Dear friends,
We come back today to the subject of men and women, though this time not from Genesis, but looking at how the New Testament looks at this topic.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News. Two Ways News comes to you as the courtesy of other people's generosity, because what we do here is freely available but supported by generosity. So thank you to those who are generous, those who are subscribers. Please feel free to continue to give so that we may make this freely available for others.
We're glad to be together again to talk about men and women in the New Testament. We've talked about men and women quite a few times already, but that's because we're working through Genesis this year. But in the last couple of weeks, we've turned our attention to how the New Testament uses quotes and alludes to the Old Testament, in particular to Genesis 1-3. So having spent time thinking about Genesis 1-3, where men and women come up in the whole passage, we move to references in the New Testament.
Peter, this is an important question in understanding our Bibles, but it's not just our Bibles, we're talking about life today when we're talking about the subjects of men and women.
Peter Jensen : We are indeed. In a sense, it's life all the time, but there are moods and tendencies in our society today which have created considerable confusion about men and women, how we relate to each other and who we are. It's come out recently, very significantly, in the whole debate about transgender athletes and other transgender people using women's toilets, where, interestingly, women are saying, ‘Women are women.’ I say 'interestingly' because the story, at least amongst the elite, has been for so long that men and women are individuals, and basically, there's no difference between them.
Phillip: So that is a very live issue today. Does that change how we read our Bibles?
Peter: Yes and no; that is to say, when a new issue arises, we sometimes go back. Having questions in our heads arising from issues around us is not a bad way to look again at the Bible. But always in doing so, we must be careful not to read our contemporary concerns into the Bible because we've got to listen to what it is saying, not what we are saying. But sometimes, in raising such an issue, we find things we've missed before in reading our Bible.
Phillip: So what's the summary of the Genesis view of men and women that we're going to start with?
Peter: Well, the fundamentals are, of course, that both men and women are the image bearers. I remember once talking to a lady who'd done a doctorate on an Amazonian settlement of two or three tribes, and in this group, men and women were regarded as fundamentally different creatures. The Bible tells us that men and women are one in sharing the image of God and thus the preciousness to God and the task of governing the world. It particularly mentions, of course, childbearing in that connection and the fruitfulness of marriage. Then in chapter 2, of course, we have Eve, the woman taken from the side of man, a helper fit for him, and what we have there is complementarity. There are two different but equal people, but they need to work together if they're going to accomplish the task that the image calls them to accomplish.
Phillip: ‘Equal people’ is a funny phrase, though, Peter, because you can't be a half person or a three-quarter person. You either are human or you're not. It's binary; you either are human or you're not, and the Bible is saying women are human and men are human.
Peter: Let’s move to the Gospels because that's the job today, to think of all this in the light of the New Testament. Phillip, do the Gospels add anything to the picture we see in those fundamental passages in the Old Testament?
Phillip: In a good sense, the gospels add very little to us in this regard. I mean, there are men and women in the gospels. But there's nothing particularly highlighted about some different significance than what we would see throughout the Old Testament. For example, all the apostles are male, and some people draw conclusions from that. Therefore, ministry, whatever kind of ministry you're talking about, has to be male. But that conclusion is never drawn from the scriptures. It's just a fact that the 12 apostles were male. It's not said to be good. It's not said to be bad. It's not said to be selective for that purpose. Nothing is drawn from that.
There are women throughout the gospels, as there are men at various points. There is the group of women who sponsor Jesus, wealthy women who travel and give financial support. Some women come needing healing. There are men who come needing healing. There are men and women who are lost. There are widows, and the widow of Nain has her son returned to her. There's a sense of sympathy for the struggles of the woman. There's the struggle of the woman with a flow of blood for 12 years. So there are slightly distinctive things about those. But there's the man who's born blind. There's nothing drawn from any of these other than that they are in the gospels.
That's what you're talking about. The gospels are related to real life. And in real life, there are men and there are women who have needs and who have contributions, and we read about both of those. Because of modern controversies, people may try and give a feminist reading of the gospels to see the importance of women in the ministries of Jesus. But it doesn't seem to me in the gospels that there's any particular importance. Mary is mentioned at the cross. Going into the Book of Acts, she was there as a witness to Jesus on the day of Pentecost. But throughout, the Old Testament speaks of men and women; the gospels speak of men and women. But it doesn't seem to me that anything particularly is made of it.
Peter: There doesn't need to be anything particularly made of it, because the Gospels assume what Genesis teaches, that both are the image bearers. We make assumptions about men and women being treated as unequal in that ancient world. The gospel doesn't endorse the inequality; it rather operates on the equality - the equality of worth, and the equality of being in the image.
