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by Elisabeth M Tetlow
Paulist Press New York/Ramsey
Republished on our website
with the necessary permissions
CONTENTS
PREFACE
1
1
THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN GREEK,
ROMAN AND JEWISH SOCIETY
5
Women in Ancient Greece
Women in the Roman Empire
Women in Judaism
2
THE BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY
30
Religious Office in the Old Testament
Ministry According to the New Testament
3
THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN ACCORDING
TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
92
The Ministry of Women During the Lifetime of Jesus
The Ministries of Women in the Early Church
CONCLUSION
139
APPENDIX: WOMEN AND PRIESTLY
MINISTRY
143
BIBLIOGRAPHY
149
PREFACE
There
are serious questions being raised in the Church today concerning the role of
women in ministry. The Second Vatican Council asserted that “since in our
times women have an ever more active share in the whole life of society, it is
very important that they participate more widely also in the various fields of
the Church’s apostolate.”(1) This position was reaffirmed by the
third Synod of Bishops, meeting in Rome in 1971. “We also urge that women
should have their own share of responsibility and participation in the
community life of society and likewise of the Church.”(2)
Yet
women are in fact and by law excluded from the official ordained ministry of
the Church.(3) What are the reasons, present and historical, why this is the
practice of the Church? The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
attempted to answer this question in 1976. It justified the exclusion of women
from ordained ministry on the basis of the constant tradition of the Church,
which, it said, was rooted in the practice of Jesus and of the apostles. It
summarized the present position of the magisterium in the statement that
“the Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider
herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.”(4)
The
crux of the problem is located in the understanding and interpretation of the
practice of Jesus and the apostles. The available information on this subject
is contained within the New Testament. The tradition of the Church has always
accorded a primary place of authority to the word of scripture. In recent times
Vatican II reiterated the belief that scripture contains and presents
“divinely revealed realities” which “have been committed to
writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” Therefore “the
books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and
without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the
sake of our salvation."(5) Thus according to the teaching of Vatican II
whatever scripture says about a subject has a normative value for the Church.
If a conflict arises between the practice of the Church and the word of
scripture, the Church should conform its practice to the revealed word of
God.
If the
situation were actually so simple, all problems could be resolved by following
the letter of the text of scripture. But this is not the case. One complicating
factor is the fact that scripture presents the word of God in translation. God
did not dictate the New Testament in Greek. The word is presented through the
language of the evangelist or epistolographer. This language is conditioned by
the history, culture and theology of the historical writer. Thus it is
impossible for the reader today to establish exactly what word of God is being
revealed in a given text of scripture without the mediation of interpretation.
What is important is that the element of interpretation be consciously
recognized and be in accord with the most rigorous scholarly
standards.(6)
Biblical scholarship is a science which is constantly learning and
growing. Thus it is possible that an understanding of a text which was
generally held ten years ago may today be viewed as incorrect. Many of the past
interpretations of biblical texts on the subject of the ministry of women were
filtered through the theological presupposition that Jesus could not possibly
have called women to ministry nor could the early Church have possibly
permitted women to function in ministry since women are essentially inferior to
men and their divinely established role in life is one of subordination to men
in all things.
In the
present moment in history there is a newfound freedom from the presuppositions
of the past. For the first time, scholars are able to look at the question of
the ministry of women in the New Testament without being bound by the
traditions of women’s inferiority and subordination. Because of this
freedom, scholars are beginning to discover information about the role and
ministry of women in the primitive Church that had never before been
noticed.
This
book will seek to reevaluate the question of the ministry of women in the New
Testament. In its interpretation of the biblical texts it will employ the
results of current biblical scholarship and attempt to remain free of the
culturally conditioned presuppositions of other eras.
The
journey will not be either short or simple. The ministry of women in the New
Testament is a broad and complex question. It cannot be comprehended adequately
without some knowledge of its context: the social and religious position of
women in the Mediterranean world in the first century A.D. Thus a preliminary
question must first be explored. What did it mean to be a woman in the time of
Jesus? What were the status and roles of women in Hellenistic Greek society, in
Roman society, and in intertestamental Judaism?
There
is a second and equally important preliminary subject to be discussed before
proceeding to the major question. What is the meaning of ministry? What is the
nature of Christian ministry according to the New Testament? What was its
background in the history of religious office in Old Testament Judaism? What
was the nature of Jesus’ own ministry? What did Jesus teach his followers
about the kind of ministry to which he was calling them? What were the earliest
forms of ministry in the primitive Church? What were their antecedent models?
Were these ministries authentically conformed to the nature of ministry lived
and called for by Jesus?
After
these two preliminary issues have been clarified, there remains the central
task of the book: to examine the New Testament evidence concerning the ministry
of women in the time of Jesus and in the first century Church. Did Jesus
himself call women to ministry? Were women included in or excluded from
apostolic ministry according to the New Testament? Were the ministries
exercised by women in the early Church official ministries of the Church? Is
there anything inherent in the character of Christian ministry as presented by
the New Testament which would give reason for the inclusion or exclusion of
women?
The
author would like to express her gratitude to those colleagues and friends who
helped make this a better book than it would have been without their
encouragement, insights and criticisms. First of all, I would like to thank
Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley for the
initial inspiration to begin reflecting on the subject of ministry, for the
invitation to contribute two chapters on the biblical foundations of ministry
to his own book on the theology of ministry, and for his helpful criticism of
the manuscript at each stage of its development. I would also like to thank
Kathleen M. Gaffney of Xavier University and Gerald M Fa-gin, SJ. and John R.
Stacer, S.J. of Loyola University in New Orleans for generously giving of their
time to read and criticize the manuscript in its entirety. Any errors or
omissions in this work must, of course, remain the sole responsibility of the
author. The greatest debt of gratitude is owed to my husband, Mulry, for giving
me the freedom of time and space necessary to research and write this book, and
for his generosity in taking time from his own busy schedule of teaching and
counseling to type the manuscript.
New
Orleans
Pentecost, 1979
NOTES
1.
Apostolicam Actuositatem, 9. Walter M. Abbott, (ed.), The Documents of Vatican
II (New York: America Press, 1966), p. 500.
2.
“Justice in the World” (Washington: United States Catholic
Conference, 1972), p. 44.
3.
Codex iuris canonici 968, 1.
4.
“Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial
Priesthood” (Rome, October 15, 1976), no. 5 (cf. no. 6). Text in Leonard
Swidler and Arlene Swidler (eds.), Women Priests. A Catholic Commentary on the
Vatican Declaration (New York: Paulist, 1977), p. 38.
5. Dei
Verbum, 11. Abbott, op. cit., pp. 118-119.
6. Cf.
Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu (1943); Dei Verbum 12, 23.
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