Scot,
William Webb’s book on hermeutics (Slaves, Women and Homosexuals) made a significant impact on me. It made me, seriously consider an egalitarian model for church ministry and across the board. I do need to keep working on it. Though Gordon Fee has at least one chapter in one of his books (Listening to the Spirit in the Text), that gives a good theological basis for this. Both of these men are committed evangelicals and their theology would fit under reformation, with maybe some overlap into revision. Such as grappling with a text like 1 Timothy 2- which Webb does very well.
I see the vision of the kingdom of God in the end, as what the coming of the kingdom of God in Jesus should be about, now. The new has come. And with it the new way of humanity in Christ, in which the no male nor female but oneness-unity in Christ is not just salvific, but across the board, including ecclesiastical.
And I’ve been helped by seeing pastoral ministry by women, whose ministry eclipsed any thoughts of gender. Just doing what they’re gifted to do. And with God’s very evident blessing.

Scot,
That’s a reasonable taxonomy. The poles are pretty much on target from my reading of the issues. I see a “hard” hermeneutic of suspicion within the theologies of rejection, and a “soft” version within the theologies of reformation. It’s contextual among evangelical feminists; it’s universally applied among the feminists who embrace theologies of rejection. That’s my take.

I, like Ted, appreciate Webb’s approach of discerning trajectories of redemption in Scripture, as we do contemporary theology. Sadly, those who are in the “rejectionist” camp (hard or soft) have nothing on which to stand once they attempt to do anything constructive. I saw this in St. Andrews, where Daphne Hampson, a post-Chrisitan theologian, was attempting such a project (a brilliant feminist theologian–D.Phil., Oxford; Th.D., Harvard). But once one jettisons Scripture as authoritative, we’re in a situation where whoever shouts loudest wins, which is tragic.

I too appreciate Webb’s trajectory approach. We easily apply the same idea to so many other issues. It’s hard to understand why it isnt more easily applied to women.

What is the EWCI? My Google search only turned up the Electric Wholesale Company which doesn’t sound particularly feminist.
On the typology, I’ve often worked with Harvie Conn’s proposal: (1) the rejectionist or post-Christian model, (2) the loyalist or evangelical model and (3) the reformist or liberation model. Obviously, the two typologies don’t overlay one another very neatly, though.
Terry

And then (to stir the pot) there is Wayne Grudem’s thesis that evangelical feminism is the new path to liberalism (see his new book with Crossway).

Terry,
Make the search EWCI and feminist and this comes up:
Evangelical Women’s Caucus International (EWCI)

Thanks for the post. Now I have an understanding of context and what is going on. Now it makes sense. I spent a significant amount of time in yesterdays thread trying to articulate something that was hard to grasp. If someone who feels like the church is misogynistic then they more than likely are going to react in a misandry approach. With the current 60/40 split with regard to female/male church attendance, I am sure that more men will opt out unless something changes.

David,
I agree with you that there probably is some misandry in the church. But most churches are led by men, and its only recently that women got to lead at all. From a historical perspective, I just don’t see the effects of the current sin of misandry outweighing centuries of misogyny.

Jen,
Both of them are wrong. Two wrongs dont make a right. When your goal is to try and overcome centuries of “percieved” misogny instead of ushering in the Kingdom of God then I think you are on the wrong side of the fence. The sin of misandry even a little of it is offensive to God. I think it says somewhere…….love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….it does not say…….hate them back.

I don’t think that anyone is saying “misandry” is okay. What I do see is that people say “two wrongs don’t make a right” so that they can ignore the centuries-old problem of misogyny and, instead, complain about the relatively new (if indeed real) problem of misandry.
If two wrong don’t make a right, let’s at least work toward eliminating both wrongs, instead of trying to shift the debate from one wrong to another that isn’t even as widespread.

To say that the history of the church has only included “perceived” misogyny is, well … a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?
And I certainly don’t think Jennifer was promoting misandry, just trying to state why there might be some sense of backlash as women are finally allowed the freedom to live into their giftedness, wherever that may lie.
Sometimes part of “loving your enemies” is having the courage to name the simple truth of reality, not just to forgive in a syrupy-sweet, blanket kind of way. Part of love is allowing God’s justice to do its work. In order to best understand the reality of women in today’s church, one must have a decent, true understanding of church history.

David,
Yes, both of them are wrong. I am with you there.
The difference is that misogyny has been institutionalized in the church for 2000 years.
Clement of Alexandria (150?-215?): “Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman.”
Tertullian (160?-220?): “Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil’s doorway.
Augustine (354-430): “Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.”
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74): “[Woman] was made only to assist with procreation.”
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of women comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.”
John Knox (1513-72): “Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man.”
John Wesley (1703-91): “Wife: Be content to be insignificant.”
I really do hear you that there may be corners of misandry in the church, David. And that is a sinful offense. But dont try to equate that with centuries of what has been done to women.

“Sometimes part of “loving your enemies” is having the courage to name the simple truth of reality, not just to forgive in a syrupy-sweet, blanket kind of way.”
I have been most “enlightened” with the dialogue the last two days and I have learned a lot. A profound level of learning. I greatly appreciate those who have contributed to my understanding of some of the current issues of Christendom in the public arena.
That being said, forgiveness has nothing to do with the person that committed the offense, it has everything to do with the heart that holds on to it. By holding onto unforgiveness you are spiritually bound to the being that committed the offense and begin to manifest the same qualities that they have and you are not following Jesus.
“Forgiveness releases great power. In our quest for exotic demonstrations of God’s power, we must not neglect the cultivation of a healed heart. We must remove the bitter roots that hinder us personally in life because the Lord wants to develop deep seated character alongside our spiritual lives. Honoring disarms the enemy. It renders the enemy impotent if someone sins against me, even a spiritual leader, I must see it as an opportunity to do damage to the enemy’s camp by honoring and forgiving the person. Honor like grace is not an earned thing. My brother is not the enemy, and I should contend for his deliverance by loving him.”
The New Mystics John Crowder pg 114
“I really do hear you that there may be corners of misandry in the church, David. And that is a sinful offense. But dont try to equate that with centuries of what has been done to women.”
Sounds to me like you are trying to extract vengence against men. How about loving your enemies from the heart?
Anyone familiar with the story behind Gates of Splendor?
It is a story about some missionaries that go to South America and get killed. The son of one of those killed describes the ability to forgive and the dramatic ability for the grace of God to transform the most horrific of life’s challenges. It is a great sermon and describes the good news of Jesus…….not just the historical Jesus of 2000 years ago but the one that today can give you the ability to not only tolerate your enemies but love them.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/EventMessages/ByDate/1673_Sovereignty_Suffering_and_the_Work_of_Missions/

