It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him. (Genesis 2:18)
Ask a chauvinist where a woman's place is and he or she will say, "A woman's place is in the home," or, "A woman's place is subordinate to the man's."
Ask a feminist where a woman's place is and she or he will say, "A woman's place is wherever she chooses to be," or, "A woman's place is anywhere a man's place is."
Ask a chauvinist and a feminist what the Bible says about a woman's place and chances are that both will be wrong.
Needless to say, Christian women and men can be deeply and passionately divided on questions like these. So, I hope this sermon will teach some basic Biblical wisdom and help open some minds on both sides of the "sexual dividing line," answering old questions in new ways. Forget what you've heard the chauvinists and the feminists say. Remember that God's Word does not conform to any of these worldly wisdoms. Listen, instead, with new ears to what the Bible has to say about a woman's place.
I.
As you may expect, Scripture's first word on this comes right at the beginning, in the Book of Genesis. Here in our text, we see that man was made first and then woman. In fact, the text says that God made Eve of Adam's rib.
Of course, people have used this for many centuries as a blessing for male chauvinism. They say that because man was made first, man's place is to rule, and woman's place is to serve. "Woman can never be equal," these chauvinists say; "it goes against the order of God's creation."
Ironically, many feminists agree with this. Still not free, they unconsciously adopt the ideology of their own oppression and agree that Genesis makes women second-class citizens. Thus, they decide that Scripture is wrong. They treat Adam and Eve as a sexist myth which they can replace with another myth more to their liking. Some are within the larger church and call themselves feminist Christians, but they reject the authority of Scripture, which no Christian can rightly do.
They are both wrong. Such chauvinists and feminists are more alike than they realize and both are wrong. They both show why the good news is a "stumbling block" and a "folly" to those who see it through worldly eyes (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23).
Look at what Genesis actually says. God has made the whole world and made Adam to live in it. But then God says, "It isn't good for the man to be alone." In effect, God says, "Creation isn't complete. Adam isn't complete. There is something missing; it's as if the whole world is empty." Then God made Eve.
We've all heard the joke: "God made man, and then God said, 'Hey, I can do better than this,' so He made woman." Well, this is closer to the Biblical truth than many chauvinists or feminists realize. You see, a so-called "male" God didn't make woman after man to put her in second place. The making of woman was the climax of Creation, the fulfillment of God's work. Only when Eve was made could God say, in effect, "Now the world is complete, and behold my creation is very good."
When Eve is made and she stands beside Adam, our text goes on to say, "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." Here it is, spelled out for everyone to see: one plus one does not equal "one made first and one made second." One plus one equals one.
Someone has called this God's "holy arithmetic." Man and woman need each other and they stand as one before God. They stand as one in their sin in the Garden of Eden [they both try to blame someone else for their disobedience (Genesis 3:12-13)] and they stand as one in the image in which they are made. As Genesis puts it: "In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them" (1:27). One plus one equals one.
What else does the Bible say about a woman's place? Can people be as confused about the rest of the Bible as they are about Genesis?
There is no question as you read the Bible that both the Old and New Testaments were written in a male-dominated, patriarchal age. In fact, women were basically just property in the culture of the time. You can go to parts of the Middle East today and see how this culture has survived even to the present age.
Still, the Bible as a whole does not bless either a chauvinist's or a feminist's view of a woman's place. Remember that God calls Eve Adam's "helper," not his property. And God gives Adam and Eve the same, identical mission in the world: to fill and subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28).
In the Book of Proverbs, we are told that child-rearing is not just a woman's job; both parents are told to instruct and discipline the child (1:8). Proverbs also describes an ideal wife who works outside as well as inside the home, making products and selling them in the market (31:10ff). In the Song of Songs, the woman keeps vineyards and pastures the sheep (1:6f). In the Book of Acts, two leaders of the early church are Lydia, a merchant (16:14) and Priscilla, a businesswoman (18:2f).
The Old Testament also shows us women in positions of great power. Deborah, Jael and Esther were military and political rulers. Judith saved Israel from the Assyrians. Huldah, the "prophetess," was an important advisor to King Josiah. Ruth has one of the loveliest books in the Bible named after her.
Does the Bible tell women to stay in their place? It's not that simple. The truth is: there is no one place for women to be in the Bible because the Bible shows women in many different places. The truth is: God's Word is not merely so one-sided as many chauvinists and many feminists make it out to be.
II.
Now we come to the New Testament and I begin with Paul, whom chauvinists love and feminists hate because once again, they are more alike than they realize. They both agree that Paul puts women rigidly in a subordinate place.
You may recall that famous verse in 1 Corinthians where Paul tells women to remain silent in church (14:34). But in the same letter, he implies that women can pray or prophesy in church if they do it right (11:5, 13). In 1 Timothy, Paul says that he permits no women to have authority over a man (2:12), yet in 2 Timothy, he sends greetings to Priscilla, a woman who has authority over men in the early church (4:19; cf. Acts 18:26). In Romans (16:1), he talks about Phoebe, who was a deaconess and may have been ordained in the church.
What do you make of all this? Why so many contradictions? What is Paul really saying about the place of women?
Remember that Paul's letters usually deal with specific situations in specific churches. Looking at 1 Corinthians, for example, it's clear that Paul is concerned about people speaking in tongues, so he might be telling women in Corinth to be silent because they have taken over the worship services with their unintelligible utterances. Paul prefers clear, understandable preaching (cf. 14:lff), so perhaps he is speaking against women whose gift of tongues is preventing the church from hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Similarly, Paul might tell women in 1 Timothy not to teach or have authority because there are women in that church who are teaching false doctrine. Perhaps they have fallen prey to certain fundamentalist fallacies (e.g. 1:4, 3:6, 4: if). Maybe Paul is concerned that they learn the truth, so he tells them to be silent, which any good teacher might ask of a student.
