O. C. Edwards, Jr.
President and Dean Seabury-Western Seminary Evanston, Illinois
Published in the Nashotah Review Vol.15 no.3 1975
(The St Luke’s Journal of Theology Vol. XVIII no.4 September 1975)
and reproduced here with the necessary permissions
On a topic such as the present one, the question is not what the evidence is but what the meaning of the evidence is. There is simply no indication that the church ordained or considered ordaining any women to the presbyterate or episcopate before the Council of Nicaea. The presupposition of this paper is that this fact alone does not settle the matter of what the church ought to do today in this regard, that the significance of the fact is not self-evident, but is, rather, in need of investigation. This paper also presupposes that the fact has some significance. The Christian church looks upon this area of its past as in some way normative and paradigmatic of its shape for all ages to come. One could argue that the major task of theology is to decide in exactly what way which parts of this past continue to govern the life of the church today. The enduring and the transient aspects of the New Testament and ante-Nicene period have been related to one another in terms of a number of different analogies at one time or another: essential/accidental, revealed/socially conditioned, kernel/ husk, etc. However they are related, the perennial problem is one of sorting, of saying what today belongs in which category, of what principles from the past are the appropriate ones for understanding contemporary events. In an age whose consciousness is historical consciousness no one can imagine that institutions in the church should or even can remain unchanged from the way they were in its charter period. On the other hand, whatever else it means to call Christianity a historical religion, it means at least that the church is not free to regard its past as entirely irrelevant. To say that we are Christian is to say that we have a continuity with that past that is more important than our manifold discontinuities. As we said, the theological task is to see how this privileged period in the church’s past shapes the church’s present.
Before we can do that, however, we must see what the past was like. Indeed, the present paper will not go much beyond that because the credentials of its writer are as an historian rather than a theologian. Since, as we have said, the early church did not ordain women to the presbyterate, to talk about anything at all we will have to talk about something else. Three topics seem worth investigating: what offices, if any, were open to women in the early church; how did the condition of women in the early church compare to that of women in contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman society at large; and how did the church come to ordain anyone as priests and bishops. Merely to choose these topics rather than others is already to begin the theological task.
Church Office and Women in the Early Church
The Pauline Correspondence
While the Apostle to the Gentiles refers to a number of women in the greetings of his letters and while Priscilla may have been stronger than Aquila in that famous husband-and-wife act,(1) the only roles that could possibly be considered offices in which he mentions women are as deacon and prophet. In the appendix to Romans, which may or may not have belonged to this letter originally, Paul says:
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess (diakonos) of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her in whatever she may require of you, for she has been a helper of many and of myself as well. (Rom. 16:1-2)
What does it mean to refer to Phoebe as a diakonos The word could mean a servant, especially a waiter, it could mean a helper, or it could refer to what was either an order or something that was approaching one. That Paul knew this last meaning is clear from the greeting in Phil. 1:1, which is to “all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.” That, however, is the only clearly technical use of the word that Paul makes while he uses it in a metaphorical sense of servant in many places, e.g., 2 Cor. 3:6; 11:23; 1 Thess. 3:2, etc. In the interpretation of this passage we are best guided by Roger Gryson who finds the surest guide to the meaning of diakonos here in the other things that are said about Phoebe, especially the designation of her as a prostatis, which the RSV translates above as helper, but which has more of a sense of patroness or protectress. Thus she probably was of both material and moral assistance to the large number of Christians who would have passed through the busy seaport of Cenchreae. In addition, she may have opened her home to meetings of the Christian assembly. (2) As Oepke has said, we are at the point here where a charism is on its way to becoming a mission or function (TWNT I,788).
When we say that Paul speaks of women who prophesy, we need to be more specific about the activity in which they engage since different New Testament writers use the word in different ways. After describing the ecstatic nature of prophecy in Rev., Friedrich goes on to say:
The prophet is very different in Paul. He certainly receives revelations but he is not characterised by visions and auditions which transport him out of the world. His chief mark is the Word which God has given him to proclaim. The prophet in the Pauline congregation is not the seer but the recipient and preacher of the Word. He is not one who, possesed by God, has no control over his senses and has to do what the indwelling power orders. Alienation and raving are foreign to him. The primitive Christian prophet is a man of full self-awareness. When he is speaking he can break off if a revelation is given to someone else. (TDNT VI, 851)
This insight is amplified by the way that Friedrich goes on to distinguish between prophecy and prayer, revelation, gnosis, teaching, and evangelism and in the contrast between prophecy and tongues that Paul shows in 1 Cor. 14.
This then is the activity that Paul says that women engage in, together with praying, in 1 Cor. 11:5 and the only difference between what women are described as doing in vs. 5 and men are described as doing in vs. 4 is that the women do so with their heads covered and men do so with their heads uncovered. Since this reference is made in passing in a passage in which the origin of woman from man and the subordination of woman to man (3) is the point that is being argued, this makes it the clearer that women exercised the charism of prophecy in church equally with men. As Paul describes prophecy, it appears to be a charism rather than an office. (4) It is referred to as one in 1 Cor. 12:10 and the number who might speak at a service and, even more impressively, the implied number who would restrain themselves suggest that we are not yet dealing with an order.
It is worth noting that the reference in Acts 21:8-9 to the four virgin daughters of Philip the Evangelist who prophesied reflects the Pauline level of tradition rather than the Lucan, as Haenchen points out, because it displays the interest in hosts characteristic of the itinerary rather than a prophecy of Paul’s impending doom, which is Luke’s interest at that point and which is satisfied in the visit of Agabus from Jerusalem in the next few verses. (5)
The difficulty with accepting this reconstruction of the role of women who prophesied comes from the same letter by Paul that suggested it in the
first place. In 1 Cor. 14:34ff. we read the familiar verses:
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.