Phillip: It is the historical record of events that happened, which involved men and which involved women. A man who is a centurion comes with a sick child; a woman who is a Syrophoenician comes with a sick child. What's important is not that they were male or female, but that one was a centurion, the other was a Syrophoenician. That's what makes the issue the issue; their sex is neither here nor there.
Peter: It is said that women couldn't be witnesses, but the witnesses to the resurrection were women.
Phillip: They were, yes. Did you say a woman couldn’t be a witness? That's a rule and law that was not the Bible's teaching. I can use that in a kind of apologetic argument: here is the issue of the resurrection, which was so historically real that they didn't get conventional witnesses but totally unconventional witnesses. I can use it as an apologetic for the importance of women by saying that the first people Jesus saw after the resurrection were women. But I don't think the gospels make either of those points.
Peter: Not in so many words. You've mentioned Mary, who occupies a rather special place. Do you think, for example, that she is the new Eve? Tell us how you think of Mary and her place in events.
Phillip: She is a godly woman, and she accepts the position that God has placed her in history, and she acts appropriately. She follows the Lord Jesus and was there at his death and was there on the Day of Pentecost. And she is seen in those terms. At one point, she and her children come to take Jesus away because they are afraid that he is mad. When he is teaching, someone calls out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed.” Jesus says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” So, she does not have a significantly important place in that regard.
However, people have raised her place of great significance, which partly comes out of history. That is, in the 5th century, there was continued debate about whether Jesus was fully human and fully God at one and the same time. There were those who said he was God, but in becoming human he ceased being God until he returned after his resurrection to become God again. But the Bible says that all the fullness of God dwelt in him bodily. This debate was finally settled in some ways at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. It was done over a technical term, ‘theotokos’, a term applied to Mary. The issue runs like this: if Jesus, the man, was fully God, then his mother could be said to be the mother of God. Not that she was the eternal mother of God, but that Jesus didn't cease being God when he became man, and so Mary was the mother of God. That then became a kind of litmus test of orthodoxy. But over time, the litmus test of orthodoxy became a basis for people's devotion to Mary, as if she were the eternal mother of God and somebody who has particular access to Jesus. The gospels never give us that, but rather, ‘blessed are those who hear the word of God and speak.’
So a whole industry of ‘Mariolatry’ has arisen. It is said in Luke 1 that in receiving the grace of God to be the mother of Jesus, she becomes the source of grace. The text of Luke 1 doesn't say that she's the one who dispenses grace to others. The movement has changed to say that she was bodily assumed, and some would say she was sinless, and indeed, her mother is seen as a great saint, although her mother's name is nowhere used in the scriptures. We don't know Mary's mother or her mother's name. Then they say Jesus, to be sinless, must have had a sinless mother. And as a sinless mother, death could not hold her, so she was bodily assumed. None of this is in the Bible, and none of it is consistent with what is said in the Bible. So although it may sound strange to say Mary was the mother of God, that's orthodoxy; that's what we should say. But to move further to use ‘mother of God’ as a phrase of devotion to Mary is, I think, a very serious mistake, because she's not the one through whom we go to God or through whom we go to Jesus. It is Jesus who we go directly to; it is through him that we pray.
The bodily assumption of Mary has, of course, become one of the key difficulties for ecumenical relations, because the Pope, since the first Vatican Council in 1870, has taken the authority of infallibility when he makes any declaration ex cathedra. As I understand it, he's made very few such statements, but the one he did make in 1950 was the bodily assumption of Mary. That gives a great problem, because how can the infallible Pope now undo his infallibility by saying it was wrong? And how can Bible believers ever come to accept what the Bible doesn't teach and is theologically inconsistent with what the Bible does teach?
Peter: This is also to do with the infallibility of the Pope, which is not in the Bible either and should never have been assumed.
Phillip: Thinking of authority, what about the women in apostolic authority?
Peter: In the apostolic ministry, my mind instantly goes to that joyous duo of Priscilla and Aquila, who are mentioned a number of times. We were introduced to them in Acts 18, where Apollos, a Jew who was eloquent in the Scriptures and competent, had been instructed in the way of the Lord Jesus, although he only knew the baptism of John. When he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, Priscilla and Aquila heard him. They took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately. So they had a ministry to help him to be on fire, as he was, for the Lord Jesus in the right way. So that's a great duo. I can remember reading it; I wasn't surprised. It fits with my experience that a husband and wife may indeed have such a ministry, which is consistent with the scriptures.
