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Unexamined emotions and preconceptions concerning women have hindered the church from taking the possibility of woman’s vocation to the priesthood seriously enough to give it detailed theological study until recently. The mind-set which prevented earlier attention to the question is illustrated by the words of the “father of Anglican theologians,” Richard Hooker. Hooker states his estimate of women in his book The Ecclesiastical Polity when, in the course of an argument for maintaining the custom of “giving away” the bride in the marriage ceremony, he declares, “It putteth women in mind of a duty whereunto the very imbecility of their nature and sex doth bind them; namely, to be always directed, guided, and ordered by others.” (1)
Today, such an assertion would be an embarrassment to an opponent of women in the priesthood. Theological statements are usually careful to avoid suggesting that women are inferior creatures. In a recent article, the Rt. Rev. C. Kilmer Myers vigorously opposes the ordination of women to the priesthood, but insists, “This is not an assertion of male superiority.” (2) Modern opponents of women in the priesthood claim not that women are inferior, but that they are different. A perennially popular English pamphlet opposing women in the priesthood puts it this way:
Any element of subordination, in the strict sense of that word, which is involved carries with it no suggestion of inferiority but only one of difference between the sexes, a difference which is manifested no less in the fact that a woman was chosen to be the Mother of God than in the fact that the Second Person of the Ever-blessed Trinity became man in our nature as her son (3)
We will put off until the next chapter an examination of the second part of this passage, that is, the implications of masculine and feminine biblical images for the ordination of women to the priesthood. What we want to focus on in this chapter is that “element of subordination” which connotes “no suggestion of inferiority.” This elusive concept often appears in arguments against the ordination of women to the priesthood. Perhaps the essence of the argument was captured by the priest who said, “Woman cannot be a priest, because she is equal but beneath man.” (4)
Subordination
The notion that women are subordinate to men occupies a special position in the arsenal of biblical and theological arguments against the ordination of women to the priesthood. It is the only theological argument against the priesting of women that is also used in the New Testament to limit the role of women in the life of the church. When Paul and other New Testament writers place limits on women’s behavior in the early Christian congregations, they use this argument alone as a theological justification. It should be emphasized as well that the New Testament writers do not direct special arguments against women in Holy Orders or women priests. Nor do they extend restrictions to women in the church which exceed the restrictions placed upon women in other areas of social life.(5)
Two New Testament passages governing the proper role of women in the church have long served as the basis for the doctrine of the subordination of women to men. Both occur in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, and the passages derive much of their authority from their location in a document of undisputed Pauline authorship.(6) The Revised Standard Version of the Bible renders the two passages as follows:
I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head-it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.)-1 Corinthians 11:2-9
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.-1 Corinthians 14:33-35
On an initial inspection of these texts, our response must be confusion. In 1 Corinthians 14:34, Paul is urging silence on all women in the churches, yet in 11:4-5, he seems to assume that women will pray and prophesy in public church gatherings and merely seeks to regulate the matter of women’s dress-that they should be veiled. There have been ingenious efforts to sort out and explain the apparent inconsistencies here, but they need not detain us because the two passages are in agreement on the crucial point: women are subordinate to men.
Paul’s view of women’s subordination to men is stated in verses 3 and 7-9 of 1 Corinthians 11 and in verse 34 of 1 Corinthians 14. In chapter 11, it is clear that Paul is thinking of the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and Z as a basis for his view of the subordinate role of women. In chapter 14, he refers in a general way to “the law” as his authority. Commentators generally suggest that he is referring here to Genesis 3:16, which tells the consequences of the fall for woman and reads, in part, “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” (7)
1 Corinthians 11 and 14 combine both pastoral advice (“behave this way”) with theological interpretation (“because Genesis says so”). A contemporary interpretation of these passages must consider both aspects-the relevance of Paul’s pastoral advice for today’s church and the soundness of the theological position he adopts to support his advice.(8)
Pastoral Advice: Decently and in Order
Paul was faced with the task of helping a rather unpopular new religious movement flourish and grow. This meant that there had to be limits on the extent to which the church could encourage a life-style different from the customary behavior of the day. Despite Paul’s efforts to see that everything in the churches was done “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40), the early Christians were in constant danger of being thought subversive in the area of family relations. The new sect encouraged membership and participation of women in a way that was unknown in the Jewish synagogue; this innovation threatened to undermine traditional man-woman relationships, especially in marriage. It is no accident that both 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Corinthians 14 appear to deal with the man-woman relationship in marriage. The marriage relationship was closely regulated by custom and, as most adult women were married, it would be their conduct that caused Paul special concern.
