In part 6 of this series I summarized the work of William Webb by suggesting that Webb affirms hermeneutical trajectories of liberation with regards to women in ministry and slavery, while maintaining that a hermeneutic of restriction remains uniform in the voice of scripture with regards to homosexuality. I’d like to further consider the complexity of Webb’s claim by examine the former examples.
I belonged to a Baptist denomination, even a moderate one, that statically fails to offer women the same ministry opportunities that it offers men. In fact Baptist (the moderate ones) still find themselves celebrating a month of women in ministry because? Women are still drastically underrepresented in their churches. And why is this? I suspect that it’s because the New Testament includes the following:
1 Corinthians 11:3-12 “ But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.
7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.
1 Corinthians 4:34-35 “As in all the congregations of the saints, 34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”
1 Timothy 2:9-15 “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10 but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. 11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”
There’s more, but I’ll stop there. As for me, I’ve done the hermeneutical gymnastics necessary to contextualize these reading and make them subservient to the New Testament data that would imply otherwise about the role of women in the church. But my point is that these are there, in our New Testament, and in tension with Webb’s breezy claim that bible has a trajectory of liberation with regards to women and the church.
As for slavery, it might be worse. When Paul writes about household codes he abides by Roman customs and expectations imploring slaves to obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5 & Colossians 3:22). And in Philemon, a letter written to a master about runaway slave, Paul does admonish Philemon to receive Onesimus as “more than a slave, as a brother,” (v 16), but what Paul does not do is rebuke and condemn slavery as an institution. An argument from silence, but one that taken up with some ferocity by black scholars Mitzi Smith, Matthew Johnson, Demetrius Williams, and others in their book Onesimus Our Brother. If nothing else I’d issue a word of caution to white folks who are quick to point out 1. that this implies Paul said enough to disavow slavery in places like Galatians 3:28 2. that Paul didn’t take on institutional slavery because he thought the parousia was around the corner and 3. 1st C.Greco-Roman slavery was different (and implied better) than chattel slavery.
In his book Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions, J. Albert Harrill catalogues the 19th C. opinions of both abolitionists and Christian pro-slavery advocates. In a particularly painful quote Harrill shares a passage from a letter written by John Henry Hopkins, Episcopal bishop of Vermont:
“With entire correctness, therefore, your letter refers the question to the only infallible criterion–the Word of God. If it were a matter to be determined by personal sympathies, tastes, or feelings, I should be as ready as any man to condemn the institution of slavery, for all my prejudices of eduction, habit, and social position stand entirely opposed to it. But as a Christian, I am solemnly warned not to be “wise in my own conceit [Rom 12:16], and not to “lean to my own understanding [Prov. 2:5]. As a Christian, I am compelled to submit my weak and herring intellect to the authority of the Almighty. For then only can I be safe in my conclusions, when I know that they are in accordance with the will of Him, before whose tribunal I must render a strict account in the last day.” (191)
This particular passage became especially salient in the conversation of my own imagination. What confronted me most was the contrast in his desire to condemn what his instincts told him was wrong, with his commitment to subvert that instinct because of the plain sense meaning of scripture. This scenario describes so many people I have encountered in my own journey who know and love someone who is queer, but are held hostage by the plain sense meaning of scripture. While the left bears the criticism from theological conservatives that theological liberalism has played fast and loose with hermeneutics, theological conservatives must bear the criticism that their restrictive readings have destroyed lives with oppressive readings of the text.
So while I agree with Webb’s conclusion about women and slavery, I’m not convinced that those conclusions are decisive or rather can be decisively arrived at through a canonical reading of scripture. Of course, my response is not to read those trajectories (women and slavery) restrictively but call for a more honest look at our hermeneutical choices as a whole. What’s to say that in fifty or a hundred years we won’t read the current literature on the prohibition of same-sex relationships with the pain we now read Bishop Hopkins words. That is, as those who wanted a different reading but couldn’t do so out of our fidelity to scripture. My point is simply that if our fear is a lack of fidelity to scripture, everyone is already guilty of an idiosyncratic approach to hermeneutics, if not on the three issues laid out here, than certainly on the myriads of laws and customs we routinely ignore in the Bible because they are “contextualized.” For a more honest approach to this complexity, I recommend reading A.J. Jacob’s A Year of Living Biblically.