The ways that exegetes have sought to get around this apparent contradiction are numerous and ingenious, but the correct explanation appears to be that these verses are an interpolation coming from a Hellenistic Jewish Christian community from around the turn of the century. These verses interrupt the flow of thought of the chapter, they use words and constructions that are foreign to Paul, they represent the custom of the synagogue and an un-Pauline concern for the Torah, and vs. 33 flows naturally into vs. 36; for these and other reasons it seems unlikely that Paul wrote these verses.(6)
The Pastoral Epistles
In spite of the support recently given Pauline authorship of the Pastorals by such distinguished scholars of the New Testament as
J. Jeremias, J. N. D. Kelly, C. Spicq, and W. F. Albright, it should be clearly recognized that the interests of these writings are interests of the post-apostolic generation. Certainly no clear reconstruction of the early history of the Christian ministry can be made which lumps together the evidence of the genuine Pauline letters and that of the Pastorals. The majority of scholars now see the latter as coming from the turn of the century or even later.
There are three passages in the Pastorals that call for our attention: 1 Tim. 2:11-12, in which the silence of women is called for; 1 Tim. 3:11, which may refer to women deacons; and 1 Tim. 5:3-16, which discusses widows. The first of these sounds like the interpolation in 1 Cor. 14 just discussed. It goes:
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach
or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.
The Dibelius-Conzelmann commentary questions, however, whether this reference is to behavior in the Christian assembly. “They rather comprise a general rule for women, here applied to prayer. The observation that the regulations are somewhat artificially inserted into the pattern for rules for the household points in the same direction.’ (7) This seems to be, then, general Jewish parenesis about the subordination of wives to husbands. In any case, it would have entered Christian tradition about the time of the Corinthian interpolation and indicates that somewhere at least women were excluded from speaking in the Christian assembly during the post-apostolic generation.
A fascinating ambiguity appears in 1 Tim. 3:11. Vs. 8 begins the section on the table of duties of members of the household that deals with deacons: “Deacons likewise must be serious … .” Vs. 11 reads:”The women (gunaikas) likewise must be serious… . ” Vs. 12 begins: “Let deacons be
the husband of one wife, and let them manage their children and their households well.” The question is whether in this context gunaikas means wives of deacons or female deacons. Possibly the difficulty comes, as Dibelius and Conzelmann suggest, from the schema that underlies this
teaching of duties. During this period classical biography was made a vehicle of popular moral teaching in which lists of the virtues (aretai) of the hero are mentioned “which do not derive from observation of their activity, but are mentioned because the description of that activity was made to fit a fixed schema” (p. 50). An example they cite is this description of a general that has very little to do with military qualifications:
I believe, then, that we must choose a general, not because of noble birth as priests are chosen, nor because of wealth as the superintendants of the gymnasia, but because he is temperate, self-restrained, vigilant, frugal, hardened to labour, alert, free from avarice, neither too young nor too old, indeed a father of children if possible, a ready speaker, and a man with a good reputation. (8)
Because the schema speaks of virtues in general, it has as little to say about the peculiar traits needed by a general as our passage has to say of the qualifications for the diaconate as such. “The uncertainty of the interpretation (of whether deacon’s wives or female deacons are meant in 3:11) is perhaps connected with the fact that the author did not sufficiently modify the traditional list of duties, so that the application to Christian circumstances did not become completely clear” (p. 58). If women deacons are referred to here, we learn little of their duties.
As Gryson has said, the problem in interpreting 1 Tim. 5:3-16 is to determine if the widows there are the object or the subject of diakonia(9) Some scholars have divided the passage, assuming that vv. 3-8 have to do with widows in general and vv. 9-18 are concerned with widows in some technical sense. (10) Actually, what we find is a group of reasons why a woman should not be enrolled as a widow and something of the qualifications of those who may be. Reasons for excluding a widow are that she has a family ( vs.4,8,11), that she lives voluptuously (vs.6), or that she is under sixty (vs.11-15). True widows have set their hope on God, pray night and day, are sixty or over, have been faithful wives, are known for their good deeds such as rearing children (probably orphans are meant), showing hospitality, washing the feet of fellow Christians, relieving the afflicted, and generally devoting themselves to doing good. About the only thing that may be inferred about their duties is that they make pastoral house calls (vs. 13). The good works listed are requirements for enrollment rather than duties of the enrolled, but undoubtedly it was expected that they would continue. They are supported by the congregation (vs. 16).
The passage illustrates the development of the technical use of the term, a process which led to the definition of the office “widows of the congregation,” but which at the same time allowed the continued use of the word as a designation for anyone who had been widowed.(11)
To summarize the New Testament evidence, we may say that in the time of Paul the emphasis appears to have been on charisms, such as prophecy, rather than offices. The diaconate, however, which he barely recognized in Phil. 1:1 and to which Phoebe may have belonged, was definitely an office by the time of the Pastorals and there may have been women who held it or they may have been wives of deacons; in any case, we are told more about their moral attributes than their duties. Widows too had attained a recognized status in which those who qualified could be enrolled, but it would be an exaggeration to call that status an order. By this time there was also felt a pressure against women in an active role in the cult, at least in places. This represents the sort of ethics of good citizenship advocated by the author of the Pastorals, who was “a man of the second generation who had to withstand the mighty assaults of syncretistic and ascetic tendencies and movements.”(12)
The Apostolic Fathers
This first group of post-New Testament Christian writers have very little to add to our investigation. When they mention widows, for instance, they usually refer to objects of the church’s charity rather than to anything that could be considered an order. The clearest exception to this is Polycarp, ad Phil. 4.3:
(and teach) the widows to be sober about the faith of the Lord, praying constantly for all men, being far from all slander, evil speech, false witness, love of money, and evil of any kind, knowing that they are an altar of God and that all offerings are carefully inspected, and “nothing escapes him of either their reflections or thoughts” and of “the hidden things of the heart.”
