The following is a series that Thorsten Moritz has been writing
on his Facebook page about gender, ecclesiology and new
humanity in the Gospel of Mark. What follows are the eleven
installments thus far.
Menschen
By: Thorsten Moritz, PhD - Professor of New Testament and
Hermeneutics at Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, MN
#1
Having
recently sat through a discussion about gender relations
in which some
participants decided that the main order of the
day was to safeguard their
rights to be complementarians, I
decided that life was too short to wait for
them to eventually
turn their attention away from their ‘rights’ to the needs
of
those who have been deprived of theirs for centuries.
Many years ago I was admittedly a complementarian myself, essentially out of ignorance. And safe in the knowledge that – as a male – I had nothing to worry about. For the past 15 or so years I turned more and more to egalitarianism. I’m sure there are people who made the opposite journey, though for every person I know who did that (‘convert’ to complementarianism), ten others I know journeyed into egalitarianism. The actual numbers don’t matter a great deal here, but the fact that those who invest in becoming more holistic interpreters of the New Testament are consistently more likely to become egalitarians must account for something.
I have not been shy in urging complementarians to put their
hermeneutical cards on the table. But we can’t wait forever for
that to happen. Having said all that, it’s only fair that I should be
expected to put my cards on the table too. So, this is the preface
for my thoughts about why followers of Jesus should be
egalitarians – without ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Every couple of days or so I
will add another thought or two. These thoughts will always be
theological – and always hermeneutical! They will range from
the refined to the provocative. Their implied author will
occasionally be a lover of questions – but other times a purveyor
of unadulterated truth claims. They will all be short. Shorter than
this preface. I will make mistakes. But not too many. I hope!
So I'm not a
fan of institutions, especially Christian ones. But
bear with me. Please!
Especially if you disagree!
By the end of the first century Christianity regressed into 'managed humanity' mode - and the hard won relationality of Ephesians 2:11ff suffocated (www.thorstenmoritz.com - click on SimplyChurch). My point is: Without the ability to leverage that institutionality, Christian gender exclusivity would be on life support. A little analogy: In Romans 7:7ff Paul argues that sin leveraged the Law with brutal consequences for Israel. I say: Ditto for complementarianism and the church, except that the role of the Law is played by our institutions! [Remember: I'm not interpreting Romans 7 here - I'm analogizing!]
Of course,
emphasizing the institutional piece could amount to
minimization. So, to be
clear: I'm not saying "Leave the
institutional church and all will be
well." Or "Women have a
simple choice". But seriously, how in
the world(!) are we
supposed to overcome exclusivity while implicitly
maintaining
that the humanity Jesus died to create was just as 'managed' as
the
one it supposedly transcended? If that were the case, his
death was too costly
by far! He died to serve others. To invite us
to do the same. And so to
re-create humanity. Sitting 'under a
man' is not part of that deal. Neither is
'sitting under a woman'.
Ask me to serve you any day! But don't ask me to sit
under you! I
won't ask you either!
Tomorrow I'll think out loud about why this matters. And about the mother of all double standards. Before I forget: Check out Eph 2:14-16. NB: The 'man' in v15 isn't a man at all. It's humanity Paul is talking about. If your translation has 'man', replace it. Get the New Living Translation! Use white-out. But do something!
Years ago I
thought the institutional church was the given, and
decisions about the role of
women came down to preference.
Today this seems strangely upside down to me:
It’s gender
equality that is the [NT’s] given. In the NT the institution is (at
best!) optional. In OT times this was different, of course – and
for good
reasons. But we don’t live in OT times. Or do we?!?
Imagine first century Jews brought by time travel into a 21st century church service. We ask them what they see. Does it look early Christian or synagogual to them? Without a shadow of doubt the answer would be ‘synagogual’. The lack of women in leadership positions would only reinforce that impression!
Yes, there are texts in the NT that seem to challenge the equality
claim made above. We’ll get to those soon enough. But I refuse
to join the ‘card playing’ approach to interpretation. Player A
throws Gal 3:28 on the table. B counters with 1 Cor 14:34. Then
comes 1 Tim 2:12. Eph 5:21 is next. The counter is Eph 5:22. And
so the show (and it is a show!) goes on. Like I said, we’ll get to
those and more. [And no offense: Card playing is cool. But it’s
not interpretation.]
