Exploring the biblical theology of Christian egalitarianism

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Introduction

It is helpful to have some insight into the values and customs of the first Christians, and some appreciation of how they organised their meetings and ministries, if we are to have a better understanding of the setting, context, and meaning of the New Testament letters. In this article, I provide a brief overview of church life in the first century and I highlight the participation of women.

House Churches in the First Century

For the first two hundred years of the Christian movement, most meetings were held in homes. This custom of meeting in homes is well attested in the New Testament. Wayne Meeks observes that “In four places in the Pauline letters[1] specific congregations are designated by the phrase hē kat’ oikon (+ possessive pronoun) ekklēsia, which we may tentatively translate ‘the assembly at N’s household.’”[2] Women were involved in each of these four house churches.[3] Prisca, with Aquila, hosted and led a house church in Ephesus (1 Cor. 16:19), and later in Rome (Rom. 16:3–5). Apphia was a prominent member of a house church in Colossae and is one of three people greeted individually in Philemon 1:1–2. Nympha hosted a church in her home in Laodicea and is greeted in Colossians 4:15.

In house churches, the public sphere (the traditional domain of men) and the more private, domestic sphere (the traditional domain of women) overlapped, and women—especially wealthy women who hosted churches in their own homes—had equal opportunities to minister.[4]

Deborah Gill and Barbara Cavaness write,

… in ancient Mediterranean society, among both Jews and non-Jews, women often played quite powerful social and political leadership roles. Such roles were rooted in these women’s authority at the household level. Much business and commerce centered around households of the wealthy. These households could be sizable domestic communities including immediate family, extended family members, servants/slaves, and employees. In the ancient world, both men and women could be householders and patrons. Women’s experience as managers of these households, their “social authority, economic power, and political influence,” established their leadership in other domains in Greco-Roman society and even synagogue leadership in Jewish society.[5]

The kat’ oikon ekklēsia was “the ‘basic cell’ of the Christian movement, and its nucleus was often an existing household.”[6] At first, almost all the Christian assemblies were small, some consisting of only one or two extended households.[7] In large cities such as Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus there were several house churches with some kind of network that connected the house churches within each city together. Paul probably used the expression kat’ oikon to distinguish the individual house churches “from ‘the whole church’ (holē hē ekklēsia) which could assemble on occasion (1 Cor. 14:23; Rom. 16:23; cf. 1 Cor. 11:20).”[8] By the end of the first century, some networks of churches were overseen by a minister sometimes referred to as a bishop (episkopos).[9]

Congregations would gather in homes for weekly communion suppers.[10] During these meetings, there would be a time for recitations or readings from memorised or written Old Testament scripture. There might also be readings from letters sent from other churches or from prominent Christians. Plus there would be some kind of exhortation, the expression of worship, and the exercise of charismatic ministries.[11] How these house churches were led or organised, however, is not known with certainty, and there seems to have been variety in how ministries were exercised. Different congregations, guided by different leaders and teachers, determined their own practices and boundaries.[12]

Some house churches may have borrowed elements from synagogue services. All of the first Christians were Jewish and it is likely that in some synagogues all the members converted to Christianity. These communities would have continued with their familiar practices but modified them to encourage the Christian faith and devotion to Jesus Christ. Other assemblies may have functioned more like the many voluntary associations and trade guilds that flourished in the first century.[13]

Leadership in the First-Century Church

Church life in the apostolic age was “dynamic and fluid.”[14] Churches responded to the pressures from within and without the Christian community, and they adapted to rising needs and other changing situations. From the beginning, some people stood out as leaders. The householder would naturally assume prominence and patronage of the assembly that met in his or her home. The first overseers (episkopoi) were such householders (cf. 1 Tim. 3:1ff). Other members with leadership ability, ministry skills, and certain charismata, might also function in some leadership capacity. If the examples of the churches founded by Paul are indicative of church life in general, all gifted members could participate in the meetings, however, not just the leaders (1 Cor. 14:26; Col. 3:16).