Schoedel, whose translation we have followed, is undoubtedly right in saying that these are real widows who “form an order within the church
and are to be distinguished from widows who are simply members of the congregation in need of help.” (13) The description of them as an altar of God probably refers both to their prayers and to the fact that they live on what is offered to God.(14)
In Smyrn.13.1 Ignatius of Antioch, after greeting married Christians, goes on to extend his salutation to “the virgins who are called
widows” (tas parthenous tas legomenas chēras). Robert Grant follows Baur and Fascher in saying that “there are vacancies on the official list of widows and they are being filled by (older) women who have never been married.”(15) Without being so certain that we can detect a list on which there were blank spots as though each church had a certain number of openings for widows, we can probably say that these were women who added continence to asceticism, prayer, acts of charity, and support by the Christian community.(16) The Grapte mentioned by Hermas in Vis. 8.3, who is to read to the widows and orphans the book that Clement will send to other churches and Hermas himself will read to the Roman elders, is not identified clearly enough for us to have any idea of whether she held church office or not. (17)
It is possible that a pagan writer contemporaneous with the Apostolic Fathers alludes to women in orders. At some time around A.D. 112, Pliny the Younger wrote his famous request to Trajan for advice on dealing with Christians. In it he says:
I thought it the more necessary, therefore, to find out what truth there was in this by applying torture to two maidservants (ancillis), who were called ministrae(18)
While Pliny was writing in Latin to the Roman emperor, he was governor of Bithynia where Greek was spoken; indeed, at that time Greek was still the language of the church in Rome, as it was to remain for some time to come. This means that he was probably supplying his own Latin equivalent for Greek terms, which makes it likely that the ministrae were designated to him as diakonoi. That is to say that ancilla indicates the social status and ministra the ecclesiastical status of these women. What that latter status involves, however, is in no way spelled out. If Phoebe was a diakonos in some sense that was becoming technical, and if 1 Tim. 3:11 refers to women deacons rather than to deacon’s wives, and if this passage also has deacons in mind, then we have these three pre-fourth century references to them. The conclusion of Gryson is irresistible: “Les commencements diaconat feminin baignent pour nous dans des ténèbres opaques, qu’il apparaît bien difficile de percer.” (19)
Church Office for Women in Heterodox Sects
It has been persuasively argued by a number of writers that the boundary between orthodoxy and heresy was indistinct in the second century. It nevertheless remains true that not everyone lived near the border and there is a considerable theological distance from the center of the Great Church to the center of, especially, Gnosticism. Women play a larger role in both the writings and the life of second century heterodox groups. There are many stories of women being prominent in the foundation of various groups, e.g., Helena, whom Simon claimed that he as first god had generated as his first idea. (20) Various apocryphal acts and gospels also give roles of importance to women mentioned in the New Testament. When we get to such matters as church office, however, we find less evidence. How seriously are we to take, for instance, what Irenaeus said about women to whom Mark the Valentinian gave chalices which he ordered them to consecrate in his presence (“autas eucharistein egkeleutai parestotos autou”) as part of an elaborate routine for seduction (adv. haer. 1.13.2)? Or what are we to make of the Quintillianists, Priscillianists, Pepouzians or Artotyrites mentioned by Epiphanius in Pan. haer. 49? They appear to be related to Montanists, but Epiphanius seems to know very little about them, and no one else knows anything because, as Karl Holl has pointed out, only he mentions Quintilla and he does not mention Priscilla when he would have been expected to. (21) Still he reports that women are bishops and elders among them, a practice they defend by saying that in Christ there is neither male nor female (49.2). No other early writer suggests this of Montanists.
What we are told of Montanists is that there were female prophets among them, especially Maximilla and Prisca or Priscilla. Labriolle, who has collected the oracles of the Montanist prophets, lists seven attributed to these women that he regards as authentic utterances of theirs. (22) In these Maximilla says that she is the last prophet because the world is about to end; that she is driven out as a wolf from the sheep even though she is not a wolf but word (rhēma), spirit, and power; that one does not hear her (or, more probably, the Holy Spirit in her), but hears Christ; that God has sent her to be a sectarian, a revealer, an interpreter of this suffering, promise, and covenant, compelled whether she wishes it or not to learn the knowledge of God; Prisca says that continence permits one to see visions and hear voices; that those who deny the resurrection and yet live according to the flesh are flesh and yet hate flesh; and either Prisca or Quintilla says that Christ came to her in the form of a woman and prophesied that the heavenly Jerusalem would descend on the village of Pepouza. The content of their oracles has been reported with such detail to show how different the Montanist prophecy was from that of which Paul spoke. These women were thought to have supplied their vocal chords to the Holy Spirit, like a lyre to be strummed by the divine plectrum, as Montanus said. (23)
Tertullian
The prolificness of the Father of Latin Theology and his vivid rhetorical style render him invaluable for the reconstruction of the life of the early
church because he preserves many details of information that do not come down to us through other channels. The attitude of this irascible and
puritanical Carthaginian toward the ordination of women is not surprising: he opposes it vigorously:
It is not permitted to a woman to speak in church, but neither is it permitted her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say in any sacerdotal office. (de vel. virg. 9.1, ANF trans.)
It is obvious that Tertullian bases his attitude toward the activity of women in church on 1 Cor. 14 and his own more than literalist interpretation of scripture. He believed that what was not explicitly permitted by the Bible is forbidden to Christians. (24) Thus, though his treatise on baptism was written to refute a woman who spoke against this sacrament (de bapt. 1.3), when he discusses the minister of it and admits that laity may baptize in emergencies, he denies that a woman may baptize and goes to some lengths to refute the implications of the pseudepigraphical Acts of Paul and Thecla 34 and 43 that one could, asking: “How credible would it seem that he who has not permitted a woman even to learn with overboldness should give a female the power of teaching and of baptizing?” (de bapt. 17). This accounts for his scorn for the activities of women heretics: “The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms—it may be even to baptize!” (de praes. 41.5).The only sacerdotal function to which women were admitted was sacerdotes pudicitiae—they could be “priests of chastity ” (de cultu fem. 2.12.1).
