3.21. The Treatment of Woman in the New Testament —A Summary

CHAPTER XXI The Treatment of Woman in the New Testament — A Summary. IN the previous chapters we have endeavoured to collect the portraits of the women who are sufficiently described in the New Testament for their individuality to be in any way marked. For the most part we have had to be content with faint hints and shadowy outlines. Still in following these indications we have been able to detect in some cases very evident distinctions of character and temperament. It remains for us before concluding these studies to stand back from the picture and regard the group in its entirety in order to note the position of woman generally in early Christian discipleship and the treatment of her by Jesus Christ and His apostles. In the first place it is to be observed that the freedom enjoyed by women among the Jews — so strikingly in contrast with the slavery and degradation of women that we usually associate with Oriental manners — which is apparent throughout the Old Testament, is not less evident in the New. Not only do women frequently come before us in domestic scenes, preparing the meals for the household and waiting on the guests, though not as far as we have any indications actually sitting down to table with the men; they also have large scope for individual enterprise. Women of position and property were able to travel in the mixed company of the disciples, apparently without raising any scandal on the ground that they were too much in public or too independent in their actions. Had their conduct been very unusual the critics, who were perpetually on the watch for some occasion of complaint against the new movement, would have been swift to seize on the irregularity. But they do not seem to have made any objection. Therefore we can scarcely set down this freedom to the influence of Christianity in the emancipation of woman. Moreover, the women that have engaged our attention have none of them stood in the first line of active leadership. Hero are no Deborahs inspiring their Baraks, no awful Sibyls, no mighty Amazons. Throughout the New Testament, woman, though often highly honoured and sometimes seen in very beautiful lights, is yet second in position and influence to man. There was no woman Christ; there were no women apostles. None of the leaders of the Church were women. No book of the New Testament was written by a woman. It is doubtful if any women were officials of the churches at all, although perhaps the order of deaconess was established in apostolic times. At all events no New Testament churches were ever presided over by women presbyters or women bishops.

Nevertheless, after making due allowance for these broadly significant facts, we have ample ground for seeing that the New Testament registers a distinct advance in the position of woman. This is not to be recognised so much in the actual position of individual women, or in the honours bestowed on any of them, as in the new spirit and temper which Christianity introduces into society. It is a fact of no little importance that the Incarnation was in a Man. Though Mary was blessed above all women in becoming the mother of the Christ, she was not the Christ, and the step from the human mother to the Divine Son is infinite. Mary was not the Daughter of God in any degree as Jesus was the Son of God. But while this is so, Robertson of Brighton justly pointed out that there was in Jesus something of the woman’s nature. This is true in some measure of all men of the finest spiritual character. It strikes us in St. Francis of Assisi; and it may be observed in Robertson himself. These finer woman traits of character are entirely different from the odious weakness named effeminacy, which has not a shadow of true Avomanliness in it. Robertson won the working men of Brighton largely by his genuine manliness of character; and he was haunted by a strange feeling that his natural vocation was to be a soldier. Nobody can fairly study the life of Christ and not perceive our Lord’s perfect manliness. The courage, the energy, the robustness of moral temperament which we associate with our idea of the true man are to be seen in our Lord’s character equally with all other perfections. At the same time the keenness of sympathy, the tenderness of compassion, the mingled refinement of soul and warmth of heart that we ascribe to true womanliness are not less apparent. Woman, quite as much as man, may find in Jesus her pattern and her ideal. Now inasmuch as Christianity is essentially the effluence of the spirit of Jesus, the womanly side of His character is breathed out into the world through His gospel, and womanliness receives in this way a new prominence, a new exaltation, a new dignity.

We may see the same thing from another point of view. Our Lord’s teachings bring to the front the finer and gentler virtues, too much ignored both by Paganism and by Judaism. Christian ethics are markedly humane, and humaneness is allied to what we think the womanly grace of character. The active compassion that is introduced by the gospel as almost a new fact in the world finds its most ready reception in the hearts of women. It is not too much to say that woman is the natural home of pity. Then the religion of infinite pity must find a large scope for its manifestation in the sphere of womanhood. At the same time the gentleness and humaneness of Christianity must rebuke and check those brutal customs of unchristian society that forbid the free and healthy development of the womanly element in the community. Christianity is the highest civilising influence the world has ever known, and with civilisation in its noblest moral form woman obtains liberty and protection for the performance of her ministry to the world. Still further, it may be remarked that since the freedom and safety of woman is especially dependent on the maintenance of the virtue of purity, Christ’s insistence on this virtue in the extreme form of cleanness of thought as well as in morality of outward conduct cannot but make largely for the elevation of woman. In these general ways it may be affirmed that the teaching of Jesus and the influence of His life and character have a special significance in regard to women.