In the end, Paul speaks more to certain women as individuals than to all women in general. Some women, like Phoebe, can have authority because they are good leaders. Others must keep silent because they are perverting the faith.
That's really how it is, even in our own time. There are some women in the church today who should keep silent!
Some of these are fundamentalist women whose false religion owes more to mammon and Caesar than God and Jesus Christ. But others are liberal women who reject the authority of Scripture, "teaching as doctrines the precepts of women" (cf. Matthew 15:9). These women assault the very foundations of Biblical faith.
A few years ago, one of our major newsmagazines reported on the first national meeting of a network of feminist Christians called "Womanchurch." This network of Catholic and Protestant women met in Chicago and at the end of their time together, they celebrated communion. Reportedly, the minister who led the service offered the cup, which she said was "filled with the blood of those women who have given birth and are giving birth today."
I would like to tell her never to lead another communion again! Her feminism perverts her faith and she clearly doesn't understand what it means to lead Christian worship. We don't share the blood of women in communion any more than we share the blood of men. We share the blood of Christ and Christ alone!
Even more recently, a group of fourteen clergywomen from one of the so-called "mainline" churches met in Connecticut for a spiritual retreat. They discussed a new book called Goddesses in Every Woman, and they tried to identify what they called the "ruling goddesses" within themselves - the Greek and Roman goddesses which rule various aspects of their personalities.
I find this appalling. This is not Christian religion, this talk about "ruling goddesses," this is paganism! It is certainly heresy. If this is what they teach and preach as ministers, then here are fourteen clergywomen who should be silent and have no authority in the church.
I agree with Paul. If women are called to lead the church in faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, they should lead. If they teach falsely and perversely, they should not speak at all. And of course, I would say the same thing of men in the church - God knows there are enough men teaching falsely in the church as well. Truth itself is at stake, the truth which sets us free.
When all is said and done, Paul sums up a woman's place by speaking in terms of mutuality: "In the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman" (1 Corinthians 11:11). "For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does" (1 Corinthians 7:4). And in his famous passage from Galatians, Paul gives the eternal definition of Christian equality: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (3:28).
Finally, we turn to Jesus, through Whom we understand and interpret all of Scripture. And we see throughout the gospels that every time Jesus has dealings with women, He stands radically ahead of His time and ahead of our time, too. He judges women by their character and not by their sex. Jesus knows the simple truth that women are human, which means that they need His mercy and salvation just as much as men do.
People ask why Jesus didn't have any women as disciples. Well, one commentator (Donald Bloesch) has suggested that it would have been too much of a scandal in the ancient world to see men and women living together as disciples did. Some of Jesus' disciples were married, after all, and Jesus had enough trouble with the authorities without inviting charges of sexual immorality.
But Jesus had women in His company (cf. Luke 24:22a). He instructed women in the faith, which was unheard of at that time. He first revealed Himself as the Messiah to a Samaritan woman (John 4:lff). Women were first to hear of His birth, last to leave him at the cross and first to see His Resurrection. You might even say that Jesus made Mary and Martha "disciples to the disciples," since they were given the job of spreading the good news on Easter morning.
III.
So after all this, what does the Bible say about a woman's place? Her place is to help the man, just as the man must help the woman. They need each other to complete the divine image in which they both are made. God made them one, and they are made one again by spiritual union in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If a woman's place is in the home, she can find that in the Bible. If her place is in work outside the home, she can find that in the Bible, too. Contrary to what chauvinists or feminists may say, a woman's place is wherever God calls her to be.
The Bible is very realistic about women: it doesn't demonize them as the old sexism does, nor does it deify them, as the new sexism does. Woman are not the same as men but are equally human.
In other words, Scripture shows that women can be evil as well as good. Some women answer God's call to service because their spirits are with God and some turn their backs on God because their spirits are of this world. The Bible deals with individuals who happen to be women. It challenges the assumptions of both chauvinists and feminists who want to deal with women solely as a group, blindly treating them as if they were all the same.
The rest of the world may argue bitterly about a woman's place, but let Christians know that God's light shines on women and men alike. Let the church be the place where a woman is free to answer the call which God is free to give her. If God calls her to sit in silence, so be it. If God calls her to leadership in boldness and truth, so be it. God gives the opportunities; we don't limit God with our rules.
Christians are not here to make a point against women, like the chauvinists, or to make a point for women, like the feminists. We are here to make a point for God. Women and men alike: we only want to do God's will. We are here to be helpmates to one another, for it is not good that either of us be alone. Male and female God has made us, and by the love of Jesus Christ we find that we all are one in Him. Amen
Pastoral Prayer
Wisdom of God, our Mother, we pray today that in this church, we may all be made one in Christ Jesus. Let there be no male or female among Your people here. Let every woman know that here she finds the freedom to be everything You call her to be. Let every woman know that here she finds the right hand of fellowship when she wants to walk in the way of her God. Let everyone know that here we are proud to be led by faithful women in the work of Your kingdom.
Eternal God, our Heavenly Father, we thank You today that male and female, we are all Your children. Fill us with such love for our Savior, Jesus Christ, that we may see His Spirit in every woman and every man in our midst. Lead us not to seek our own truths but Your Truth, that we may no longer walk in darkness but in Your great light, and in the glory of Your holy name. We ask this through Jesus Christ. Amen
Donald Bloesch, Is the Bible Sexist? (Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois, 1982).