I talk a lot (relatively speaking) about patriarchy and complementarianism and the positive instructions Scripture gives for family structure, etc.  I don’t address a lot of objections because that’s not my primary purpose and the “negatives” get plenty of “airtime” from the feminist/egalitarian crowd.

But I’ve expressed disappointment in several of the books I’ve read recently because they raise legitimate objections that — in my estimation — get lost in the “patriarchy is evil” rhetoric, so I think it’s only fair that I take some time to address what I see as legitimate problems, from within my framework that truly biblical patriarchy is good (and not harsh).

I want to do this in three ways (which may span more than three posts).

1. I want to address misogyny & tradition.  (This post.)
2. I want to talk about why certain famous “woman passages” may truly not have the rigid interpretation traditionally assigned to them.
3. I want to honestly go through what I thought about Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, particularly where I disagreed with it or had concerns.

That’s obviously a bit much for a single post, so for now let’s just start with misogyny and tradition.

The Witness of the Church

Particularly in certain circles, appeals to the witness of the church — universal and historic — are frequent.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  As Aimee Byrd pointed out, “even in our private devotions, we don’t read God’s Word alone.” (Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, p. 164)  Our interpretation is shaped by our culture, by our church culture, and by the tradition handed down from the historic church.

And this context provided by the church — both modern and historic — in theory should help guard us against wacky theology.  We know we’re not going too far off the rails, for instance, when our theology is in accord with the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.  But as we often joke in our house, we don’t live in Theory.

The reality is that, although we ought not disregard the consensus and testimony of the historic church lightly; we also ought not weigh it so heavily that we forget that it, too, was comprised of fallible humanity.  We had a Reformation on purpose — because the church universal had fallen into error that needed to be corrected.  Is it so farfetched to think that it could also have errors in other areas that we would be foolish to perpetuate?

There needs to be a tension between honoring these Church Fathers and not rushing to abandon what they carefully preserved for us, and weighing their words against Scripture itself and humbly and prayerfully setting it aside where they were mistaken.

What About Women?

One area where I believe there’s cause for concern is the teaching about women.  I’ve heard some people suggest that it’s rebellious to disagree with certain traditional interpretations or practices, because the “universal testimony of the church” in history should make it obvious that those views are correct.  But what if they’re not?  What if those interpretations are handed down, not because the church carefully exegeted those passages and repeatedly confirmed them for themselves, but because a certain tradition surrounding women from their own cultural influence shaped their approach to Scripture and we’ve simply passed that error down?

Let’s look at some examples of statements some of the Church Fathers made about women that clearly display a certain bias — which, I might add, is not biblical — that might have colored their view as they approached the Word.

Subtle-ish Statements

Some of these statements are more on the subtle side — sort of.  They’re not exactly subtle in their misogyny, but they aren’t as blatant in their flouting of Scripture, so it’s harder to make a clear case for how they’re wrong.  It’s more about having a sense of the general voice of Scripture than a specific chapter and verse that “disprove” what they’re saying.

“God maintained the order of each sex by dividing the business of life into two parts, and assigned the more necessary and beneficial aspects to the man and the less important, inferior matter to the woman.” -Chrysostom

This just simply isn’t in Scripture.  The “business of life” was not divided between them.  At Creation, God blessed them and said to them, “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)  And if God didn’t divvy this up at all, how could He have assigned the “inferior” matter (whatever that would be) to the woman?  This is misogynistic, culturally-driven nonsense, not biblical teaching.

“I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?” – Augustine

Um…Eve was given precisely as a companion to Adam.  “It is not good for man to be alone.”  (Gen. 18)  God made him a help “comparable” to him.  A counterpart.  Sure, she’s needed for procreation, also, but companionship was a major element.  When the Lord rebukes Judah in Malachi, he says, “…the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” (Mal. 2:14, emphasis added)

Augustine doesn’t stop there, either.  He also says

“. . . woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by superior reason. Is this why the apostle Paul does not attribute the image of God to her?” – Augustine

That women are inferior and stupid is his own foolish idea, not God’s.  Once again, we simply don’t see these ideas in Scripture.  But he’s getting even more perilous with his commentary on Paul.  There is a technical sense in which Paul “does not attribute the image of God to” woman, but it’s one that disregards the clear purpose and context of the passage.  (I’ll tackle the actual passage in a separate post.)

“But woman is naturally of less…dignity than man . . .” – Aquinas

Yet again…not an idea we find in the Bible.

Not-So-Subtle Statements

If you’re anything like me, your response to most of the above statements is, “WOW.” But it gets worse.  Some statements aren’t even close to borderline.  These blatantly and directly contradict Scripture, so immersed are they in disdain for women.

“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.” – Aquinas

Just…what in the world?!   The nature of both man and woman is fallen.  And yet both man and woman are made in the image of God.  And all of this sounds like so much metaphysical nonsense.  This sounds like, “we don’t know what genetically causes a baby to be female, but we presume it’s because something went wrong that prevented it from being a male” — which reveals an underlying disposition to think poorly of women, which doesn’t come from the Bible.

And Tertullian…wow.

“If there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters, from the time that she had first “known the Lord, and learned (the truth) concerning her own (that is, woman’s) condition, would have desired too gladsome (not to say too ostentatious) a style of dress; so as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve,—the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition….And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die. And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?” -Tertullian

(He goes on to say that all means of beautification come from fallen angels, that wearing beautiful things is sinfully ambitious, and that “care of the hair, and of the skin, and of those parts of the body which attract the eye” is prostitution. Dyeing anything [e.g. wool for cloth] into colors other than what God originally made them is from the devil. No exaggeration.) Source: Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On the Apparel of Women/I

I find myself struck almost speechless when reading this, so that it’s difficult to even address the issues here.  But let’s just tackle one theological problem that forms the heart of this passage.  What does Scripture say about sin and “human perdition”?

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam…or if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one” (Rom. 5:12, 14, 17)

“…he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened…” (Gen. 3:6-7)

Now, I’m not trying to make a big fuss about men being uniquely evil, either, but the point here is that the biblical teaching is that sin entered the world through Adam, who was the responsible party, the covenant head.  The fact that Tertullian is willing to overlook this (repetitive!) biblical teaching, in order to tear women down as personally, individually bearing the guilt of the world is troublesome, to say the least.

It’s clear that he’s not getting his theology of women from Scripture, and that’s my primary point.

What Should We Do with This?

My point is not to say that the Church Fathers were all scum, or that they were stupid, or that they had nothing to say of value.  Most of these were learned men with much to offer when it comes to much of Scripture.  But they were influenced by their own culture just as we all are, and it’s clear that many of them were not getting their views of women from Scripture…which suggests a strong probability that they were bringing their views of women to Scripture.  And that should cause us to dig more deeply, not less deeply where their interpretation of passages regarding women is concerned.

We need to be careful not to just blanketly endorse “historical church figures” or “church tradition,” and we definitely need to ensure that we’re weighing their words against Scripture, not weighing Scripture against their words — which is what all too often happens.

These men might have a lot of beneficial things to say about other aspects of theology, but it seems clear to me that they aren’t reliable sources when it comes to teaching on women.