Why women should be church leaders and preachers // Ask NT Wright anything

as with many other things I want to go to the resurrection I want to go to the resurrection stories of Jesus in the in the first light of Easter day actually you know without the resurrection of Jesus everything falls apart anyway there's no Christianity and within that culture the idea that the prime witnesses to the most important event in the whole story would be women in tears is so counterintuitive that as a historian I have to say nobody would ever make up that story interestingly in first Corinthians 15 when Paul quotes what is now the shaped up and polished tradition the women have disappeared already by the early fifties here's our tradition and we know that people aren't going to believe us if we say he appeared first to these women but Matthew Mark Luke and John it's all very clear the first person to see the Risen Jesus were the women and particularly the first people to be told to tell other people that jesus is alive again hmm Mary Magdalene and the others now all Christian ministry flows from the announcement that the crucified Jesus has been raised from the dead and is now the lord of the world and this is just a cultural revolution that Jesus had up till then chosen 12 men mmm who all let him down in various ways he now transforms that this is part of the newness of new creation it seems to me by saying now actually this extraordinary explosive message is so subversive that the best people to take it are strange women who no one's going to believe and indeed the disciples themselves don't but they were telling the truth and it seems to me we need to inhabit that story and that way of looking at that story and say so was this just a flash in the pan and was this just well Jesus you know had a special thing about his mother or Mary Magdalene or whatever but after that it all went and the answer is absolutely not read Romans 16 now of course most people studying Romans find it hard to get to chapter 8 let alone 11 or let alone 16 but Romans 16 is explosive Paul greets all these church leaders in row many of whom are women who are church leaders in their own right one of whom is an apostle he says so Junior and there's been a huge attempt to try to make out this as Junius a man but the scholarship is quite clear this is a female name and she is an apostle for Paul that means somebody who has seen the Risen Jesus and is thereby commissioned to be an authorized representative and here's the crunch the first woman mentioned in Romans 16 is the bearer of the letter to Rome now if you're Paul and you know in your bones you have just written a letter which is the most explosive piece of theological writing you can imagine who you're going to give it to to take it to be read under Caesars nose in Rome well presumably some strongman know a deacon woman from the church in Ken creo we assume she's an independent businesswoman Phoebe and she's on the way to Rome and what we know about the way letters worked in the ancient world was if you sent a letter via a friend or somebody the chances are you can't prove this the chances are they will be the one to read it out they might well be the one to explain it to people who I mean faced with Romans we'd have a thousand quid I'd have a thousand questions so Phoebe tell us what so the probability is that the first person to expound Paul's letter to the Romans was a woman a deacon from the church in king-crab and I want to say get used to it guys you know this is explosive but it's the sort of thing that happens when new creation is going forward and to row back from there and to say well you know important really mean that and so now we've then want to say what are the forces in our culture today particularly I have to say in America which are forcing some churches and some people to fasten on one or two verses from elsewhere to say oh no no we can't have we've been doing this and that and the other because that's a highly highly selective reading of Scripture and as with all other theological answers the best place to start is with the resurrection of Jesus and then everything that flows out from there so in summary in a sense to Abby's question here is it biblical for a woman to preach to lead a congregation of men and women you would say unbalanced yes I would miss out on balance I would just say yes it is difficult yes that there are particular something you want me to get to well its let's let's talk about that because that comes up in the next question ELISA in California interesting you know to to women asking these questions the first Tim C to 13 to 15 there you could expand beyond that can you explain what these verses have to do or to say specifically about women teaching if they do at all and specifically what your thoughts are on verse 15 in particular what do you like to read that from yeah well I think there's there's a few things to say and let me say I've written a piece on this which is printed in my book surprised by Scripture and so all I can do here is summarize some of the arguments I've set it out more fully and indeed in Paul for everyone the pastoral epistles there's there's a chunk on it there and that those overlap inevitably and the first thing to say is that in verses 8 and 9 and 10 Paul is saying men and women don't go with the stereotypes the men must lift up holy hands without getting angry and having arguments in other words men we all know about testosterone just now you're Christians learn to deal with that and don't be all sort of par brokers and so on women don't think that your life is defined by having an elaborate hairdo or by having jewelry as that just plays into the idea that women are the pretty little things the decoration on the side while we men are doing the fighting as it were so he's saying let's get rid of the stereotypes and learn a wise way of being human which avoids those in other words he it isn't that he's crossed