Here’s what I’m wondering about: How is it
that
complementarians see no need for a scriptural warrant for the
institutional church (and for leveraging it theologically!!), but
when it comes
to leadership in that very institution, 1 Cor. 14
and 1 Tim 2 are suddenly
pulled out of the bag to discriminate
against women? Why the double standard?
What’s up with that?
Complementarian senior pastors, please tell me: What’s
your
scriptural warrant for your office? So far I only know what
warrant is
used for excluding women from that office.
Yes, I
really think there is a place for institutions, especially good
ones. I'm just
not convinced that the church is wise to put its
eggs in that particular
basket. Apart from the complete lack of
christological backing for the
institutionalization of church, does
the world really so need Christianized
versions of what it already
has that we are prepared to turn a perfectly good
Jesus
movement into a collection of corporate entities?
Here is an intriguing piece: I know followers of Jesus who, ironically, are suspicious of governmental institutions, while embracing the institutionalization of the church as the way forward – no questions asked. True, I have used the phrase upside-down in ‘Menschen’ a few times already. But seriously, from a Jesus/NT perspective, does this not look to you like a complete inversion of what Jesus and the NT are in fact doing? Jesus, Paul and others encouraged Christians to respect and make the most of the institutions of the world. Even Jeremiah urged Israel to “seek the welfare of the city” (29:7). And that city sure wasn’t Jerusalem. It actually was..... in Babylon! Is it just possible that we have a real penchant for turning Jesus’ own priorities upside-down? Why not reconnect with our primal Christian instincts to be what we were supposed to be? A taste of a humanity worth having! Leveraging institutionality would seem a weird way of going about that.
The other thing that came up following
Menschen #3 was the
question of offices in the Pastorals (1. and 2. Timothy and
Titus).
But my self-imposed word limit is fast approaching. So I’ll come
back
to that one. When I do, I will express disappointment about
some of our Bible
translators’ choices. But on the whole they
really do a stellar job! Thanks for
that! Seriously
For
centuries the gender equality question could not be raised
effectively because
theological thinking was mediated by the i
nstitution. Today theology can be
done irrespective of the
institution. This is both good news and bad. Good,
because
institutionalized inequality can be challenged openly. Not good
when it
makes us confident that progress on gender equality is
assured simply by tweaking
or recovering the NT’s theology of
gender on which the church ostensibly feeds.
The reality may be
more complex. I want to illustrate this with a quick look at
how
major Bible translations can overstep their boundaries in a quest
to feed
us their institutionalizing preferences. [Let’s remember
that translation
committees are typically appointed by
publishers who have their own
denominational commitments.]
The low lying fruit here would be how various well-known translations turn Junia (a female recognized as an apostle in Rom 16:7) into Junias (=male). But let’s look instead at a few other examples of institutionalizing translations. I’ll stick to a single translation (New Revised Standard Version) and just one short NT letter (1. Timothy):
Ch. 3:1 talks about being an ‘elder’ (same
word as in Acts 20:28
and Philippians 1:1). Yet, the NRSV translates “office of
bishop”.
[There is neither an ‘office’ nor what we would today call a ‘
bishop’
in the Greek text.] When ch. 5:17 talks about those
elders ‘leading’, the NRSV
escalates the verb to ‘ruling’. In the
same verse, when some of those elders
are busy studying ‘the
word’, they are portrayed as preachers. And in 5:22
‘laying on of
hands’ suddenly becomes ‘ordination’. Ditto elsewhere. I’m no
conspiracy theorist. But this is just too blatant! If translators can
read
their church preferences into the text like that, we have an
issue. And that
issue is deeply hermeneutical. Among other
things!
At the end
of ‘Menschen #3’ I posted a challenge to
complementarian senior pastors. Still
waiting. Meanwhile, I used
Ephesians 2 in post #2 to argue that Jesus died to
re-create
humanity, not to re-create a new man. Some asked me how this
tied in
with the gender debate. Here goes (part 1).
For a letter, Ephesians has a wonderfully narrative vibe to it. I don’t mean ‘narrative’ in the sense of genre here, more in the sense of worldviewish lenses through which we perceive life: Ephesians expresses, assumes, subverts, reinforces and exposes an amazing array of (faith) assumptions about life, especially in ch. 1. Here’s one such claim (vv4-5): God ‘predestined’ that Christ would be the world’s solution and that those ‘in him’ would be transformed in love. Ch. 2 asks what this means for humanity. It’s here that the powerful link is made from the cross to the re-creation of humanity (v15). Jesus died to re-create humanity! Incredibly, many translations lose that. Unable to look past their own individualism!