On the basis of this firm stand, it might seem surprising that Tertullian should have been converted to Montanism, which emphasized the prophecy of women. (25) He explains that Paul said that women should be silent in church and that they should not speak there in order to learn, but points out with the same literalism that the apostle had conceded to them the right to prophesy “when he covers the woman who prophesies with a veil” (adv. Mar. 5.8.11-12). Indeed, one of the proofs of the illegitimacy of Marcionism is that the “holy sisters” those ranks do not prophesy. Yet even here he is consistent: women should keep silent in church. There was in his congregation at Carthage a woman with a great gift of prophecy.
We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the church; she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord; she both sees and hears mysterious communications; some men’s hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies, (de anim. 9)
With all of those gifts, she still does not speak during the service, but “after the people are dismissed at the conclusion of the sacred services, she is in regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision.”
In addition to women prophets, Tertullian also recognizes the order of widows. He speaks of their ordo, and Gryson is right in saying that this term drawn from ancient Roman institutions is applied analogically by Tertullian to those who occupy an official position in the church. (26) It only comes up in passing while he is discussing other things, usually monogamy, by which he means not remarrying even after the death of a spouse. His literalistic exegesis of 1 Tim. sees this as the meaning of the statement that a bishop is the husband of one wife (3:2) and that a widow has been the wife of one husband (5:9; ad uxor. 1.7.4; de monog. 11.1). Thus he is able to ask: “how many men therefore and how many women in ecclesiastical orders owe their position to continence?” (de exhor. cast. 13.4). In fact, we learn very little from Tertullian about widows but that they conformed to the standards of 1 Tim. 5. He objects strenuously, for instance, to the virgin under twenty who was placed among the widows (and worse, did not veil herself there; de vel. virg. 9.1). He could not share the enthusiasm of Ignatius of Antioch for “virgins who are called widows.” This passage does show, as the use of the term ordo does, that Tertullian ranked widows among the clergy even if he did not add to the duties implied for them in the Pastorals; the virgins sat in the special seats provided for the widows, indication that their order had its special place in church. The same point is indicated by the passage which objects to the forgiveness of adulterers in part on the grounds that those who are penitent are brought into church in haircloth and ashes before the widows and elders (de pud. 13.7).
Hippolytus
For this writer we are dependent upon the Apostolic Tradition exclusively among all his writings for any reference to women in church office. The entire passage is worth quoting.
When a widow is appointed, she shall not be ordained but shall be appointed by name. If her husband has been long dead, she may be appointed (without delay). But if her husband has died recently, she shall not be trusted; even if she is aged she must be tested by time, for often the passions grow old in those who yield to them.
The widow shall be appointed by the word alone, and (so) shall she be associated with other widows; hands shall not be laid upon her because she does not offer the oblation nor has she a sacred ministry, but the widow is appointed for prayer, and prayer is
the duty of all. (Trad. ap.W, trans. Easton; 10, ed. Botte)
The first paragraph is obviously based on 1 Tim. Easton finds the vigor of the second paragraph hard to explain if widows were not ordained somewhere.(27) Whatever the truth of that matter, the only additional thing we are told about widows, beyond their being supported by the church, is that they, along with the virgins, fast often and pray for the church (Trad, ap. 25, trans. Easton).
Clement of Alexandria and Origen
We do not need to use the thirteen pages that Gryson did to reach the negative conclusion that he did:
C’est done en vain qu’on cherchait chez les Alexandrins une indication quelconque concernant un ministère exercé par des femmes à leur époque ou, plus généralement. concernant le statut des veuves dans les communautés égyptiennes.(28)
There is an exegetical interest among the earliest Alexandrians to elucidate references to widows and female deacons in the New Testament, but there is no suggestion that those offices existed at their time in Egypt.
Didascalia Apostolorum
While the Eastern documents we have surveyed previously have had only passing references to women in church office, this Syrian church order from the early third century treats the matter with some detail. (29)The basis of the institution of widows is still 1 Tim. although the age has unaccountably been reduced from sixty to fifty (14.3.1). The reason is still that one younger would be in danger of remarriage, or, as the author puts it so quaintly, the one enrolled as a widow should be someone “who in some sort, by reason of her years, shall be remote from the suspicion of taking a second husband” (loc. cit.). Younger widows are to be supported by the church in case of need, but they may not be appointed as widows. It is lawful for a widow to marry a second husband, but not a third; beyond two husbands is regarded as harlotry. The work of a widow is prayer. “A widow shall have no other care save to be praying for those who give, and for the whole Church” (15.3.5).