People sometimes ministered on their own initiative. Stephanas of Corinth is an example of this. He devoted himself and his household to ministry (1 Cor. 16:15ff). He probably had seen a need and had the means to meet that need. Titus is said to have ministered on his own initiative. Or, as Paul put it, God put the concern in the heart of Titus (2 Cor. 8:16–17). Paul began ministering after being commissioned by Jesus, but without official approval from apostles or elders—something he seems to be proud of (Gal. 1:11–12, 17–20; 2:1–2, 6–7). In the apostolic church, people did not necessarily have to go through some sort of official channel in order to begin ministering. But sometimes people were commissioned by their church for ministry (e.g., Acts 6:3; 13:2–3).

Jesus had warned against a ruling kind of leadership in ministry, and he exemplified ministering as a servant. Jesus urged his disciples to follow his example and told them:

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. Matthew 23:8–11 (NRSV)

Kevin Giles comments on this passage and writes, “These words clearly exclude any kind of hierarchy or authoritarian-type leadership within the church.”[15] In Pauline communities, hierarchies and distinctions of ethnicity, gender, and social status were minimised, and a sense of family and equality was encouraged. In fostering this dynamic of equality, Paul avoided the use of leadership titles and descriptions that might suggest a hierarchy among believers. In his earliest letters, Paul addresses certain people whom he recognises as leaders but he gives them no title at all (e.g., 1 Thess. 5:12–13; 1 Cor. 16:15–18).[16] However, as the church grew and as governing principles became formalised, leaders were given official titles such as “bishop” (episkopos) or “priest” which were increasingly associated with both clout and prestige. These titles were typically not given to women.

Women Ministers in the First-Century Church

Wayne Meeks observes that the number of women ministers in the Pauline movement is “nearly equal to that of men.”[17] In Romans chapter 16, twenty-nine people are mentioned. Two women—Phoebe and Prisca—head the list, and more women than men are described in terms of their ministries. Of the five named Christians in the church at Philippi, a church founded by Paul, three are women, and two are men.[18] Considering what the New Testament shows us about Pauline churches, it seems that, as a general statement, Meeks is correct: women were actively involved in churches and ventures associated with the apostle Paul in numbers that were “nearly equal to that of men”.

Many women ministers are mentioned in the New Testament and feature in most of Paul’s letters. In the post-apostolic writings, however, women ministers are mentioned much less frequently and they almost disappear. Furthermore, in some of the post-apostolic writings, women are rarely addressed directly and seem excluded from even general instructions. First Clement, a letter written by the Roman Christians to the Corinthians in around 95–97, seems to be primarily written to a male audience which is addressed several times as “men, brothers” (andres adelphoi).[19] On the other hand, the anonymous epistle of Barnabas, possibly written around the same time, is addressed to both “sons and daughters” (huioi kai thugateres) (Barn. 1:1). In Second Clement, a pseudonymous letter written in around 140–160, men and women are also addressed together. Towards the end of Second Clement this becomes explicit as both “brothers and sisters” (adelphoi kai adelphai) are implored to heed the same instructions (2 Clem. 19:1; 20:2).

Chapter 12 of Second Clement contains a profound message of gender equality and indicates that gender discrimination has no place in the body of Christ. First Clement, the Didache, and other post-apostolic writings, however, indicate that only men could be leaders in the church. The Didache, a church manual dating from the late first or early second century, speaks of leaders as priests, high priests in fact, in a “priesthood” that is restricted to men. This new priestly dynamic, which was absent in the first Christian churches, caused a growing distinction and separation between church leaders and other church members, as well as between men and women in the church.[20]

Conclusion

Church life in the first century was quite unlike church life today. We need to remember this when we read the New Testament letters and be careful to not read back into the text our modern understandings of ministry and Sunday services. There is one thing we share in common with the early Christians, though: their views on women in ministry, as in today’s church, were not uniform. Tragically, in the following centuries, the attitudes towards women in ministry became unjustly restrictive, and these attitudes were turned into church rules.[21] In some churches today these unwarranted restrictions continue.


