly 100,000 churches and over 14 million members — passed a resolution at its 1984 general convention in Kansas City, calling upon local congregations to abide by the tradition of male leadership in ministry. As a result, it has been almost impossible for approximately 600 women, currently ordained as ministers by local Baptist churches, to function in official ministerial roles, according to Mary Zimmer, executive director of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry. They have tried to find an outlet for their call as institutional chaplains, youth ministers, directors of Christian education, educators in Christian colleges, and foreign missionaries. The Association of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry, organized in 1983, has been repeatedly denied any official status within the denomination and has been denied opportunity to meet during its general conventions, says Zimmer.1
On October 18, 1987, the Prescott Memorial Baptist Church in Memphis made a move that sent a shock wave rippling through the Southern Baptist denomination. They called Rev. Nancy Sehested as their pastor. She was one of the first female pastors in their history and the first to gain national media attention. The reaction to this novel move was swift and decisive. Four hundred male delegates of the Shelby Baptist Association, which represented 120 churches in the Memphis area, promptly met behind closed doors and expelled the congregation from its association. Another regional association in Tennessee recently threatened the expulsion of a congregation that merely considered opening its board of deacons to women.
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The net result of this open and blatant discrimination against women is that the Body of Christ continues to suffer a seismic fracture of cosmic dimensions. While the walls between "Jew and Gentile" have been torn down and the chasm between "bond and free" has been bridged, the Body of Christ is not yet all "one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). The "great divide" sundering the church is gender driven. Women, who constitute the majority of members in every church, are second-class citizens. They are denied access to pulpits, lecterns, and boardrooms for no other reason than their gender. Women ministers, in particular, feel the sting of rejection and exclusion. Diane Cunningham Leclerc, a senior pastor in the Church of the Nazarene, shares her experience: "Even if I might want to 'hang out' with the ministerial association that labels itself as 'evangelical,' I am not welcome because some of the dear brothers won't associate with a woman pastor for 'biblical' reasons. They don't want to appear as if they condone such a thing as me!"2
It is surely more than strange — even scandalous — that the very church that professes, with the apostle Paul, to be "the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh" (Phil. 3:3, NASB, emphasis added), nevertheless makes the flesh the decisive criteria determining access to professional ministry. Natural talent and spiritual gifts, even a divine call to preach, are rendered null and void on the basis of human physiology.
There is, however, a small but mighty movement of churches that have historically taken strong exception to such flagrant gender discrimination. From their various beginnings, holiness churches in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition have granted women all of the rights and privileges of membership, ministry, and leadership that are accorded to men. For example, during the first quarter century
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of the Church of the Nazarene's history, over 20 percent of its pastors, evangelists, and missionaries were ordained women. In some regions, as recently as the decades of the 1930s and 1940s, as many as 30 to 40 percent of its preachers were women. Women have served with distinction as pastors, evangelists, missionaries, educators, theologians, Bible scholars, counselors, scholars, authors, administrators, board members, and local leaders. As recently as its 1980 General Assembly, the Church of the Nazarene reemphasized its historic position in regard to women in ministry by affirming: "We support the right of women to use their God-given spiritual gifts within the church. We affirm the historic right of women to be elected and appointed to places of leadership within the Church of the Nazarene. We oppose any legislation which would be against the scriptural teachings of the place of womanhood in society."3
The enfranchisement of women in the holiness tradition has been based upon a settled conviction that the dispensation of the Holy Spirit has dawned, empowering both men and women to declare the unsearchable riches of Christ as prophesied by Joel and proclaimed by Peter on the Day of Pentecost:
In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18, emphasis added)
In the last few decades, however, there has been a decided erosion of this distinctive heritage in the Church of the Nazarene. Only 12.8 percent of licensed ministers (327 out of 2,564) are women,
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and only 4 percent (377 out of 9,394) are ordained elders (1992 statistics). Sixty-five women are presently serving as senior pastors (less than 1 percent of churches), and 134 serve as staff ministers. Nineteen are registered as evangelists. Fifty-two percent of licensed and ordained women are either unassigned or retired.4 A sister denomination, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) reports the same shrinkage, from 32 percent of their congregations led by women pastors to less than 3 percent by 1975.5
No women have ever been elected to the general superintendency or as directors of the five divisions that oversee the Church of the Nazarene's various ministries. Only two women presently serve as district superintendents, one in the Philippines and the second in the Caribbean. Only one woman has ever served as a district superintendent in North America, and then only for a part of a year until a suitable male minister could be elected.6 No Nazarene institution of higher learning in the United States has ever had a woman president, and few have women represented on their board of trustees. Religion faculties are overwhelmingly male.