Other women are referred to, of course; Romans 16 comes to mind, but it tends to be in passing. But in other words, the great teaching of Genesis 1 and 2 is assumed. There's a reference which is tantalising but interesting in Philippians 4:2-3 to two women called Syntyche and Euodia, and the apostle Paul asked them to desist from arguing with each other. By the way, it's not just women who may argue with each other, because we see in the New Testament disagreements between men.
Phillip: Paul and Barnabas.
Peter: Paul and Barnabas, for a start. But that's not the interesting thing. He says, "I entreat these women to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, to help those women who have" – now listen to the description of them – "who have laboured side by side with me in the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life." And so the apostle describes these women as fellow workers with him in the gospel. He doesn't say what they were doing, but clearly, they were significant to him, and the thing is, there's nothing surprising about this. It fits with the biblical theme as a whole, and not just Genesis 1 and 2, but the whole of the Old Testament as well, in which women played a very significant part.
If we're thinking of the New Testament and the apostolic teaching, the text, which is especially important, is not so much these references from which we have to draw deductions that may or may not be the case, but rather the explicit teaching of scripture. The famous text in Galatians 3:27-28
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Now, that's just wonderful and clear. He takes this selection of oppositions, if you like – Jew and Gentile, slave and free, men and women, the selection of differences – and says, ‘No, when you come to Christ, when you are baptised into Christ, those distinctions are not there.’
Now it doesn't mean, as we know from his writing elsewhere, that there are no differences that need to be acknowledged. Rather, when it comes to salvation, to acceptance by God, to forgiveness, to the work of the Holy Spirit, when it comes to the tension that existed between the Jews, thinking that they had the revelation and therefore the Gentiles had to conform to them, and the Gentiles, the ones who were without God and without hope in this world, as Paul describes them elsewhere. No - all one in Christ Jesus. Now that's a master text on the importance of recognising – I'll use the word 'equality', but that's not quite the word.
Phillip: It's the unity in Christ.
Peter: That’s better.
Phillip: We are one in Christ, and if you're Christ’s, then you're Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. So the inheritance goes equally to the slave and the free, equally to the Jew and the Gentile, and equally to the man and the woman. But we're oneness. We all have the inheritance and share in the inheritance together. But a slave is still a slave. You don't cease being a slave because you become a Christian.
Peter: Not in the ancient world; indeed Paul later says slaves are to do the following and masters are to do the following, etc.
Phillip: So you don't stop being a woman.
Peter: He's not abolishing slaves.
Phillip: Nor is he abolishing sexual difference by this either.
Peter: No, and that's very important, and it's very important for women that the sexual differences be recognised. This is one of the things we are hearing now, at long last, from people who are aware of the difficulties of this sexual confusion that we have now reached. So all are one in Christ Jesus. But what about the hot topic, Phillip, of Christian ministry?
Phillip: Well, it's fundamentally the same for everybody to hold up the Lord Jesus Christ to the world. There's no idea that women must not evangelise in the scriptures. I must share the gospel, and my experience of life is women do it all the time, and they're very good at doing it. But the differences of people are recognised and accepted in the scriptures. There are a very interesting couple of verses in 1 Timothy 5:1-2
Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, in all purity.
That's a terrific verse, Peter. “Do not rebuke an older man.” The older I get, the more I like that verse.
Peter: I'm not old; I'm late middle-aged, but older than you.
Phillip: You've always been older than me. Now let's take the text seriously here.
There are many dimensions to life; age is one, sex is another, and the ways in which we relate to each other are affected by things like age and sex. He's not for a moment saying that it's all right to treat younger brothers without purity or older women without purity, but there's a particular problem for a young man like Timothy in ministering to young women. Just as there's a particular impropriety of rebuking an older man and being harsh with an older man. It's a lovely phrase too, in that you treat older women as you would mothers. And while you look up to your elders, you'll notice you don't look down on your juniors, so younger men are brothers, on the same footing. It's a package here of relating to different people differently because they are different, which is part of Christian ministry.
Peter: Time does not permit us to go into detail, but in 1 Corinthians 11 we see, very interestingly indeed, that men and women again are interdependent but not interchangeable. Yes, how wonderful it is.
Phillip: He's arguing that from Genesis 1 and 2 again. Two good words, interdependent and not interchangeable.
Peter: That's right. That's a good way of summing up.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, listen to this sermon given at St Andrews Cathedral on 1 Corinthians 11, “Man and Woman in Christ.”
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