Footnotes

Several scholars have investigated the patterns of fellowship, worship, ministry, and leadership in first-century churches. Here is a small sample of these investigations: Valeriy Alexandrovich Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries (Leiden 2009); Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in their Cultural Setting (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994);  Andrew D. Clark, Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000); Kevin Giles, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians (Sydney: Collins Dove Publishers, 1989); Philip Harland, Associations, Synagogues and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003); Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); James Tunstead Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church: Public Service and Offices in the Earliest Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

[1] Romans 16:4–5, 1 Corinthians 16:19, Philemon 1:1–2, and Colossians 4:15.

[2] Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 75.

[3] Other New Testament women who hosted church meetings in their homes include Mary of Jerusalem (Acts 12:12), Lydia (Acts 16:40), the Chosen Lady and Chosen Sister (2 John), probably Phoebe of Cenchrea, and perhaps Chloe of Corinth (1 Cor. 1:11).

[4] Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Missionaries, Apostles, Coworkers: Romans 16 and the Reconstruction of Women’s Early Christian History”, Word & World 6.4 (1986) 432. Kate Cooper argues, however, “The notion of a ‘private’ sphere divested of ‘public’ significance would have seemed impossible (and undesirable) to the ancient mind. The domus [home], along with its aspects of family, and dynasty, was the primary unit of cultural identity, political significance, and economic production.” The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 14.

The oikos (Greek), or domus (Latin), was the centre of society and the base for churches.

The center of Greco-Roman society was the household (oikos or oikia). The center of the early Jesus groups was also the household. One built upon the other. This is an important point because by New Testament times the household was regarded as the basic political unit that encompassed one’s immediate and extended family.
Marie Noël Keller, Priscilla and Aquila: Paul’s Coworkers in Christ Jesus (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2010), 36.

[5] Deborah M. Gill and Barbara Cavaness, God’s Women—Then and Now (Springfield, MO: Grace & Truth, 2004, 2009) (Kindle Locations 862–870)

[6] Meeks, First Urban Christians, 75.

[7] The house church was the basic cell of the church in the first two centuries, but Christians did meet in other places. The first Christians in Jerusalem met daily in the temple courts as well as in homes (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 5:42; cf. Acts 12:12). According to the accounts in Acts, Paul taught in synagogues wherever he went in the course of his missionary travels. When he was in Ephesus for the first time, Paul spoke in the synagogue every Sabbath for three months (Acts 19:8). But then, for two years, he spoke daily in the School of Tyrannus (Acts 19:9-10). Paul also spoke to Christian assemblies in homes, such as Lydia’s home (Acts 16:40). In Acts 20:20 GNT, Paul mentions that he taught in public settings and in domestic settings (kat’ oikous) which may refer to house churches. The Apocryphal Acts of Paul 10.1 mentions that Paul taught in a rented warehouse outside of Rome; it also says that, while in Iconium, the apostle taught in the house of Onesiphorus (1.5). Origin records Celsus as saying, derisively, that Christians met for instruction in women’s apartments and in the workshops of leatherworkers and fullers (Against Celsus 3.55). (Priscilla and Aquila were probably leather workers and may have held meetings in their workshop in their home.)

[8] Meeks, First Urban Christians, 75.

[9] The first episkopoi, in around 40–70 CE, were probably house church leaders rather than bishops with oversight of churches in the one city. More on these early episkopoi (“overseers, supervisors”) here.

[10] Paul and Mark refer to one eucharistic tradition; John and the Didache refer to a different eucharistic tradition. More on these traditions here.

[11] Writing in around 155–157, Justin Martyr described what happened in Sunday meetings in the mid-second century.

And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.
First Apology, chapter 67, translated by Marcus Dods and George Reith. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm>

[12] See Christine Trevett, Christian Women and the Time of the Apostolic Fathers (AD c. 80–160): Corinth, Rome and Asia Minor (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), 9.

[13] Andrew D. Clarke writes that leadership in these groups was not just the province of the elite.

