Getting The real Paul To Stand Up

For dealing with disagreements about belief and action in the church, a long-standing rule of thumb says that the buck stops at the Bible. Lip service to this rule notwithstanding, however, most Christians violate it a lot. Thank goodness. Here is one recent case of Bible wrangling that may make the reason for my gratitude a little clearer.

Recently, officials of a near-by seminary denied a faculty member the opportunity to earn a permanent appointment on the ground that, as a woman, she should not be placed in a position of authority over men preparing for the ordained ministry. There are a number of institutional integrity issues here, not the least of which is that these same guys gave her the job in the first place, and seemed happy to do it. But I want to focus instead on the reasoning behind the specific decision to send this young scholar packing.

It seems to have been based upon a very uptight reading of 1 Timothy 2:12, which prohibits women teaching or "dictating to" men. The basis of the passage's churlishness is its own overly literal take on Genesis 2 and 3, which Paul's ghost writer (Pauline authorship of this particular letter is doubtful in many quarters) summarizes roughly as follows: Adam was created first; Eve was deceived first; and all of the women they set loose on the earth are saved only in the bearing of children.. So, if women can't keep quiet performing the latter, at least they ought to do so in church.

My, my. And this from an apostle who says that instruction in the church "has love as its goal." (1:5) In fairness, it has to be said that he doesn't let men completely off the hook either. Especially clergy types of men. They are enjoined to control their children "with dignity" and to "manage" their own families (3:4-5), ostensibly to show all and sundry that they are able to control and manage their congregations. We can only guess by what means.

It is difficult for me to understand folks who with a straight face talk this way about women in the church. In the first place, the Bible keeps reminding us that in the divine economy of salvation, firstborns often have to give way to secondborns, e.g.: Ishmael to Isaac, Esau to Jacob, the elder to the prodigal brother, Jew to Gentile. And still further, it tells us to quit blaming others for our own sinning. And then, according to church rhetoric, it was in Adam's fall, and not Eve's, that we have all became the sinners we are. First Timothy to the contrary notwithstanding, Eve got such a raw deal in the Garden that maybe it should be only her successors doing the shouting in the churches, while the menfolk clean up the dishes and the bathrooms in the basement.

It is this Eve-started-it-all kind of stuff that people get into whenever they succumb to the temptation to let the buck stop with the Bible, and then to shut down all further conversation while gazing reverently upon the Good Book. Actually, in many cases, the conversation never even gets started. Having a Bible waved in your face by a bug-eyed or a seductively mellow-toned preacher is often quite enough to provoke biting your tongue and saying with a smile how welcome its bloody taste is.

Most thoughtful Christians are more than happy to resist the buck-stops-here approach to the Bible, and without passing the buck besides. For them, the Bible is the place to start, but rarely if ever the place to stop. For one thing, it has to be read in its original contexts, about which we still do not know a lot of what we yearn to know. (Anybody still sure about all the geneologies?) For another, tradition has had a lot to say about what the Bible can and cannot mean for later contexts. (Anybody still believing in a purely human or a purely divine Jesus, but not both?) And then there are all those changing contexts over time which only experience and reason can help us to understand. (Anybody still want to mount an argument for slavery?)

I can't help wondering what might have happened at that theology school had somebody insisted that alongside the Timothy correspondence, attention should be paid to the Galatian. Or had they listened when the suggestion was offered. On the matter of a woman's place in God's scheme of things, the Paul of the first letter seems so very different than the Paul of the second. In the latter, the real Paul wrote, "There is no such things as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)