David,
You said : Sounds to me like you are trying to extract vengence against men. How about loving your enemies from the heart?
Jennifer : Since you don’t know me, I’m going to ignore the personal implication about vengeance there. These conversations go much better if we stay away from personal things there really is no way you can know.
The bigger reality is that even after forgiveness, there are still consequences to deal with. I can forgive every man in the past 2000 years of Christian history who has been misogynistic, but that still wont change the fact that we all are living with the results of that sin. Forgiveness of someone’s sin toward you doesn’t erase the effects of their sin on you (if you forgive someone for getting angry and braking your leg, you will still have a broken leg even after you forgive them).

David,
Though I appreciate all your thoughts, I’m really not sure you are hearing what I am trying to say. Can’t speak for Jennifer, but in her writing I certainly don’t sense any desire for vengeance. Not even close.
Nor do I harbor unforgiveness in my heart toward the church for its centuries of patriarchy. To name injustice as injustice in no way a sign of lack of forgiveness. You may desire to equate the two … but I certainly don’t.

Jennifer,
That’s quite a sad list you have in #13. It also strikes me as something someone went out of the way to compile. My guess is that you would get a different picture from those men’s sermons on Eph. 5:25. That is not to justify the quotes, but to say that the act of assembling such a list may not be helpful.
Your list could also include Luther saying something to the effect of “God made women with large hips so that they can sit on them.” But the list would probably omit Luther calling his wife “my lord Katie.” You can even pick and choose from Proverbs to paint two very different images of women.
In 2000 years of church history I would expect some stupid things to get said. Stupid things get said on every topic eventually. You might be focusing on the bottom of the barrel.
Matthew Henry had touching things to say about how a man should love his wife. B. B. Warfield cared for an invalid wife for 40 years.
It would be interesting to have a historian address how representative your list is. (Dennis Martin, are you out there?)

Brian,
What I think I hear you saying is that church history, as a whole, has a more mixed bag on this subject. And with that I would agree. I know many Christian men who respect and cherish women.
But when people of influence, Church Fathers, are saying things like women are a temple built over a sewer, it can’t be neatly taken as an isolated incident. One generation passes this attitude on to the next, all the way down to us. Neither would those I quoted have the perfect ability to take their prejudices about women out of their other teaching. It’s going to work its way into other areas of teaching. And Christian women today still live with the consequences.

Jennifer,
The mixed bag extends even to the Church Fathers on most every topic. I would expect the same for what they say about women as well. What you choose to focus on may be the key factor. What has been the lasting impact of their sermons on Eph. 5:25? That impact may be far greater than the impact from your list. That is why a representative survey of what they have said needs to be made.

Brian,
I agree with you that the mixed bag extends to the Church Fathers as well. I am choosing to point out the negative things in that list only because not been acknowledged very often in an overt sense. When I first read a list like that a few years ago, I was shocked at first(and then sad…and then a little sick). I read that list when I was a complementarian, but it was one step toward a change in my thinking – that maybe the way in which some Christians view women might have been shaped by something other than scripture. So, I’m not denying that they said other things too, but let’s not ignore these specific things they said, and the influence they still have as it has been passed down to us.

jennifer thank you for your words here. You are a great voice for women.

Jennifer,
Impressed by the way you express yourself on such a hard topic with grace and perseverance. I look forward to your posts as they express my heart so often.

I’ve been giving lectures today, so just now getting to this.
Jennifer’s list is fine — it is harsh stuff. I’ve heard stuff like this for decades on Jewish view of women, and there is no good reason to shut down realities like these.
There have been some sharp, but controlled, disagreements. I’m all for it — this is what this blog is all about. As long as we behave.
How about this question, though? How do you see various feminist views relating to Scripture?

From what limited exposure I have had to the writings of feminists on religion, I think Cochran has it pretty generally right.
Dana

Scot,
Honestly, I don’t resonate with any of the 3 types of feminists Holcomb lists.
I have friends who are in the Rejection category, and it’s not someplace I see myself going. I find the Reformation category to lack a full acknowledgement that when the Bible was written it simply was not egalitarian – not in the way that we think of it anyhow. It was an improvement from how things had been, but it didn’t point to the fullest possible reality.
The Revisionist category is completely uncomfortable for me. I cant pit God against God or Bible against Bible.
I know Webb’s book has been mentioned a number of times in this discussion, but I think he is offering another way to understand this which is more sane. His ideas about redemptive trajectory make a lot of sense when you see how they are applied to so many other issues where there are multiple levels of ethics to consider. Maybe it’s a little easier to see on an issue that’s less emotionally charged than women’s role. It’s easier to see on something like the slavery issue.
So when a feminist approaches scripture, she doesn’t have to do it from rejecting, reforming or revising scripture – she can do redemptively and recognize that the Bible wasn’t necessarily teaching the ultimate ethic on how women should be treated, just like it wasn’t teaching the ultimate ethic on how slaves – but that it is teaching an improvement from the surrounding culture. That improvement is good, and should be recognized as such, but greater cultural redemption is yet to come and that we have made some improvements on women’s issues since NT times – just like we have made some improvements on slavery issues since NT times.

Jennifer,
One quick question on your list of quotes: Do you have the references?
I’m with you 100% and fully support women in ministry. I have seen some of these quotes in various readings. I would love to have these referenced as I speak with others on this topic. Thanks!

