The Role of Women in the Church

Charles C. Ryrie

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781433675416
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Out of print in recent years, this newly revised edition of Charles Ryrie's The Role of Women in the Church, featuring a new foreword by Dorothy Kelley Patterson, proves its ongoing relevance in addressing what is still a divisive issue at the forefront of Christendom: What can a woman do in the church of God?With clarity and depth, Ryrie recounts the status of women in ancient Greece and Rome. He looks at the significance of Mary as Christ's mother, the attitude of Jesus toward women, and at women as ministers to Jesus. There are Scripture based chapters on marriage, celibacy, and divorce as well as a woman's place in church life. The book's final section examines the status of women in the church during the second and third centuries.In sum, Patterson views Ryrie's work as "a masterpiece of blending both historical records with biblical exegesis to present a well-reasoned biblical answer to the burning question from this generation and those to come."

CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUNDS

Numerous difficulties beset the treatment of a subject such as the one discussed in this book. Feminists and their efforts at revisionism and faddists, who are intent on culture-driven interpretation as superior, are but two of them. Author and reader alike must be constantly on guard against trying to prove a particular pet point merely from the historical facts. And yet, few subjects are as important in church governance and work. Ecclesiastical bodies throughout the world are discussing the role of women in the church. Those who have not discussed the matter officially are facing the problem unofficially and on the local level.

What did the introduction of Christianity do for the status of women? What does the New Testament say concerning their place in the home and church? How did those who lived in the days following the writing of the New Testament interpret its doctrines about women? These are but a few of the questions this book attempts to answers. The Word of God is accepted as inspired and authoritative, yet the approach is historical. This study concerning biblical principles for application today seeks fact, not fancy; truth, not theory; instruction, not imagination.

Although the subject of this book will not permit a full and complete discussion of the status of women outside the Christian church or through the breadth of history, to begin with a survey of the position of women in ancient Greece, Rome, and Judaism is obviously imperative and will provide the necessary background for the ensuing discussion. This background study will help to show at the very outset what effect, if any, the environment in which Christianity developed had on its message and practice; that is to say, to what extent the status of women in Christianity was dependent upon or to what extent it differed from the status of women in Greek, Roman, and Jewish life.

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT GREECE

By comparison, Greek women were accorded somewhat higher respect than women of other ancient pagan societies. Nevertheless, women were under the authority and control of their husbands both by custom and by law and found themselves almost on the same level with the slave. Plato, of course, vigorously affirmed the equality of the sexes and the community of wives.¹ He speaks of “the natural partnership of the sexes,”² and as a result of that belief holds that “women naturally share in all pursuits.”³ However, Plato’s views were exceptional. Actually, the truer representative of Greek thought was Aristotle, who regarded the inferiority of women as inherent in the sex.⁴ The love of The Symposium is homosexual love, and “it is assumed without argument that this alone is capable of satisfying a man’s highest and noblest aspirations, and the love of man and woman, when it is mentioned at all, is spoken of as altogether inferior, a purely physical impulse whose sole object is the procreation of children.”⁵

The rise of the City-State was an important influence on the status of women in Greece. Since the City-State was supreme, all individual wishes were subordinated to it. In Sparta, for instance, women were cultivated physically in order that they might be good mothers and produce sons who would be superior warriors. However, no thought was taken for women after their days of childbearing were over, with the result that standards became very lax. The marriage tie could be dissolved by the husband without any scruple, reason, form, or legal process. This importance of breeding warriors for the State gave the women of Sparta full liberty to show themselves in public in the performance of bodily exercises. However, one must note again that this liberty “was not the result of a philosophic idea of the equality of the two sexes, but was founded on the desire of producing strong children by means of strengthening the body of the female.”⁶

In Athens, likewise, the State was all important. All the citizens of Athens were connected by blood ties of some sort, and they took great pains to maintain this common bond. Consequently, careful distinction was made between citizens and strangers and among the offspring of each group. Citizen women, therefore, were forced to lead very secluded lives. Their existence is well described thus:

The life of married women, maidens, children while in the care of women, and of female slaves, passed in the gynaikonitis [the part of the house reserved for domestic purposes], from which they issued only on rare occasions. The family life of Greek women widely differed from our Christian idea; neither did it resemble the life in an Oriental harem, to which it was far superior. The idea of the family was held up by both law and custom, and although concubinage and the intercourse with hetairai was suffered, nay favored, by the State, still such impure elements never intruded on domestic relations. Our following remarks refer, of course, only to the better classes, the struggle for existence by the poor being the same in all ages. In the seclusion of the gynaikonitis the maiden grew up in comparative ignorance. The care bestowed on domestic duties and on her dress was the only interest of her monotonous existence. Intellectual intercourse with the other sex was wanting entirely. Even where maidens appeared in public at religious ceremonies, they acted separately from the youths . . . . Even marriage did not change this state of things. The maiden only passed from the gynaikonitis of her father into that of her husband. In the latter, however, she was the absolute ruler, the oikodespoina of her limited sphere. She did not share the intellectual life of her husband. . . . It is true that the husband watched over her honor with jealousy, assisted by gynaikonomoi, sometimes even by means of lock and key. . . . [H]er position was only that of the mother of the family. Indeed, her duties and achievements were hardly considered, by the husband, in a much higher light than those of a faithful domestic slave.⁷

Such seclusion, however, did not mean that these wives were ignorant women, for many were self-trained. Nonetheless, although the Greeks were a race of great thinkers, poets, sculptors, painters, and architects, “not one Athenian woman ever attained to the slightest distinction in any one department of literature, art, or science.”⁸ However, this seclusion did not mean inactivity, for the wife was in full charge of all domestic affairs of her household. She was absolute ruler in this realm, and in her own way she did have a place of honor. But Pericles expresses the prevailing view concerning women in the funeral oration that Thucydides puts into his mouth:

If I am to speak also of womanly virtues . . . I will sum up all in a brief admonition: Great is your glory if you fall not below the standard which nature has set for your sex, and great also is hers of whom there is least talk among men whether in praise or in blame.⁹

Some women, called hetairai (Gk., feminine plural of “companion”), were forbidden to marry citizens. They did not, you may be sure, lead a monastic existence but enjoyed much greater freedom than the wives of citizens. They became the companions, both intellectual and physical, of Athenian men. Demosthenes’ summary of the status of these various groups of women is brutally frank: “Hetairai we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the ordinary requirements of the body, wives to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households.”¹⁰

After the time of Alexander the Great, women began to have a relatively greater measure of freedom, especially in Macedonia, due largely to the fact that Macedonian dynasties produced an extraordinary succession of able and masterful women such as Arsinoe, Berenice, and Cleopatra. These women played a large part in civic affairs, for they “received envoys . . . built temples, founded cities, engaged mercenaries, commanded armies, held fortresses, and acted on occasion as regents or co-rulers.”¹¹ Even more important is that from the courts of Macedonia relative freedom came to those women who desired emancipation. They could be educated, take part in club life, appear at the games, and in general enjoy freer relations with men. Nevertheless,

most of these things clearly relate only to a minority. Freedom was not automatic, but had to be grasped; education for the mass was rudimentary, and even in the first century there were women, rich enough to own slaves, who could neither read nor write. Greece suffered from the sexes being on different levels of culture.¹²

Thus one may conclude that in the Greek world the status of women was decidedly inferior to that of men; wives led lives of seclusion and practical slavery; the hetairai, though, at least enjoying more freedom of movement, did not share the rights or status that belonged to men; and the relative freedom that did come to women in places like Macedonia was enjoyed only by a minority.

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT ROME

Under the Roman Empire women enjoyed a somewhat better standing than in Greece. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1
• Part 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Part 2
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Part 3
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13