Women and the Bible

We who term ourselves biblical feminists believe that when properly, understood, the Bible supports the central tenets of feminism.

Traditionalists cite New Testament instructions about the submission of first-century wives and church women as proof that it is forever the will of God for women to remain in a subordinate role in marriage and in the church. It is understandable that the Bible should seem to traditionalists and even to many secular feminists to support male supremacy, since most of the Old Testament authors assume that patriarchy is the will of God for the social order, while in the New Testament the same assumption prevails, with several notable exceptions: Christ's personal behavior, the ministry of certain women in the early church, and several prophetic flashes which envision the regenerative effects of the gospel on human society. Because patriarchy is the cultural background of the scriptures, it is absolutely basic to any feminist reading of the Bible that one cannot absolutize the culture in which the Bible was written. We must make careful distinctions between what is "for an age" and what is "for all time." We cannot assume that because the Bible was written against the backdrop of a patriarchal social structure, patriarchy is the will of God for all people in all times.

To clarify by means of a different example, most Biblical authors assumed that kings ruled by divine right and that absolute monarchy was the divinely ordained form of government. Yet although traditionalists insist that New Testament instructions to first-century wives and church women are normative for all times and all places, they do not insist on a return to absolute monarchy. In other words, where political government is concerned, both feminists and traditionalists join in de-absolutizing the culture of biblical times. We all agree that one can be a Christian without believing in absolute monarchy. What we feminists are asking is that in the area of sexual politics as well as in the area of national politics, we de-absolutize the biblical culture.

Similarly, both Old and New Testament authors assume that is the will of God for some people to be the slaves of other people. There was a time when traditionalists argued for that very reason black people could justly be enslaved by whites. But largely through the efforts of 18th and 19th century evangelicals who believed that the gospel was intended to lead to an egalitarian society in which the injustices of racism would be abolished, the pro-slavery view is no longer upheld by traditionalists.

On the subject of slavery, as on the subject of monarchy, we have de-absolutized the biblical culture. We all agree that one can be a biblical Christian without believing in slavery; in fact, most of us, even traditionalists, would go farther and say that enslaving other people is a practice antithetical to genuine Christianity. Here again, what biblical feminists are asking is that in the area of male-female relationships we be consistent about de-absolutizing the biblical culture. We ask that modern Christianity concern itself with fulfilling the visions of a society regenerated by the power of the gospel, instead of clinging to the sinful social order into which the gospel was first introduced.

The apostle Paul knew that the sinful order could not be changed overnight, but he sometimes glimpsed the truth that eventually the principles of the gospel would bring about a more egalitarian society. That seems to be the point of his message to slaves and their masters in Ephesians when he states that there is no discriminatory respect of persons with God--that all people are equal in God's sight. The implication is that those who want to reflect the nature of God here on earth should also desist from being "respecters of persons" and should treat one another more nearly as equals. But since Paul could not abolish slavery single-handedly and overnight, he wrote instructions to both masters and slaves which would at least alleviate the conditions of slavery until the gospel had done its full work.

Paul also wrote instructions to first-century wives and husbands which closely parallel the instructions to masters and slaves: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.... Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it" (Ephesians 5:22 and 25). Just as slave masters were reminded that they had a Master in Heaven, first-century heads of families were also reminded that they had a Head in Heaven (1 Corinthians 11:3), and that they were to manifest Christlike self-sacrifice toward their wives. It would seem that in the case of first-century female subordination, as in the case of first-century slavery, people were being told how best to live in an established social order which could not be changed overnight.

Since the Bible is a divine book which reached us through human channels, it is also true that some of the apostle Paul's arguments reflect his personal struggle and show vestiges of the rabbinical training he had received from Gamaliel, training which strongly favored female subordination. Such vestiges seem to be implied in 1 Corinthians 14:34, where women "are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law," a reference not so much to the Old Testament as to the social customs and rules of first-century Judaism. The miracle is that Paul so often triumphed over such culturally-instilled preconceptions, most notably in his Galatians 3:28 vision of a classless, non-racist, non-sexist society, "all one in Christ Jesus."