Phred,
I first ran into those quotes a few years ago. When I quoted them today, I was at work and quickly did an internet search to find them. I cant find the same site I pulled them off of (I should have quoted it…) but here is one that has many of the same ones, and a few different quotes. I’m sure a 10 min google search would produce a lot of information.
http://flagteaparty.org/Publications/Sept2000/Pages/spiritviolence.html

I had resolved to stay out of this because it seemed fairly clear from reading each of these women/ministry threads carefully that responses only from one direction were welcome. The easy equation of masculinity with warmongering that has recurred and the quick shooting down of the one or two voices that dared to demure (John in # 66 of an earlier thread; another one very early on regarding raising boys) set a rather forbidding tone. I waited in vain for someone to bring into the conversation the large body of literature that suggests that boys are routinely mis-educated in our feminized culture because their natural aggressiveness and competitiveness is considered anti-social, beginning with Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys or some similar title and now Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness. They may be wrong in their theses and hypotheses, but they must be engaged intelligently because they are not offering a simplistic macho warmongering aggressivity as “manliness.” Sterotypes and caricatures won’t refute them. There is highly sophisticated material from Leon and Amy Kass about both boys and girls, men and women, that would shed an awful lot of light on the issues being addressed on these threads.
From an explicitly Christian perspective, the work of Anthony Esolen (a Catholic), for instance, in Touchstone Magazine and its blog and Crisis Magazine or to the sort of perspective offered by Amanda Witt and Jonathan Witt(Evangelicals) on her blog, Wittingshire:
http://wittingshire.blogspot.com/2005/04/on-boys-and-bkns.html
http://wittingshire.blogspot.com/2005/06/raising-men.html
http://wittingshire.blogspot.com/2006/03/eleven-year-old-girls.html
I cite Wittingshire only because it’s what I’m familiar with–I’m sure there’s much more like it out there.
But I digress.
I cannot let pass without comment the series of snippet quotes cited in # 13, taken totally out of context. Broadly speaking, neither the Fathers nor medieval Christian authors were misogynistic. The misogynism against which feminists today fulminate is primarily an early modern phenomenon, with roots in the later Middle Ages. In the later Middle Ages it is associated particularly with towns and commerce and with de-Christianization (the Fabliaux), as well as with the application of Roman law. The work of Regine Pernoud, Women in the Days of the Cathedrals is must reading here, as well as her Those Terrible Middle Ages. I also highly recommend Glenn W. Olsen, ed., Christian Marriage: A Historical Study, sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute (New York: Crossroad Publishing / Herder and Herder, 2001). In Olsen’s own chapters on the patristic and early medieval period he calls a spade a spade, deals fairly with the tendency to prefer virginity over marriage among the Fathers but points out the countervailing evidence that all of them in one way or another valorized women and marriage. The chapters on the medieval and early modern period, by other authors, likewise put the lie to many of the commonplace, simplistic claims about medieval patriarchy and underscore how most of the characteristics people today find problematic originated in the early modern period.
Specifically with regard to the Aquinas “quote.” Thomas Aquinas was not saying thatwomen are defective males; this translation is just plain incorrect. The woman who first this urban legend into currency (I think it was Mary McLaughlin but I don’t recall for sure–it was in one of the earliest feminist anthologies), simply did not know what she was doing and did not understand what Aquinas was saying. He was not agreeing with Aristotle. See Michael Nolan, “The Defective Male: What Aquinas Really Said,” New Blackfriars, 75 (March 1994), 156-66; Joseph Francis Hartel, Femina ut imago Dei in the Integral Feminism of St. Thomas Aquinas, Analecta Gregoriana, 260 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1993), each citing previous literature.
On Augustine, see Richard J. McGowan, “Augustine’s Spiritual Equality: The Allegory of Man and Woman with Regard to Imago Dei,” Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes, 33 [1987], 255-264; idem, “Misogyny in Augustine and Sexist Scholarship,” University of Dayton Review, 21, no. 3 [Spring 1992], 85-90.

Correction: demurr, not demure. Freudian, perhaps.

Hi Dennis,
I appreciate your added information on the quotes. However, mistranslation or not, the effects of the church’s misogyny over the centuries remains unchanged.
Dennis : The easy equation of masculinity with warmongering that has recurred
Jennifer : I respect your right to read these threads that way, but I haven’t really seen masculinity equated with warmongering. I’ve seen people try to be very careful to express the value of masculinity alongside the value of femininity.

Here’s a summary of the Nolan article that’s available on line:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9811/opinion/nolan.html
and additional refutation of some feminist urban legends about misogyny:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9704/nolan.html
McGowan’s work on Augustine is not online as far as I can see.

“I appreciate your added information on the quotes. However, mistranslation or not, the effects of the church’s misogyny over the centuries remains unchanged.”
Your mind’s made up and a few facts won’t change it. That pretty much ends the discussion. But just in case it might register with you, it’s not merely about mistranslation. It’s about Aquinas’s entire position on women. It is not misogynistic. Period. And the claim that Augustine denied the image of God in woman is just not true. These are the pillars upon which the claim of deeply embedded misogynism in the Fathers and medieval period are based. I’m suggesting that the widespread dogmas about patristic misogynism are fundamentally misleading if not plainly false; that the patriarchy against which the 2nd Wave Feminist fulminated was in fact a feature of the early modern period; that the prooftext quotes floating around now for 30 or 40 years were hastily put together in the early years of the movement and have been amply refuted.
Why don’t you at least suspend judgment until you’ve looked at some of the literature, including that by women like Pernoud? Why do you already know that they are wrong?
But your mind’s made up.

