MetaCatholic

This is a kind of follow-up to my recent posts on the gender debate, seen as one specific element of the US Church’s export of the American culture wars. I have noted previously that I simply don’t think the divisions “egalitarian” and “complementarian” actually correspond to any view in the first century world. And although I acknowledge the comments that criticise the use of the word “directly,” I do think there’s a tendency for people to assume that texts they like were originally saying the same things that they’re now being interpreted as saying, whether that modern reading is appropriate or inappropriate. That is, people are prone to think (or give others to think) of a direct line from the text to its use today.

This is particularly the case in the dropping of text-bombs, that is, the use of specific texts as grenades to blast your opponent’s arguments to smithereens. Text bombs tend to be selected because people believe their application is so obvious and so immediate, that a direct connection ought to be obvious to all those who are not blinded by their own prejudices. I’m going to look at a couple of these text bombs to explore the point. The conservative text bomb first:

But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. 1 Corinthians 11:3 NET

It would be tedious to repeat the many discussions here. I simply observe that this occurs in a context where a great many things are obscure (as is the meaning of the word “head” in this verse), not least whether “man” and “woman” in the second clause are actually “husband” and “wife”. These obscurities (or debates over meaning) include the words “unveiled” in verse 5, and “sign of authority” (literally just “authority”) in verse 10. But much else is also obscure, including not only the precise cultural significance of long hair, loose hair, and veils, but also exactly what practices in the Corinthian church are in view, and how they do or don’t relate to the other questions about worship dealt with in subsequent chapters.

It is surprising, therefore, to say the least, that this text can be deployed against women-men relationships generically, as though this is a straightforward statement that automatically means the same in every culture. There are so many obscurities, most of them relating to obvious cultural understandings, that the text demands to be translated not only linguistically but culturally. But whether linguistic or cultural, our translation is hampered by our not having enough knowledge to be sure of the meaning of either words or customs.

Lest that look like yet another naive plea to cultural conditioning by a hopeless liberal, let me move on to my second text-bomb, a veritable (to mix metaphors) Swiss army knife of text-bombs, much beloved by those at war with the conservatives.

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. Galatians 3:28 NRSV

Now there are some obvious culture-specific alerts in this passage. “Jew and Greek” and “slave and free” remind us that we are dealing with a particular time and place. But they are very easy to transpose into racial differences and economic or status differences respectively, and because, as a matter of application, we do so almost instinctively, it is equally easy to assume that the last pairing of “male and female” is even more straightforward. In reality it is probably even more complicated.

The use of “male and female” rather than “male or female” is generally recognised now as an echo of the Genesis narrative. The distinctions necessary for living in this age, in which people marry and are given in marriage (cf Mark 12:25 par), will not obtain in the age to come. In this Paul and Jesus seem to have a shared view, but Paul applies it to the church’s anticipation of the coming age here. Some of his rather mixed views on sex and gender are no doubt due to working out what on earth this overlap may look like in practice. There seems to have been a common assumption in the ancient world that a male was a normative human being, and evidence can be found for its corollary that women were in some way deficient. It seems to be instanced in the interesting Thomas logion (114)

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. (Lambdin’s translation)

Now it is impossible to be sure exactly how much of this (if any) Paul assumed, but the presumption must be, that without evidence to the contrary, Paul held in some version the view that was widespread in the Graeco-Roman world. His belief that sexual differentiation would be eschatologically overcome is not exactly the same as a belief in sexual equality. Hence he probably didn’t see the same gulf between this and some of his other statements about women that we see today.

This text-bomb is as culturally conditioned as the conservative one. (Well, so is the whole Bible, along with everything we say and write about it.) But there are some differences. First, there is much less obscurity about the Galatians passage than the Corinthians passage. It is a sound principle that the more obscure should be interpreted in the light of the clearer. (And how strange it is to find some who call themselves evangelical doing the opposite!) Second, where the Corinthians passage appears to be an ad hoc response to a particular situation, the Galatians statement acts as a partial conclusion to a lengthy theological argument on seminal themes. Again, Galatians should be privileged for theological work on those grounds.

There remains much theological work to be done in moving from the conclusions Paul draws to the ones we might choose to draw, and treating isolated verses as text bombs simply gets in the way. My view is that, although it might not look exactly like what we mean by equality, Paul moves substantially in this direction by his argument, and our readings should be guided by his own trajectory to a new way for men and women to relate, as equally heirs of the kingdom, and fellow-workers for the government of God.