with women for wearing jewels it's that don't get trapped in the thinking that that's all that it means to be a woman to be a pretty bit of decoration on the side and then he says this is my second main point um a woman should learn in peace in all submissiveness but the idea the word mantha Netto let her learn is the same root from which we get matthäus disciple and hey sukhiya is what you have if you're a student you have the leisure to study the word scholar actually comes from having leisure to study and it looks to me as though this is similar to what you have in Luke chapter 10 where Jesus is in the home of Mary and Martha where Mary shock horror is not in the back room where the women should be doing the cooking she is in the front room sitting with the men disciples which means she is in training to be herself a loner and then it's like somebody's sitting at the feet of a rabbi it sooner or later gonna be a rabbi themselves I remember when I had Paul a good on my unbelievable podcast discussing this with Francesca Stavrou Coppola who takes the view that it's all inherently sexist and patriarchal and and Paul II was keen to say of course it came out of a very patriarchal culture so we're bound to see certain aspects of that but pointed out that the in this specific instance simply saying women should learn exact was exactly quite quite radical it is a it is it is and and and women would regularly ever since Aristotle who saw women as a deficient form of men that actually women were regarded as as not that sort of thing and this of course has gone on in the Western world and still in some circles does to this day but then the crucial thing then I think is the possibility and it is only a possibility that this is written to the context of Ephesus and what we know about Ephesus in the first century is that as we know in Acts the Great Temple in Ephesus is Diana or Artemis in in Greek and the cult of Artemis which has this vast temple one of the wonders of the world is a female only cult and various people have argued this isn't my idea but I think it has some mileage that actually what Paul is opposing here is the idea well of course we in Ephesus know that religion is basically a female thing so if there are any men there and then the women is going to have to take over the leadership from them and because we we want to hold our heads up like our the Artemis priestesses we're where men aren't allowed to look in and this would then be verse 12 would then be a rebuke to that that women should not use herb or try to take over authority from men now I want to say I don't know that that's what that means but the key Greek word in the middle al Fenton is a very strange word which would look it up in the dictionary meaning 'he's one of which is actually to murder I mean it covers a huge range and then the question about the men there is does this mean women shouldn't be usurping authority from any man or from their husbands or they shouldn't be teaching their husbands as though there's a husband-wife thing going on here as though yes women teachers fine but maybe not if it's that I really don't know on that and then the argument about Adam and Eve rather like the one in 1st Corinthians 11 if you read it out for us I'm sorry yes Adam was made first and then Eve and Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and got herself into trouble in paribas LeakyCon and she became in transgression I shouldn't make clear for those who can't see but you're actually reading from the original Greek here sorry it's just some people might assume why is why is he sort of questioning how to do a you're not reading from an English Bible at this point I mean so so for Paul this is a flicker of the Adam and Eve story right and it's I've heard it expounded both ways I've heard well Adam was not deceived but he jolly well sinned whereas the woman was deceived so that's all the more fault for Adam but you could read it as that the Adam was above that sort of thing but in the story Adam did eat so it's not quite clear to me or not at the moment the different ways of possibly reading that and then verse 15 which was was specified that the woman will be saved through childbirth if she continues in faith in love and and holiness with wisdom and the the the point there is that in Genesis 3 there is this warning to the woman that you will have great pain in childbirth which goes with the warning to the man that the ground will Bend bring forth thorns and thistles in your you'll have hard work digging it and so it seems to be Paul saying okay that was the Eve problem the Eve story but that doesn't mean all is now lost that Eve will be saved through childbirth it doesn't mean she'll only be saved if she gives birth lots of children it means that the the apparent curse on this painful childbirth is not the be-all and end-all that God will make the way through now so all of that pretty when everything I've said could be contested and has been contested it seems to me that is as good a way of reading the passage as any I've come across and my question is why have some people taken those three verses and made an entire Church policy out of it and been very fierce about it which has happened particularly again in America we thought we kind of got beyond that and it's now come back again what's going on in the culture to make people say this is the defining thing when they miss out so many other things in the New Testament you know that's one little passage how many times do we have teaching about riches and poverty in the New Testament how many times we have teaching about generosity to the poor and all of that and many people who fixate on that don't actually seem to bother about all those other things at all the podcast episodes at bonus content and to ask your question sign up at ask NT right com [Music] you

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Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2019