Last week, we asked a very big question. If God created “maleness” and “femaleness,” does that dictate the tasks and roles we can perform? Or, conversely, are gender expectations the product of human sin, division, and domination (Genesis 3:16)? How much of “maleness” and “femaleness” is a category of “being” and not necessarily limiting of what we do?
So far, we’ve said that men and women are equally valuable, yet distinct. They both possess the authority to rule over the earth together. Both are equally responsible to submit to Jesus and to one another. Yet men seem to carry an innate spiritual authority, or “headship,” to serve and protect their families, not to dominate them. Jesus exercised His headship differently from the world; He emptied Himself for His people and protected, healed, and empowered them. Headship seems to be more about responsibility and influence for others rather than power over them. Read last week’s article here: Is the Church Sexist? Part 1. Let’s continue to define headship.
Headship Is Different From Leadership
Spiritual headship is different from the gifts and skills of leadership. All husbands are the head of their families, but not all men are leaders. Leadership is a gifting of personality and Spirit. Headship is a spiritual responsibility before God. The leadership gifting, as listed in Romans 12:3–8, is not gender specific. Neither was prophecy, serving, mercy, or giving, for that matter. Leadership operates through various personalities within the church and within family and tribal units. The purpose of leadership, as with all the gifts distributed by the Lord (1 Corinthians 12:4–6), is for the building up of others (1 Corinthians 14:26). As in the home, often women are more competent at organizing, delegating, discerning, or leading within social structures and churches than men. It’s not a competition; men and women are an integrated unit.
Releasing women into leadership roles does not threaten the principle of male headship. Maleness and femaleness serving together complete the “image” of Christ; He is the head (Colossians 1:15, 18; Genesis 1:26–27). They are complementary. We have already said that women were coworkers and co-laborers with men in God’s ministry. The Holy Spirit comes upon both men and women with different kinds of “gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:4) to build His church. The instruction to women in 1 Timothy 3:11 likely refers to women in a position of ministry. [1] The quarrel between two prominent female ministers was disrupting the entire church in Philippi (Phil 4:2–3). In Romans 16, Paul commends 29 people, one-third of whom are women. Phoebe was privileged to carry the Roman letter to the church and served in the office of a “minister” [diakonos]. Priscila was named first, even before her husband, in Paul’s list of noteworthy church members. Junia was considered an Apostle [apostolos] by Paul. [2] Today, women are still empowered and used by God to build His Kingdom.
Again, we are not erasing the differences between maleness and femaleness. We agree with The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s statement concerning equal value and gender uniqueness, “Both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood.” What we balk at is exactly how the Council defines “roles” when it says, “men and women have different roles in marriage as part of the created order.” [3] Are those roles defined by Scriptures or by their own tradition? People often make many cultural assumptions about what men and women should do and transpose them onto the Scriptures. We contend that the gifts of grace people operate in are different from a person’s maleness or femaleness. Maleness and femaleness are who they are; good works are what they do. The gifts of mercy, healing, or leadership are the grace of God moving through their maleness or femaleness. God’s works of grace are perfumed and tempered by maleness or femaleness, not limited by it.
Gender Roles Within the Home
There is nothing in the Scriptures that says a woman must stay at home and be a housekeeper, or that women should cook the meals and tend to the children. Women are often competent in various industries. Indeed, if one reads Proverbs 31, one would think this wise and entrepreneurial woman is more competent and gifted than most men! There’s freedom for husbands and wives to define who performs which tasks in their home. Peter instructs us, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10). Women with a gift of leadership and management may take the initiative, run the family budget, or even manage a company. Women can be assertive and opinionated. Men and women lead together in both the church and in the home.
Headship within the home is taking responsibility and initiative before God for your spouse and children by nurturing, protecting, and serving them physically and spiritually. Again, headship in God’s way of doing things seems to be a responsibility under others rather than a position of power over others. The husband’s spiritual authority doesn’t require him to call all the shots, though some wives may prefer that their husband take such a proactive posture. Husbands and wives are “one-flesh” and should strive to work as an integrated unity. They make decisions together. Just as a quarterback passes the ball to others who can do a better job than he can, so husbands empower their families. Neither husband nor wife should be passive, and both should honor the other’s desires and contributions. There is permission within different cultures and households for men and women to figure out together how they best operate.