Even though women comprise the majority of members in local churches, they are a distinct minority on most church boards. In some local churches they have been denied leadership positions by congregational vote or pastoral edict. District superintendents seldom recommend women as pastors or associates. They protest that their hands are tied in that churches are unwilling to consider women candidates. The few who serve as staff ministers usually function in children's or women's ministries. Worship leadership in church services, conventions, and assemblies is invariably male. Rarely are women called upon to read Scripture, pray, lead congregational singing, administer the sacraments, or even serve as ushers.
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Why such retrenchment? While holiness churches have given theological assent to equality, they nevertheless have generally accepted, implicitly and uncritically, cultural patriarchy as the "biblical" norm. Permitting women to preach or serve in positions of leadership has not signalled a change in this traditional hierarchy but has only stretched the boundaries to accommodate those exceptional women who have been aggressive and assertive enough to make their voices heard. Women preachers have generally been more tolerated than welcomed, even in the best of times. Their biographies and letters indicate that they constantly faced entrenched male chauvinism, both outside the church and at all levels within. They have had few male champions and even fewer female. What ministry they have exercised, they have invariably carved out for themselves as evangelists, educators, missionaries and church planters. Rarely have women been called to pastor strong churches or been elected to lead established denominational organizations.
Another potent factor is the pervasive influence of the larger evangelical movement with its powerful media outlets. It has consistently and redundantly promoted patriarchal hierarchy in church and home as being the only biblically defensible tradition. It has mounted the most vocal and virulent backlash against the contemporary feminist movement, for which it blames most of the ills afflicting marriages and families today. Equal rights for women is viewed not as desirable but as deplorable. is is seen as a threat to "traditional family values: and a violation of "biblical principles." When members of holiness churches are made aware of their own church's history of openness to women in ministry, many are openly nonsupportive, and even ashamed, of their heritage. And why should they behave differently, not hearing or reading a strong, biblically based apologetic for women preachers and equality
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in male-female relationships, and not seeing credible models of women in active ministerial roles?7 Consequently, another of the "distinctives" of holiness tradition has been all but lost.
Early Pentecostals welcomed and endorsed women as ministers. In recent decades, however, women have experienced the same exclusion from leadership roles as has been true in holiness churches. While they are tolerated and even encouraged as "prophesying daughters" — particularly as evangelists and missionaries — they are usually denied institutional presence as pastors or denominational leaders. Prominent charismatic ministers have been as opposed to women in authority as any other opponents of women ministers.8
Most of the mainline denominations have officially, although belatedly, opened the door to women for ordination. Yet it has been difficult, if not impossible, for women to exercise their ministry on a par equal with men. When it comes to positions of authority, it is still a man's world except for the occasional token woman, such as Barbara Harris, who in 1990 became the first female bishop in the Episcopal church, an event unprecedented in the 450-year history of the Anglican church — not to mention nearly 2,000 years of Anglo-Catholic history. Yet even on the historic occasion of her consecration, the service was rudely interrupted by Rev. James Cupid, Jr., an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of New York, who issued a formal objection. He implored the presiding bishop to halt proceedings, saying that he believed "her consecration and election were contrary to sound doctrine and the consecration an intractable impediment to the realization of that visible unity of the church for which Christ prayed."9
Another example can be cited. Lutheran theologian Philip J. Hefner protested, in the 1960s, that the role of women in the Lutheran church was their greatest scandal
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and hidden problem. The Lutheran Church in America responded by being the first of the Lutheran bodies to grant ordination to women in 1970. It appeared that gender walls had been breached when, in 1982, a number of women were elected to serve on a commission of 70 Lutherans to form a new Lutheran church, which became the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Yet, when it came to choosing its leadership, of the 65 new bishops appointed, not one was a woman. Only one was elected to head a major denominational division, and she was chosen, predictably, to lead the women's commission.10