Many biblical feminists fear that if they admit that some of Paul's arguments undergirding female submission reflect his rabbinical training and human limitations, the admission will undercut the authority of scriptures and the doctrine of divine inspiration. Things have come to a bad pass when we have to avoid seeing certain things in scripture (or avoid admitting that we see them) in order to preserve our preconceived notions about inspiration. Rather we ought to have so much faith in the God of the Bible that we fearlessly study what is written there.

The fact is that the same apostle Paul who wrote of "no male and female" in Christ also argued for female submission, and did so on the basis of Genesis 2, Adam's creation before Eve (1 Timothy 2:12-13; 1 Corinthians 11:8-9). Either we must recognize that Paul is contradicting Genesis 1 by saying that the creation of Adam and Eve was not simultaneous, or we must say that Genesis 1 is not inspired. It is of course possible to harmonize Genesis 1 and 2 by seeing the second chapter as a symbolic and poetic expansion on the first, while viewing the first account as authoritative concerning the simultaneous creation of Adam and Eve--but if we do that, then Paul's argument falls flat. Traditionalists, by insisting on the inerrancy of Paul's argument, are forced to deny the accuracy of Genesis 1, and contradict their own interpretation of inerrancy.

Despite rabbinical theories that Genesis 2 depicts the order of creation and that female submission is based on that order, Paul treated Phoebe and Aquilla and other women as his equals in the Lord's work; and it is time for the Christian community to follow Paul in his transcendence of his limitations instead of clinging to the letter of his struggles with them.

It seems to me far less detrimental to the authority of scripture to recognize that some of Paul's arguments do reflect his human limitations, just as the imprecatory Psalms which express David's vindictive hatred of his enemies are reflections of David's human limitations. By gloating over the fall of his enemies David was violating such Old Testament instructions as "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth" (Proverbs 24:17); yet even the imprecatory Psalms were written for our instruction and learning. And I believe that Paul's arguments for female subordination, which contradict much of his own behavior and certain other passages he himself wrote, were also written for our instruction: to show us a man of God in process, and to force us to use our heads and our hearts in working our way through conflicting evidence.

What C. S. Lewis wrote concerning the imprecatory Psalms (see his Reflections on the Psalms), I would say concerning Paul's rationalizations for the female submission which was standard in his culture: the passages are distorted by the human instrument, yet they are instructive in showing us an honest man in conflict with himself. Lewis calls David's imprecatory Psalms "contemptible," yet he insists that we must not try to explain them away, nor must we reject the inspirational and devotional value of the Psalms, nor must we try to call hatred a good and pious thing. Rather, we must seek to profit from this record of David's humanity. Similarly, we cannot deny that Paul rationalized female subordination in a theological fashion that he did not employ concerning slavery. Neither can we deny that Paul contradicts these rationalizations in Galatians 3:28, in his many passages on the new creation in Christ, and in his own behavior toward female church leaders. We must open our eyes to these conflicts, demonstrating faith in the God who allowed them to appear in the New Testament. We must conquer our fear that honest attention to what we see in the Bible will undercut the doctrine of inspiration. We must allow the facts of scripture to teach us in what way it is inspired, rather than forcing scripture to conform to our own theories about it.

The Bible was not in error to record David's hatred and the Bible was not in error to record Paul's thought-processes. But we are in error to absolutize anything that denies the thrust of the entire Bible toward individual wholeness and harmonious community, toward oneness in Christ. Even if the biblical evidence were 50 percent in support of female subordination and only 50 percent in favor of the equality of mutual submission, ordinary kindness and decency should lead modern Christians to choose in favor of equality. But the evidence for Christian equality is far stronger than that.

Biblical feminism should not seek to root itself in the citation of first-century practices, which for all the purifying impact of the gospel remain to some degree hierarchical, patriarchal, and sexist. Biblical feminism must instead root itself firmly in the major scriptural doctrines of the Trinity, of creation in the image of God, of the incarnation, and of regeneration (including the regenerative influence of the gospel in human society).

