Don Haymes is a faithful member of Churches of Christ and a serious, caring student of the Bible. He has responded to our statement of Purpose & Definition with “9.5 Theses.” We find these Theses to be as thoughtful and provocative as the original “95” that Martin Luther nailed to the church door in Wittenberg 485 years ago. Don proceeds from a candid statement of something that is painfully obvious: “The witness of the New Testament” to the ministry of women “is ambiguous.” The remaining theses illustrate and address this uncomfortable ambiguity. Theses proposed in this way do not demand that we agree to the arguments they make, but rather are intended to provoke thought and thoughtful discussion that leads to understanding. We may not, for example, share the understanding of the Pastoral Letters expressed in these Theses, but we have nevertheless found them to be rewarding discussion partners.
9.5 Theses on the Ministry of Women in the New Testament and the New Testament Church
1. The witness of the New Testament to the ministry--service and participation--of women in the New Testament Church is ambiguous. This ambiguity should neither threaten nor discourage us; it is, rather, reassuring. God has called no “plaster saints”; they are all flesh and blood, and they all fail. We are called to patience born of love. We are saved only by grace, and not by our understanding or by our work.
2. Women follow Jesus, and Jesus encourages their ministries to him, for him, and with him. At the end of the Gospels, when the men who followed Jesus have fled, women remain with him. Women are “faithful to the end.” Women are the first witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus, and the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. The men who have followed Jesus, and then fled, do not see the resurrection and do not believe the testimony of the women. Even when they finally see the risen Lord, they doubt. The women never doubt.
3. In the Acts of Apostles the women who followed Jesus in the Gospels are among the “120” who “devote themselves to prayer” and, on Pentecost, they are “all” filled with the Holy Spirit. They receive gifts from the Holy Spirit, but the men who have taken charge do not set them apart for any “office” or “work.” The men ignore, overlook, and deny the gifts and ministry of the women for the same reason that they deny baptism to anyone who is not a Jew.
4. Jesus is male and the “apostles” of the Acts are all male; they are also Jews. To assert on the basis of the masculinity of Jesus and the “apostles” that women may not preach or pray or serve the Lord’s table or perform any public function in the worship of the church or serve in any public “office” of the church is to found the church’s doctrine of ministry on genitalia. “Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” (Rom 8:5).
5. Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:28 that “in Christ . . . there is no male and female” alludes specifically to Genesis 1:27 (“male and female created he them”) and is based on Paul’s fundamental teaching that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). This teaching is essential to understanding the authentic Paul, as opposed to his opponents, compromisers, revisers, and rehabilitators. It is present in every authentic letter of Paul. Its absence is a certain sign of pseudepigraphy.
6. The “new creation” in Christ restores the primeval condition of humankind before sin erected barriers between humankind and God and between human beings. The barriers of the old creation--race, class, and sex--are broken down by the reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ. While the new creation shall in the end time, at the return of the Lord Jesus, be fully manifest, it is not merely “eschatological,” but it is intended to be present in the here and now. It begins at baptism, when we “put on Christ.” If it does not happen now, it will never happen at all.
7. Paul in Romans 16 names Phoebe of Cenchrea as a diakonos--a “deacon,” not a “deaconess”--and also a prostates (“guardian”) of himself and others. Prisca and her husband Aquila are “my collaborators” or “fellow workers.” Mary “has worked hard among you.” Junia, with her brother or husband Andronicus, is a relative of Paul, a “fellow prisoner,” and a person “well-known” or “outstanding among the apostles.” Tryphaena and Tryphosa are “workers in the Lord.” In Philippians 4 Euodia and Syntyche “have walked with me in the Gospel, with Clement and the rest of my collaborators.” Paul does not distinguish the “work” of these women from the “work” of men whom he names; clearly he mentions them because of the value of their “work” and the faith their “work” expresses. These names, mentioned only in passing, and only in the letters of Paul, remind us that there are many heroes of faith whose names and biographies we do not know, and many of them are women; we do not know their “works,” because no one wrote them down.
8. In 1 Corinthians 11 women pray and prophesy. They are not forbidden to speak, but they are instructed to cover their heads when they speak to God or speak for God, “because of the angels.” In 1 Corinthians 14 “all” may prophesy, and “all” may learn and be encouraged. Among most Churches of Christ in the twenty-first century women are forbidden to pray and prophesy, but they are permitted to join in the worship assembly and to join the men of the congregation in singing various prayers and prophecies (many of them composed by women), with uncovered heads. Here we may pause to marvel at the convoluted consequences of eisegesis.
9. The entire case against the public ministry of women among Churches of Christ rests on a misunderstanding of two controverted prooftexts, both attributed to Paul. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 plainly contradicts the instruction of Paul in 11:2-16 and 14:31. That is why Paul responds in the way that he does in 14:37: “Did the word of God come out from you? Has it reached you only?” Paul is quoting the letter or statement of a Corinthian faction--just as in 1:11-12, 3:4, 5:1, 6:12, 6:13, 7:1, 8:1, 8:4, 10:23, 11:18, 15:12--and his response is swift, direct, and appropriate. Those who presume to exclude women from speaking in the worship assembly are claiming a monopoly of the word of God from which they seek to assume the prerogatives of God.
In 1 Timothy 2:8-15 we should translate aner as “husband” and gyne as “wife” (as in 1 Corinthians 11:3); read in this way the text is more coherent, but no less troubling. The author is concerned throughout not with teaching and encouraging a “new creation” but with winning the respect of polite society. The vocabulary is unique in the New Testament. The prooftext from Genesis is misapplied in a way that “Paul” elsewhere never uses. Among other things, 1 Timothy 2:15 plainly contradicts Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 7. The author is attempting to rehabilitate Paul and align him with conventional mores.
9.5. The same “Paul” who wrote Romans, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, or Ephesians did not write 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus--although many members of the Churches of Christ would gladly discard all the others if only they could keep the “Pastoral Letters.” It is no accident that the Pastorals are favorite texts for such second-century Christians as we are, for these more than any other canonical documents consign women to the “place” where men have since Adam been determined to keep them.
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