A similar situation exists in the Presbyterian church. Elizabeth Howell Verdesi published a book titled In but Still Out (1973). In it she concludes that while women have achieved ecclesiastical equality and have been given significant responsibility in both lay and clergy roles, they are still marginalized. She described this situation as one of "being in but still out of the central currents of the church."11
So it goes for officials in the National Council of Churches. Champions of social justice and nondiscrimination, they nevertheless maintain a male-dominated lock on positions of power and prestige. Only one woman has been elected to fill the position of general secretary, and she was not ordained. The council lists no woman as head of a member communion. Likewise, the World Council of Churches, which, for all of its egalitarian pronouncements, has yet to elect a woman to any of its major offices.12
Gender discrimination in the church is rigorously defended on biblical grounds. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, whose members comprise a who's who list of evangelical leaders (Bill Bright, Jerry Falwell, Carl F.H. Henry, Beverly La Haye, et al.), recently published the "Danvers Statement" in Christianity Today. It summarizes their position in this way: "We are convinced
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that Scripture affirms male leadership in the home, and that in the church certain governing and teaching roles are restricted to men . . . Both Old and New Testaments . . . affirm the principle of male headship in the family and in the covenant community."13
This council arose as a reaction against the erosion of traditional roles of male dominance and female subordination in church and home, due largely — in their judgment — to the encroachment of a secular humanist-feminist view of equality. It originated in response to "the emergence of roles for men and women in church leadership that do not conform to Biblical teaching" and "the increasing prevalence and acceptance of hermeneutical oddities devised to reinterpret apparently plain meanings of Biblical texts."14
Which texts? The first cited is the creation story where Adam is created first, and then Eve as his "helper" (Genesis 2:18; see vv. 4-25). This is believed to represent the "order of creation" by which patriarchal hierarchy is established as a divinely ordained and immutable institution. Since the Genesis story of the Fall focuses attention almost exclusively upon Eve, the one deceived, she is blamed for the entrance of sin into the world (Genesis 3). The subsequent curse directed to Eve, and to all her female descendants, declares that "your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (v. 16, emphasis added). Paul seems not only to accept but also to affirm an ironclad subordination of women to men when he writes, "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ . . . he [man] is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man. Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man" (1 Corinthians 11:3, 7-9).
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The hierarchy of male domination and female subordination is given further support in Paul's command to the churches at Ephesus and Colossae: "Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church" (Ephesians 5:22-23; see Colossians 3:18). In light of the order of creation, how can women, who are created to be in subjection to men, possibly hold a position of leadership in the church where they would inevitably exercise authority over men?
Then two specific biblical texts appear to prohibit women not only from preaching but also from any active participation in public worship:
Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says (1 Cor. 14:34).
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Tim. 2:11-15).
Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and traditional Protestants further argue that the Bible consistently portrays God as male (we do not pray, "Our Mother in heaven"!). Likewise, God's only begotten Son became incarnate as a male human being. Episcopal theologian J.I. Packer states the matter of Jesus' gender as follows: "The New Testament presents him as the second man, the last Adam, our prophet, priest, and king (not prophetess, priestess, and queen), and he is all this precisely in his maleness . . . That one male is best represented by another male is a matter of common sense; that Jesus' maleness is basic to his
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role as our incarnate Savior is a matter of biblical revelation."15
Biblical teaching seems crystal clear. Women are not permitted to speak (hence, teach or preach) in the church, nor are they permitted to exercise leadership roles over men. The issue appears to be quite simple: either we obey the clear teaching of Scripture or we disobey.
