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by John L. Mckenzie
from Women Priests, Arlene Swidler & Leonard
Swidler (eds.), Paulist Press 1977, pp. 212-215.
Republished on our website
with the necessary permissions
John L. McKenzie received his S.T.D. from Weston College in Massachusetts. He
was at the time Professor of Old Testament Studies at De Paul University. A
former president of both the Catholic Biblical Association and the Society for
Biblical Literature, he was the author of such books as The Two-Edged Sword
and The Power and the Wisdom.
I am
asked to comment on the brief passage of the Declaration dealing with
Paul’s attitude toward women. The comment must certainly bear upon
Galatians 3:28 and upon some apparent inconsistencies in Paul’s attitude
towards women.
The
revolutionary force of Paul’s language in Galatians 3:28 can hardly be
appreciated without some knowledge of the background of the writer. Paul was
reared as a Jew and professed Judaism until his adult life. One wonders
sometimes how many modern Jews realize the degree of machismo there is
in their religious heritage. Until Conservative Synagogues of the United States
began to change their discipline in 1972 (not changed in Orthodox Synagogues,
though Reform Synagogues eliminated the problem over a hundred years ago), the
minyan, the minimum number of ten required for a synagogue service,
meant ten male Jews; women do not count. One becomes a Jew by circumcision, and
only by circumcision. Women are not obliged to the full Torah.(1) Jewish
literature provides a generous measure of quotations expressing disrespect and
contempt for women. (2) Josephus, whom not all Jews would admit as a witness,
said flatly that woman is inferior to the male in every way. An ancient Jewish
prayer preserved in modern Jewish prayer books expresses the Jew’s thanks
that God has not made him a goy or a slave or a woman.(3) It is of
interest, although I am sure it is merely coincidental, that these three
classes are precisely the three classes whose differential is annihilated in
the unity of Christ Jesus.
In
the world of Paul the difference between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, and
male and female represented the deepest class divisions of society. I have
spoken of the third class with reference to the Jewish world; in
Hellenistic-Roman Society the social position of woman was higher than it was
in Jewish society. A close examination of the social position of women makes
one aware that the adjective “higher” is used in a qualified sense.
The greater freedom of the Roman lady was the freedom to be promiscuous. Paul
was not concerned with this. In a society in which women were not fully Jews he
did say that in Christ the difference is unimportant.
In
our ecumenical age perhaps it is not nice to resurrect the contempt of
Gentiles, and especially of Christian Gentiles, exhibited in the sayings of
Talmudic and medieval rabbis. If women were not fully human, Gentiles were
brute beasts. If women were morally weak, Gentiles did not even know the
difference between right and wrong. Gentiles in the Roman world were aware of
Jewish contempt and they resented it.
Slavery none of us knows except by reading. In Roman law the slave was not a
human person. You could kill a slave; you could not murder him. Humanity did
emerge, for the emancipation of slaves was common; unlike the domestic animal,
the slave could save money to purchase his freedom. But as long as he was a
slave, he was a chattel in law. This difference also was annihilated in Christ.
Yet slaves could become officers of the church; Gentiles could become officers
of the church. But the unity of Christ which embraced Jews and Gentiles, slaves
and free, did not quite encompass men and women. If Paul had meant this, it
would have been easy for him to say so. One cannot adduce any New Testament
text in support of the ordination of women. One cannot adduce any New Testament
text in support of the ordination of men. Officers named hiereus,
priest, are not mentioned in the New Testament. The apostles were all men;
the office expired with the first generation of the church. Episkopoi,
overseers, and diakonoi, ministers, are mentioned. Both of these are
obviously groups within the local church. We do not know their duties or
powers. The number of offices, or what could be offices, in the apostolic
church of the New Testament is so large it seems that almost every believer had
an office. Very probably they did; for office was the working of the Spirit in
the believer, and if the Spirit did not work in the believer something was
seriously wrong. The office of priest (hiereus or sacerdos or
kohen) was known in Greek and Roman religion and in Judaism; its absence
in the apostolic church cannot be merely coincidental. I once suggested that
the apostolic church rejected the whole category of the sacred as known in its
predecessors and contemporaries—sacred places, persons, objects—and
that the reintroduction of the sacred was an intrusion of a pagan element into
Roman Catholicism.(4) Possibly I am arguing that women are not ordained and men
should not be. Paul did fairly well with no consciousness of ordination but a
great sense of mission.