Ephesians 3 zooms in some more and wonders about the role of
churches in this world. Verse 10 spills the beans: It is to be a
direct wisdom challenge to the powers that shape this world.
That’s just about the most powerful rationale for churches in the
NT! Ch. 4 explores that challenge. In Israel the assumption was
that the Law of Moses represented God’s wisdom for the world.
But in Ephesians it’s the risen Jesus who lives through his
followers and who embodies that wisdom challenge. Through his
communities. They are supposed to bring real alternatives, real
humanity - over against the convenient pragmatisms of this
world. For Jesus that meant sacrificial relationality. Same in
Ephesians. Enter ch. 5. The connection to gender? I’ll talk about
that in post #7.
The second
half of Ephesians is intensely real. From not stealing
to avoiding idolatry it
covers the works. If chapters 1-3 claim
meta stories for this world, chapters
4-6 are about real life
intersections with those stories. And every piece of
that is about
relationships. We often miss it, but in Ephesians this is what we
live for: each other. Even the advice about not stealing anymore
is not about
self-improvement – it’s about building up the
community. No more stealing isn’t
good enough. Those
[formerly] stealing hands no longer serve self – they now
serve
the other (Eph 4:28)!
Restored community is everything in Ephesians. And by that lived humanity the Jesus crowd is supposed to challenge the world’s idolatrous powers (3:10). Just to be clear, those powers are not Perretti’s demons, the kind that lurk in some tree over there (and help sell cheap paperbacks). These demons are serious. Close. Systemic. Parasitic. They feed on our willingness to dominate the other - or to be dominated! Their M/O is to envenomate our core reason for being – sacrificial relationality.
Ephesians 5-6 challenges those relational demons. The culturally
shocking center piece of that challenge was chapter 5:21: A
willingness to actually submit to each(!) other – both ways! That
verse is not afterthought – it’s preview. The headline for what
follows. Exhibit A is marriage (5:22-33). The first century Roman
machismo husband isn’t excused from this. Neither are their 21st
century counterparts. But here is the kicker: Submission in
Ephesians is not about asymmetrical control or power or
hierarchy. It’s about esteeming the other in the highest possible
manner. About disposition, not management. Sacrifice, not
subservience. Empowering, not enthroning. Dominating the
other or being willing to be dominated would be a cake walk by
comparison. And a waste of a perfectly good life.
There are
dozens of ways of looking at gender in the New
Testament. Cultural.
Intertextual. Anthropological. Theological.
Experiential. But there is one that
hits the reader before any
others: It’s how the genders actually do (as in
‘perform’) in the
Jesus story. And what kind of a difference they make. In
Luke’s
Gospel the women are crucial to the Jesus vision. But some see
Luke as
the big exception. To find out, let’s check out Mark, the
briefest Gospel.
Here is a little prep: Read Mark’s Gospel and look out for the twelve male disciples/apostles. Having decided to follow Jesus, they start for real in ch. 3. Over the next 13 chapters they appear dozens of times. I’ll have you over for a beer if you find more than three occasions in Mark - after their appointment - where they get anything right at all. Anything! The three are: They proclaimed the kingdom and healed people (ch. 6), they picked up a young horse (ch. 11), and they prepared a meal (ch. 14). In other words, they average about one success a year! And if we define success as making a difference in people’s lives – actually being good news – their grand total in Mark is ONE! That’s in three years! They are basically a disaster.
I can hear the objections. “They achieved a lot that’s not
recorded in the NT.” “Didn’t they write some of the NT?”
“Wasn’t Peter crucified upside down for Jesus?” “Thomas took
the gospel all the way to India.” OK, that last one has April fool’s
written all over it. The others are credible. But if the NT is
foundational for Christians, none of these objections matter.
Maybe the apostles were amazing and Mark just doesn’t tell us.
If so, his silence becomes even more powerful. It's 'pick your
poison' time!
A stroll
around Mark’s Gospel to see what Jesus thinks about
gender: To be clear, Mark
is not primarily about gender. But
there is a relentless subcurrent about how
the most ‘unlikely
people’ – that is, ‘unlikely’ by the standards of that
Jewish
society – consistently ‘outperform’ the main protagonists, which
of
course are the male disciples. Two kinds of ‘unlikely people’
are particularly
impressive in this Gospel: Gentiles and women.