Is it, however, really that simple? Paul writes, just as unambiguously, for example: "Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters . . . Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness" (Colossians 3:22; 4:1, NASB). These scriptures have been used by generations of Christians to justify what John Wesley called "that most vile of sinful institutions." George Whitefield, Wesley's coevangelist during the early years of the great evangelical revival in England, responded to the slavery issue different from Wesley. He became the catalyst for the Great Awakening the American colonies during the mid-1700s. His preaching drew crowds of thousands and precipitated one of the most astonishing revival movements in the history of our country. He castigated worldly living and pressed hard for moral reform. Yet when it came to slavery, he not only wrote tracts defending it as a biblically sanctioned institution but acquired a slave plantation in the mid-1740s with eight slaves. His only concerns were that masters would treat their "servants" well and work for their evangelization.16
At the height of the abolitionist movement to free slaves, Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney advocated this strategy of opposing them in 1851: "Here is our policy then, to push the Bible argument continually, to drive Abolitionism to the wall, to compel it to assume an anti-Christian position."17 The "Bible argument" pressed and upheld by the overwhelming majority of Southern ministers — and many Northern as well — was: first, slavery
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was an accepted institution in both Testaments; second, neither prophet nor priest, neither Jesus nor Paul ever uttered one word specifically condemning it; and third, slavery is a social institution ordained of God as part of the created hierarchy by which human relationships are ordered. Baptist theologian Dr. Richard Furman argued from the silence of the Bible to speak out against slavery in this manner: "Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives for the cause the their God, would have tolerated it, for a moment, in the Christian Church . . . In proving this subject justifiable by Scriptural authority, its morality is also proved; for the Divine Law never sanctions immoral actions."18
Many defenders of slavery saw in it the providential hand of God in that "heathenish pagans" were delivered from a burning hell because of their good fortune to be brought to a country where they could be under the influence of the gospel. The fact that so many slaves did embrace Christianity only reinforced their belief. Furthermore, Christianity had the added advantage of pacifying the slaves and making them better workers. A young black fugitive named Frederick Douglass, addressing a white audience in Boston during January 1842, gave them a sampling of the kind of preaching slaves typically heard as they sat segregated in a balcony. White Southern clergymen would take a biblical text such as "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31), and this is the way they would apply it:
They would explain it to mean, "slaveholders, do unto slaveholders what you would have them do unto you": — and then looking impudently up to the slaves' gallery . . . looking high up to the poor colored drivers and the rest, and spreading his hands gracefully
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abroad, he says, (mimicking,), "And you too, my friends, have souls of infinite value — souls that will live through endless happiness or misery in eternity. Oh, labor diligently to make your calling and election sure. Oh, receive into your souls these words of the holy apostle — 'Servants, be obedient unto your masters.' Oh, consider the wonderful goodness of God! Look at your hard, horny hands, your strong muscular frames, and see how mercifully he has adapted you to the duties you are to fulfil! While to your masters, who have slender frames and long delicate fingers, he has given brilliant intellects, that they may do the thinking, while you do the working."19
The slavery issue was no academic matter. Ultimately, it was settled, not in church councils nor by legislative action, but on the battlefield. A total of 529,332 Americans laid down their lives during the Civil War, nearly as many as have died in all other American wars combined.
Another shocking example of the damage done through faulty biblical interpretation can be cited. In 1828, some white members of a Dutch Reformed congregation in South Africa refused to partake of the Lord's Supper with the "colored" husband of a Malay slave. They argued, on the basis of 1 Corinthians 8:13, that if the presence of a colored person at Holy Communion offended some whites, the dark-skinned one should stay away so as not to "offend" (KJV). This was the inauspicious beginning of what has become one of the most heinous, discriminatory, and incendiary social systems in the world today, apartheid. Supporters of "apartness" interpret the Tower of Babel story to mean that God himself ordained the separation of the races. Proponents of biblical separation of the races also cite the differing languages given to the disciples on the Day of Pentecost as evidence of divine approval for maintaining strict ethnic homogeneity and separation.20 Already the struggle
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over apartheid has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and deprived millions of others of "freedom, liberty and justice for all."
