Davide's Notes

These are some notes on the role of women in the early Church, with some considerations specific to the ordination of women to a priestly role.

Ireneaus (175-185) in AH 1:13:2 talks about to the role of women in consecrating wine referring to Marcus the Gnostic, who "deceived many". Note that Marcus would ask in his prayer that "Charis" fill the women's "inner man", multiplying in them her (Charis') own knownledge. This reminds me of the well-known final passage of the Gospel of Thomas:

Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven." (Gospel of Thomas, 114)

Tertullian (197-220) directly refers to 1 Cor 14:34-35 ("As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says...") in his On the veiling of virgins, IX; and in the same passage he says that to a woman is not permitted "to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say (in any) sacerdotal office." It is also interesting to note that Tertullian explicitly does not grant virgin women any special privilege in this regard.

Speaking of the 1Cor quotation, it is perhaps worth noting that Paul does not mean with that that women cannot pray or "prophesize" in general; see 1 Cor 11:5; and he certainly does not rule out the role of deaconness for women, see Rom 16:1-4; it seems he really wants to apply his directive in 1Cor 14:34-35 just to speaking in the church.

Looking at gnostic writings, it seems clear that there was some tension between those who supported the view that spiritual authoritiy could only come from men, and those who admitted that women could at least prophesize: see for example the Gospel of Mary (but note that in that dialogue the underlying assumption is still that the disciples are the men that Jesus chose, and no details are given about the future role of Mary in preaching the Gospel). But this view is not necessarily in constrast with what Paul says.

When examining these texts, one could of course say that they reflect the mentality of the time, where women were allegedly given a subjugated role, and that mentality has changed since then, and that therefore these texts should not be seen as normative in their prohibition of the ordination of women to a priestly role. But this is, first of all, not relevant in this context, where what seems very clear is that in the Early Church women acting as priests are not attested by the available documents. Then (but only then) there is the important problem of what to make of directives found in the Bible and in attested traditions, i.e. what is deemed to be changeable because tied to inessential customs of a certain time, and what is not. But this is a very complex problem, and I am not dealing with it right now (also because as I just said it does not seem relevant to me in this context).

At any rate, it is always interesting and useful to try and see the overall picture. For example, in the direct antecedent of early Christianity, i.e. Judaism, it would be very superficial (= wrong) to declare the role of the woman as marginal, and still it is clear that the officiant's (to simplify things) is a role reserved to men alone; for a summary, cf. Judaism 101: The Role of Women or Kressel's Korner.

And what about "heretical" movements which the "orthodox" church had to fight? Here (cf. again Elaine Pagels' "The Gnostic Gospels") we notice a tendency to characterize cosmological thought using sexual terms (something not very common in orthodox schools, but see for example Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.VI: "The Word is all to the child, both father and mother and tutor and nurse"). For example, see the description that Hippolytus makes of the philosophy of Pythagoras, taken up by Valentinus:

The Father Himself, then, as He was solitary, projected and produced Nous and Aletheia, that is, a duad which became mistress, and origin, and mother of all the Aeons computed by them (as existing) within the Pleroma. Nous and Aletheia being projected from the Father, one capable of continuing generation, deriving existence from a productive being, (Nous) himself likewise, in imitation of the Father, projected Logos and Zoe; and Logos and Zoe project Anthropos and Ecclesia. (The Refutation of All Heresies, 6.XXIV)

This Logos, in Hippolytus, is mapped elsewhere to Sophia and to the Holy Spirit; see for example 6.XXX, describing interesting divisions within the Valentinians on the nature of Jesus' body (the "Italians", i.e. Heracleon and Ptolemaeus, vs. the "Orientals", i.e. Axionicus and Bardesianes); which somehow reads the Trinity into the triad Father, Mother (i.e. Holy Spirit in this case) and Son. This concept can be explicitly seen in the Apocryphon of John found at Nag Hammadi:

He said to me, "John, John, why do you doubt, or why are you afraid? You are not unfamiliar with this image, are you? - that is, do not be timid! - I am the one who is with you (pl.) always. I am the Father, I am the Mother, I am the Son. I am the undefiled and incorruptible one.

But while considerations on the sexual nature of the divinity like these abound, there does not seem to be much attention paid to the role of women in priesthood. As I wrote at the beginning, Irenaeus does speak of women consecrating wine in gnostic gatherings, but the context under which this is done focuses rather on the deceiving role of Marcus the Gnostic who, at any rate, retains a superior office: "handing mixed cups to the women, he bids them to consecrate these in his presence. When this has been done, he himself produces another cup of much larger size than that which the deluded woman has consecrated,  and pouting from the smaller one consecrated by the woman into that which has been brought forward by himself, he at the same time pronounces these words..." (loc. cit.).

Moreover, one point that has to be considered is that Gnostic liturgy, in all its variety of incarnations, seems to be much less formalized (or, generally speaking, concerned with formalization) than its orthodox counterpart (cf. also the notes on Montanism); and this is reflected in the much more vague definition of the role of the clergy. On the one hand, as I noted already elsewhere, this can at least partly explain why the gnostic movements succumbed to orthodoxy; and, on the other hand, it reiterates the fact that it is very difficult to speak of gnosticism as a uniform movement and that, therefore, it does not seem easy or even meaningful to extract propositions about the "role of women" in such a loosely defined context.

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Categories: Church_History