We
know little about the ministry of women in the apostolic church; and in a
masculine-clerical tradition we have not tried to find out more. Phoebe is
called a diakonos of the church of Cenchreae (Romans 16:1). This is
surely an ecclesiastical office, however vague the definition of its
responsibilities, I do not know why it is not an office in this passage except
that Phoebe was a woman, and that begs the question. I doubt seriously that
Phoebe was the only woman in the apostolic church who was a deacon. It is
certainly unwarranted to assume that her service was limited to such things as
the collection and distribution of old clothing. A saying of Jesus (Mark 10:43)
exhorts whoever would be great among you to become your diakonos: that
is, to be in the group of disciples what Phoebe was at Cenchreae. If one likes
the kind of word games which are so highly regarded by the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, one could project that the office of diakonos put
Phoebe within reach of becoming great among the disciples.
Aquila and his wife Priscilla are always mentioned together. Paul counts them
among his fellow workers, and they had a church in their house (Romans 16:3-5).
They were obviously a husband-wife evangelical team, and the one thing we can
be sure they did was to teach. The word “fellow worker”
(synergos) is applied in the Pauline correspondence to Urbanus (Romans
16:9), Timothy (Romans 16:21; Philippians 3:2), Epaphroditus (Epaphras;
Philippians 2:25; Philemon 24), Clement (Philippians 4:3), Philemon
(Philemon1), Demas and Luke (Philemon 24). These are men who were or could have
been bearers of sacramental powers and jurisdiction, and no difference is made
between them and Priscilla.(5)
Romans 16 is thought to be a list of Ephesian Christians. Besides Priscilla and
Aquila, there are 24 personal names. Of these five are feminine, and two
unnamed women appear also. Paul does not distinguish between services rendered
by men and services rendered by women. The quarrel of Evodia and Syntyche
(Philippians 4:2) must have been ecclesiastical; it is doubtful that anything
less would have deserved mention in a letter to the whole church. Paul also
says that they have struggled with him “in the gospel” (NAB “in
promoting the gospel”). Clearly they were more than officers of the Altar
Society; indeed, this mention by name suggests an important role in
evangelization which scholars have not attended to. The context suggests that
their importance may be compared with that of Clement (4:3).
Paul
was not entirely consistent in his dealings with women. Few men are. The
breadth of his statement in Galatians 3:28 and his practice, dim as our view of
the details may be, clash rather sharply with his imposition of silence upon
women in the assembly of worship (1 Corinthians 14:33-36) and the same
prohibition amplified by some unnecessary anti-feminist rabbinical exegesis (1
Timothy 2:9-15). Modern scholars generally think that 1 Timothy is not from
Paul himself; this, of course, does not close the question of how faithful the
author was to the traditions of the Pauline school. In 1 Corinthians, which is
surely from Paul, we hear the echoes of Jewish practice, in which women,
according to some rabbis, should not even learn the Torah, let alone
teach it.(6) Nevertheless, could Paul have addressed this to Priscilla? or to
Phoebe? or to Evodia and Syntyche? Obviously he could not and did not. He wrote
this to the church of Corinth about participation in charismatic worship such
as speaking in tongues and in prophecy; and he seems to have forgotten in
14:33-36 what he said in 11:5. He does speak as the rabbi, as he does in many
other passages. After all, he had been trained in rabbinical patterns of
thought and speeeh. It appears that where we do not enshrine his rabbinical
utterances and style as apostolic constitutions, we neither understand nor
forgive him for going to a rabbinical school—and for learning his lessons
so well.
Let
me add a personal note. The contributors to this commentary were asked not to
show in their tone the anger which they may feel. I wish to assure readers that
the objective and dispassionate tone of this note does not disclose my whole
mind about the Declaration. The Church is never served well by bad scholarship.
I cannot think of any pontifical document which departed so far from the
methods of sound learning as this document.
Notes
1.
Hermann Strack-Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und
Midrasch (Munich, 1928), 111, pp. 558 f.
2. A.
Oepke in Kittel, Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, I
(Stuttgart, 1933), pp. 781-784.
3.
Ibid, p. 777. The corresponding prayer to be said by a woman is “Blessed
art thou, Eternal One, our God, Lord of the world, who hast made me according
to thy will.”
4.
Did l say That? (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1973), 45-50.
5.
This has some reference to the word game presented by the Congregation on
“fellow workers,” par. 17 of the Declaration
6.
Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar, III, 468.
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