We could add to the list other questionable practices that are defended as "biblical": polygamy, dancing, consumption of alcoholic beverages, snake handling, works salvation, free love, and divorce. A biblical case can be made for child sacrifice, for the burning of witches, for stoning people who gather sticks on the Sabbath, for abandoning spouses and children, and even for genocide. Likewise, biblical support can be found for nearly every position under the sun relative to male-female roles in church and home.
It is important, at the outset, to establish an overall framework for biblical interpretation. It is quite clear that earnest, Spirit-filled, Bible-believing Christians can have strong differences of opinion about the Scriptures. Furthermore, when virtually every strange belief and bizarre behavior imaginable can be buttressed by biblical texts, it is obvious that the Bible can be understood in almost as many ways as there are readers. How do we sort through this jungle of claims and counterclaims, so that we "no longer [are] children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming" (Ephesians 4:14)?
There are certain basic principles that guide us as we interpret the Scriptures in the evangelical, Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. Among biblical scholars, there is a truism that holds that "interpreting a text out of context is a pretext." Never is that "truism" more true than in analyzing what the Bible has to say about women, particularly when it comes to Paul's teachings — which appear, at first reading, to deny women equal standing with men in church and home.
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First of all, we must see what the text actually says. Translation is by no means an exact science. One word in Hebrew or Greek may allow for a dozen or more English words to be used. Which option is exercised makes a lot of difference in how the English reader understands the text. We shall see this, particularly in the way such words mean in Greek and suggest in English are vastly different.
Second, we must take careful note of the immediate context of a scriptural passage. We believe that the Bible is the inspired ("God-breathed") Word of God. Yet not every word in the Bible is God's. "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21, KJV), but so did a number of unholy men and women, beginning with Adam and Eve. The Bible records the words not only of the wise but also of the foolish, not only of angels but also of demons, not only of "apostles and prophets" but also of sorcerers and Satan. By ignoring the immediate context, the Bible can be construed to teach atheism ("There is no God," Psalm 14:1) and to promote hedonism ("Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," 1 Cor. 15:32). When we consider the context of paul's admonition, "Women should be silent in the churches" (14:34), for instance, we will discover that he is endeavoring to restore some semblance of order in a very disorderly church, where certain women ("the women") were disrupting the worship services with their tongues-speaking, idle chatter, and interruptive questions. It was not a rule prohibiting all women from ever speaking in church.
Third, a particular passage must be evaluated in the larger context of all that a particular author has to say, as well as the intention and purpose of the Bible in its entirety. It does violence to the apostle Paul's high view of women, for instance, to focus exclusively on a few select passages where he is addressing problem situations and to
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ignore the larger portrait of all he has to say about women, particularly the equality they enjoy as full partners with men in all aspects of the life and ministry of the church.
Then each author must be interpreted in light of the big picture of all God is doing by way of creation, redemption, resurrection, and restoration, throughout the vast sweep of Scripture. John Wesley (1703-91), founder of Methodism and the spiritual and theological forefather of the holiness movement, encouraged us to judge every text according to "the general tenor of Scripture."21 He further counseled that "every doubted scripture [must be] interpreted according to the grand truths which run through the whole."22 That "grand truth" finds its locus, its apex, its full and final expression in "[Jesus] Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:2c-3).
Wesley maintained, along with Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-64), that Christ is the "central point of the circle" around which everything in Scripture revolves.23 Luther spoke of the Scriptures as the manger in which lies the Christ child. He often referred to Christ as the "King of Scripture." Everything in Scripture must be judged in light of Jesus, in whom "all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Col. 2:9 NASB). This is known as the "Christological Principle" of biblical interpretation. For instance, we must ask: Was it Jesus' intention, in selecting only male apostles, to thereby exclude women from publicly proclaiming the gospel, or were there some practical social realities that dictated such a limitation? Can we find clear support in the life and teachings of Jesus for dividing the Body of Christ along gender lines? Was it His purpose for His "body" to institutionalize discrimination against women? Does this state of affairs in today's church bring Him glory?