True, the male disciples’ record is so dismal that it may not seem hard to outperform them. But actually, they are not the only ones being seriously outclassed. Synagogue after synagogue proves to be a let-down in this narrative, with their refusal to show compassion and to think of holiness as reflecting God’s grace on others - instead of pedantically enforcing (what they thought was) ritual purity. They radiate about as much hope as nails in a coffin. Only one institution does worse in Mark – the temple. And that includes its male religious leadership, the priests!
Back to the women. ‘Exhibit A’ is 3:31-35. Jesus’ mother and (half
-)brothers are too embarrassed about Jesus to associate with
him directly, to be ‘around him’. So they send someone to get his
attention. They don’t want to be seen with Jesus. But with
sublime irony Mark blows their cover no less than four times in
four verses. So much for going icognito! And then the climax:
Jesus mentions the mother and brothers a fifth time. But this
time, as he defines family in terms of true discipleship, he
powerfully adds the ‘sisters’. Technically he uses the singular.
But it’s generic. It refers to all ‘sisters’.
Footnote: Some translations have the sisters
included as early as
v32. But our best manuscripts don’t. The sisters are added
by
Jesus in v35. At the end. Climactically! Provocatively! Inclusively!
Gender in Mark: Exhibit B comes from ch. 5:21-43. This is one of
Mark's 'sandwiches'. Meaning, Mark often tells one story inside
another. Each time, the two stories are meant to interpret each
other. It starts with a male synagogue leader who wants to see
his daughter healed. Before that happens, a new episode begins.
A woman who had been sick for 12 years touches Jesus' clothes
and is healed. After that, Jesus finally attends to the synagogue
leader's daughter and heals her also.
Here is what's amazing: (1) The male synagogue
leader trumped
the sick woman socially ('purity'), institutionally and in
gender.
But shockingly, the woman is healed first. (2) Both females are
associated with the number 12. The daughter was 12 years old,
the woman had
been sick for 12 years. Importantly, in Mark's
Gospel the number 12
consistently symbolizes the renewal of
God's people. People thought that the
synagogue and the
Temple embodied the future of God's people, but in Mark it is
the unlikely people - especially the women! They actually
symbolize human
restoration. Most men in Mark's Gospel,
including the disciples(!), seem
incapable of doing so.
Another thing. Mark writes about Jesus as
being the son of God.
That's his headline (1:1). In Judaism “son(s) of God”
refers to
God's people – example Hosea 1:10. Jesus, in other words,
represents
in Mark the future of God's people. That's why he
chose 12(!) disciples to help
him do so. They were all male - and
they failed so consistently that this story
of restoration would be
utterly depressing, were it not for the women. Israel's
male
'sons' were a disaster. Thankfully Israel also had daughters. We
just met
two of them. One a physical daughter, the other a
highly symbolic one:
“Daughter(!), your faith has restored you!”
Meet two fascinating
women in Mark 6. Herod’s wife Herodias
and Herodias’ daughter.... Herodias.
Hmm. Herodias and
Herodias are a little different - in a pathological sort of
way.
Basically they’re psychopaths. Think about it: They could have
had up to
half of Herod’s kingsom. Instead they asked for an old
man’s head on a platter.
Something’s out of sync here! I’m just
glad these particular woman were so...
‘establishment’. Imagine
them as followers of Jesus. That would just be too
embarrassing.
(And it would mess up my gender argument big time. --- Exhale!)
Fastforward to Mark 7:24ff: Meet the Syrophoenician woman with a demon possessed daughter. That’s three strikes right there! But in a few shrewd moves she transcends all that. She acknowledges Jesus for who he is; she trusts his restorative intentions for humanity; and she shows amazing theological intuition. She basically embodies God’s ‘project humanity’ (my speak for ‘Abrahamic covenant’). And she does it in a way that makes the male disciples look amateurish by comparison. She gets it: God’s project Israel was only ever supposed to benefit the world! That was its whole point. In this narrative, she’s actually way ahead of the game. Mark’s readers won’t figure this out until 11:17 and 13:27. Had the male disciples had half of her wisdom, they might have stuck around for the crucifixion and the resurrection – like the women did! Instead of bolting and defaulting to a passer-by, they could have carried Jesus’ cross for him, out of the city to ‘Skull Hill’ – the first leg of Jesus’ liberating journey into the world!
Syro-woman
is amazing, a ray of hope. And guess what: Yet
again, the ‘kingship stuff’ in
Mark happens precisely not in the
synagogue, but... in a house! Where real
people actually live!
(Gotta love Mark’s Gospel!)
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