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by Thomas L. Thompson
from Women Priests, Arlene Swidler & Leonard
Swidler (eds.), Paulist Press 1977, pp 209-211.
Republished on our website
with the necessary permissions
(Thomas L. Thompson did graduate study in theology, Bible and
religion at Oxford and Tuebingen Universities and received his Ph. D. from
Temple University. The author of several books and articles on the Old
Testament and related topics, including The Historicity of the Patriarchal
Narratives, he was at the time writing a book on the literary structures of
Genesis.)
Thc
Declaration’s attempt to defend Paul’s prohibition of women teaching
in church (I Cor 14:34-35) by stressing Paul’s argument that such
prohibition was derived from “the divine plan of creation” is a quite
peculiar case of special pleading: it attempts to propose a distinction in
Paul’s disciplinary exhortations between commands which are “probably
inspired by the customs of the period,” and, as such, reversible (such as
the obligation to wear veils), and other regulations which might be somehow
understood as culturally transcendent, as part of a “divine plan,”
and consequently beyond the disciplinary power of the church to change.
This
argument is peculiar in that the “divine plan” theory of Paul, which
the Declaration has chosen to cite (I Cor 11:7), is not directly related to
Paul’s prohibition of women speaking in the assemblies (I Cor 14:34-35),
which is based more simply on obedience, the law (v. 34), and by what Paul
perceives as the shamefulness of it (v. 35). That is, Paul forbids women to
teach for reasons which are most readily understood as culturally and
historically susceptible. I Cor 11:7—the proof text cited by the
Declaration—is directly related, however, to Paul’s insistence that
women be veiled (I Cor 11:215)! The very prohibition which the Declaration
considers to have been culturally determined, and therefore in theory
reversible, is a prohibition which Paul understood as related to
ecclesiological typology (I Cor 11:3) and as based on what he understood as
woman’s subordinate place in creation.
Limited even to the categories of argument offered by the Declaration, one must
conclude that the prohibition of teaching is both contingent and theoretically
reversible, and that the requirement of veils has a somewhat more lasting
character. However, the presuppositions from which the arguments of the
Declaration proceed are hardly more sound than the arguments. If one accepts
that Paul’s discipline is in any way culturally and historically
contingent, as the Declaration does—and one must—is it theologically
legitimate to claim that the criteria for discerning the degree and
actuality of contingency lie in what Paul’s historically inf7uenced
understanding and theology propose as based in law, mores, or Scripture?
Are not just such criteria profoundly determined by both Paul’s individual
personality and inclination, and, more globally, the thought world of the first
century?
The
historical limitations of this aspect of Paul’s theology, and of
the Declaration’s dependence on it, are very apparent in a
comparison of I Cor 7 with what the Declaration proposes as a text relating to
a “divine plan of creation” in Gen 2:18-24. The proposal of this text
as somehow supporting in an ontological or theological way some essential
subordination of the female to the male is ironic, since the basic literal
meaning of the text centers itself around a narrative episode which stresses
the complete likeness and equality of men and women. That Paul
understood Genesis’ priority as superiority, and that the priests of
the Sacred Congregation understand Paul’s superiority as irreversible
hegemony, are merely a most obvious example of historically contingent changes
in theology, caused by culturally inherent biases against women.
It
ought not be assumed that the cultural milieu of the author of Gen 2-3 was
unbiased against women, though it is possible to argue that the author, whether
a man or a woman, was sensitive to this kind of question. It is obvious that
the narrator of the garden story saw more clearly than either Paul or the
authors of the present Declaration, that the subordinate position of women in
society was a fact illustrative of human alienation and hardly good or
desirable. In terms of creation, however, both the biblical creation narrative
(Gen 1) and the Garden Story (Gen 2-3) stress the unity of the sexes.
The
author of Gen I has God cause the waters and the earth to develop vegetation,
fish, fowl, and animals in their various forms and species (Gen 1:11,20,24),
but humanity is created more directly, and not according to species or kinds,
but in the form (or image) of God (Gen 1:26). It is not found in Genesis, as in
Paul, that the male alone was made in the image of God, but it was humanity,
male and female (Gen 1:27).
The
Garden Story of Gen 2-3 allows a different manner of presenting this same
understanding of the essential equality of men and women. That the author is
fully aware of the male-centeredness of his or her contemporary society is
clear from the aetiology of Gen 3:16 with its ironic perception of human
alienation. Yet, the alienation and subordination of women is seen here
precisely as a given which defines the evil of society and humanization. Not
only is the creation of man and woman out of the original human in the Garden
Story not understood as the cause of such subordination and alienation, but all
of the elements which are used in this episode are arranged with the very
opposite intention. The essential issue of the episode in Gen 2:18-24 (1) is
that the human (ha-’adam), which has been placed in the garden, is
lonely. God decides to overcome this lack by making another creature to help
the human, a creature just like the human. In the vivid mode of the narrative,
God then sets about forming other creatures in the same way that he had formed
the human. Each of these creatures in turn God brings to the human, but with
only incomplete success. The human names all of the animals and birds, but none
of them were really like the human, nor fit to help it. Undaunted by this
failure, God then tries a different way. If what is wanted is a creature like
or equal to the human, then creation must proceed by separation, following the
principle of like from like. God takes a bone from the human and out of that
makes woman. When he takes the woman to the human to be identifed, the
human approves with a series of sayings which affirm the likeness and identity
of men and women: like comes from like: bone from bone, flesh from flesh, woman
(‘issah) from man (‘is-). This identity is exemplified in
marriage (here not understood as hierarchical as in Paul) where the two become
one. The ultimate expression of equality is unity reestablished.
It is
important to keep in mind, when comparing the narratives in Gen I and Gen 2-3,
Paul’s prohibitions, and the present Declaration, that all four are
profoundly influenced by their historical and cultural contexts. All are
written from a point of departure in male-centered societies. The culture of
the authors of Genesis and of Paul might even be described as patriarchal
though misogyny is not as pervasive in early Israelite society as it is in
Paul’s or that of the authors of the present Declaration. In fact, it is
this lack of misogyny in Gen I and Gen 2-3 which gives these narratives a
sensitivity which is lacking in the others and ought to be instructive to the
Church, if it is to reexamine its practice in a society and culture no longer
patriarchal in order to rid itself of its inherited cultural burden of misogyny
and prejudice This burden, vast and still pervasive, had already been perceived
as evil by our own tradition more than 2500 years ago.
Notes
1.
For much of the following interpretation, I am indebted to Dr. Dorothy Irvin.
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