Finally, please read the second Nolan piece in First Things. It shows how a claim that women have no souls was invented merely as a joke in the 1500s (early modern times) but was taken seriously by Lutherans and Calvinists who then claimed to have found a proof-text for it in a 6thc. Gallic church council. This fits with Steven Ozment’s research (When Fathers Ruled showing that real patriarchy did emerge in the 16thc. I think it has to do with desacramentalizing marriage, but I won’t go into that now. The predisposition by Lutheran and Calvinist ministers to take as fact what was merely a lark by a Latinist with time on his hands suggests that something truly did change at the time of the Reformation as far as men dominating women was concerned.
Someone earlier on one of these threads asked about how Catholic veneration of Mary fits into all of this. One of the reasons that medieval Catholic theologians could never have for a moment entertained as true the clever joking claim that women have no souls is that Mary obviously was a woman and to say she had no soul would be ludicrous. There were plenty of other reasons, including the baptism of women, as Nolan points out.
Most Catholic parishes I have attended are highly feminized. Priests who have a poor self-understanding of their role as priests (fearful of the governing aspect of it since the anti-institutionalism of the 1960s) tend to surround themselves with as many lay-ministers as possible. Most of these are women, at least 75 % in my experience.
However in my own, very traditional parish, where veneration of Mary is strong and all the traditional devotions are retained, the mix of men and women is just about 50/50. I have observed that precisely young adult men are particularly active in devotion to Mary. I cannot prove this scientifically, but I have seen plenty of present-day and historical evidence indicating that strong veneration of Mary as the Mother of God complements a healthy, firm, mature, loving (not macho or patriarchal) sense of masculinity.

Even a superficial glance at this web site cited in # 28 should send up red flags–the site proudly displays the axe it intends to grind
http://flagteaparty.org/Publications/Sept2000/Pages/spiritviolence.html
Sure, a Google search will turn up dozens of repetitions of this collection of quotes, but that should in and of itself give pause–these quotes are never given with references. They clearly have been repeated from one site to another until they’ve lost all touch with any contextualization.
This is what I mean by urban legend. And it’s on the basis of unexamined urban legend material like this that the assumption of deeply embedded misogyny is based and woe to anyone who challenges it, especially if he’s a man.

Sorry, the site cited in no. 27, not 28.

Dennis,
The issue of the quotes aside, are you saying that misogyny has not been a problem in the church for the last 2000 years?

One notes in the Nolan piece about soulless women that Chrysostom is famous for supposedly having said women do not have the image of God(when in fact he said men and women do not–he’s using image in a specific way, probably (I’m speculating) distinguishing between Christ as the Image and the derived image of God in men and women). The http://flagteaparty.org/Publications/Sept2000/Pages/spiritviolence.html site attributes this to Augustine–just one indication of how reliable this set of stock quotes is.
Note also that prominent in the preface to flagteaparty list is precisely the urban legend about a church council in the 6thc denying that women are human, the myth that nolan shows was invented in the 16thc on a lark and taken as Gospel truth by patriarchal Lutheran and Calvinist scholars.
Surely this ought to indicate that something’s very rotten in the whole industry of proving deeply embedded misogyny in the patristic and medieval Church.

Dennis,
So, you’re saying the church has not been steeped in misogyny then?

All this highly intellectualized argument about quotes aside … one can barely begin to argue against the truth that in practice the church has struggled to allow women to fully live into their giftedness in every arena of ministry, that women have been discriminated against and marginalized through the centuries in the church and in the seminary, and that the church has a fairly sorry track record in the arena of supporting and affirming women in their full personhood. Sorry Dennis … its just reality. I certainly do not believe that this is God’s desire, nor that it is a reflection of how life will be when the Kingdom comes in its fullness.

How do feminists treat scripture? We can treat scripture with respect as fully inspired with inspired words and inspired grammar and still be fully egalitarian. We can even present the opposing viewpoint (complementarian) with respect and grace while strongly disagreeing with the complementarian position. That is what I have tried hard to do in “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?” a 4 DVD set available from http://www.mmoutreach.org or from amazon.com. I have the introduction on line for free viewing that shows the strong view of scripture as well as the respectful tone towards the opposing viewpoint (the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and John MacArthur). The opposing viewpoint is documented with audio clips from CBMW and John MacArthur and their viewpoint is compared with scripture. The free clip is available at http://www.mmoutreach.org/wim.htm. The whole premise of this DVD is to tackle head on the hard passages of scripture on the women’s issue. The reviews that we have received include a wonderful review from a complementarian Pastor with a doctorate degree and the reviews are also listed at http://www.mmoutreach.org/wim.htm.
It is very important to hold a high view of scripture as well as treat those who are opposed to women in ministry as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is a very volatile subject, and it should produce lots of debate, but it should not separate brothers and sisters in Christ.

“The issue of the quotes aside, are you saying that misogyny has not been a problem in the church for the last 2000 years?”
I would agree with Dennis that in fact it has not been. It is a claim often made, but with little evidence or, as Dennis has pointed out, misleading evidence at best. Some of that evidence is not much more than reading back into history/Scripture purely modernist notions of “rights” and gender roles.
Now I actually support women in full ministry and leadership positions within the Church, but solely on the basis that it seems clear to me that God is calling women to ministry, not on secular notions of “rights” or roles. So my support is based on submission to the soveriegnty of the Spirit, who calls whom She will.
I admit this is an easier position to take in a Pentecostal church (Vineyard) than in one like the RC that places a strong emphasis on ecclesial tradition and authority.

Dennis,
Thanks for weighing in on historical issues. Context matters, and this has been a good case in point. (Incidentally, if you lecture anything like you write, your lectures must be a real treat.)
Beyond the historical accuracy issue, it is important to recognize the method of argumentation that is being used. It runs something like this.
“Whether or not time has had a filtering effect on the church fathers so that the best gets repeated down through the centuries in books and sermons and the worst gets left behind doesn’t matter. We have to go back and dig up the bottom of the barrel because what we find down there reflects an underlying mysogyny that must therefore have influenced everything else they did (including how they read scripture) and extends to their legacy forever.”
This whole way of thinking is simply a determination to find the worst in other people. The case for Christian feminism needs to be argued better than that.

Brian,
As I said in the private e-mail, I don’t think it is fair to Jennifer to accuse her of digging up what can be found at the bottom of the barrel, nor do I think it is her intent to find the “worst” in people.
If these statements were made, then should be seen for what they are. At best unwise; probably reflecting attitudes that are not what they should be. To be sure, Dennis is spot-on on saying we need to sink each in context. Still, the statements — with needed corrections — were made. Statements like that should not be made by Christian leaders with voices that influence and echo down the corridors of history.
I will also ask not to use either “misogyny” or “misandry.” I believe these terms inflame rather than further any genuine conversation.
My post was about how feminists treat Scripture, not about whether or not Christian males have said things about women we wish they hadn’t.

