Adventures of the Early Church . . .

WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE EARLY CHURCH

Since both women and children have been generally deprived of both rights and attention in the cultures of the world, there is reason to look at them together in our study of the early church. Since the beginning of human history it has not only been an adult’s world but a man’s world. More often than not in the story of nations the woman has been subservient to the man, and it has been common for her to be denied such rights as citizenship, suffrage, equality before the law, and a place in the business world. Even though our own nation was born of democratic freedom it was not until 1870 that women had the right to vote, and even now they seldom receive equal pay for equal work.

The attitude often shown toward children is reflected in the way Jesus’ own disciples treated the children that were brought to him. Supposing that Jesus was both too busy and too important to be bothered by children, the disciples rebuked those who brought children to be blessed by the Master’s touch. It was not atypical of adults who presume that children are not to be in on things. They are not important and do not really count. The disciples turned the little ones away but for one reason, they were children.

This episode provides us with a penetrating insight into Jesus’ sensitivity toward those who are ignored or brushed aside. Mark (10:14) tells us that Jesus was “greatly displeased” when the disciples treated the children as they did. And the occasion produced one of the most remarkable things Jesus ever said: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God.” It says much about the nature of the kingdom of God when it is likened to that part of humanity that is generally regarded as unimportant. Our Lord likened the kingdom to the very ones we are inclined to ignore. It is all the more remarkable that Jesus gives this place to children when he was in great distress and tension, for he was on his way to the Cross. He had time for children because he took the time. He saw in the little child the marks of God’s reign in the hearts of people: trust, humility, forgiveness, obedience. It is not amiss to conclude that the most important person we will meet today is a child. How often we pass them by without notice!

The child is also vulnerable in that it is unashamedly open to the hurts and slights of those who are stronger. The kingdom of heaven is like that in that it is made up of people who are free of suspicion, intrigue, and dissimulation. Like children, those in the kingdom take chances with life’s uncertainties. They even dare to love when love may not be returned.

With Jesus teaching what he did about the importance of the child, one would suppose that the New Testament would abound in references to children and their development. But this is not the case. It is an amazing fact that the New Testament says next to nothing about the training and teaching of children. Children are mentioned on Pentecost in that the promise of the Holy Spirit was for them as well as their parents (Acts 2:39), and Acts 21:5 reveals that children were present along with adults in bidding Paul farewell in Tyre. Both Eph. 6:1 and Col. 3:20 tell children to obey their parents in the Lord, and verses in both 1 Timothy and Titus require that an elder have faithful children.

There is not much more than that, though Eph. 6:4 does say that the father is to bring up his children “in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Col. 3:21 urges fathers not to provoke their children lest they become discouraged. But the New Testament provides no details on how children are to be brought up. Some attribute this neglect to the conviction of the early Christians that the Lord would soon return and they saw no need to concentrate on training their children since they would not grow up in this world.

That is all the New Testament says about children except for one unusual passage in 2 Cor. 12:14: “The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.” This is only Paul’s way of telling the Corinthians that he does not want any of their material substance. He is their father in the faith, so he will give to them and not the other way around. He is only recognizing what is generally the case, that parents take care of their children and not the children the parents. We have here no injunction against children providing for their parents, which is sometimes necessary and of course the right thing to do.

So we have no educational program set forth for children and there is nothing about schools. The implication seems to be that the only school that matters is the home and the teachers are to be the parents. Our non-class brethren have a point since there is no intimation of a Sunday School in the New Testament.

Once we go beyond the New Testament to the so-called Apostolic Fathers, which takes us well into the second century, the material about children is equally meagre. Ignatius greets the children along with their parents in his epistles, and Clement says what the New Testament had already said with such as “Let our children partake of the training that is in Christ,” and he urges children to be humble and of a pure mind. Polycarp does the same in urging his readers “to train up their children in the knowledge and fear of God. “

The angel in Hermas says a little more since he found parents indulgent with their wayward children, so he exhorts them: “Do not cease, then, correcting your children, for I know that if they repent with all their hearts, they will be inscribed in the book of life with the saints.” The angel further assures Hermas what many a modern parent supposes of himself or herself: “But you, Hermas, had great troubles of your own because of the transgressions of your family, because you did not pay attention to them; but you neglected them and became entangled in their evil deeds.”

