Is the Bible a
chauvinistic book?
"Isn’t the Bible kind of backwards and behind the times where
the
roles of men and women are concerned? How can I take seriously, any
document that teaches a wife to obey her husband like some kind of
slave? How can I respect commands which insist that women refrain from
leadership in the church?"
You have certainly expressed a common and serious concern. But have you
considered the possibility that this may not be an authentic problem
with the Bible, but rather, with the way many Christians are
interpreting the Bible? Sincere and well meaning people often read
passages out of context.1
Appraising the common Christian view
It was a Christian advertisement for a Christian bookstore being
broadcast over (you guessed it) a Christian radio station. According to
the friendly commercial, Grace Reading was no ordinary run of the mill
bookstore. They had more than just books. They had items that would be
of interest to women also.
"For you men, commentaries, concordances, Greek Lexicons. For you
women, perfume, jewelry and praise tapes."
True story; extreme example. Still, it tells us something about how
today's market views women. Unfortunately, it also helps explain our
culture’s current viewpoint of Christianity, namely that
Christianity is several light-years behind the times.
When conducting evangelistic dialogues on college campuses, I am
inevitably faced with the question: "Is the Bible a chauvinistic book?"
While attempting to answer, "No, actually Jesus and the apostles were
very liberating," I am frequently interrupted and "assisted" by some
helpful Christian in the audience who explains that although God will,
of course, love men and women equally, women must be under the
spiritual covering of a man. Spiritual Covering. Interesting
expression. Interesting because I’m convinced that nobody
really
knows what this overused buzz phrase means.
"It's so frustrating," I've heard many women say. "My husband
doesn’t assert himself as the leader of our household.
Indeed, I
am more interested in spiritual things than he is, and I know that
isn't right."
Hmm. That’s a problem for sure. The very audacity of a woman
being more interested in spiritual things than a man. Why did she grow
so fast? How ever did she get ahead of her husband? Who dared to
disciple her so well? What an assault on the cosmic order!
Is it possible that these mandates of male leadership are putting undue
pressure on both men and women? People usually do feel pressure when
they submit to principles that don’t make any sense. Just
imagine. Some poor man just gave his life to Jesus. All of a sudden
he’s supposed to be his wife’s spiritual leader.
"Can somebody explain this?" I like to ask, "Are men closer to God than
women? Do men have more of the Holy Spirit than women?"
"No," is the typical conservative answer.
"Well, are men more intelligent than women?"
"No."
"Then why must women be in submission to men?"
"Because the Bible says so."
The Bible. Okay, at least some hope for objective discussion. The Bible
is a common ground for settling differences of opinion between
Evangelical Christians. Some movements in Christianity (such as the
liberal movement) deal with hot topics by assuming that the Bible is
not completely the word of God. They believe the apostles may be
mistaken in many of their teachings, including their teaching on
marriage. This is not an option for me. Instead, I acknowledge that two
people believing in the authority of Scripture can come away with
different conclusions. I do not see this as a problem with the way the
Bible was written, but rather, as a human problem, since our biases
sometimes keep us from viewing the Scripture in its proper context.
Some controversial passages
Now it's true that the Bible contains some very crisp imperatives about
the submission of women. Wives are commanded to obey their husbands and
women are forbidden to teach in the church.
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of
which He is the Savior (Ephesians: 5:22-23).
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She
must remain silent (I Tim 2:12).
Many who do not like these verses try to imagine that Paul and the
others didn't quite say what they seemed to say: "Maybe being a leader
means being a servant." "Maybe Paul is just talking about an attitude."
Those holding the patriarchal view find it difficult to respect this
kind of cut and snip job on scripture. In their minds, it verifies what
they suspected all along, egalitarians are not being honest with the
Bible.
Personally, I consider it a waste of time to argue about whether these
troublesome commands say what they mean and mean what they say.
Obviously they do. Even a third grader could tell us that words are
clear. Instead, we should ask ourselves why the Bible issues such
commands.
I find it quite interesting that the passages commanding wives to obey
their husbands are found right next to passages about slaves obeying
their masters. If we keep reading in Ephesians it says;
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with
sincerity of heart just as you would obey Christ (Eph. 6:5).
Not only is this found shortly after the husband/ wife passage but it
uses a similar analogy with our relationship to Christ.
In Colossians and I Peter the commands are also found together. This
doesn't surprise me, for in the ancient world, women were generally
viewed as the property of men. One could purchase a wife very much the
way he purchased a slave. Marriage was essentially a form of slavery.2
Could we justify slavery today? When we read passages such as "Slaves
obey your masters" do we not assume that Paul had some unique reason
for his unusual request? If we were to take those passages at face
value, out of context, we might conclude that God condones the idea of
owning another human being. But this would be a false conclusion. After
all, Paul made it clear that slave trading was an evil practice (I Tim
1:10).