Scot,
My point is many of those statements were not made. Period. And those that were made were made in a context that means they don’t necessarily mean what people think they mean out of context. And one can line up for every single one of those men quoted equal prooftexts praising women.
I have to say that I am just a bit perplexed at the brush off along the lines of “well, maybe there are some mistranslations and context problems.” A huge project that has affected Church and society through and through has been built on false claims about what the Fathers and medievals said about women. If people would actually take the time (and it does take time but there’s a lot at stake because feminist assumptions have completely changed the way boys are raised in our culture and have contributed significantly to the absence of fathers, which has fundamentally altered the way boys grow up [do not grow up]) to learn what attitudes toward men and women were in the foundational period of the church’s history it would alter the entire conversation.
Jennifer. Yes, I am saying that such anti-woman sentiment as is found in Christian culture in the West begins in secularizing circles in the late Middle Ages and becomes endemic in the early modern period.
Please read Pernoud, Women in the Days of the Cathedrals before deciding what you think about this question.
Has anyone actually read the Nolan articles? His case is devastating to the “women were not taken seriously” assumption.
I will not prolong this, but I think I owed everyone one more attempt at a wakeup call. You are operating on seriously, centrally flawed assumptions about where the problem lies. These are not merely “intllectual niceties” as one person responded before dismissing them.

I cannot let Alice Shirey’s comment go by without a response. Read the lives of saints, beginning with the martyrs. Read the history of the enrolled widows and virgins from which monasticism developed in the West. Read the history of Jerome (among the most irascible–you can line up plenty of anti-woman prooftexts from him) and Melania and Paula and Eustochium as they worked together. Read the story of Radegund at Poitiers in the 500s, Hilda and Leoba in England and Germany in the 600s and 700s. Read about the monastery of Fontevrault in Pernoud’s book. Read about queens raising kings, about Empress Adelaide (wife of one of the three Otto emperors in the 900s and 1000s), read about the role of Matilde of Tuscany (Canossa) and Gregory IX, about Elizabeth of Thuringia.
Read about Einhard’s affectionate relation with his wife in the Olsen book on Marriage that I cited. Study the history of how both men and women looked up to Mary as a model. Read Dhuoda’s letters and manual guiding her sons as they served at the Carolingian court–it is a treatise on the Christian life and how to live it equal to that of any bishop of the time and it was celebrated and copied and recopied.
Oppression and injustice abounded then as it always had, but it had far more to do with class and social standing than sex.
Things change with absolutism. The culture becomes a culture of war in the 1500s that it never was before. It becomes a culture of patriarchy and naked power that it never was before. Men go around wearing codpieces exaggerating their genitals, like rutting dogs. Women lose their rights to own property under the newly introduced Roman civil law. In some areas they virtually become perpetual wards of their fathers/husbands. This is a reversion to the status of women in pagan Rome and pagan Germany.
Marriage law under the pagan Germans was by raptus: if a man was strong enough to carry off a woman, she was his wife. The Christian church, against great opposition, pushed through the monogamy that protected women against this injustice. See the books by Georges Duby on marriage in the Middle Ages–he’s a secular, quasi-Marxist historian but he agrees that the Church totally changed the situation of women.
I could go on but I won’t. I realize this thread is on Scripture. But I did not throw in that list of totally non-credible prooftexts and I would never have posted had that list not been introduced without any hesitation as the Gospel truth about the Fathers on women.
As far as women and Scripture is concerned, the exegesis of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is groundbreaking, earthshattering stuff that has to be taken into consideration by anyone who claims to be knowledgeable on the question of women and Scripture.

Dennis – you seem to be proving the “women are not taken seriously” accusation. Thank you for providing your interpretation of history, it is one more thing to consider. But you seem to be completely ignoring how women really feel here. There are reasons why women feel like the church has not valued (or openly oppressed) them. To deny that and say we are all making it up denies our reality. To then blame us (as females being females) for the issues with boys and fathers in society shows that not only are women not respected and still despised for being female, but that our desires for freedom, respect, and equality still have a long way to go.

Correction, Dhuoda’s manual was copied but not widely. It was recognized as more than merely a private manual for her sons but useful to others.

Scot,
Thanks for the private e-mail. I can take this up with you there at greater length if you like, but there is probably no need to.
I don’t think it was Jennifer’s intent to find the worst in people. (My apologies, Jennifer for not being clearer.) But it was someone else’s intent somewhere along the way to go looking for the worst. How else does a list like she has in #13 get created? Jennifer simply picked it up somewhere along the way and didn’t assess it from that angle.
I would agree that these statements need to be seen for what they are, but the claim being made for their long term influence has to be supported. It hasn’t been. If not for feminists digging these statements up the dust of history would have left them covered long ago.

Julie, I am asking you to base your feelings on truth and facts. If you want to be angry at patriarchy, then locate it where it existed, in the early modern and modern eras and in ancient pagan cultures. In the interest of doing something about your feelings I am asking you to learn the facts. Women do themselves no service by basing things on a mythology.
Why does it hurt your feelings to be told that you’ve been sold a bill of goods about the patristic and medieval period? You still have plenty of whipping boys from the early modern era. Why aren’t you feeling excited to learn something more accurate about the way women lived in the past?
But this truly will be my last post. I have done my best to point you to sources of information about a world Evangelicals know nothing about, the world before the Reformation. One cannot learn to know that world overnight anymore than one can learn the truth about how people live in Slovenia or Botswana by reading superficial pull-quotes from a travel agency. One has to go native. Not everyone can do that, but there are solid, well-researched summaries which I have cited. She who has ears to hear, let her hear.

“But you seem to be completely ignoring how women really feel here.”
How you choose to feel has nothing at all to do with the claim made here that virtually the entire history of the Christian West was misogynist, in part as a result of the Fathers. This claim is simply incorrect. Challenging that claim is therfore reasonable. Claiming that the challenge ignores feelings comes close to using emotional blackmail to shut down debate.