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In analyzing a particular passage, these questions must be asked: "Who is speaking? To whom are the words addressed? Why? What is going on? What are the author's intentions? How was it read and understood by its first readers? How do we translate that from the biblical world to ours?
Fourth, we must distinguish between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive in the Bible. In telling the story of Cain who killed Abel in a fit of rage (Genesis 4:1-16), the Bible does not suggest that this represents how brothers ought to relate to one another. Rather, we are commanded, over and over again, to "love one another, because love is from God" (1 John 4:7). In light of this principle, we will ask: Does the curse, directed to Eve, prescribe how men and women are to relate to each other in perpetuity — even in Christ — or does it rather describe the consequences of the Fall?
Fifth, we need to recognize the difference between the particular and the universal, between what is historically conditioned and what is timeless truth. For instance, Jesus commanded His disciples to "go . . . to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" and forbade them from preaching to the Gentiles (Matthew 10:5-6). We can easily discern, however, that this command was in no way intended to be universal but represented a particular directive for a specific mission, in that Jesus later commissioned these same apostles to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (28:19; cf. Acts 1:8). Likewise, when Paul counseled Timothy to "drink . . . a little wine" (1 Tim. 5:23), we do not take that to mean all Christians are obliged to consume alcoholic beverages. We will argue that Paul's instruction to Timothy, prohibiting women from teaching or exercising authority over men (2:12), does not prescribe a universal law but describes how he dealt with a specific and unique problem situation that arose in a particular church, the church at Ephesus.
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Sixth, we need to be fully aware of the historical, social, and cultural context that forms the background of a given scripture. We will be at a loss to understand why the disciples "marveled that [Jesus] had been speaking with a woman" (John 4:27, NASB) until we discover that, in New Testament times, Jewish men never spoke with women in public. It is only when we understand the social customs that severely restricted the public role of women in first century Palestine that we can resolve the apparent contradiction between Paul's instruction for the women in Corinth to keep silent in the church (1 Cor. 14:34-35) and his teaching that "there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). Our principal task, then, is to discover what is the "grand truth" of the whole of Scripture in regard to male-female relationships in general and then what is the role of women in the church in particular.
Finally, we must distinguish between God's original intentions for us and His accommodation to our fallen estate. For instance, nobody believes that God's command for Joshua to destroy all the peoples in the land of Canaan represents either His best will or His ultimate design in dealing with enemies (see Matthew 5:44; Luke 9:51-56). Likewise, Christians have held, from the New Testament era onward, that many of God's instructions to the Israelites regarding circumcision, sacrifices, feasts, and ritual laws did not represent a permanent order but rather a temporary and provisional expedient. In responding to the Pharisee's shabby question on "whether it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife" (Mark 10:2, NASB), Jesus answered by pointed out that Moses' divorce law was an accommodation to their "hardness of heart" (v.5). God's original intention was that "a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shalt become one flesh" (v.7, NASB). Jesus went so far as to add to the text of Genesis 2:24, "Therefore what God has
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joined together, let no one separate" (v.9). His did so deliberately and with authority, confident that He was bearing witness to God's original purposes for marriage and the family. Our task, then, will be to separate that which is culturally derived from that which owes its genesis to the great purposes for humankind, revealed in creation and realized in Jesus.
