The Role of Women in the Church

Texas

PREFACE

Attitudes toward the role of women in the church are rapidly changing in our day. The material in this book is presented so that all might have a better perspective concerning this subject which is coming to the forefront of ecclesiastical thought and life. Although one may choose not to be guided by the lessons of Scripture and history, one cannot afford to be ignorant of them. While the author has convictions concerning this subject, it is certainly not a doctrinal hobby with him. It is sincerely hoped that this book will be received in the same spirit in which it is offered.

The research which forms the basis for this work was done during studies at the University of Edinburgh, and the author wishes to acknowledge with appreciation the counsel of Professors J. H. S. Burleigh and Matthew Black. The changes and additions to this revision were done by Tamra Hernandez and the updates on the subject index by Katie Frugé, Ph.D., students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

May the Spirit of God whose ministry it is to guide us into all the truth (John 16:13) find teachable minds and hearts in all who read these pages.

Charles C. Ryrie

CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUNDS

Numerous difficulties beset the treatment of a subject such as the one discussed in this book. Feminists and their efforts at revisionism and faddists, who are intent on culture-driven interpretation as superior, are but two of them. Author and reader alike must be constantly on guard against trying to prove a particular pet point merely from the historical facts. And yet, few subjects are as important in church governance and work. Ecclesiastical bodies throughout the world are discussing the role of women in the church. Those who have not discussed the matter officially are facing the problem unofficially and on the local level.

What did the introduction of Christianity do for the status of women? What does the New Testament say concerning their place in the home and church? How did those who lived in the days following the writing of the New Testament interpret its doctrines about women? These are but a few of the questions this book attempts to answers. The Word of God is accepted as inspired and authoritative, yet the approach is historical. This study concerning biblical principles for application today seeks fact, not fancy; truth, not theory; instruction, not imagination.

Although the subject of this book will not permit a full and complete discussion of the status of women outside the Christian church or through the breadth of history, to begin with a survey of the position of women in ancient Greece, Rome, and Judaism is obviously imperative and will provide the necessary background for the ensuing discussion. This background study will help to show at the very outset what effect, if any, the environment in which Christianity developed had on its message and practice; that is to say, to what extent the status of women in Christianity was dependent upon or to what extent it differed from the status of women in Greek, Roman, and Jewish life.

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT GREECE

By comparison, Greek women were accorded somewhat higher respect than women of other ancient pagan societies. Nevertheless, women were under the authority and control of their husbands both by custom and by law and found themselves almost on the same level with the slave. Plato, of course, vigorously affirmed the equality of the sexes and the community of wives.¹ He speaks of the natural partnership of the sexes,² and as a result of that belief holds that women naturally share in all pursuits.³ However, Plato’s views were exceptional. Actually, the truer representative of Greek thought was Aristotle, who regarded the inferiority of women as inherent in the sex.⁴ The love of The Symposium is homosexual love, and it is assumed without argument that this alone is capable of satisfying a man’s highest and noblest aspirations, and the love of man and woman, when it is mentioned at all, is spoken of as altogether inferior, a purely physical impulse whose sole object is the procreation of children.⁵

The rise of the City-State was an important influence on the status of women in Greece. Since the City-State was supreme, all individual wishes were subordinated to it. In Sparta, for instance, women were cultivated physically in order that they might be good mothers and produce sons who would be superior warriors. However, no thought was taken for women after their days of childbearing were over, with the result that standards became very lax. The marriage tie could be dissolved by the husband without any scruple, reason, form, or legal process. This importance of breeding warriors for the State gave the women of Sparta full liberty to show themselves in public in the performance of bodily exercises. However, one must note again that this liberty was not the result of a philosophic idea of the equality of the two sexes, but was founded on the desire of producing strong children by means of strengthening the body of the female.⁶