Scot,
I see the critical line in Scripture and the gender issue as the line between (1) those who posit that Scripture teaches patriarchy but is wrong and (2) those who argue that Scripture, when properly read, teaches egalitarianism.
Cheryl has stated here the importance of taking the second approach and Bill Webb has been helpful in spelling out the hermeneutic which has led him to believe that egalitarianism is God’s intention.
Of the first approach, clear examples are found in the work of Paul Jewett and Frank Matera. Jewett posits that Paul was wrong in his letter to Timothy and Corinthians, as a result of his rabbinic training, but that he got it right in Gal 3:28. Matera’s work (New Testament Ethics) is particularly intriguing because he sets out to do a thoroughly descriptive work of biblical theology without evaluation. He is consistent in this regard except when he gets to the role of women. Only there does he describe the teaching of the New Testament and state that we cannot follow it at this point. His exegesis hears a clear complementarianism but he doesn’t believe that we can allow it to direct our behaviour.
Bill Webb has been wise to examine together the approach to homosexuality and gender roles. I found it interesting that Matera was satisfied to leave his treatment of the New Testament on homosexual practice at the descriptive level (Scripture prohibits it) but not to do the same on gender roles, given his stated intention to be purely descriptive.
Bill has kindly pointed out in (S, W and H) where he thinks my own hermeneutical guidelines fell short. My major hesitation in following Bill’s own take on the matter comes from the sense my wife and I had, as we read his book together, that contemporary western culture is the grid through which Bill approaches Scripture. I have a keen interest in theological method for proper contextualization but I think that the cultural context weighs too heavily in Bill’s conclusions.
In this regard, I was interested in the response of students in a seminar where we read Beck’s four views book together. It was a very fruitful experience. What intrigued me, though, was the discomfort expressed by some of my egalitarian students with the exegetical efforts of the two egalitarian authors. My students were troubled by what looked to them like an effort to contextualize away the complementarian position through elaborate examinations of the cultural context.
I see this hermeneutical issue as the critical point for the evangelical discussion and I think that we will do well to work at the issues of homosexual practice and gender roles together, as we seek to hear God speak through his Word.

I am not for shutting down debate nor for ignoring facts (or better said certain interpretation of so called facts). I think in some of your rush to prove to women that we are wrong and deluded and stupid believers in mythology you ignore the pragmatic realities of our experiences. It honestly DOESN’T MATTER what really happened. We have existed in churches/cultures that assumed (righty or wrongly) that the early church fathers were misogynists. That has fueled churches to uphold such opinions as rightful practice and given reason for others to reject the church. What really happened doesn’t matter because the practical outworkings of perceptions have changed reality and our experiences as women. So we do feel the pain and the oppression. Perceptions of history have translated into todays sexism in the church. So you can go on and on about how our perception of history is wrong and imply that therefore our experiences are wrong, but we have lived them and know better.

Dennis in #44
I wasnt trying to brush off your statements…I was trying to say that we can make the same case without those quotes.

Brian #48
I appreciate the apology. Thank you.
The thing is…I could let that list go and immediately come up with another one just as horrifying containing quotes from pastors I know personally, or quotes said to women I know personally by their pastors. That’s truly not looking for the worst in people, that’s just a reflection of life in the church.
I see Scot is trying to keep this on topic So I don’t want to go too much further down that road.

Terry,
Very grateful for your comments — insightful and will be useful for me when I teach my class.

I think that some egalitarians who have written off Paul saying that he was wrong in his views of women have done a disservice to the egalitarian viewpoint. Paul was not against women at all and in fact his writings in context dispels the faulty tradition that many have held that credits Paul with silencing women in general. It is simply not true.
The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has stated that no egalitarian has yet given an explanation for 1 Timothy 2:13. This verse seems to give a priority to men because the man was created first. However CBMW can no longer state this as “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?” has answered this in a decisive way by going back to Genesis to understand why the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to emphasis Adam’s first creation. Paul’s statement highlights the importance of Adam’s first creation and ties this into the fact that Adam was not deceived. Paul does not say that Adam’s first creation made him the leader.
I submitted my DVD to CBMW for review and they have to this point not been able to refute it. They have only answered me that they have to agree to disagree on this subject. However other complementarian Pastors have not been silent after watching WIM. I received two emails from two different complementarian Pastors this summer. The first one was from a Southern Baptist pastor who was very touched by the material found in WIM. He said:
“I did watch the video and thought it was very interesting. You made some very valid observations… Your points were well taken…I must admit that my eyes were opened away from some faulty traditions from viewing your DVD objectively and un biased. The question is how do we contend without being contentious? Many people, even women are steeped in tradition rather than educated in Scripture. Lord help us all!!!”
Another Pastor from a large denomination that restricts women from teaching men said:
“I want to say from the start that I was very impressed with the quality of your production and the depth of reasoning present in Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free? This is a well thought out treatment of this controversial issue of women in ministry…It would have been easy for you to fall into a derogatory and disrespectful and even an antagonistic tone in this production, but you did not stoop to this level and for that you are to be commended. The tone throughout was one of respectful disagreement and honorable treatment of those who differed from you in your position. That’s grace… I learned some interesting things from your teaching [for example](your handling of 1 Corinthians 14)… This was well done and your reference to Jewish tradition was powerful in making your points. Could Paul’s reference to “the law” in verses 34-35 be referring to a quotation from Jewish tradition? You make a pretty persuasive case that it is… Again I want to commend you on your work. It is well done, rational and reasonable, temperate, well organized, and of high technical quality… I want to say in closing, Cheryl, you and all those who worked on this project have done a magnificent job in presenting your case. I thank you for allowing me to review your work. It stretched me and forced me to dig deep and seriously consider what I believed about this issue.”
This Pastor also gave me a list of questions and challenges that he believed needed to be answered regarding issues outside the hard passages of scripture and thus not included in the material in the DVD itself. I have answered his questions point by point and right now we are still dialoguing. In fact a lecture I am giving in October has its foundation based on some of the questions that this Pastor asked me and the answers that I gave to him.
In my last post I put an extra period in my link to the free on-line introduce to “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?” so I will list it again. The correct link should be http://www.mmoutreach.org/wim.htm

Jennifer,
Yes, you could come up with another list. My main point is all about focus. To make that new list you have to focus on the bad statements. Whether or not that focus can be justified is the issue in my posts.
I’ll try to stay on track now too.