There is a close correlation between the prayers of the widows and the alms of those who support them; the widow prays for the donor by name (15.3.1). The church leaders to whom the Didascalia is addressed are told:
Let them not act after their own will, nor desire to do anything apart from that which is commanded them, or without counsel to speak with anyone by way of making an answer, or to go to anyone to eat or drink, or to fast with anyone, or to receive aught of anyone, or to lay hands on and pray over anyone without the command of the bishop or deacon. (15.3.8)
This passage is very instructive because it tells us that widows fast with, pray over, and lay hands on the sick, that they are supported by the congregation, often by being invited to meals, and that they are to do no teaching. Apparently they had become something of a nuisance because of a tendency to go around from house to house, to gossip, and to seek money and other gifts for themselves. “For those who are gadabouts and without shame cannot be still even in their houses; for they are not widows (chēras), but wallets (pēras) and they care for nothing else but to be making ready to receive” (15.3.6). Indeed, Armitage Robinson said:
The widows were a numerous and somewhat troublesome body of Church pensioners. Among their besetting sins were grumbling at their fellow-widows who happened to receive larger doles, and making begging expeditions instead of being content with the supplies that reached them in a normal way.(30)
In a number of places it is said quite explicitly that a widow is not to teach, as, e.g., the following:
When she is asked a question by anyone, let her not straightway give answer, except only concerning righteousness and faith in God; but let her send them that desire to be instructed to the rulers. And to those who question them let them (the widows) make an answer only in refutation of idols and concerning the unity of God. (15.3.5)
Other topics on which the widow is not to teach are punishment and reward, the kingdom of the name of Christ, or his dispensation. This is not exclusively anti-feminine, because lay men are not to teach of these things either. The reason why they are not to do so is to avoid the scorn of the gentiles. There is also an exegetical reason that is given: Jesus had women disciples, but he sent only the Twelve to instruct. “For if it were required that women should teach, our Master Himself would have commanded these to give instruction to us” (15.3.6).(31)
In summarizing the evidence of the Didascalia on widows, Gryson has pointed out that they are really neither clergy nor lay, but already represent a third category that is to come to the fore later, that of religious. Not only is this tertium quid status shared, there are also the common elements of commitment to a life of prayer and acceptance of celibacy. To the extent that one can speak of the duties of widows, they are to pray for all Christians, especially their benefactors and the sick, with whom they also fast and on whom they lay hands. (32)
It is in the Didascalia that deaconesses appear for the first time with any clarity about their functions. Those functions are essentially two: to anoint women for baptism and to visit Christian women in pagan households. There is a parallel between deaconesses and deacons: “those that please thee out of all the people them shalt thou choose and appoint as deacons: a man for the performance of most things that are required, but a woman for the ministry of women” (16.3.12). In baptism a deaconess is only supposed to anoint the nude bodies of other women. The officiant anoints women in a more discreet way if there are no deaconesses, but the deaconess does not baptize. “Let a woman deacon, as we have already said, anoint the woman. But let a man pronounce over them the invocation of the divine Names in the water.” (16.3.12). In the section dealing with widows there is a general ban on any baptisms by women: “for if it were lawful to be baptized by a woman, our Lord and Teacher Himself would have been baptized by Mary His mother, whereas He was baptized by John, like others of the people” (15.3.10). The deaconess, however, is to take newly baptized women and teach them “how the seal of baptism ought to be (kept) unbroken in purity and holiness”(16.3.12) and it is pointed out that Jesus himself was ministered to by women.
The other duty of deaconesses is “to go into the houses of the heathen where there are believing women, and to visit those who are sick, and to minister to them of that of which they have need, and to bathe those who have begun to recover from sickness” (16.3.12). One interesting aspect of the teaching of this document about deaconesses is that it picks up a trait of the works of Ignatius of Antioch and sees analogies between orders of clergy and the persons of God or things of divine appointment. (33) In the Didascalia, deaconesses are seen in analogy to the Holy Spirit, undoubtedly because in Syriac “spirit” is feminine (9.2.26). (34) It is interesting that presbyters are seen in analogy only to the apostles. Orphans and widows are in parallel with the altar.
It is obvious that Connolly and others like him must be wrong in such statements as: “It seems probable that (deaconesses) were selected from the order of widows, though this is not indicated” (p. xlii). As Gryson has pointed out, in the one area in which there appears to be an overlap of duties, the care of the sick, deaconesses are expected to function as nurses and do hard physical labor, while widows are expected to do nothing more strenuous than to fast, pray, and lay on hands. (35)
Conclusions
Rehearsing our survey of the ante-Nicene period, several points are obvious. At no time during this period did the Church seriously consider ordaining women to the episcopate or presbyterate. Although it is possible that we have allusions to female deacons as early as Paul, it is only at the very end of our period that we learn what any does. In the Great Church women prophets disappear shortly after Paul. From the time of the Pastorals on widows are supported by the church and are expected to give themselves to prayer, chastity, and possibly some corporal works of mercy.
More important than what was done—or not done—is the reason why. It is here that we move from history into theology in asking the degree to which what happened then was paradigmatic of the shape of the Church for all times to come and that to which what happened then is to be explained entirely in terms of social conditions of the time. While, as we saw, Paul probably did not say that women should keep quiet in church, he never questioned their subordination to men. The explanation for that seems to be his social conditioning in terms of his expectation of an imminent parousia that we must assume did not occur. (36) Dibelius explains the ban on women speaking in church as an effort of the second-generation Christians to resist syncretistic and ascetic tendencies and movements, (op.cit.,p. 49), another social conditioning. Tertullian’s rules grow out of what he thinks the Bible says and his belief that nothing is permitted to Christians which the Scriptures do not allow explicitly, a hermeneutical principle that not all later generations have assumed to bear the authority of revelation. The Didascalia says that if Jesus had wanted things done that way, he would have done them that way himself, which is quite similar to Tertullian’s point. On the whole, the ante-Nicene church gives us no reason for not ordaining women that is likely to sound compelling to persons of today. The more significant fact may be that by and large they did not justify their failure to act, but seem not ever to have imagined that they could. The question then becomes: why not? and we have to approach that in a more roundabout way.
The Position of Women in Early Christian
as Opposed to Contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman Society
Women in Jewish Society
The position of Jewish women in society at the time of Jesus was very similar to what it is today in native Mid-Eastern cultures. In Jerusalem, a woman could not go out of the house without her head covered by two veils, a heavy headband, and a thick hairnet, all of which made her features unrecognizable. (37)It was improper for a man to be alone with a woman, to look at or greet a married woman; it was especially thought disgraceful for a scholar to speak with a woman in the street. It was generally thought better for a woman, especially an unmarried one, not to go out of the house at all. Of course these customs were not observed by the worldly women of the court and exception was made for even nice girls on 15 Ab and the Day of Atonement when they danced in the vineyards around the city and extolled their virtues to the young men who watched. Naturally, a certain social position was necessary to make such observances possible, since working-class wives often sold their husbands’ products and otherwise worked with them. The country was less strict than the city. Maidens went to the well and wives worked with their husbands in the field. Head-wrapping there was also not so strict. Even there, though, it was not customary for a man to converse with a strange woman.