In Athens, likewise, the State was all important. All the citizens of Athens were connected by blood ties of some sort, and they took great pains to maintain this common bond. Consequently, careful distinction was made between citizens and strangers and among the offspring of each group. Citizen women, therefore, were forced to lead very secluded lives. Their existence is well described thus:

The life of married women, maidens, children while in the care of women, and of female slaves, passed in the gynaikonitis [the part of the house reserved for domestic purposes], from which they issued only on rare occasions. The family life of Greek women widely differed from our Christian idea; neither did it resemble the life in an Oriental harem, to which it was far superior. The idea of the family was held up by both law and custom, and although concubinage and the intercourse with hetairai was suffered, nay favored, by the State, still such impure elements never intruded on domestic relations. Our following remarks refer, of course, only to the better classes, the struggle for existence by the poor being the same in all ages. In the seclusion of the gynaikonitis the maiden grew up in comparative ignorance. The care bestowed on domestic duties and on her dress was the only interest of her monotonous existence. Intellectual intercourse with the other sex was wanting entirely. Even where maidens appeared in public at religious ceremonies, they acted separately from the youths . . . . Even marriage did not change this state of things. The maiden only passed from the gynaikonitis of her father into that of her husband. In the latter, however, she was the absolute ruler, the oikodespoina of her limited sphere. She did not share the intellectual life of her husband. . . . It is true that the husband watched over her honor with jealousy, assisted by gynaikonomoi, sometimes even by means of lock and key. . . . [H]er position was only that of the mother of the family. Indeed, her duties and achievements were hardly considered, by the husband, in a much higher light than those of a faithful domestic slave.⁷

Such seclusion, however, did not mean that these wives were ignorant women, for many were self-trained. Nonetheless, although the Greeks were a race of great thinkers, poets, sculptors, painters, and architects, not one Athenian woman ever attained to the slightest distinction in any one department of literature, art, or science.⁸ However, this seclusion did not mean inactivity, for the wife was in full charge of all domestic affairs of her household. She was absolute ruler in this realm, and in her own way she did have a place of honor. But Pericles expresses the prevailing view concerning women in the funeral oration that Thucydides puts into his mouth:

If I am to speak also of womanly virtues . . . I will sum up all in a brief admonition: Great is your glory if you fall not below the standard which nature has set for your sex, and great also is hers of whom there is least talk among men whether in praise or in blame.⁹

Some women, called hetairai (Gk., feminine plural of companion), were forbidden to marry citizens. They did not, you may be sure, lead a monastic existence but enjoyed much greater freedom than the wives of citizens. They became the companions, both intellectual and physical, of Athenian men. Demosthenes’ summary of the status of these various groups of women is brutally frank: "Hetairai we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the ordinary requirements of the body, wives to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households."¹⁰

After the time of Alexander the Great, women began to have a relatively greater measure of freedom, especially in Macedonia, due largely to the fact that Macedonian dynasties produced an extraordinary succession of able and masterful women such as Arsinoe, Berenice, and Cleopatra. These women played a large part in civic affairs, for they received envoys . . . built temples, founded cities, engaged mercenaries, commanded armies, held fortresses, and acted on occasion as regents or co-rulers.¹¹ Even more important is that from the courts of Macedonia relative freedom came to those women who desired emancipation. They could be educated, take part in club life, appear at the games, and in general enjoy freer relations with men. Nevertheless,

most of these things clearly relate only to a minority. Freedom was not automatic, but had to be grasped; education for the mass was rudimentary, and even in the first century there were women, rich enough to own slaves, who could neither read nor write. Greece suffered from the sexes being on different levels of culture.¹²

Thus one may conclude that in the Greek world the status of women was decidedly inferior to that of men; wives led lives of seclusion and practical slavery; the hetairai, though, at least enjoying more freedom of movement, did not share the rights or status that belonged to men; and the relative freedom that did come to women in places like Macedonia was enjoyed only by a minority.