Rigid social conventions regulated the conduct of women in the first-century Hellenistic world. Wives were regarded in both Palestine and Greece as the property of their husbands, and they were expected to observe social conventions faithfully in order to avoid bringing dishonor on their husbands. A woman needed to exercise particular care that she not give the appearance of being an adulteress or a prostitute. To protect herself and her husband from scandal, she exercised discretion in appearance and speech. She neither spoke in public, nor appeared outside her home unless covered with a veils (9)
Given this context, what is surprising is not that women did so little in the early Christian congregations such as Corinth, but that they evidently had freedom to do so much. They gathered together with men in public church meetings and apparently prayed and prophesied from time to time. Their participation in the Christian congregations exceeded the usual limits of woman’s role in the first-century Hellenistic world, doubtless more than once to the point of scandal. It was in this setting that Paul urged the women of Corinth to “wear a veil” and to “keep silence.”
Today, the pastoral guidelines which Paul laid down for proper behavior in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 are more honored in the breach than the observance. Episcopalians have long since decided that Paul’s suggestions on dress and decorum-however helpful for maintaining the church in the first century-do not apply in different circumstances. It is no longer unthinkable for a woman to appear in church without covering her head. Men-particularly clergy-occasionally attend services wearing head coverings ( the bishop’s mitre, for instance) in direct contravention of 1 Corinthians 11:7.
It is also common for women-both in this country and in Anglican churches abroad-to take a vocal role in all kinds of public church gatherings, as vestry members, speakers, teachers, or convention delegates. In fact, the role of women in conventions should probably be seen as the most blatant violation of Paul’s directions. The wide publicity accorded such gatherings makes a woman’s participation there much more of a scandal, in Paul’s terms, than her leadership at the services of a local church would be.
Theological Advice : Be Subordinate
Opponents of the ordination of women to the priesthood are willing to brave charges of inconsistency to maintain that whatever else women may now do in the churches, Paul’s words rule out their priesthood. In this one area, at least, the principle of subordination still applies. Changing social conventions may have opened other areas of the church’s life to women, but in the central institution of the priesthood, the theological principle of subordination applies. It is precisely this “theological principle” which we will now examine.
In 1 Corinthians 11:7 Paul has pulled together the two different creation stories from Genesis 1 and 2 and conflated them into an argument for the veiling of women: “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.” However, when we read Genesis 1 and 2 to see where Paul got this idea, we see that his interpretation is a distortion of the two creation stories.
The two creation stories go this way. In Genesis 1:27 we read that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." In the account in Genesis 2, God creates Adam first from “dust of the ground” (v. 7) and later forms Eve from Adam’s rib to be “a helper fit for him” (vv. 18-22) . In the Genesis 1 account, both man and woman are formed in the image of God. In the Genesis 2 version, neither man nor woman is formed in God’s image. Adam is made from dust and Eve is made from Adam’s rib, but the story doesn’t mention that either of them is made in God’s image.
Now what Paul said was that “man . . . is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man”-a statement that strongly suggests that man is made in God’s image and woman is not. But if this is what Paul meant, he has misread his proof-texts, because neither Genesis 1 nor Genesis 2 will support him. The subordination of women to men cannot be argued on the basis that one sex (male) is made in God’s image while the other sex (female) is not.
In 1 Corinthians 11:8-9, Paul focuses on the Genesis 2 creation story in an effort to reinforce his point: “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” In this argument Paul takes the fact that Eve was created after Adam in order to be a “helper fit for him” and uses it to suggest that women should observe their proper, subordinate role. Does it follow from the story of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib that she is therefore Adam’s subordinate?
