FOUNDATIONS: Male and Female He created them
This is a continuation of a series that began in February 2023. Join us as we take a closer look at each building block of FHC’s Mission Statement using the book of Colossians as our lens:
“To be a relationally driven community that seeks to encounter God, empower Christ-centred lives, and faithfully serve others"
Scripture: Colossians 3:18-19
Interpreting Scripture presents a challenge. It’s like a two-way street that forces us to look forward as much as backward. In other words, it requires us to balance considering where we’re headed based on our current context, and where we’ve been based on what history can teach us. This is a complex but necessary tension we must embrace if we’re to do due diligence in interpreting Scripture in a way that’s honest and open to its teaching and correction.
We’re confronted with this tension in passages such as the one above, as well as Ephesians 5:21-33, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, and 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. In each case, this tension challenges our assumptions and encourages us to reconsider how we were led to our conclusions. Ultimately, we have to question what the author’s original intended meaning was in light of the bigger picture of Scripture.
Based on what we know about Paul through his other letters, it is safe to assume that Paul’s authority as he writes these words should be kept within the context in which it was written. In other words, Paul’s message does not apply to all contexts, for all time — it was written for a specific audience in history. What we can infer from this is that the rest of Paul’s life demonstrates a belief in the equal authority of men and women both in the church and in the home.
How do we know this? In our passage above and its sister passage Ephesians 5:21-33, we see this evidence in three ways: culturally, textually, and contextually.
Culturally:
Let’s place ourselves in the world of those who first received Paul’s letter. From what we know about the Greco-Roman context of both the Colossian and Ephesian church, we can assume that it was highly patriarchal — to the point that women were often considered to hold the same status as slaves or children. Despite this, women were still expected to hold authority over males in the context of owning slaves themselves.
In his work titled Politics, Aristotle said that “the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject… for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female… the female is as it were a deformed male.”
For a young girl growing up in that world, her life could be summed up as being groomed for marriage until she reached legal marrying age (age 12). However, there were also groups in the Roman Empire that didn’t follow this trend and sought power in other ways. The female cult that worshipped the Roman goddess Artemis empowered women to become priestesses and vocal leaders in the community, making it an attractive alternative to living under patriarchal rule.
It’s also important to note that Paul addresses the wives before addressing the husbands in this letter. Men were typically addressed before women, so this would have been somewhat shocking to the men in the room. Lastly, it was not a cultural assumption that a husband should “love” his wife, much less love them “as Christ loved the Church”. These deliberate literary choices make it difficult to believe that Paul would want to reinforce a patriarchal view of submission in his letter.
2. Textually:
The word “submit” is often the focus of heavy criticism in modern readings, given its connotations of oppression and its archaic nature. In ancient Greek, the word used here is hypotasso and scholars agree that it is used in the form called the middle voice. This is to say that the subject (i.e. the women) are both the cause of the action and the subject of the action itself. Not only that but compared to the word Paul used in the context of slaves obeying their masters just a couple of verses later (Gr. “hypakouo”), Paul clearly means to use this word not in a negative or pejorative sense but in a way that is meant to empower the subject of the verb to choose. And what is he asking them to choose? Paul is giving the women the choice to choose to respect their husbands who in that culture would have been privileged to be the provider of the home and their protector against harm. Lastly, when comparing the meaning behind the verb “to permit” in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 to other uses in scripture, we see that it is never used in a permanent or universal sense.
3. Biblical Context
Within the context of the bigger picture of the Bible with the Gospel message at its center, we can see as we compare Paul’s sentiment to his other messages that Paul does not mean to contradict himself and the Gospel but means to address specific issues in the church that are foreign to us today. In Galatians 3:28, Paul makes this abundantly clear as he says that “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.” Some might be tempted to make this an issue of only salvation but in the wider context of the book of Galatians, Paul is clearly addressing practical implications for how that salvation is lived out. Furthermore, in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, we see how Paul’s principal concern is not women prophesying but rather women being uneducated and therefore being deceived. This is evident in Paul’s comparison to the Fall narrative where Eve was deceived not because she was headstrong or spoke up too much but because she was ill-informed compared to Adam who came before her. This admonishment is consistent with what we know about the false teachers in Ephesus (see “1. Culturally”), many of whom were women. Elsewhere, in passages such as Acts 16:14, 17:12, 18:26, and Romans 16:1, we also have evidence of numerous different women leading in different capacities within the church. Lastly, in Ephesians 5:21-33, we once again see how there is a discrepancy between where our attention usually lies versus where Paul’s emphasis is which is squarely on the men of that congregation and their treatment of the women. Paul makes this clear not only by addressing the women first but by expounding on the duty of each man to “love your wives, as Christ loved the Church” and, effectually, raises the bar.
In conclusion, as we approach the texts outlined above through each of these lenses, we are faced with the question of whether the conclusion we arrive at is more reflective of the patriarchal culture that dominated Paul’s day or the ministry of Jesus, a trademark of which was the multitude of women it attracted. From the beginning, we are told “male and female HE created them.” The image of God is imparted to each one equally although they are different and separate from one another. Therefore, by pointing us to a new creation, Paul is calling the church to demonstrate a new way of relating to one another compared to the way the world around us does. Indeed, if we are able to appreciate our differences and learn what it means to reflect his image together, then the promise of Jesus is that the world will inevitably take notice (John 13:35) and, perhaps even, want to take part.
Study Questions:
1.) How do you view the church’s treatment of women in its history?
2.) What are your thoughts on women in ministry and having positions of authority?
3.) How can we apply these same principles to other texts that have been misunderstood?
4.) Are there parts of my life that need to change if this is a new perspective for me?
5.) What is my gut reaction to a text like this?