We can honor the spiritual authority vested in maleness while empowering and releasing women in their gifts and calling at the same time. Male headship is a reality of “being,” not a role or task. And “headship” is a responsibility to sacrifice, not a mandate to control. The original design was for a woman to give herself to her self-giving husband freely, and for the husband to take the initiative in sacrificing himself to empower his wife. They love one another sacrificially and submit to each other mutually in a spirit of unity.
Are Women Forbidden to Teach?
We have already seen that women are co-laborers in the gospel. They are also co-rulers over creation. Nowhere do the Scriptures provide a list of defined “roles” a woman may or may not serve in. There is, however, a tricky passage in 1 Timothy 2:10–11 which says, “a woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” Throughout his ministry, Paul offers this instruction only once, and it addresses a very specific problem within the Ephesian church.
Remember, Paul’s letters and leadership are anchored in specific contexts. His instructions address peculiar relationships and problems during a precise slice of time under the Roman Empire. We must interpret the intended meaning of Paul’s words. We don’t still practice modesty in the exact same way that he prescribed it (1 Cor 11:2–16; 1 Tim 2:9), or hospitality through a holy kiss (1 Thes 5:26). And most scholars agree that when Paul told the Corinthian women to be silent (14:34) he was not commanding all women everywhere to never speak in church—since Paul empowered women to pray and prophecy in church (1 Corinthians 11:5). Rather Paul meant for the Corinthian women to stop being so disruptive with their side conversations during the service. We need to interpret Paul’s words—and consistently.
It seems probable that, in 1 Timothy 2, Paul was also addressing a very specific situation. [4] Some Ephesian women were promoting heresies (1 Timothy 4:1–5) and dressing and acting more like the feminists of the Temple of Artemis down the street. [5] Even 1 Timothy 4:3 brings more clarity to the opaque comments in 2:15. And let’s not miss the obvious fact that the women had been empowered to teach in the first place, since Paul uses the universal pronoun “command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer” (1 Timothy 1:3). Furthermore, the prohibition to not “have authority” in 2:11 for example, uses an unusual word—“act on your own authority,” or “to dominate”—are two ways to interpret it. We are attempting to understand what Paul means by his words. It’s not always easy. And we only hear one side of the conversation.
It doesn’t seem like Paul was forbidding all women, everywhere, from teaching Scriptures to others. Indeed, this was the same city of Ephesus where a woman, Priscilla, was a founding leader and taught Apollos, one of the great teachers of the early church (Acts 18:18–28). It seems probable that Paul was provoking uneducated feminists to stop teaching false doctrines and to first come under the church’s authority and learn with a humble attitude. Instead of operating in a spirit of competition and defiance, Paul asks them to submit in an attitude of cooperation and unity. In the context of Paul’s entire letter and the broader scope of his ministry, this seems like a reasonable way to understand the intended message Paul was communicating.
No Women Apostles or Overseers!?
Additional questions always arise: Why didn’t Jesus commission female apostles? And why does Paul presume maleness when he writes that an elder should be “blameless, faithful to his wife” (Titus 1:6)? Jesus and Paul were working with very practical concerns. Most men in the surrounding Roman Empire did not view women as having serious leadership capacity. Women apostles would not have been received. Listen to Judy Brown describe the situation,
A woman would not have been able to address a synagogue audience or most other gatherings of Jews and would, thereby, have been severely limited in reaching them…It is not surprising that male leadership dominated the Early Church…the disciples’ task was to reach people who were virtually unreachable by women, the viability of women ministers continued to face great challenges. [6]
Brown’s conclusion is that the maleness was a practical consideration and not a theological requirement.
Additionally, Paul’s template for an elder emphasized the elder’s character, stressing faithfulness to a spouse. Most of the elders were male, and so he was using the language that described the candidates. But this is different from presupposing exclusive maleness as a theological requirement. Given the liberating tendency of Jesus and Paul’s ministry, it seems that male leadership was a reflection of the reality they were living in at the time and not a theological necessity for all times.