We can investigate this question by looking at the language which the author of Genesis 2 uses to describe Eve’s role. We are told that she is to be a “helper” to Adam. Even with the qualification “fit for him,” the term “helper” connotes inferiority in English, perhaps an assistant. At worst, the term suggests that Eve is to be Adam’s housekeeper, or perhaps his maidservant. But the Hebrew word ezer, which is here translated “helper,” carries no such connotation of inferiority in other places where it is used in the Old Testa-ment. As a summary of a study of the use of ezer in the Old Testament concludes:
It is used twenty-one times in the Old Testament, and sixteen times it is used for a super-ordinate, not a subordinate, helper. In no case is the one who helps subordinate unless we consider Genesis 2:18, 20 as exceptions. The most common use of ezer is in reference to Jehovah as a help. In Psalm 33:20 we read: “The Lord, He is our help.” Exodus 18:4, “For the God of my father was my help.” Psalm 146:5, “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help.” If this word ezer, “help,” does indicate a grade or rank, we should conclude from its use elsewhere in the Old Testament that Adam was subordinate to Eve. The truth is that the word itself indicates neither a higher nor a lower grade or rank. (10)
It is extremely unlikely that the author of Genesis 2 intended to convey the idea that Eve was Adam’s inferior by describing her as Adam’s helper. Despite the fact that the passage has often been interpreted this way, from Paul’s day to our own, it cannot be used as evidence for woman’s inferior or subordinate place in the created order.
In 1 Corinthians 14:34, Paul invokes another Genesis passage, the story of the fall, to argue that women should occupy a subordinate place in church life. According tò Genesis 3:16, one of the consequences of the fall was that woman would be ruled by her husband. Paul’s statement that women “should be subordinate, as even the law says” is certainly a legitimate interpretation of the results of the fall for the man-woman relationship in marriage.
However, the question we are faced with today is whether the man-woman relations that resulted from the fall are appropriate in the Christian community. Is it still true that women are subordinate to their husbands as they have been since they left the Garden of Eden? This is a central issue and one about which the New Testament itself gives conflicting opinions. The same Paul who instructs women to be “subordinate, as even the law says,” also tells us (in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 ) that “in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.” In Galatians 3:28, Paul asserts, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Two Views of Man-Woaman Relations
The New Testament, then, outlines two types of manwoman relationships-those which obtain under the law (1 Corinthians 14: 34) and those which exist “in Christ” (Galatians 3:28). These two approaches existed in tension in St. Paul’s thought and are both recorded in Scripture. The problem for the contemporary reader is deciding which of the two approaches best embodies the central message of the Gospel, in order to find a guideline for man-woman relationships today.
Opponents of women in the priesthood are not, by and large, willing to take this problem seriously. They would like to “have it both ways.” They would like to accept both the message of a new man-woman relation “in Christ” and the message that women are subordinate, “as even the law says.” Their way out of this dilemma is sometimes to suggest that the message of Galatians 3:28 does not apply to life in this world, but only to life “at the end of time.” They would argue that yes, we are all equal before God, but in this age we are still bound by the conditions that resulted from the fall. One writer dismisses the Galatians passage this way: “[Paul’s remark is clearly intended as eschatological-having to do with ‘the last days’-when ‘God will be all in all.’ In other words, the Galatians passage is irrelevant to the issue under discussion." (11) The author goes on to challenge those who want the priesthood opened to women to state their criteria for preferring the Galatians passage to 1 Corinthians 14:34 as a guideline for the churches today. (12)
Before picking up that challenge, we should examine the implications of saying that the Galatians passage is “irrelevant” because it points only to “the last days.” To say that the Galatians passage is irrelevant is to say that all efforts to break down the barriers of enmity that exist between different groups are inappropriate to this age. This would mean that the church would never seek to erase in its own life those distinctions which flow from race and ethnicity, condition of servitude, or sex. This is plainly repugnant and no opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood that we know of advances such a position. However, such a position ought to be the logical consequence of an interpretation that views Galatians 3:28 as “irrelevant.”
In a similar vein, others argue that, if the Galatians passage were intended for implementation in the life of the church, it would have been implemented in apostolic times and we would see the results of this in the New Testament.(13) This effort to play what Krister Stendahl has called “First-Century Bible Land” (14) -to try to maintain in our churches the relations which obtained between different groups at the time the New Testament was composedleads to contradictions as well. We would then-following the New Testament practice-regard the emancipation of slaves as contrary to God’s will for us, and would try to maintain in the church some reminders that slaves are not free in this world (perhaps descendants of slaves could sit at the back of the church, or be employed by the church in those jobs formerly performed by slaves). Fortunately, no opponent of the priesting of women that we know of has suggested such a desperate expedient.