Thanks Terry for your great insights, I found they brought real light to some of the ideas we are discussing and if I can point my finger at some other commenters, I think this is the kind of post that serves the folks here best.

Jennifer: The problem with the theory of a “trajectory” is that it a course that can so easily- by a mere puff of wind- be set off course. What assurance can we have as Christians that it has not or will not? I think Dennis has tried to argue that from many corners, there does not seem to be even an accurate grasp of where the course has led us up til now. Certainly I scratch my head at comments such as Alice’s, that the church has denied personhood to women, given the female saints that spring immediately to my mind whose lives stand in testimony against this idea. It is why I so often feel that feminism does not in fact love women as they are and were- it would rather create a caricature to both pity and idealize.
Dennis, I share your perplexity and (I daresay) your frustration with how these discussions tend to go. Could I ask you to email me at alleghenies32 -at- hotmail? I would like to discuss your reading list.

Brian,
You have, several times now, tried to make the point that the very act of creating a list of “bad statements” made by theologians may not be justified. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not these statements accurately reflect the opinions of the people who wrote them (which is, itself, a fair enough question, and comments already present demonstrate that there is considerable debate on that issue), I would suggest that the very act of creating a list such as this demonstrates nothing more or less than the fact that the person who created it (whoever that may be) has perceived a problem, and is attempting to demonstrate it with verifiable data.
Now, that data must be analysed, to see if the data means what it is purported to mean, but I do not find the act of collecting the data itself to be a problem. The data exists. There are people who feel maligned because of statements like these. These are facts. What remains is how are we to respond to these facts. Do we seek to have the data reinterpreted (to demonstrate what the statements “really meant” that may indeed be different than what has been suggested)? Do we deny that the statements exist? Do we acknowledge that the statements mean what they seem to?
And then, of course, depending on our answers to those questions, we must ask ourselves how we should respond.
But I cannot fault Jennifer, or anyone else, merely for the act of collecting the list. To do such is to deny intellectual integrity, it seems to me.

B-W,
I really am trying to leave this part of the discussion behind, but you deeply misuderstand me.
On the personal level, people will often focus on a small strand of evidence because they have been hurt by it. That is understandable, but the way to deal with the hurt is not to make a list, dwell on it, and collate it with other people’s lists of hurts. In the case of regular harm coming from pastors there are other courses of action that should be taken.
On the level of how we read history, the problem is not with makeing a list, but with what people overlook in order to assemble a list like this one. In this case huge amounts of data were bypassed when making a list that was used to make a sweeping accusation that encompasses millions of Christ’s followers.

On the level of how we read history, the problem is not with makeing a list, but with what people overlook in order to assemble a list like this one. In this case huge amounts of data were bypassed when making a list that was used to make a sweeping accusation that encompasses millions of Christ’s followers.
I would argue that many people “overlook” vast amounts of mistreatment of women over the centuries in an attempt to deny that lists such as this one just might have something to them….
So what am I misunderstanding, exactly?

It seems rather convenient, to me, to make the claim that focusing on evidence of negative attitudes and teachings on women in the church’s history, is unjustified. Such a person can say there was/is no such negativity, then when presented with evidence of that negativity, claim that the person(s) presenting/compiling the evidence are focused on the wrong thing. As I say, it’s convenient to demand that others ignore what one apparently prefers not to think about.
The topic here appears to be how feminists treat Scripture, vis a vis women in ministry. To deal properly with that topic, it is both valid and necessary to examine historical and scriptural contexts in which negative attitudes toward women by those in power and by society in general MAY have prevailed. To be told that we should not dare to examine this possibility critically and present evidence that confirms negative attitudes about women in the church, is a part of the problem, IMO. It is one reason that so many young male preachers continue to spew hateful rhetoric about women and teach that women are unfaithful unless they are married mothers who remain home with their children. They insulate themselves from any form of accountability on this issue by using that very tactic (“you’re seeking vengeance if you even bring up the issue”), as well as other silencing tactics.
There IS an elephant in the living room, ladies and gentlemen. Pretending it is not there, will not prevent it from crushing the woman it decides to sit upon. The truth is, it will eventually crush the man in the room, too.

I will readily admit that the quotations of various historical Christian leaders and thinkers, do not adequately sum up all that they wrote. Wesley, for instance, was actually quite forward-thinking in his attitudes toward women when the full context of his writing is considered, relative to the general attitudes of his society. That does not mean that he was not significantly influenced by his society’s deep-seated negative attitudes about women. They were the norm, but they were far from godly.
To me, that is the point here: God in Scripture calls us to be different from the world. The world has always and will always reflect sinful attitudes in which the individual is god. In the world, the stronger rule over the weaker; God observed in the beginning that due to our sin, this would be so. In Christ, however, we are to be transformed into our Lord’s likeness. That means a radical transformation, which the church ought to reflect collectively, that values each and every person as a beloved child of God. We are not to divide people by race, privilege, gender…by anything. We are to be one in Christ Jesus. The man must consider the woman greater than himself. The woman must consider the man greater than herself. The powerful must consider the powerless greater than themselves. And so forth. Our WORLDLY dividing lines must be nailed to the cross so that we may be one in spirit.
So yes, identifying where we’re been taught otherwise and why, is useful so that we do not continue to make the same sinful exegetical mistakes and teach the same worldly attitudes as though they’re godly. If we don’t accept the reality of the sin that has shaped us, we’ll never be able to confess it and allow Christ to remove it from our midst. And it IS very much alive in the church today, weakening us from within and pitting brother against sister…to our shame.

Seems strange for me to be ‘on topic’; but the three categories listed do seem to me to be what I have seen of feminists teaching; with the caveat, also listed:

Theologies of Reformation: those in the evangelical movement — at either end of that movement — who are either egalitarian and think that is what the Bible really teaches, and those who (like the EWCI) are more toward the revisionist end.

that some (indeed all that I have seen) who would call themselves ‘reformation’ actully lean toward ‘revisionist’.