We must acknowledge, at the outset, that the Scriptures were written in, and deeply reflective of, a patriarchal culture. It was, in biblical times, a "man's world." The principal actors, throughout the Bible, are males. The Old Testament does not speak of the God of "Sarah, Rachel, and Rebekah" but of "Abraham...., Isaac...., and Jacob" (Exodus 3:15). All the priests were men, as were Israel's judges — except for Deborah (Judges 4:4). All the kings of Israel were men, as were the prophets — except for Huldah, who was a noteworthy prophetess during the reign of Josiah (2 Kings 22:14-20). Biblical writers do use male pronouns and images in speaking of God, though not exclusively, as we shall see. Jesus was incarnate as a male human being. John Paul II is only the most recent in a long line of Catholic popes and Protestant traditionalists who steadfastly defend barring women from the priesthood and ordained ministry by making the point that "Jesus chose 12 apostles and not one of them was a woman." Such an argument invites the response: Jesus chose 12 apostles and not one of them was a Gentile either!
We have every right to question, however, whether patriarchy represents God's original intention and ultimate design as to how men and women are to relate to each other. If we accept such a hierarchical model as reflective of God's immutable order, then we must admit that those who defended slavery as an extension of that same hierarchical order were justified.
And so, as biblical interpreters, we must constantly ask ourselves whether any given practice, commandment, or institution recorded in the Scriptures reflects God's patient, provisional, and gracious accommodation to fallen humankind's desperate situation under the curse of sin, or represents how things were meant to be by way of His original, creative intention and the redemption that is "in Christ." Then we have a choice to make: either to live according to the rule of the law or to live within the reign of grace where "there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). "For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17, NASB).
Chapter 2 || Table of Contents
1. Most of this information was provided in a telephone interview (Sept. 26, 1991) with Mary Zimmer, executive director of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry, 2800 Frankfurt Ave., Louisville, KY 40206. [BACK]
2. Diane Cunningham, New Horizons (Kansas City: Church of the Nazarene, Pastoral Ministries Dept.), June 1991. [BACK]
3. Manual, Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1980), 904.10. [BACK]
4. These statistics are for 1992 and represent only the Churches of the Nazarene in the United States and Canada. [BACK]
5. Juanita Evans Leonard, "Women, Change, and the Church," Called to Minister, Empowered to Serve, Juanita Evans Leonard, ed. (Anderson, Indiana: Warner Press, 1989), 152. [BACK]
6. Rev. Elsie Wallace was appointed by Dr. Bresee to fill a vacancy in the superintendency of the Northwest District in 1920, and she served for several months until another superintendent could be elected at the following annual District Assembly. [BACK]
7. Fannie McDowell Hunter's Women Preachers (Dallas, 1905) was the first and only book written by a Nazarene author defending the right of women to preach, according to Church of the Nazarene archivist, Stan Ingersol. [BACK]
8. Edith L. Blumhofer, "Women in Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism," in Women and Church, Melanie A. May, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), 6. [BACK]
9. Joan Brown Campbell, "Toward a Renewed Community of Women and Men," Women and Church, 79. [BACK]
10. Amalie R. Shannon, "A Lutheran Woman Looks at the Decades," Women and Church, 60-64. [BACK]
11. Elizabeth Howell Verdesi, In but Still Out (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), 181, as cited in Women and Church, 101. [BACK]
12. Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, Constant H. Jaquet, ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988), as cited in Women and Church, 107. [BACK]
13. Christianity Today (Jan. 13, 1989), 40-41. [BACK]
15. J.I. Packer, "Let's Stop Making Women Presbyters," Christianity Today (Feb. 11, 1991), 20. [BACK]
16. Alan Gallay, "The Great Awakening," Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord, John B. Boles, ed. (Louisville, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), chap. 1. [BACK]
17. H. Shelton Smith, Robert T. Handy, and Lefferts A Loetscher, American Christianity (New York: Scribners, 1963), 2:177, as cited in Patricia Gundry, Woman, Be Free (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1979), 51. [BACK]
18. Ibid., 185, cited in ibid., 52. [BACK]
19. Clarence L. Mohr, "Slaves and White Churches in Confederate Georgia," Masters and Slaves, 153. [BACK]
20. Editorial, Christianity Today (Oct. 4, 1985), 18. [BACK]
21. The Works of John Wesley, Frank Baker, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 26:158. [BACK]
22. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: Epworth Press, 1950), 570. [BACK]
23. Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), 77-78. [BACK]