It’s not often that I disagree with 99% of the church leaders and theologians of the past 2000 years.  And it is certainly a rare occurrence that I listen to the teachings of such heavyweights as Augustine, Aquinas, Tertullian, Ambrose, and Martin Luther and say without blinking, “I think you’re wrong.”  Certainly it should give anyone pause to dismiss the teachings of the pillars of the church as “misguided and unbiblical.”  But you know what?  I’m not worried.

As an evangelical Christian, I believe that the Bible is the authority for faith and practice for believing Christians.  This is why I’ve been preaching through a series on what the Bible has to say about gender roles, so that our church leadership and our families might be line with God’s will on this issue.  However, as I mentioned last week, I also know that all theological conclusions are informed by three other sources besides Scripture – reason, personal experience, and tradition.  Last week I briefly addressed what my reason and experience tell me about the question of whether or not women should have equal access to church leadership roles.  Briefly, I believe that both reason and experience teach me that not only do we all have a lot to learn from a woman’s perspective on God and church, but that a church or any organization is stronger when men and women are working together, complementing each other’s gifts in leadership. 

But what about tradition?  What does church history add to the debate?

Last week I argued that many evangelical Christians assume the following three things about the history of the church on the role of men and women in church leadership:

   1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
   2) The increase in women pastors, elders, and teachers is due more to the influence of secular feminism than it is to Biblical scholarship. 
   3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and allow only men to be pastors, teachers, and elders

Today I’ll address these assumptions.  Has the church traditionally held that only men can hold positions of authority or teach in the church?  And if so, is there a good reason for it?

The short answer is that for most of its history, the church has believed that God’s will is for only men to be in positions of leadership and teaching in the church.  And the increase in women in church leadership has coincided with the women’s movement of the past century, which fought for equal rights (like the right to vote and equal pay) and access to more opportunities for women.  All of which leads many to draw the same conclusion as #3 above, that the issue of women in leadership is more a cultural issue than something that is in line with Biblical teaching or historic Christianity.

So why do I disagree with 99% of church history?  And why am I not worried that I disagree?

The answer is that as I read the history of the church on this issue, I found that the majority of church leaders and theologians throughout history have believed and taught that women are inferior to men.  As they read the Biblical texts on the roles of men and women, they found support for what their reason and experience told them, that women were inferior to men, that they were more gullible, more sensual, too emotional, and that their place was largely in the home with the children while the men did the leading and teaching.  I believe that this fact could just as easily lead me to argue the following in regards to church history and women in leadership:

   1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
   2) The lack of women pastors, elders, and teachers was due more to the influence of the surrounding culture (which taught the inferiority of women) than it was to Biblical scholarship 
   3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and will recognize that leadership & teaching roles in the church should be distributed to those with spiritual gifts of leading and teaching, not by gender

What do you think?

Let me just say before we look at some examples of what the church fathers have taught on the issue of gender roles in the church that whether or not you believe the Bible teaches that women should be in church leadership, that this is an area of church history of which the church should be ashamed.  I believe the clear teaching of the Bible, from the creation account to the actions and teachings of Jesus, to the teachings of Paul, is that men and women were created equal in the sight of God, and that the disharmony and imbalance between the sexes is a result of the Fall (see Genesis 3:16) and not something the church should ever be perpetuating.  The church fathers have influenced the church for good on so many areas of theology; however, the nature of man and woman has not been one of them.  Consider the following:

Tertullian, a 3rd century theologian who coined the word Trinity, developed aspects of the doctrine of original sin, and defended the dual nature of Jesus, wrote a treatise called “On the Dress of Women.”  In this treatise he told women that they needed to dress in humble garb, “walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might expiate the ignominy of the first sin and the odium of human perdition.”  He continued with some harsher words, saying “You are each an Eve… the guilt must of necessity live with your sex.  You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree:  you are the first deserter of the divine law:  you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.  On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.”  In Tertullian’s mind, the Fall of man and the death of Jesus were all a result of woman’s sin, and therefore all women must live their lives in constant penitence.

Ambrose was the bishop of Milan from 374-397.  In “On Paradise,” he wrote “In fact, even though the man was created outside Paradise (i.e., in an inferior place), he is found to be superior, while woman, though created in a better place (i.e., inside Paradise) is found inferior.”  To Ambrose, it was a fact of nature that men are superior to women.

What about Augustine, probably the most well-respected and influential theologian of the early church?  In his “Literal Commentary on Genesis,” Augustine wrote “If it were not the case that the woman was created to be man’s helper specifically for the production of children, then why would she have been created as a helper (Gen 2:18)?  Was it so that she might work the land with him?… Yet for company and conversation, how much more agreeable it is for two male friends to dwell together than for a man and a woman!  I cannot think of any reason for woman’s being made as man’s helper, if we dismiss the reason of procreation.”  In Augustine’s mind, a woman existed for the purpose of making babies, and if you were to take away that ability, then you may as well have given Adam another man to have as a companion, since that would have been preferable.

Thomas Aquinas, another of the most influential theologians in church history, wrote that women are dominated by sexual appetite, while men are ruled by reason (many might argue the opposite today!).  Women, he said, depend on men for everything in life, while men depend on women only for procreation.  He even said that “Children ought to love their father more than their mother, because they are the more active principle, while the mother is the passive principle.”

And Martin Luther, whom I quoted on Sunday, said this in his commentary on 1 Timothy:  “Since therefore God added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of the order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed.”  Luther was just another example of a theologian finding in his reading of the Bible justification for his belief that women were inferior to men.

The fact is that women in church leadership is not the only recent development possibly affected by cultural views; the notion of the equality of women is also a recent development, in society and in the church.  The complementarian (fancy word for those who limit the roles of women in the church) argument today comes to the same conclusion as the church fathers did, but uses a different means to get there:  instead of arguing that the nature of things proves that women are inferior and should follow the leadership of men, they argue that men and women are equal before God, but still should fulfill different roles in the church.  Therefore, it should be noted that NEITHER side – complementarian or egalitarian – is really following church tradition, since both have rejected the premise that women are an inferior gender.

So why in God’s name would we take as authoritative on the gender issue the views of men who saw women as inferior?  Would that not be akin to letting a racist inform our opinions on the superiority of the Caucasian race?  Complementarian theologians, however, are often not so discerning.  Listen to the theologian Thomas Schreiner in Two Views on Women in Ministry:  “I readily admit that those supporting the historic view have sometimes used extreme and unpersuasive arguments to defend their views, and that low views of women have colored their interpretations… (however) an interpretation that has stood the test of time and been ratified by the church in century after century… has an impressive pedigree, even if some of the supporting arguments used are unpersuasive.” 

My conclusion is that I see nothing impressive about misogynistic (if I dare to call them that) men concluding that women are inferior and therefore should contain themselves to the home.  I believe this directly contradicts the creation account and the actions and teaching of Jesus, and is not the way God intended for his church to be.  It is for this reason that I am not afraid to disagree with the church fathers. 

Next week, I will continue to examine what church history adds to this discussion by looking more closely at the last two millennia of women in church leadership.  In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or comments to add, especially if you have ever felt that the Bible or the church still treats women as inferior, please post your comments so that we might all learn and not repeat the mistakes of our fathers.  May God grant us wisdom and discernment as we seek His will on this matter.

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