It is evident from both the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers as well as the history of the times that the early church made no special provision for the education of its children, such as its own school system. Special instructions were laid out for new converts and for the church’s ministry but not for the children. One reason for this, as has been referred to, may have been the expectation of the imminent coming of Christ, which made the secular education of children irrelevant. They were also too poor to have built their own schools, and in times of persecution, which was frequent, it would have been impossible.

How then were their children educated in general studies? In the secular schools of the Greeks and Romans. While some of the church fathers, such as Tertullian, forbade Christians teaching in secular schools, where Homer and his gods were the curriculum, there were no measures against the children from studying in such schools, an interesting inconsistency to say the least.

By the fourth century the emperor Julian forbade Christians teaching in the schools of the empire, but still the Christian children could attend them. Julian’s persecution of the believers was curiously inconsistent, for while he turned from the harsher forms of persecution inflicted by his predecessors, he imposed such measures as not allowing them to be called Christians (They were to be known as despised Galileans!) and required that they offer a few pinches of incense to Caesar if they brought a case to court, which denied them justice before the law. But in the end the claims of Christ proved too much for the embittered emperor. On his death bed he filled his hand with his own blood and flung it into the air, crying out, “That hast conquered, O Galilean.”

We must conclude, therefore, that the early church provided for the secular education of its children in the same schools attended by pagan children. Their spiritual training was in the home (more than in the church as such) with the parents as teachers. The case of Timothy is to the point, for his curriculum of study was the sacred writings (the Old Testament) and his teachers were his mother and grandmother. Two passages in 2 Timothy imply this. 2 Tim. 3:15: “From childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” And 2 Tim. 1:5: “When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.”

The situation with women in the early church was not unlike that of children in that they too were deemed relatively unimportant. When Jesus fraternized with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well he not only broke down the barrier between Jews and Samaritans but also the barrier between male and female. John 4:27 says that his disciples marveled that he talked with a woman, which would suggest that even Jesus rarely had such an opportunity. Jesus’ forgiving attitude toward the woman taken in adultery also shows how his view of the equality of women stood in stark contrast to that of the religious leaders. While he named no woman an apostle, women were nonetheless among his companions, and it is not without significance that it was women who first proclaimed the good news of the resurrection.

Two statements from the apostle Paul strongly reveal how the early church sought to follow its Lord in the liberation of women. Gal. 3:28 declares that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In Christ man and woman are equal! It was a revolutionary concept in the ancient world where women were hardly more than chattel.

The other reference, 1 Cor. 7:4, is even more dramatic and surprising for its time: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” The first part of that statement would fly in the ancient world, but who would dare make the woman an equal to man in conjugal rights?

These judgments alone should spare the apostle from the charge of being either a misogynist or a male chauvinist. Moreover, like his Lord, he had no problem in working with women as well as men in the gospel, apparently making no distinction. ‘Of the 24 fellow workers he names in Romans 16, six of them are women. Especially noteworthy is Junius, who, along with Andronicus, is referred to as “having high mark among the apostles,” which might mean she was an “apostle” in that like Barnabas, who is called an apostle, she was sent forth on missions by the church. In the same chapter Phoebe is referred to as a deaconness (servant) of the Church of Christ in Cenchrea. We are left to wonder why it is today deemed a heresy for a church to have female as well as male deacons.

The apostle nonetheless in both 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2 restricts the woman’s ministry, and it will hardly do to pass this off as simply a matter of custom. His prohibition against a woman speaking to the assembled church is apparently based upon the inspiration of the Spirit rather than the demands of custom. Dr. McKnight is probably right in concluding that when Paul says in 1 Cor. 14:34, “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak,” he means that it is Christ that does not perinit them to speak in the assemblies.

The apostle also argues that. “the law” requires submission on the part of the woman, which forbids her taking a leading role, though we cannot be sure what law he refers to. He goes on to make a third argument against it, that “it is shameful for women to speak in church,” which is an appeal to the natural modesty that is to characterize a woman. A fourth argument (v. 36) is that when the gospel was originally proclaimed it was done by men, that Christ did not select any women to be apostles.