In fact, there are good interpretive principles for preferring Galatians 3:28 to 1 Corinthians 14:34 as the embodiment of the central message of the Gospel.
In the first place, Galatians 3:28 is found in a theological discourse in which Paul is discussing the saving work of Christ. 1 Corinthians 14:34, on the other hand, is incorporated in a set of practical directions for maintaining church order. Between the two, we should probably assume that the passage which is basically “theological” in character has more long-term importance and relevance for the church. (15)
In fact, Galatians 3:28 has special theological importance because it is describing the order of things in the kingdom, “in Christ.” (16) As Christians we live between two worlds, between this world and the Kingdom of God. This world, as much as we seem to be bound up in it, is not where we “live and move and have our being.” Our real life as Christians is “in Christ.” When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.” We ask that God work to establish the order of the kingdom on earth, here and now. (17) We do not ask God to put off his saving work until some “last days” that are always at the other end of the rainbow. We do not know exactly what God’s kingdom will be like, but the New Testament gives us some glimpses and one of those glimpses is in Galatians 3:28. We know about the kingdom through our life “in Christ.” And “in Christ” there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.”
The theological importance of the Galatians passage is underscored by the fact that it speaks of a new order which reverses the effects of the fall. (18) In Romans 5:18 Paul says, “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.” The subordination of women to men was one of the effects of the fall, as we know from Genesis 3:16. In Christ’s death and resurrection we are freed from bondage to the sinful conditions of existence that obtained under the fall. If Paul had never written Galatians 3:28, we would be compelled to affirm its principles on the basis of what we know of Christ’s work from the rest of the New Testament.
If we accept Galatians 3:28 as consistent with the central message of the New Testament, we must discard the theological doctrine of subordination which St. Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 to justify his pastoral concern that the Christian churches conduct themselves “decently and in order.” At the same time, we should be alerted to the limitations of other images Paul employs to describe man-woman relations. The notion of subordination that is implied in 1 Corinthians 11:3 (“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God”) is likewise inconsistent with the kingdom order proclaimed in Galatians 3:28. A man might be the “head” of his wife under the conditions of the fall, but not in Christ.(19)
1. Richard Hooker, The Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V, Sec. 73.
2. Myers, “Should Women Be Ordained? No,” p. 8.
3. E. L. Mascall, Women and the Priesthood of the Church (London: The Church Union, Church Literature Association, n.d.), p. 35.
4. Quoted in Cunneen, Sex: Female; Religion: Catholic, p. 139.
5. Krister Stendahl, The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics, trans. Emilie T. Sander (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), p. 38.
6. The discussion of the doctrine of subordination in I Corinthians 11 and 14 can be applied as well to the several other New Testament texts in which similar ideas are expressed; for example: Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; Titus 2: 3-5.
7. Russell C. Prohl, Woman in the Church: A Restudy of Woman’s Place in Building the Kingdom (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1957), p. 38.
8. Andre Dumas, “Biblical Anthropology and the Participation of Women in the Ministry of the Church,” Concerning the Ordination of Women (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1964), p. 30.
9. See Prohl, pp. 51-54; Dumas, pp. 28-29; Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Sexual Relation in Christian Thought (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), p. 296.
10. Prohl, p. 37.
11. John Paul Boyer, “Some Thoughts on the Ordination of Women,” Ave: A Monthly Bulletin of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York City, Vol. XLI, No. 5 (May, 1972), p. 73.
12. Ibid.
13. Mascall, p. 13.
14. Stendahl, p. 40.
15. C. W. Atkinson, A Position Paper in Favorof the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church (New York: n.d.), pp. 1-2; Stendahl, p. 32.
16. Atkinson, p. 2; Stendahl, pp. 35-37.
17. Krister Stendahl, “Women in the Churches: No Special Pleading,” Soundings, Vol. LIII, No. 4 (Winter, 1970), p. 376.
18. Atkinson, p. 3.
19. Bailey, pp. 295-299.
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