Christian feminists must stress that biblical language about the nature of God is metaphorical language. Women have long been barred from the ministry through specious reasoning about God's maleness and Christ's incarnation as a male. Women have been kept in submission in the home and in the church through reasoning that the male embodies the sovereignty of God while the female embodies the submission which is the proper response to that sovereignty. Lately, radical feminists have been saying that if God is male, then the male is God--a line of reasoning which meant very little to me until recently, when I studied some twenty-seven evangelical books about the role and status of women and discovered that they are indeed filled with worship of the male.

In this connection, the September 1975 issue of Cosmopolitan printed a large excerpt from The Total Woman; and the only factor which the sexually permissive Cosmopolitan editors found it necessary to repudiate was the male idolatry. In their introduction the editors commented that The Total Woman is "too blatantly man-worshiping." What a tragic twist, that the secular world should have to point out to people who claim to be Bible-believers that they are "too blatantly man-worshiping"! Where are the prophets in the Christian community? Why are they failing to thunder against such idolatry?

Traditionalists tend to fall into unconscious idolatry when they operate on the assumption that the male relates to God directly while the female relates to God through the authority of the male. This in turn stems from failure to realize the implications of Genesis 1:27, which tells us that both male and female were created in the image of God. Whatever else this may mean, it certainly must mean that there is a feminine aspect as well as a masculine aspect in the nature of God.

It would seem from Genesis 1:26 that any attempt to split off the Trinity into separated masculine and feminine persons would be unbiblical: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion..." This surely implies that both male and female are created in the image of the entire Trinity, and therefore that the entire Trinity possesses both masculine and feminine elements.

Therefore, we ought to re-think our doctrine of the Trinity, which traditionally has been pictured as totally masculine. And there is biblical precedent for understanding the masculine and feminine elements of the Trinity. The "Father" is referred to in maternal as well as paternal terms in both the Old and New Testaments. At least five times the Old Testament pictures God as maternal rather than paternal (cf. Isaiah 42:14, 46:3, 49:15, 66:13, and Psalm 131:2), and in Luke 15 the Lord Jesus Christ pictures God not only as a shepherd seeking his lost sheep and a father welcoming home his prodigal son, but also as a woman seeking for her lost coin.

The Son is pictured not only in the stereotypically feminine aspects of submission to the will of the First Person, but also in the stereotypically masculine roles of the powerful generator, upholder, and judge of the universe (Colossians 1:16, 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). His incarnation is pictured in human rather than male terms, since the New Testament authors repeatedly refer to him not as aner, male, but as anthropos, human. As the Logos Christ is associated with the Old Testament figure of wisdom, always personified as feminine, through whom one is enabled to know and do the will of God (Proverbs 4:4-7).

The Holy Spirit is pictured as femininely brooding over the face of the waters like a hen on her nest, and as the comforter of the Christian (John 14:26) but is also associated with the masculine symbol of a flame of fire (Acts 2:3,4). Throughout mythology the dove, biblically associated with the Holy Spirit, is an androgynous image, embodying both male and female characteristics in one unit. So it seems clear that we have been remiss in failing to grasp the feminine as well as the masculine elements in each of the three persons of the Trinity, no doubt an important element in the unity of the one God who inhabits the universe.

Perhaps the theological lesson to be learned from all this is that we are to free ourselves from the delusion that God is to be limited by sexual dichotomies or by any other human limitations, and certainly that we ought to free ourselves from oppressing one sex and idolizing the other on the assumption that God is male.