The position of women in the home was consistent with these expectations of public behavior. Daughters were ranked after sons and their only education was in the domestic arts. Fathers had full power over daughters under twelve and a half years: the girls had no right of possession, their vows could be canceled, they were represented by their fathers in all legal matters, marriage offers were dealt with by their fathers, and they could even be sold into slavery. Over that age they could not be betrothed against their will, but their betrothal was the beginning of the transfer of power over them to their husbands. It was a society in which the acquisition of a wife was compared to that of a gentile slave. The usual age for betrothal was twelve to twelve and a half, with marriage to follow a year later. The young couple usually lived with his family and the new wife was the lowest member of the household and was often received with hostility and made the servant of all. The husband was obligated to support his wife and see that all of her needs (including, incidentally, her sexual needs) were met. Her duties were primarily household duties, but she had to obey her husband as a master. He owned anything she earned or even found. It was even possible that she would be one of several wives her husband had. The right to divorce was his exclusively and he could exercise it apparently from whimsy. Some stigma for divorce also fell upon him, he did have to return dowry, he was often bound to his wife by close family ties, and a wife who had given birth to children, especially males, was esteemed; all these factors retarded the husband from divorcing from mere caprice even when it was legally possible. It does not appear that a wife could be sold as a slave.
The religious position of women was also inferior. They were obligated to keep the negative but not the positive commandments of the Torah. They were not required and probably not allowed to study the Torah. They could go no further into the Temple area than the Court of Women, and could not even go into the Court of the Gentiles during their menstrual period or for forty days after childbirth. They were given segregated seating in synagogues and, at certain periods at any rate, could not take a turn in reading there. They could not teach or pronounce the benediction after a meal, nor could they bear witness. Not surprisingly, much religious legislation lumps women with slaves and children. There was joy over the birth of a son and indifference or sorrow over the birth of a daughter.
We have therefore the impression that Judaism at Jesus’ time also had a very low opinion of women, which is usual in the Orient where she is chiefly valued for her fecundity, kept as far as possible shut away from the outer world, submissive to the power of her father or husband, and where she is inferior to men from a religious point of view.(38)
Jeremias shows in a very brief but compelling way that Jesus rejected many of the patterns of his society in the way that he dealt with women. For one thing, women followed him, which was unprecedented. This was made safe by the requirement of absolute chastity that he imposed upon his followers. And, in saying that tax collectors and prostitutes would enter into the kingdom before the religious establishment of Jerusalem, (Matt.21:31-32), he placed women on a religious footing equal to that of men. He further equalized their position by forbidding men to divorce.
Women in Greco-Roman Society
The position of women changed considerably from time to time in Greece and Rome. In Homeric times there was a relative equality of the sexes, although toward the end there was an Asiatic influence that suggested that women are inferior. By 500 B.C. this oriental idea had captured Attic thought on the matter and Athens became a man’s world, with wives left at home to attend to chores. There was a reversal of this tendency during the early Hellenistic period. Roman matrons were better off from the beginning than their Athenian counterparts, but it was as wives and mothers that they were esteemed. Until the wars of the third and second centuries B.C. wives remained very much under the patria potestas of their husbands, but when husbands were away so much, responsibilities fell on women that brought increasing independence and authority with them. During the last years of the Republic, wives joined their husbands and their guests for dinner, they could attend most outdoor entertainments, and they had received as girls at least an elementary education. In the early days of the Empire, though, Roman woman acquired great freedom, which, in that corrupt society, was often accompanied by abuse by male and female alike. (39)
It was this last situation that obtained during the period under consideration. (40) Betrothal and marriage came immediately after puberty. Girls were usually married between their thirteenth and sixteenth years. Indeed, Augustus arranged for the punishment of any woman of twenty who was childless. The consent of a girl was necessary for her marriage, but it was presupposed unless she stated an objection. Girls were married for family convenience and marriages were often arranged during childhood before the couple had met. Children were cared for by nurses and slaves. Girls were taught the domestic arts in even upper-class families, but they also received the same education as boys, at least up until a certain point. Patrician children were educated at home, and lower classes were sent to school. Boys and girls were taught together. Girls were also taught music and dancing. Marriage “must have been a sudden release from surveillance to freedom absolute, and an awakening to an enlarged horizon.” (41) Girls, in fact, moved from the nursery to their husband’s home.
A Roman wife of the wealthy class had great authority in her home. Her husband was given her dowry alone and there were conditions imposed on the use of that; the wife retained control of other money that she brought to the marriage. Rich wives, thus, had much power over their husbands. Some women entered into fictitious marriages with poor men to avoid breaking the law against celibacy.
She could participate in social life without always having to be accompanied by her husband. It was a time of great sexual immorality and a time, too, of very easy divorces and many marriages. The large number of slaves, a form of conspicuous consumption at the time, had a morally debilitating effect on the society. It led to adultery and also to cruelty, to mention but two effects. This was also a time in which literature and the theatre were very licentious. The circuses and the banquets of the period are both symptoms and causes of the laxity that prevailed. The literature of the times also contains scandalized remarks about the dress of women, although, of course, these are not confined to that period. The Roman wife, unlike her Jewish counterpart, was free to converse with men in public places.
These sporadic observations contribute to a picture in which women enjoyed considerable independence. It is thus disappointing to see that most real achievements were virtually closed to women. Occasionally we hear of women engaging in what had previously been regarded as male pursuits, whether dressing in gladiator’s armor and drilling, or challenging men to drinking bouts, or pleading cases in court, or managing estates, but equal scandal appears to have attached to all. Women who were interested in either literature or philosophy were regarded with equal condescension. A woman, for instance, was much more likely to have a work of literature by someone else dedicated to her than she was to have one of her own taken seriously. Some women studied philosophy and some studied science but their work was always regarded with a degree of patronism. In a number of religious movements, mostly of oriental provenance, that made their way into Rome during this period, women appear among those most receptive to them, but their being so is not counted so much as evidence of the value of the religions as it is of the flightiness of the women.