Julie,
I understand what you are saying, but the problem is you can only speak to your own feelings, not those of all women in the Church, and there are many in the more traditionalist churches, Orthodox and Catholic, who simply dont share your feelings or experience and who do not think their churches are misogynistic.

Cheryl, thanks for the link. I’m ordering the dvd’s for my wife’s birthday. Shes currently preparing for ordination in the Anglican Church.

Shawn,
You are welcome. Please do contact me back once she has had a chance to view them. I would be very interested to hear from her.

Thank you, Jennifer, for your comments here.

Perhaps I am coming to the dance a little late? I think one thing that is overlooked here is that no one, not even Dennis comes to any information tabula rasa. We all have cultural bias and that is not to be overcome but embraced. The hermeneutical cirlce is different from one community to another. These quotes, whether in context or out of context is important only if one sees meaning as in the word itself. The thing that I find to be interesting is how the smartest person in the room pedantically looks down and seemingly is saying if you just get more information your mind will change. Transformation is not that easy, more info is not what is needed, better info perhaps. Interpretation is not that easy and the perpescuity of any given text is bull. One last thing from a closet nestorian our history matters. One persons view of history must be seen as a process of understanding. Just because someone states that these guys never meant this must be held with a high degree of suspicion no matter how many white men one pulls out to make the case. for every bad history concerning the Father’s and Mother’s written by evangelicals, there are alot since for the most part we are horrible historians, there is a good one read them both and use your brain and discernment to judge.
Now to the topic at hand Scot, isn’t the fact that scripture can “mean” many things?
Scott

Scott,
Did you read the Nolan and McGowan articles? When you have, please write me and tell me exactly how I am operating merely out of a point of view. The claim that Aquinas thought women were defective men is completely, prima facie, false. The claim that Augustine beleved women lacked the image of God is completely, prima facie, false. Since these two represent the most frequently and most effective pillars in the feminist claim that the Church was deeply misogynistic, the fact that these two claims are totally false should give you pause to say, well, maybe there’s a really serious problem with the basic thrust of several decades of feminist claims about the Church.
But instead of reading the articles and confronting the evidence and drawing your own conclusions, you theorize that I’m simply coming from another perspective and therefore can be relativized.
I come from this perspective because I read the sources. I was once an egalitarian feminist, that is, a man who was fellow-traveler, feminist enabler. That was 20 years ago before I had read patristic sources. I changed my mind because I read the sources.
Of course it is possible that I have misread them. But I certainly did not misread them because I came at them with anti-egalitarian prejudice.
Just the opposite: I came to them with egalitarian prejudices but I could not deny what I read with my own eyes.
But I will not burden you any more with sources. It has become clear through these threads that people prefer not to have their cherished mythologies challenged. I leave you to them, including the myth that I’m just a partisan complementarian.

Dennis and others,
This is late in the discussion and I have not read the articles to which you refer – but have been steadily working my way through the writings of the church fathers. The kinds of “smoking guns” quotes presented here are generally taken out of context and are not representative, at least not as far as I’ve gotten so far. While the text is not misogynist – that is they do not promote a hatred of women – they are definitely and unashamedly male-centric.
So Tertullian can say something like: “The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.” (Chapter 1, on the Apparel of Women)
But he can also call his wife “my best beloved fellow-servant in the Lord” and he can extol Perpetua and Felicitas as steadfast martyrs for the faith.
There are many instances in my reading where the tenor of the text makes me uncomfortable. In many of these writings, as I must admit in most extant writings up to very recent times, there is a base-line assumption that women are less capable in many ways (particularly in intellect and capacity for “intrinsically moral” action) and that the exceptions are noteworthy because they are exceptions to a general rule. Frankly reading the works of C.S. Lewis makes me uncomfortable in the same way. There is a typical patronizing attitude – which carries over into many dimensions of discussion.

RJS,
Thank you for your thoughts on #72. Although I have done limited direct reading of the Church Fathers, I have somewhat come across this issue in my research on cross sex friendships. Rosemary Rader in “Breaking Boundaries: Male and Female Friendship in Early Christian Communities” is a good resource for explaining the tension of women being viewed as inferior, but simultaneously being sought for intimacy, friendship, support at a more mutual level, including, as you note, Tertullian. Thanks for sharing this.

I’ve just come upon this thread, and I’m not a feminist scripture scholar, so can’t speak from that point of view. But:
As a feminist, which I was for many years, I ignored Scripture.
As an Evangelical Christian, which I became later, I ignored feminists, except in prolife debates (and I won a few over to the prolife side).
As a convert to Catholicism, more recently, I was delighted in my study of history to learn that the Catholic Church was responsible for improving the rights of women in history, especially compared to how they were treated by the pagan Roman Empire (no rights at all – they were property of their fathers or husbands).
By the Middle Ages, women were no longer considered property; were not to be forced into arranged marriage (though their families still tried to do so); could be educated and own property and businesses of their own; had an equal say in the education of their children; could vote; could accede to the throne; many Abbesses exercised as much power and political influence as feudal Lords.
It was only after the Middle Ages that the decline of women began to occur, because of the Renaissance revival of classicism in the 16th century, which included the rediscovery and adoption of ancient Roman Law in the interest of centralized nation states, law which clearly favored men and relegated women to the status of children. Study of Roman Law entered the universities in earnest in the 17th century, and by the 19th century the rights of women had been virtually eliminated.
Tangential though this issue may be to Dr. McKnight’s question, it is important in the consideration of the feminist approach to scripture, because scripture is a Church document, so it is important to understand the attitude of the Church towards women in evaluating scripture.
By the way, these historical details are from the book “Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths” that Dennis mentioned, which I have on my bookshelf. It is written by the distinguished female historian Regine Pernoud, a medieval specialist. It’s a short and very entertaining read.
Accurate history does matter, contrary to what one commentator above said. After all, doesn’t our Christian faith depend on it, on the historical reality of the death and resurrection of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ?
The Church is not the problem, in my opinion. The problem is sin. Original sin has defaced relations between men and women since the Fall, thanks to the Father of Lies, who still continues to deceive.