Different Interpretations and Cultures
Rather than a thorough defense for women in leadership, this article is more of a broad outline. We are attempting to evaluate and synthesize multiple themes within Scripture and practice them within our dynamic community today: the spirit of Jesus’ gospel, the redemptive and liberating nature of Jesus and Paul, the specific issues they were confronting in their day, the deep and valuable differences between males and females, the ongoing mission of the gospel, and our present cultural considerations. We believe, most importantly, maleness and femaleness should be honored and appreciated as beautiful and distinct ways of “being” in the world. Secondarily, we believe that God’s empowering gifts should be valued and expressed through both males and females; gender expectations are too often a human creation instead of a Divine establishment.
Different churches and cultures hold to God’s inspired and authoritative texts, yet arrive at different applications for their communities. Many merge male headship together with the gender roles that they prescribe. Consequently, only men can serve in “eldership” or “teaching” roles in their communities. At Petra Church, we affirm male headship and female leadership at the same time. We do this because we separate headship—who we are—from giftings—what we do.
Not everyone will agree with us. And it’s important to recognize that there’s a spectrum of human cultures and tolerances towards gender roles and expectations. I just spent five days in the Ivory Coast in Africa. Their culture is very patriarchal. Women had defined roles, and their young girls served us our meals and poured water over our hands to wash them. The men lead the churches and homes in a very traditional way. Yet, I didn’t get the sense that this was unhealthy or demeaning to the women. In this community, the women appeared to feel loved, heard, valued, and protected. In that sense, the church was not acting in a sexist manner in any demeaning sort of way. They were valuing women within the gender roles that they served.
Yet consider how different that leadership style is from egalitarian cultures like the United States or Sweden. It would be insulting to many women to be told that their femaleness required them to cook the meal or wash men’s hands. For over one hundred years, the women in our cultures have been integrating into the labor market and interacting at the highest levels of civic leadership. The tasks we perform are different from who we are.
It is important to have a respectful awareness of these different social sentiments. There can be healthy patriarchal cultures that serve and protect. There can also be unhealthy patriarchal cultures that demean and control. There can be healthy egalitarian cultures that equip and empower. And there can be unhealthy egalitarian cultures that are defiant and divisive.
To answer the question that we started with—Is the Church Sexist?—I have no doubt that some churches are. If you see signs that women are devalued, “put in their place”, or shunted out of the way, that women only serve men’s needs, are spoken of condescendingly, aren’t free to disagree with their husbands, or are fearful of men’s reactions, these may be signs that the home or church is demeaning towards women. That is sexist and thoroughly unchristian. Husbands and wives should submit to one another and empower one another to fulfill Christ’s mission.
Conclusion
Men and women are equally valuable, yet distinct. At Petra Church, we affirm the spiritual authority of male headship and the giftings of female leadership at the same time. Headship is a responsibility based on who we are, and leadership is a gifting based on what we do. If God has intended for our gender differences to be expressed in different ways, then we need to honor and applaud our differences, not demean them. Still, we recognize that different churches, marriages, and cultures interpret and apply our sacred texts differently and that there is room for healthy diversity. The majesty and mystery of our wonderful Redeemer is that the uniqueness of “maleness” and “femaleness” both display his beautiful image.
[1] Schreiner, Thomas R. Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology. Second edition. (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2020). Schreiner continues with his thought: The word “likewise” here seems to point towards women ministers, not wives of ministers. If Paul had intended wives “of deacons,” he could have included those words. Using the word “women” by itself leans in favor…also, the requirements for the women are quite similar. Fourthly, if he talks about the wives of Deacons here, why not talk about the wives of overseers/elders?
[2] Ibid., likely to mean itinerary missionaries as used in the Patristic literature (Did 11:3-6; Herm. Vis. 13:1; Herm. Sim. 92:4; 93:5; 102:2).
[3] The Danvers Statement: 1987
[4] Scheiner, Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory, 369. 1 Tim 2:12. Many scholars today maintain that the restriction of not permitting a woman to teach or exercise authority is culturally limited.
[5] Cunningham, Loren, David J. Hamilton, and Janice Rogers. Why Not Women?: A Fresh Look at Scripture on Women in Missions, Ministry, and Leadership. (Seattle, Wash: YWAM Pub., 2000), 205-207.
[6] Brown, Judy L. Women Ministers according to Scripture. (Springfield, Mo.: Distributed by Judy L. Brown, 1996), 151.
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