WILL THE REAL PAUL PLEASE STAND UP?
Christine Galea
Our life in community today carries many tensions between races, economic classes and the sexes, as we struggle to keep our balance between unity and diversity. In the Pauline world too there existed similar struggles, particularly sexist tension between male and female. This is clearly reflected through Paul’s Letters and although the reader will immediately notice that the apostle writes with personal eloquence and deep feelings, it emerges that he does not always provide neat solutions to these unavoidable, complex tensions.
In fact, the question that many Christians like to ask is whether Paul is a patriarchal misogynist on the one hand or a passionate missionary who had an inclusive vision of Christianity in which male and female were equal. Is he an authoritarian leader who directed women to be silent in the churches, or is he a minister who recognized and appreciated the leadership of women in the early Church?
There was probably no moment in early Christianity where women were totally included as equals with men, since Christianity was born and developed in the context of patriarchal social structures in both the Jewish and the Hellenistic worlds, however Paul counters this cultural attitude by reminding us that both came from the creating hand of God and hence they were equal and not subordinate:“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3,28). Hence, life in the Christian community was to mirror that divine order and celebrate the equality of men and women, without denying sexual differences. The baptismal formula assures that all social and hierarchical differences are dissolved in Christ: both men and women have access to salvation since both are baptized into the same Lord and drink of the same Spirit.
Some modern feminists have interpreted that the gender part of this formula was probably linked from its beginning with celibacy: women became equal with men by dissolving their traditional relations with men as wives. Thereby they were also free to teach and preach in local assemblies and as itinerant preachers. Paul accepted this activity of women, as is evident from his epistles to the women engaged in these new roles, yet he was troubled by what he saw as a radical interpretation that Christians should all adopt a celibate lifestyle.
Therefore, although he accepted the practice that women could speak in church worship assemblies, Paul demanded that they do so with veiled heads to indicate their continued secondary status in the order of creation (1 Cor 11, 5). He is also attributed to have said that women should not speak at all (1Cor 14, 33b-35), however it is today generally conceded by scholars that this was not part of the original text, since the words directly contradict Paul’s acceptance and commendation of women’s leadership. They also contradict an earlier passage in this same letter, where Paul assumes that women do both pray and prophesy in the Corinthian community (Cor 11:5). The silencing of women does not make sense coming from Paul. Women such as Prisca, Phoebe and Junia – upon whom Paul largely depended to help him in his ministry - could not have functioned as Church leaders and apostles if they were not allowed to speak in public.
Since Paul presumes the right of women to participate in his missionary work and in the activities of the communities he founded, it follows that he could not have possibly ever spoken negatively about the role of the female as a married woman. Although the authenticity of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is questioned, many interpret 5, 21-28 as being a Pauline attack upon the woman, often cited to prove Paul’s chauvinism. At first glance the wife is plainly told to be submissive to her husband, however, a closer reading between the lines will reveal that the strongest admonitions are made to the “higher” member of the relationship – the husband, who is called to leave all other ties and love his wife, not as an inferior or as a possession, but in the same way Christ loves his Church. Paul’s language must be taken seriously here: the husband is not to love his wife only in an erotic sense but to love her with agape, the self-emptying disposition that God himself revealed in Jesus.
I think we can clear Paul from any charges of misogyny if we pin his attitudes towards women on historical and cultural considerations: as an educated Jew and intellectual heir to the Hellenism that was prevalent at the time, Paul was, after all, as much a child of his age and upbringing as everyone else. Although some of Paul’s letters make today’s women grit their teeth,some of the comments he makes about them can probably be ascribed to his background. Still it is not so simple to ask the real Paul to stand up. Nowhere do we have an extended exposition on the subject of women from his own hand. All we have are brief references in his Letters, which were devoted to a variety of issues, and in none of them were women his primary concern.