The voluntary associations, professional guilds and trade unions were highly popular in the early [Roman] empire. For the most part they had highly developed constitutions with an established pattern of selecting and appointing leading officials. Many of these groups included non-citizens or slave members who earned positions of leadership within this limited context. The Roman family or household was a further context in which leadership was exercised or experienced by both rich and poor, citizen and non-citizen, slave and free.
Clarke, Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000), 4.

The “rich and poor, citizen and non-citizen, slave and free” may not have included women, however, as there is no clear evidence of women holding leadership positions in voluntary associations. But some women were patrons of guilds.

[14] Kevin Giles, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians (Sydney: Collins Dove Publishers, 1989), 8.

[15] Giles, Patterns of Ministry, 53.

[16] Giles, Patterns of Ministry, 9.

[17] Meeks, First Urban Christians, 81.

[18] The three women are Lydia (Acts 16:14–15, 40), Euodia, and Syntyche (Phil. 4:2–3). The two men are Clement (Phil. 4:3) and Epaphroditus (Phil. 3:25).

[19] In the book of Acts, speeches are often addressed to “men, brothers” (Acts 1:16; 2:29, 37; 7:26), “men, Galileans” (Acts 1:11), “men, Jews” (2:14), “men, Israelites” (Acts 2:22; 3:12), “men, Athenians” (Acts 17:22), etc. The Greek word for “men” in these verses is andres. This word is used 29 times in speeches in Acts when the speaker is directly addressing his audience. (See words marked VMP here.) But that doesn’t mean that women were not in the audience or that the speeches didn’t apply to them.
In many cases, there would have been more men than women in the audiences, especially for speeches that were given in public spaces such as the temple courts in Jerusalem during Pentecost and the Athenian agora. But women were present in most cases.
Moreover, andres (“men”) doesn’t necessarily exclude women. We see this in Acts 17:34 where it says that some men (andres) joined Paul; one of these “men” was an elite woman named Damaris.
“Men, brothers,” etc, is a figure of speech in Acts. Today’s equivalent, in English, is “Ladies and Gentlemen.”

[20] It seems that in the second and third centuries only a few groups of Christians continued to relate to each other as family members without a social hierarchy or clear distinctions between so-called clergy and laity. Tertullian spoke out strongly against the blurring of distinctions between ministry roles and positions and against allowing women to minister as men did. He saw these displays of egalitarianism as symptoms of heresy.

“The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures— it may be even to baptize. . . [Furthermore] today one man is their bishop (episkopi), tomorrow another; today he is a deacon (diaconi) who tomorrow is a reader (lectores); today he is an elder (presbyteri) who tomorrow is a layman. For even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood.”
Tertullian “The Prescription against Heretics”, chapter 41, Translated by Peter Holmes. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm>

[21] The exclusion of women from many ministries in later centuries is due, at least in part, to the formalising of ministries, and to the increasing respectability of the church and its conformity to broader patriarchal society. James D.G. Dunn remarks on the different experience of church life among the first generation of Christians than that of later generations when Christianity became increasingly institutionalized.

Increasing institutionalism is the clearest mark of early Catholicism—when church becomes increasingly identified with institution, when authority becomes increasingly coterminous with office, when a basic distinction between clergy and laity becomes increasingly self-evident, when grace becomes increasingly narrowed to well-defined ritual acts. … Such features were absent from first generation Christianity, though in the second generation the picture was beginning to change.
Dunn, Unity & Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity (Westminster Press, 1977), 351.

This article is adapted from chapter one of a paper entitled “The Roles of Diakonoi, Male and Female, in the Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Church (c. 40–120) with Special Reference to Phoebe of Cenchrea.”  More posts from this paper can be accessed here.

© Margaret Mowczko 2014
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20 thoughts on “The First Century Church & the Ministry of Women

  1. I am delighted to see Meeks referenced here. I also commend to you Ramond Brown’s succinct treatise: The Churches the Apostles Left Behind. The two books Truly stirred my heart & imagination in graduate school.

    1. Thanks Darcia,

      I’m going to my university’s library tomorrow so I’ll see if I can find Raymond Brown’s book. The title makes it sound very interesting.