All of this is to say that, while Roman women had a good bit more freedom than Jewish women, their society was still not one that could envision them as equal to men in all respects. While there is truth to the statement of Wright that “with the rise of Christianity in Rome women were put back into a position of relative subservience,” a kind of Christian leaven had already begun to be observed in the lump. (42) Celsus could say of Christians:
The following are the rules laid down by them. Let no one come to us who has been instructed, or who is wise or prudent (for such qualifications are deemed evil by us); but if there be any ignorant, or unintelligent, or uninstructed, or foolish persons, let them come with confidence. By which words, acknowledging that such individuals are worthy of their God, they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the silly, the mean, and the stupid, with women and children. (Origen,contra Cels. 3.44)
As though he knew the charge, Tatian replies:
Not only do the rich among us pursue our philosophy, but the poor enjoy instruction gratuitously; for the things which come from God surpass the requital of worldly gifts. Thus we admit all who wish to hear, even old women and striplings; and, in short, persons of every age are treated by us with respect (Or. 32).
In a way it is ridiculous for one generation to say of another that it should have constructed reality differently from the way it did. There is an ecology to a society’s view of itself that does not permit this piecemeal tinkering. Yet we can see that with the subordination of women that was accepted and in some ways encouraged by the early church, the seeds had been sown for a radical re-interpretation. To change the metaphor, they were time-bombs waiting for their time to come so that they could go off.
A case in point is Gal. 3:28: “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.” As we have seen above, Paul was as conservative in his eschatalogical situation about slaves as he was about women, but the implications of his radical re-evaluation of persons under the tutelage of Jesus have finally caught up with us. Christianity did not immediately appreciate that the attitudes of Jesus toward women would no longer permit their subordination, but the time has come when we can no longer hide ourselves from this knowledge. But does this full equality imply that women should be ordained to the episcopate and presbyterate?
The Origins of the Episcopate and Presbyterate
This material has been gone over too often to need detailed rehearsal here. The main points are that the earliest church officers appear to have been itinerant, whether apostles or prophets and teachers. It seems very likely to me, at any rate, that all the earliest congregations were organized as Christian synagogues each with its own board of elders (presbyteroi).(43) At the end of the first Christian century it appears as though the itinerant officers have stopped making their rounds and that the government of the congregation is in the hands of this board of elders. Within a few years, as we see in Ignatius of Antioch, one member of this board has assumed the leadership of it and he is called the bishop.
At this point we must deal with an issue that has escaped notice in most of the current debate over the ordination of women: the real point is not who shall be priests, but who shall preside at the eucharistic assembly. There is no eternal order with its fixed set of functions, but a function that has been performed by persons answering to one title or another at various periods in church history. We simply do not know who the celebrants of the eucharist were in the first seventy or so years of the life of the church. Since my own strong hunch is that it would not have been left to chance, I believe that it was either an itinerant minister or one of the elders. When the leader of the elders came to be recognized as the bishop, presiding at the eucharist became his prerogative. Thus it appears as though at first the elders delegated to the bishop the right to preside regularly. That had no more than been done, however, when the process was reversed: the bishop delegated to elders the right to preside on certain occasions (Ignatius of Antioch, ad Smyr. 8.1).
There are a number of very important implications to this reconstruction. The first is that it is obvious that this organization did not grow out of an explicit instruction of Jesus during his ministry. There is, in fact, no evidence that Jesus did not expect the world to end shortly after his crucifixion and it seems unlikely that he anticipated the existence of a church that would need a ministry. Thus all arguments about who may be presidents at the eucharistic assembly that grow out of his intention are invalidated. These arguments are sometimes stated in two ways, both employing a formula that we saw as early as the Didascalia: “If Jesus had intended for women to be priests, he would have chosen a woman as one of his Twelve Apostles,” or “If Jesus had intended for women to be priests, he would have made his mother one.” Both of these arguments have a considerable antiquity. We have seen that the Didascalia says that if Jesus had intended for women to teach, he would have included one in the Twelve. The latter point is made in Epiphanius’ refutation of the Collyridians:
If women had been appointed to act as priests on behalf of God, or to perform official liturgical acts in the Church, it must surely have come about that Mary herself, who received the privilege of carrying in her bosom the Sovereign King, the heavenly God, God’s Son, would in the New Testament have exercised the priestly office. (Panarion 79.3)
The anachronism of these two arguments is obvious. We do not in the New Testament learn of any celebrants of the eucharist appointed by Jesus, much less his mother. The late emergence of the episcopate, together with the fact that the post-resurrection function of the Twelve appears to have been nothing but eye-witness to the resurrection, militates against any direct chain of eucharistic celebrants succeeding from the Twelve. Thus all arguments from the intention of Jesus that specify who may celebrate the eucharist are anachronistic. (44)
A different set of problems is raised by those who wish to argue one way or the other about the ordination of women from the priesthood of Christ. The concept is venerable but its specific content and the relevance of that content to the eucharistic president are not clear. Only Hebrews in the New Testament speaks of our Lord in this vocabulary and there it is on the basis of the sacrificial language of the Old Testament rather than any New Testament eucharistic language that he is so designated. What made him a priest for the author of Hebrews was his “one oblation of himself once offered”: he was perfect priest and perfect victim. He has also entered into the heavenly sanctuary to make intercession for us. One can also see him in the celebrant’s role at the Last Supper in which he pleads the sacrifice that he is to make the next day on the cross. Any legitimate transfer from his priesthood to ours would have to focus on his role of presiding that night rather than from an abstract analysis of “priestly” qualities of Jesus, deriving its content from some implicit definition of priesthood taken from another source, giving authority to that definition by its association with Jesus, and then using it as a criterion by which it may be decided who may preside at the eucharist.
Epilogue
To this point I have been engaged in a historical study which has, I hope, undercut most of the arguments from the New Testament and early Fathers that have been used to oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. What 1 am unable to do is offer in such a manner an argument for their ordination. As a matter of fact, 1 have an unanswered question in that regard myself and I would appreciate help with it. The question has to do with the extent to which the Christian eucharistic president is to be understood as a manifestation of the phenomenon of priesthood in the general history of religions. If these religions are rightly regarded as in some sense propaedeutic to Christianity, this may be something of a criterion. Yet I am under the impression that in the general history of religions and in depth psychology the offering of sacrifice has a male sexual symbolism. I know that there are religions in which there are persons called priestesses. I know that, as Urban Holmes pointed out in a recent issue of St. Luke’s Journal , (45) women clergy introduce an enriching feminine element into our understanding of God. What I do not know is if any of these priestesses offer sacrifice and, if they do, whether their doing so changes the symbolism. I think I am right in believing that Greek and Roman priestesses did not offer sacrifice. While I know of no other argument that is personally persuasive against the ordination of women, I would like to have this question of symbolic role answered.
