I teach Biblical ethics.
Each year I do so, I wonder whether I should put on the list of topics
to consider ‘women in ministry’. We
always discuss sexual ethics—particularly homosexuality, given challenges to
orthopraxy in the West in our day on this topic. But does a discussion of women in ministry
belong in a course on ethics in the same way that a topic like homosexuality
does? Is it not more a matter of 'polity'?
The answer is in part what we understand by ‘ethics’. Too often, we think of ethics as ‘quandary
ethics’—what should we do when faced with challenging circumstances? This approach to ethics is all about major
challenges and struggles: abortion when a mother’s life is in danger, going to
war when faced with a major, evil force like the Nazis or Isis, or
homosexuality—a challenge in a different way given that some clergy and
scholars are challenging the long-standing teaching of the Church in our
day.
Yet ethics is more than quandary
ethics. It is also, and much more, about how we should live,
day by day. It is about the character we
should work to develop, not just the responses we should give when faced with
crises and tragedy. And so, this raises
the question, ‘what is the role and status of men, women, children, pastors,
missionaries, etc. in the home and/or the church?’ That is a more day-to-day sort of question, a
‘How shall we live?’ question rather than a ‘How shall we respond?’ question.
Ethics, moreover, could be seen in terms of what we should
not do because we are God’s people. It
could be seen as ‘the sin list’ of things someone does not do if one is going to
enter the Kingdom of God. Scripture
clearly teaches that certain acts and behaviours will exclude someone from the
Kingdom of God—homosexuality being one of them.
But being an ordained woman for ministry (parish or bishop) or missions
is not something that will exclude someone from the Kingdom of God! The person doing the ordaining will not be
excluded, and the person being ordained and serving in such a ministry is not
excluded. Ethics understood in this way
would cover the issue of homosexuality, but it would not cover the issue of
women’s ordination.
It would, however, cover the issue of slavery. Paul extends the 8th Commandment, ‘You
shall not steal’, to cover the slave trade in 1 Timothy 1.10. Stealing people and enslaving them is an
ethical matter--one that, like homosexuality, will exclude one from the Kingdom of God. That is rather serious!--nothing like having a woman priest! Similarly, Revelation
18.13 speaks of the things to be destroyed in the wicked economy of the Roman
Empire, and the list concludes with ‘slaves, that is, human souls’. A simple word with profound
significance. Up to 1/3 of the Roman
Empire may have consisted of slaves—a system of ‘stealing’ people’s lives, a system that contributed largely to the engine of the Roman economy. (Mind you, this
was different from the economic model of the Old South in the USA during the
days of slavery as slavery in the Roman Empire was not largely an agrarian
workforce.)
Women’s ministry may, however, be a subject related to ethical issues if not an ethical
issue in itself. It may, for instance,
be a pragmatic issue with ethical implications.
Take away the car, the grocery store down the road, the 1.5 child
family planning, the equal education of females and males, and so forth of Western
society and get back into the warp and woof of ancient society, and you will
have to start thinking differently about roles and family. Paul’s warnings in the Pastoral Epistles
include concerns about women easily duped by false teaching: this was a day
when girls were not educated. His
suggestion that women (including young widows) marry rather than follow the false teachers’ teaching not
to marry was pragmatic: don’t set yourself up for sexual immorality by staying
unmarried if you do not have the gift of celibacy. His recommendation that women focus on childbearing
and rearing is a call to familial rather than ecclesial ministry (though
elderly widows may have an ecclesial ministry of care and prayer). Think about it: a family with five children
needs a mother, not an absent mother running around in ministry leaving the
children to a maid. Sure, this has
implications for absent fathers in ministry, too, but the point is that a push
for pastoral roles for women in the 1st century may have been
neither here nor there ethically in itself, but it could have ethical
implications, like the proper care of children in the family.
Finally, the role and status of women in ministry can raise
questions of role differentiation in ethics.
The egalitarian movement in the West since the sexual revolution in the
1960s in particular came, by the 1990s, to raise questions about role
differentiation more generally. Not just
equal work opportunities and pay, not just ordination, but now, perhaps especially, gender
fluidity itself. Surprise, surprise,
this is not a new issue. It was an issue
in the 1st century as well.
Just here, the issue of women’s dress and ordination becomes an issue of
ethics, not just style and ecclesiastical polity. 1 Corinthians 11.2-16 is not
some relic of antiquity about the dress of women in that era. It is a passage about an ethical concern over gender
confusion. Paul responds by insisting
that the two genders (there are only two, by the way) God created must not be confused. The same concern is present in 1 Timothy
2.9-15. Women are to dress like women—modest
women, at that. Men are to wear their
hair as men do, not as homosexuals with long hair (that is the issue about long hair—not simply a matter of hairstyles). The differentiation of roles must be maintained,
even if different societies and ethnic groups distinguish genders differently.
Thus—speaking strictly on the matter of gender
differentiation—it may be perfectly fine in Uganda, for example, for women to
be ordained to ministry. The culture
there is not experiencing the gender confusion of the West. Ordaining women in this context may not cause
people to think that women are acting like or being treated like men.
In our day in the West, men might have long hair and people will not
think that they are transgender or homosexual, but if your male priest showed up to
worship with high heels and a purse, you’d think otherwise. 'Nature itself teaches us' that this is wrong (1
Cor. 11.14; not the particular way a person is dressed but what it signifies
about gender differentiation in that culture).
Surprisingly, then, in the egalitarian West, women’s ordination may be
an ethical problem, but in Uganda it might not be. In the West, the issue of gender confusion
has created an ethical quandary: is women’s ordination not like affirming
homosexuality in that both are examples of gender confusion, a failure to
differentiate roles? If the matter is an
ethical issue in Uganda, it might be more an issue of family ethics: who is
properly raising the children?
Pentecostals, incidentally, may think of ordination as an empowering by
God for a call from God to a task only God can accomplish. Ordination is not an office or status but a
role that nobody in their own strength will be able to accomplish without the
power of God at work in and through the minister. On such an understanding, gender issues are
somewhat irrelevant: all ministers are unqualified to the task, and God’s use
of such persons only shows that, when we are weak, we are strong because of His
power at work in us.
So, yes, women’s ordination will be on the syllabus next time
around for the ethics course. But it won’t
be there because ordained women or those ordaining them are immoral. This is a very different issue from
homosexuality or the slave trade.
Learning to distinguish these issues is a good exercise for students on
the course—and for all of us, for that matter.
When, in the West, people think that the issues of slavery, women’s
status and ordination, and homosexuality are related in that social ethics are thought to be all about the increasing advance of freedom, they simply do not understand the
differences between the issues and the different approach to ethics in
Scripture. Instead, they are thinking like Westerners in the 21st century.
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