Perhaps the psychological lesson to be learned is that in every male and in every female, there are masculine and feminine components which must be accepted and harmonized in order for the personality to become whole and healthy. If we regard the masculine component in terms of traditional roles, it would include activity, aggressiveness, clarity, logic, and so forth; and traditionally defined, the feminine component would include passivity, submissiveness, tenderness, intuitiveness, nurturance, and the like. Damage is done to the human spirit when these characteristics are assigned to only one sex exclusively--that is, when men are taught to be exclusively and stereotypically "masculine," and women are taught to be exclusively and stereotypically "feminine." When biblical feminists call for psychological androgyny, we are not talking about becoming hermaphrodites or homosexuals, and we are not talking about unisex; we are talking about developing all aspects of God-given male and female personalities, so that each person becomes a unique and un-stereotyped harmony of male and female components. Biologically we remain male and female and relate to each other in that fashion; but we are basically persons, whole beings, made in the image of a God whose being apparently mingles what society has defined as masculine and feminine components.

The sociological lesson to be learned is that male and female are intended to work in harmonious partnership in society, in the home, and in the church. When men reject their so-called female component they become contemptuous of the opposite sex as well. Instead of manifesting the best qualities of what society calls feminine, such as tenderness, intuitiveness, and nurturance, they develop the negative qualities, such as narcissism and selfishness. And when women reject their so-called masculine component they also become contemptuous of the opposite sex. Instead of developing the better traits of what society terms masculine, such as strength and assertiveness and clear logic, they tend to develop the negative qualities of that "masculine" component, such as opinionatedness and rigid dogmatism. All of this escalates the war of the sexes.

By contrast, the Bible teaches mutual submission and mutual concern, for "neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things are of God" (1 Corinthians 11:12). Only when the church teaches and acts on the assumption that marriage is a partnership of equals, that the Christian community is a harmonious relating between men and women, and that women as well as men are fully qualified and fully acceptable in all aspects of the Christian ministry and church governance, will the church be true to the biblical teaching that both male and female are made in the image of a God who is both paternal and maternal, both powerful and submissive, both transcendent and immanent.

Unity in Christ
When the apostle Paul wrote his dazzling vision of a Christian society which recognizes neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, certainly he could not have meant that those born Jews and those born Gentiles would lose their ethnic roots. Rather, he meant, according to the context, that those rules and practices which militated against the Gentile converts, forcing them to conform to Jewish stereotypes, would be abolished in the equality of Christian fellowship (Galatians 2:14). Similarly, he could not have meant that Christian males and females would lose their biological distinctives, but rather that in the freedom and psychological wholeness fostered by Christian fellowship, each male and each female would be free to develop his or her gifts and God-given traits without reference to gender-based stereotypes. They would not be forced to conform to sexual stereotyping any more than Gentile converts would be forced to live according to Jewish religious customs.

When Paul says that in Christ there is oneness, there is neither male nor female, he is envisioning the breakdown of all stereotypical behavior, including the hierarchical pattern of male dominance and female submission. He is supporting the concept that a healthy personality involves a harmony between so-called masculine and feminine components in both men and women, while a healthy society involves a harmonious sense of partnership between those who were created biologically male and those who were created biologically female.

What biblical feminism seeks to promote is wholeness both in the individual personality and in the Christian community, the kind of wholeness described in Ephesians 4:13--"till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect person, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." At least one aspect of coming "to a perfect person" is reflecting the psychological androgyny of Christ and relating harmoniously and without any rigid role-playing to the members of the opposite sex.

For too long the church has ignored such implications, and blocked genuine friendship between men and women by insisting on a hierarchical pattern of dominance and submission rather than responding to the liberating message of the good news. For too long the church has denied the fulfillment of Christ's great prayer in John 17, a prayer which takes on a new dimension in the light of a Godhead of three persons who each contain a harmony of so-called masculine and feminine elements. Jesus prayed "that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.... And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one...." (John 17:21-23). Neither male nor female, all one in Christ Jesus!

