May Women Serve As Pastors And Elders
| 14 December 2009
May Women Serve As Pastors And Elders In The Local Church?By Dr. Gary Bonebrake, Pastor, Main Street Baptist Church, Oneonta, NY
Women are intelligent and capable, working effectively in education, in law, in government, and in the corporate world. May women lead the church? May they serve as pastors and elders? What does the Bible say?
We should follow Christ’s example. In a culture where men did not even speak to women, and where women were not taught, Christ broke cultural convention. He spoke to the woman at the well (both she and his disciples were astonished). Not only did he speak to her, he engaged her in theological discussion, and he led her to faith (John 4). He praised Mary of Bethany for sitting at his feet to learn (Luke 10:41-42). (Her sister Martha should do the same, Jesus said.) Jesus permitted women to follow him and to support his ministry financially (Luke 8:2-3). And in the providence of God, it was women who were the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and the first to announce the good news, “Jesus is alive, risen from the dead!” It is difficult for us to appreciate how counter-cultural all this was. In this cultural context, women’s testimony was not permitted in court. No matter. God permitted them to be the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection. So Jesus treated women with dignity and respect in defiance of culture.
Yet when Jesus chose twelve apostles to become the leaders of his church, he chose twelve men. He could have chosen six men and six women, but he did not. (This was not because Jesus was somehow limited by cultural convention!) It is because Jesus understood what modern culture does not: equality of personhood does not imply sameness of role. And when Judas defected, and the apostles chose his replacement, they proposed two men; the Lord chose Matthias (Acts 1).
The apostles teach that the man has a leadership role in the family and in the church family, “the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15), because this is the way God created men and women. Men and women are created equally in the image of God, endowed with the same dignity, the same mental, spiritual, and moral capacities (Gen. 1:26-28). But men and women have different roles: in marriage, the husband is to offer loving servant leadership; the woman is to support his leadership (Eph. 5:22-33). Sin mars male headship and twists it into domination or passivity. Sin mars female submission into manipulation and power grabbing (Gen. 3:16). But God’s good plan for marriage remains good—it is the sin which must be abandoned, not God’s plan.
In the church, when Paul prohibits women from being elders, he grounds his prohibition in creation (1 Tim. 2:11-15; 1 Cor. 11:8-9). In 1 Timothy 2:11-15, where Paul “does not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man,” he points to the creation of Adam and Eve as his reason (v. 13). Only four lines of text later, he introduces the qualifications for an elder, whom he describes as “faithful to his wife” and “able to teach.” In other words, in the flow of the context, what Paul is prohibiting women in 1 Tim. 2:11-15 is the role of eldership / leadership over the church—a position which involves teaching and authority. The elder role is a role for men in the church, just as the leader role is assigned to the husband in marriage.
That equality of being and submission in roles are not mutually exclusive is illustrated in the relationships in the Trinity. The Son is equal to the Father in every respect, but the Son is not the Father. Equality and sameness are not the same thing. Though the Son is equal to the Father, he has a different role: “I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). Here Paul makes a parallel between the headship of the Father over Christ, and the headship of the man over the woman. This is equality of being, but difference in role.
In my view, women may teach men in the church in certain settings (Bible study, Sunday School), but may not have the role of elder / pastor in the church. With this one exception women are free to participate actively in ministry along with men, both investing themselves in the work of the gospel for the glory of God.
Questions:
Aren’t the passages limiting women’s roles culturally conditioned—that is, limited to the first century cultural context?
This was my assumption when I was assigned to lead a panel discussion on 1 Timothy 2:9-15 in a Greek exegesis class in seminary. When I was in seminary, women’s liberation was “in the air,” and I came to the assignment with the assumption that this passage was limited in its application to a first century setting. The text changed my thinking. Paul grounds his prohibition in creation. A difference in role between men and women is part of God’s creation plan. God’s creation is good (Gen. 1:31), and it is good for male-female relationships in the church to reflect his good plan. God’s creation plan is not limited in its application to certain time periods.
Don’t the passages that teach women to “submit to their husbands” also require “submitting to one another”?
Four times in the NT wives are instructed to submit to their husbands (Col. 3:18; Eph. 5:22; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1-6). In one passage, Eph. 5:22, the command is preceded by the words “submitting to one another out of fear of Christ” (v. 21). Spirit-filled husbands and wives will submit to each other in reverence for Christ. But their submission to one another takes different forms. The key here is to remember that the relationship between Christ and the church is the pattern for the relationship between husband and wife. Are Christ and the church mutually submissive? One could say that Christ is submissive to the church in that he sacrifices himself for her. The church is submissive to Christ in that she follows his leadership. So their “submission” takes a different form. So also with husbands and wives. The husband is to lead sacrificially as a servant leader; the wife is to support his leadership. Do not equate the instruction to “submit to your husbands as to the Lord” with the abuse you may have observed or personally experienced! When men “love their wives as Christ loved the church” and lead in the servant way modeled by the Lord Jesus, the harmony God intends in marriage is made plain.
Paul taught slaves to submit to their masters. We have moved beyond this cultural situation to insist on the end of all slavery. Shouldn’t we see the submission of wives as culturally conditioned, something we have left behind?
There is no parallel between slaves submitting to their masters and wives submitting to their husbands. Slavery is not rooted in God’s creation plan! Slavery violates God’s creation plan, where all human beings, and all descendants of Adam and Eve, are endowed with God’s image (Gen. 1:26-28; 5:1-2). Paul did not challenge the social situation in which slaves found themselves, but taught Christian slaves to behave as Christians, and Christian masters to behave as Christians. Christian teaching led ultimately to the end of slavery—but there is no parallel between slavery and the role of wives in marriage.
If we see women as equal to men, aren’t we required to give them equal roles in leadership?
We see the true dignity in submission in the Son’s submission to the Father in their relationship within the Trinity. The Son stands under the authority of the Father (1 Cor. 11:3; cf. 1 Cor. 15:26-28). This in no way takes away from the equality of the Son with the Father. (See Bruce Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles and Relevance.) In the church; men and women and have equal dignity before God, but different roles.
But don’t the biblical passages require women to remain silent? What about 1 Corinthians 14:34-35?
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
Please note the context to this passage. It does not stand alone. In the context, Paul is talking about prophecy in the church. In ch. 14, as Paul regulates the gift of prophecy in the church, he requires that some “weigh carefully what is said” (v. 29). This is the responsibility of leaders. In this role, of weighing prophecy, women should remain silent, as “the Law” (that is, the creation order of Genesis 2:20-24) teaches. Evaluation of prophecies in the church falls to the elders of the church, a role which Paul assigns to the men of the church. So this passage does not mean that women cannot speak, voice their opinions, or teach mixed groups in the church. It has a very limited application—limited by the context. It should never be quoted in a way that ignores the context.
What about Paul’s instruction for women to wear veils? Doesn’t he base that instruction in creation too?
In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul teaches that women may pray and prophesy in church, but they must wear a veil as a culturally appropriate sign of submission to the headship of the male leadership, based in creation (vv. 8-9). The creation order took that form in that culture. The creation order, designed by God (11:3), remains today, but does not take that form in our culture. So head coverings, appropriate then, are not necessary today.