1.That, at any rate, is the conclusion that a number of scholars have drawm from the fact that she is listed first in Acts 18:18;
18:26; Rom. 16:3 and 2 Tim. 4:19
2. Roger Gryson, Le ministère des femmes dans I’église ancienne (Recherches et Synthèses, Section dTiistoire,IV;Gembloux: Duculot, 1972), pp. 22ff.
3. C. K. Barrett suggests that it is an “innocent form of subordinationism” in The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Harper’s New Testament Commentaries; New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 249. Whether that is contradictio in adiecto, others may decide.
4. For a contrary view see Jean Daniélou, The Ministry of Women in the Early Church, trans. Glyn Simon (London: Faith Press, 1961), p. 9.
5. Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, trans. R. McL. Wilson et al. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), p. 601.
6. See Barrett, First Epistle, pp. 330-33; Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, pp. 28f.; and Hans Conzelmann, Der erste Brief an die Korinther (Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar, 11. Auflage; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), pp. 289f.
7. Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), p. 44. Cf. p. 47.
8. Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, p. 158. The quotation is from Onasander, De imperatoris officio 1.
9. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, p. 31.
10. This and much of what follows is based on Dibelius and Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles.
11. Ibid., p. 74.
12. Ibid., p. 49.
13. William R. Schoedel, Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Fragments of Papias (“The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary,” ed. R. M. Grant, vol. 5; Camden, N.J.: Nelson, 1967), p. 18.
14. Polycarp, ad Phil. 4.3; cf. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, p. 36.
15. Robert M. Grant, Ignatius of Antioch (“The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary,” ed. R. M. Grant, vol. 4; Camden, N.J.: Nelson, 1966), p. 125.
16. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, p. 37.
17. Ibid., p. 38; cf. Graydon F. Snyder, The Shepherd of Hermas (“The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary,” ed. R. M. Grant, vol. 6: Camden, N.J.: Nelson, 1968), p. 40. For an interesting discussion of Hermas’s attitude toward women, cf. George H. Tavard,
Women in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1973), pp. 51-53.
18. Plin. Epp. X (ad Traj.), xcvi, trans. Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1943), p. 5.
19. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, p. 39.
20. Justin Martyr, / Apol. 26.3.
21. Epiphanius, Ancoratus und Panarion, ed. Karl Holl (GCS; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1922), 2:241.
22. Pierre de Labriolle, La crise montaniste (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1913), pp. 68-105.
23 Oracle 5, Labriolle, pp. 45f. That not all writers of the period favored woman prophets, however, is possibly suggested by a doctrine of female prophecy which is of the present world, while male prophecy is of the world to come. This doctrine appears in the Kerygmata Petrou, a late second-century source for the Pseudo-Clementine novels (Hom. III, 23-23). It is not explicitly stated that female prophecy is given through female prophets and it probably was not thought to be so in an exclusive way, but derogatory remarks about harps at the end of the passage may suggest familiarity with Montanist claims.
24. De cor. 2 and 4; cf. O. C. Edwards, Jr., The Biblical World of Tertullian (Unpublished S.T.M. Thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1961), pp. 41f.
25. T. D. Barnes has advanced an interesting psychological explanation for this conversion in his Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 136: “On the assumption that he married and then lost his wife, Tertullian’s Montanism can be understood, in part at least, as the psychological buttress of his belief that remarriage was wrong.”
26. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, pp. 47f. This is the most complete and accurate study of patristic evidence for the ordination of women that I know and I have followed it closely not only in the discussion of Tertullian, but in all of this first section of the paper.
27. The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, trans, with intro. and notes by B. S. Easton (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1934), p. 83.
28. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, p. 64.
29. Ibid., p. 65. The translation we use is that of R. Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, trans, and ed. with intro. and notes (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1929). Connolly gives an excellent summary of what the Didascalia has to say about widows and deaconesses, pp. xlii-xlv.
30. Quoted by Connolly, p. xlii.
31. It is worth noting that the formula, “If God had wanted … , He would have … ” is one that we will meet again in the Didascalia and in Epiphanius and also today. One of the relatively modern examples not related to the ordination of women is: “If God had intended for men to fly, He would have created us with wings.”
32. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, pp. 12-15.
33. Cf. R. M. Grant, Ignatius of Antioch, pp. 20f.
34. Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum, p. lxii.
35. Gryson, Le ministère des femmes, p. 79.
36. Ernst Kaesemann, New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), pp. 208ff.
37. This entire section is based on the appendix on “The Social Position of Women” in Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, trans. F. H. and C. H. Cave (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), pp. 359-376, and no further citation will be given except for direct quotations.
38. Jeremias, Jerusalem, p. 375. 39. Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “Women, Position of,” Frederick Adam Wright.
40. What follows is based on Ludwig Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, trans. L. A. Magnus (London: Routledge,n.d.) 1:228-267, and Samuel Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (London: Macmillan, 1905), pp. 76-88. The latter, and to an extent the former, is a commentary on Juvenal’s satire on the subject.
41. Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners, 1:236.
42.Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “Women, Position of.”
43. For a popular but essentially complete statement of my own reconstruction of the early history of the Christian ministry,
see my How It All Began (N.Y.: Seabury, 1973), pp. 121-33. 44. A different sort of error is made by Prebendary Peter Johnston, who recently proposed that “godly laymen” be permitted to exercise an auxiliary parochial ministry (APM) which would include/celebration of the eucharist (The Living Church, March 23, 1975). Contemporary functional views of orders would say that one who celebrates the eucharist would by that fact cease to be a layman.
45. “The Feminine Priestly Symbol and the Meaning of God,” St. Luke’s Journal of Theology 17 (1974) 3-22.