In the May 1975 issue of the Post-American, traditionalist Thomas Howard writes that trying to defend feminism by listing Sarah and Deborah, Esther and Jamel, Anna and Dorcas and Paul's female assistants in the ministry "is self-defeating, since...[the list] is embarrassing in its brevity next to the long list of the...male prophets, apostles, etc." But the point to be made is not that the female list equals or exceeds the male, but rather that in the Bible's patriarchal context, it is amazing and indicative of God's intentions that any women are listed at all. Jesus repeatedly had to correct the sexist and stereotyped responses of his male disciples, who were shocked that he would talk to a Samaritan woman and disturbed that mere children should bother the Master and incensed that the Lord would let himself be touched by a fallen woman. What we see operating in the Bible is the power of God similarly moving on human beings, causing them to overcome their prejudices in order to include occasional details about women in leadership roles. It is not the paucity of attention to women which is surprising, but rather that there is as much biblical focus on women as actually exists. And biblical feminists emphasize these passages about women precisely because the church has not emphasized them, and because Christian women need to be encouraged to believe that they too can be meaningful in God's service, and because the demon of sexism must be exorcised from the modern Christian community.

Regarding incarnation, it is important to remember that Christ's submission was a personal, internal, purely voluntary matter. According to the New English Bible's rendering of Philippians 2:5-8, "the divine nature was his [Christ's] from the first; yet he did not think to snatch at equality with God, but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape, he humbled himself, and in obedience accepted even death--death on a cross." Christ's obedience was not to something external to himself; rather, it was the fusing of his own will with a purpose that reached far beyond himself; and in Ephesians 5 the apostle Paul makes Christ's loving obedience the example for husbands to follow in relation to their wives.

Thus, we biblical feminists are not arguing that there is no room for Christian submission and service; instead, we are saying that there is no room for gender-based categories which define female persons exclusively in terms of subordination. After all, Christ taught the concept of service and mutual submission to all of his followers, male and female alike. Biblical feminists are returning to Christ's own emphasis by extending voluntary mutual submission to all believers. And we are saying that cooperation with the will of God is an internal and individual matter, not to be dictated to any individual by any other individual, and not to be blocked by human prejudice such as the prejudice which has barred women from the Christian ministry.

A New Creation
Finally, biblical feminism is grounded in the doctrine of the new creation in Christ Jesus. The context of Genesis 3:16 makes clear that dominance and submission in human society constitute a curse, a sinful condition resulting from the fall of humanity. But "if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17); "as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (Galatians 3:27); and "ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another" (Galatians 5:13 KJV). The Old Testament prophet Joel looked forward to a day when the Spirit of God would be poured out on all flesh so that men and women alike would prophesy (Joel 2:28-30); at Pentecost Peter said that on that very day Joel's prophecy had been fulfilled (Acts 2:16). Thus by implication Peter announced that with the advent of the Spirit had come the end of patriarchal limitations upon the ministry of women. Paul followed through with his vision of no male and female in Christ (Galatians 3:28). Yet most Christian churches have failed to implement the glorious insights of Peter and Paul, choosing to imitate certain first-century cultural conditions rather than to revolutionize them.

We Christian feminists face an important task of teaching the churches and the secular society to interpret the Bible with greater attention to its overall message and with an awareness of cultural background and the limitations of the human channels. In this task we may find guidance in Christ's own behavior as recorded in Matthew 19:3-9. When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by pitting his view of divorce against Mosaic law, Jesus pointed out that Mosaic law did not represent God's original glorious intention for man and woman, but rather that the law enunciated in Deuteronomy 24:1-3 was given to a patriarchal culture "because of the hardness of your hearts," although "from the beginning it was not so." Thus by his own practice Jesus showed us that sacred scripture concerning man's behavior toward woman does not always reflect God's highest intentions for the human race.

Jesus harks back to God's original intention, when "God made them male and female," as the basis for love and loyalty and equal partnership between male and female. By playing off Deuteronomy against Genesis, Jesus is not impugning the inspiration of the Old Testament but is showing that certain passages were inspired to meet specific needs in response to human hardness, while other passages (recognizable by context) convey God's ultimate intentions for the human race.

This article was taken from Virginia Mollenkott's speech to a conference on biblical feminism held in Washington, D.C., in November 1975.