However much one may disagree with Paul’s restriction, he should not dispose of it with such a superficial bypass as “He was dealing with the custom of the times.” The apostle appeals to what had been revealed to him and to “the law” as well as the instinctive judgment that it is indecent for a woman to assume man’s role. That has no ring of local customs to it. Moreover, he concludes such instructions in verse 37 with “The things I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.”

The same is true in 1 Tim. 2:11-12 where Paul enjoins that the woman is to “learn in silence with all submission” and “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.” This time Paul argues from the primacy of Adam and the fall of Eve. Again one might not like his hermeneutics, but we can hardly claim that it was all just custom.

Nor does it follow that Paul contradicts himself since in 1 Cor. 11 he allows the woman to pray and prophesy with her head covered. Paul never allows a woman to speak in the assembly with head covered or uncovered. All we can conclude from what he says in 1 Cor. 11 is that if a woman does pray or prophesy she should at least have her head covered. Even here the apostle is not motivated by oriental custom but by the creation story, by what is instinctively shameful, and even “because of the angels,” whatever that may mean. No custom dictated that the man be uncovered when he speaks, but Paul nonetheless enjoined that too.

If I were a woman in the church today and respected apostolic or Biblical authority and were bent upon praying and prophesying in some public fashion, I would veil or cover my head. But I could not conclude that it would necessarily be with apostolic approval if I spoke in the assembly even with covered head. The injunctions in 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2 are too plain for that.

Do we really want to accept what the Scriptures teach on such matters in these days of “women’s liberation”? Is an apostle of Christ talking into his hat when he says, “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (l Cor. 11:3).

He who says “In Christ there is neither male nor female” says “The head of woman is the man.” These do not contradict. God has made man the leader (or head) among equals. Every institution must have order. The buck has to stop somewhere. In my home I have a responsibility that my wife does not fully share, for God has made me the head. But still my wife is my equal, just as God and Christ are equal when God is the head.

So it is in the church. We are equal, male and female, but functions can be different among equals. God has assigned the public ministry of the gospel to men, or so it was in the early church. Those who conclude that the intervening centuries make a difference, that it is now unrealistic not to give the modern woman her place in the pulpit, will find rationale for women preachers and evangelists. They might even call the apostle Paul names. Or they will quote the apostle when he gives women equality but ignore the restrictions he lays down.

I have a “modern woman” in a class I am teaching at the University of Dallas. A Roman Catholic, she is a student teacher with important professional ambitions. She could be described as a strong woman, mildly assertive. When the subject of women and the church came up in our class, she expressed gratitude that the Vatican had not “budged an inch” on the matter of ordaining women priests. She told the class, “Men have a priestly function in the church that women do not have. I accept that and have strong convictions about it.” I admired her position as not only Catholic (catholic?) but apostolic as well. She sees no contradiction in being a lecturer at a high school or a college or even a successful business woman and yet being “submissive” to an order that God has ordained when she assembles with the gathered church. She does not consider herself a second-class citizen in the kingdom of heaven.

But we do deny our sisters their equality in the church when we apply the restrictions of public ministry to the church’s larger life and work. And here you may call me a woman’s “libber,” for I believe our sisters have an equal vote in elections, they should serve on any and all committees and even chair them, their advice should be sought and even insisted upon, and they should serve as deacons and teachers in the church’s educational program. They should help plan the whole of the church’s life and ministry.

Indeed, the public ministry (public proclamation of the gospel) is but a part of the church’s total ministry. We have not even begun to be creative in what our sisters can do and should be doing. They certainly have a place on the professional staff with various and sundry ministries.

Now and again I am told that if Jesus came to this troubled world in this century rather than 2,000 years ago that he might well have chosen some women as apostles, as if modern women are more “with it” or freer than the likes of Mary Magdalene. Well, he might and he might not. What matters is what he did when he came, and Paul for one sees it as significant that he chose only men, basing his injunction for woman’s silence in the public assembly on that fact (and not on custom!), as per 1 Cor. 14:36.

In this 20th century are we to walk by sight or by faith? — the Editor