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT ROME

Under the Roman Empire women enjoyed a somewhat better standing than in Greece. Legally, however, the wife was still regarded merely as a piece of property completely under the control of the husband. Yet in practice the law was interpreted otherwise, and women enjoyed considerable freedom. Further, the wife was not kept in seclusion as in a Greek household; rather, she shared her husband’s life and set a standard of wifely and motherly virtues envied in a later age.¹³

Any such freedom was not, of course, gained all at once. The laws of the Republic made every father and husband a despot. Because some husbands chose to assert their legally constituted role,¹⁴ there were two waves of feminine reaction, which took the form of mass poisoning of husbands in 331 BC and 180 BC. In 215 BC a law proposed by Oppius at a time when state finances were low and expenditures had to be curbed provided that no woman should be allowed to possess more than a half ounce of gold, to wear a parti-colored garment, to ride in a chariot within the city of Rome or a town occupied by Roman citizens, or within a mile of these places, except for religious purposes.¹⁵ When more prosperous days returned, Roman matrons, who had been chafing under this law, sought and won its repeal. One of the arguments against the repeal was this: If they win in this, what will they not attempt? Review all the laws with which your forefathers restrained their license and made them subject to their husbands, even with all these bonds you can scarcely control them.¹⁶ These quotations show clearly both the restraint under which Roman women lived (i.e., in being subject to their husbands), together with the freedom they enjoyed (i.e., having liberty to appear in public).¹⁷

Along with this partial emancipation came increased moral laxity. Women sought escape from the control of their husbands with the result that divorce became more common. Though Seneca’s famous remark about divorce does not necessarily represent the condition of the majority of women, it nonetheless indicates the trend of the day. He asked (in AD 54), Is there any woman that blushes at divorce now that certain illustrious and noble ladies reckon their years, not by the number of consuls, but by the number of their husbands, and leave home in order to marry, and marry in order to be divorced? In addition, other vices were common in Roman society at the time of Christ. Another has summarized the situation well:

With rare exceptions, they [the Romans] copied only the vices of the Greeks. The old frugal, industrious, and virtuous manner of life practised by their ancestors was in too many instances exchanged for an idle, luxurious, and sensual existence . . . . Hand in hand with increasing wealth and outward prosperity came indolence and corruption, and the State whose citizens could boast that for five centuries no Roman had ever to divorce his wife, sank under the emperors to the pitch of moral degradation mirrored . . . in the opening chapter of Paul’s epistle. The fountains of life were poisoned. Although the position of women in Rome was for long a much more dignified one than in Greece, there was latterly a greatly diminished value set on marriage, a marked increase in divorces, a general casting off of moral restraint. In the last pre-Christian century almost every vice was rampant—immorality and paiderastia, abortion and infanticide, gluttony and avarice, cruelty and sycophancy, gambling and suicide, indecency in pictures, at public races, and on the stage.¹⁸

Religious movements had both good and bad effects on the status of women. Stoicism, first taught in Greece by Zeno and taken over in Roman times by the philosopher Seneca, the slave Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius, tended to elevate the position of women. It inculcated lofty ethical standards, including a single standard of chastity for men and women alike. On the other hand, the worship of Bacchus, which was practiced by many women, incorporated shameful vices that greatly degraded women. In 181 BC the cult was declared illegal, and the worst offenders were put to death.¹⁹

Balance is the most necessary ingredient in trying to arrive at a true evaluation of the status of women in Roman society and avoid a one-sided exaggeration. The moral principles of Stoicism must be balanced with the knowledge that they were not widely applied; the evident degradation of society must be balanced with the realization that among the common people throughout the empire there were doubtless many who had neither part nor lot in the ridiculous dainties or bestial practices of the wanton revellers pilloried in the literature of the age.²⁰ Clearly women enjoyed greater practical, if not legal, freedom in Roman than in Greek society, and this aided the spread of Christianity because women participated more freely in religious activities. It also resulted in the laxity and licentiousness against