How then, do we handle this apparent contradiction? We may actually
find a clue by first observing a different apostle. In I Peter 2-3,
Peter explained that as far as God is concerned, Christians have been
liberated from all earthly institutions, including the institution of
slavery. However, for the sake of testimony, Peter still insisted that
submission to these institutions continue. Evidently he did not want
the peaceful revolution of Christ to be spoiled by a violent
revolution. At the time of his writing, Rome had more slaves than
citizens. Declaring the slaves free would have been no less than
declaring war on Rome, something Jesus, his Lord and Savior refused to
do (Matt. 22:15-22).
If this was Peter’s approach, it makes sense that Paul would
have
a similar strategy. After all, this is the same Paul who bridged the
gap between Jew and Gentile (Acts 15), who instructed Christians to
respect each other’s differences of opinion (Rom 14), and who
took a vow he considered unnecessary just to preserve the peace with
fellow Jewish Christians (Acts 21:20-26). Finally, it is the best
explanation for his opposite statements about slavery;
Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you,
although if you can gain your freedom, do so ( I Cor 7:21).
But perhaps, Paul's most liberating text is found in Galatians 3:28.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for
you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Paul is describing three strong social distinctions of his day. What's
interesting to me is that Christians seem to understand the elimination
of the first two classes as they hold on to the third. Imagine someone
coming into the church and listening to an orientation that says, "In
our church there is no racial division. Israel may have been a chosen
nation by God ,but Gentiles are now a part of this Israel spiritually,
and in our church we recognize no difference between Jews and Gentiles;
however, only Jews can be in positions of leadership. Got that? We are
all equal before God, but only Jews can preach."
Does that sound ridiculous? How about this? A church introduction in
ancient Rome: "When you enter these walls you leave the world behind.
Out in the world, slaves and masters exist. In here there is no such
order. We have neither slave nor free for we are one in Christ;
however, I'm sure you can understand, slaves do not teach in our
church."
Sound crazy? Of course, because our present day American culture has
long since abolished the institution of slavery and our hindsight shows
us how horrible it was. We recognize these Bible commands about slaves
obeying their masters as temporary limited injunctions due to the
special situation of Ancient Rome. For Paul’s clear theology
of
slavery, we turn to his liberating teaching in Galatians (as seen
above).
Of course, only a little over a hundred years ago, right here in the
very same America, the Pre-Civil war south would have still been
wrestling with slavery. My point is this: Much as we’d like
to
think that one can open the Bible and simply read it, we are all
influenced by our cultures and today’s Christian sub-culture
has
not yet settled the gender issue. Certainly one can read the Bible
without the interpretation of a pastor or teacher, but all too often,
that is not what happens. Christians are not used to cold readings of
certain passages. Instead, they are used to expositions of these
passages, and most verses about the submission of women have not been
approached in the same manner as the slavery issue, although, as
demonstrated above, this would be a more consistent method of
interpretation.
"But I have heard many Christians describe a difference between gender
based submission and slavery. ‘After all,’ they
say,
‘God created men and women differently.’ "
There are differences but nobody knows for sure what these differences
are (aside from the obvious physical and biological differences).
I can discuss politics with a woman, and she may make all the same
points that a man would make. Still, the conversation has a different
feel, because I am talking to a woman. This intuition can be accepted
without the temptation to analyze and figure out what the differences
are. We walk off a cliff when we try to define the differences. For
example, many will say that women feel more than men and men think more
than women. The Margaret Thatchers and Amelia Earharts of the world
seem to dispel this notion. So do the "feeling oriented" men in the
Bible, like David, Jeremiah and even Jesus, men who were not shy about
showing their tears and other strong emotions (Psalm 6:7-8, Jer. 13:17,
John 11:35).
But again, without the analysis, we still conclude some undefined
differences between men and women. The question remains: Does a
difference forbid leadership? After all, we have different leadership
gifts in the church (prophet, teacher, apostle, pastor), and children
need both a father and mother. Indeed, Deborah the prophet was called
the mother of Israel (Judges 5:7), because she ruled her people for
some 40 years. The frequent rebuttal says she did this only because no
man would take the job. This is an argument based upon silence, for the
Bible does not say anything of the kind.
Going back to creation, the only description of submission comes after
the fall when men and women were cursed separately. Adam’s
curse
was that work would lose its fulfillment and be filled with drudgery.
As for Eve's curse,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing: with pain you will
give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he
will rull over you" (Gen. 3:16).
I have to assume that if obedience to her husband was some kind of new
curse, then obviously back in the garden prior to the curse, Eve was
not living under a mandate to obey Adam.