  2. Excellent again marg, its so simple to realize women in ministry when reading the bible, but apparently deceivers as “Christans” twist the names of these women with their role by 3 popular verses that mention women. If they could only come on your website and get a revelation on how God use both genders to win all genders….they’ll see how the Gospel shouldnt have us christians divided like the jewish tradition on women.

    By the way here’s a funny story, my friend thought the feminine names were masculine names LOL. She stopped being my friend since she said women are deceived and cannot proclaim the Gospel based on 1Timothy2:11-12. But apparently she’s a teacher in her church, so how can she say that about herself lol

  3. pls read your bible, these people are inaccurate concerning colossians 4:15; that was a man, not a woman. they have an ajenda and its has very little to do with Christianity. Nympha is clearly a man. Under the heading,” House Churches”, need I show you more; search, study the Holy Scriptures, our salvation depends on this.Church Of Christ Rom 16:16

    1. Hi Derek,

      Check here to see how Nympha appears in English translations of Colossians 4:15: http://biblehub.com/colossians/4-15.htm
      You may also want to check endnote 7 in this article to see why the King James Bible has “Nymphas”: Stephanas or Stephana?

      The information in the section entitled House Churches is biblically sound. Check the scriptures quoted in this section, and the scriptures quoted in endnotes 1 and 3.

      Your presumption that this article has been written by someone who does not read the Bible is strange considering the amount of scripture references included in the article.

  4. One thing that stands out about Chloe is that Paul says she has people, as in the sense of people who are responsible to her. Since he mentions this in the context of spiritual matters it’s hard not to glean that she’s probably a spiritual leader.

    1. I think Chloe was most likely the leader of a house church in Corinth. She was the one who sent Paul a verbal or written message, via her people (lit. “those of Chloe”) that prompts Paul to write 1 Corinthians.

      By sending a delegation to Paul with a message about the state of the broader church in Corinth, Chloe is acting as someone with responsibility or, at the very least, a keen interest in the church. 🙂

      Did Chloe tell Paul that some Corinthians were telling her, “Women should keep silent in the churches . . .”?
      More on Chloe here: https://margmowczko.com/who-was-chloe-of-corinth/

  5. I was recently reading some of Chrysostom’s homilies, particularly Homily 31 on Romans. He mentioned 1 Timothy 2:12 when talking about Mary who had labored (Romans 16:6). He mentioned that the 1 Timothy verse was to hinder women from coming forward publicly and from a seat on the bema, and I couldn’t help but think about how house churches in the first century probably didn’t have a bema. I read his homilies on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15, and it seems to me that part of his underlying assumption is that there would be one single person talking on a bema or something like that for most if not all of the church service, and women would be interrupting by talking. All that to say, I mourn the fact that churches developed such hierarchical structures of leadership that limited people’s participation, and I can’t help but wonder how much damage it’s done.

    1. I agree. A hierarchical structure is bad enough, but one that has excluded women from the top tiers has been disastrous for the church. It’s amazing the church has even survived considering all the factionalism, killings and corruption that has been a part of the church almost from the beginning.

      1. Jesus said that the very gates of hell could not prevail against the church, Marg, so I don’t think that a bunch of mortal men have power to destroy it! In spite of all that has happened, women have, and will continue to be, beautiful, indispensable, instruments in God’s hand for the good of his Church, the body of Christ, along with men. For me, years ago, the eureka moment came when a scholarly old preacher pointed out that the sign of inclusion under the new covenant of grace was baptism (of male and female) rather than circumcision (only for males), in the old covenant.

        1. Clearly, the church hasn’t been destroyed. It still exists. But too many things that have been said and done in the name of the church have been horrendous, harmful, and even lethal.

          Most of the worse things that have happened to the church, the body of Christ, were done by men professing to be Christians and who were/are members of the church.

          The body of Christ is fully inclusive of men and women. 🙂

  6. […] I explain why “the co-elect” woman in 1 Peter 5:13 (AKA “she who is in Babylon”) may be a woman and not a congregation. […]

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