"But according to your Bible, we still live under the curse, so
shouldn't women still obey their husbands?"
Christ's death and resurrection started a process which will eventually
do away with the effects of the curse(Gal. 3:13-14). In Heaven, women
and men will be joint heirs, kings and priests (Gal 3:29, I Pet. 2:9).
We conclude that women were co-rulers with men before the curse and
that women will continue to be co-rulers after the Second Coming of
Christ when the curse is completely abolished. It is the present in
between time that raises questions.
"Okay. Well then let's concentrate on the present in between time. Work
is still difficult and women certainly experience pain in childbearing,
so the curse is still in operation. Therefore, if Christians want to
take the Bible seriously, women should still obey men."
Yes, the curse is still here, because Christ’s kingdom has
only
begun to enter the world and will not reach fruition until the Second
Coming. But the church still represents the kingdom of God here on
earth. In other words, we model the ideal, not the curse. When men
receive spiritual gifts and do works of ministry, are they not
fulfilled with a sense of the enjoyable and important? The very word
for gift, (Charisma) comes from the Greek word Char, which means joy.
Therefore, the curse of unhappy work for men has been at least partly
eradicated. What right do we have to say that the church will try to
free men from their curse but leave women to remain under theirs?
"Then why does Paul forbid women to even speak in church?"
As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent
in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in
submission as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something,
they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a
woman to speak in the church ( I Cor 14:34-35).
We know Paul did not forbid women to speak, because he already told us
in this very same letter that women could pray and prophesize in church
(I Cor 11). Remember, a prophet was one of the five authoritative
offices listed in Ephesians 4. Paul’s topic here in I
Corinthians
14 is order in the worship service. He had already expressed concern
about tongues without an interpretation and prophets who interrupted
each other. Now he asks women to save their questions instead of
speaking out of turn. The early church modeled their services after the
Jewish synogogue, where men and women sat on separate sides.3 For women
to ask their husbands questions, they would actually have to shout
across the room. It is easy to understand how disruptive that could be.
Therefore, Paul isn't objecting to the education of women. He is
instead asking them to wait for the appropriate time.
Footnotes:
1) Some may wonder why I included this chapter, for it deals with an
issue of hot disagreement amongst Christians. Sincere Christians have
held varying degrees of opinion on this subject for years, and
certainly my modest little chapter will not settle the debate. But this
is an issue of grave concern to many unbelievers. They view the Bible
as oppressive and demeaning to women. Since I wrote my book primarily
for them, I wanted to remove this barrier by helping people to see an
alternative way to interpret certain passages about women, an
alternative which may pleasantly surprise them. This does not mean that
I have an agenda or that I am insisting people agree with me. And it
certainly does not mean that I disrespect those who take more
conservative positions on this theology. What then, is my point? If the
gender issue is the primary set back to investigating Jesus, it may be
refreshing to hear of a different approach to the subject.
That’s
all.
2) The New Testament comes from a unique time in history when the
Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures converged to a large extent in many
places. For this reason, we should study how each of these three
cultures treated women.
The Jewish Talmud tells us that money was one of three ways to acquire
a woman. Deed and intercourse are the other two ways (Kiddushin 2a,
Babylonian Talmud). Ancient Rabbis also interpreted Exodus 20: 17 as
references to property (Mishna Ketuboth 4:6 and 6:1, Palestinian
Talmud).
In ancient Rome, women were purchased if they came from the lower
class. With upper class women, a special dowry arrangement was made
when a man took a wife, but the woman still had no choice in the
matter. (Will Durant, Ceasar and Christ , p. 57) The ancient writer
Plutarch tells us that husbands had control over the lives and
educations of their wives. (Conjugal Precepts, from Essays and
Miscellanies pp. 4, 48, 29, 11, 33, 16) Clough and Goodwin translators)
The ancient Greek writer Xenophon said that marriage was arranged for
women at an early age to men they did not know. (Within the Home p. 626
Greek Reader tanslation)
3) Clement, in his letter to the Corintians, written early in the
second century, tells us that early services were based on the worship
of the Jews and modeled after the synagogue. The ancient Jewish
commentator Philo mentions a structure which seperated men and women in
the synogogue. (On The Contemplative Life vs 32)
More Questions
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Have your own question?
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The following
is a brief excerpt from a larger book.
For a fuller treatment of this subject as well as a better context, see:
I’d
Like To Believe
In Jesus, But…
(The harder, less frequently discussed questions)
By Bob Siegel
Published by CSN Books
Copyright © 2007 by Bob Siegel
All Rights Reserved
Published by
Campus Ambassador Press
Copyright © 1999 by Bob Siegel
All Rights Reserved
This article is not to be reproduced without written permission from
the author. |