Then our Lord’s direct treatment of the women who came across His path throws a further light on woman in the New Testament. We have seen that His relation to His own mother had peculiarly painful elements, which even the infinite tenderness of Jesus could not smooth away. That is altogether peculiar, in no sense typical. It is when we see Him among His women disciples that we discover what we may regard as His normal treatment of women. His cures were administered impartially to men and women y His public teaching was open alike to both. Mohametanism will not allow that women have souls, or at all events its method can only be justified on that monstrous supposition, for it makes no provision for the religious teaching of woman. The Koran was written solely for men. Judaism cannot be accused of this gross injustice. The Jew’s religion is not a perpetual insult to his mother, his sister, his wife. The Hebrew Bible is a book for women as well as men. The first teaching of children in its sacred truths was imparted by their mothers in the home. How beautiful a picture of Jewish family teaching is that we gather from St. Paul’s reverent mention of Timothy’s early lessons! Jewish they were wholly, and pre-Christian; and yet with all his antagonism to the bondage of the law the apostle could say to his disciple, ** From a babe thou hast known the sacred scriptures that are able to make thee wise unto salvation.”^ Still there never was a woman Rabbi among the Jews. No woman would be found among the disciples of Hillel or Gamaliel in the regular instruction of the schools. But, excepting in the case of instruction reserved for the Twelve, from which all other men as well as women were excluded, our Lord’s teaching was equally open to both sexes. And full advantage of this freedom of access to the great Teacher was taken by women. JNIary, a woman sitting at the feet of Jesus, is the typical disciple drinking in His words. Here it is a woman who has chosen “ the good part.” The conversation by Jacob’s well was with a woman. There were women and children among the multitudes whom Jesus fed in the wilderness.

Healing women of their sicknesses, preaching to women in His congregations, and numbering women among His intimate disciples, Jesus consented to be dependent on the gifts of women for the support of Himself and the Twelve. A group of women accompanying Him on His travels, for the purpose of “ministering” to Him, comes next to the apostles, and before any other male disciples. It could not but be that women who were accorded such a position would realise somewhat of the new elevation of womanhood and widening of women’s sphere that Jesus Christ was bringing about. In a very special degree our Lord’s treatment of the unhappy class of women who had fallen victims to the selfish vices of men indicates a startlingly new departure. It was customary for religious people to trample these miserable outcasts under foot as hopelessly lost and utterly ruined. For Jesus to show kindness to any of them, and even permit them to approach Him and do Him homage, was regarded as an outrageous breach of propriety. Yet, with a courage that must have astounded His most intimate friends, our Lord maintained His novel attitude unflinchingly. This meant many things. First, it meant justice. The attitude of society to these sorrowful products of its own corruption was hypocritically unfair. They were treated as vermin, while their tempters and destroyers escaped without detection, or even, if detected, had to endure a much less severe social reproach. The same gross injustice has prevailed in all ages, down to our own time, and is found among us to-day, when it is much less excusable, seeing that it is confronted by the teaching and example of Christ. The passage that most clearly reveals our Lord’s perception of the justice of the situation is one that cannot be claimed for certain as an integral portion of the New Testament, that which stands in our Bibles, at the beginning of the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to iSt. John, and tells of the woman taken in adultery. The passage is generally admitted to contain a tradition of probable truth, and a recent suggestion is to the effect that it was written by St. Luke in a second edition of his gospel In the scene that is here brought before us so vividly two momentous utterances of Christ reveal His way of treating a woman’s ruined life. First He bids the man who is without sin among the accusers cast the first stone. A probable variation in the rendering of our Lord’s words gives us a terrible suggestion. This is to read, ^’the sin” — “ He that is without the sin,” &c, the man who has preserved his own chastity; then not one of these fierce accusers of the woman could bring his conscience to admit his innocence in this respect!

Jesus here applies His rule about the mote and the beam — not indeed that in this case He would have made light of the woman’s offence. But then the custom of society in letting the man off easily and coming down with the severest penalties on the woman was base and false and hateful in His eyes.

Next, seeing that one by one the shamefaced men had crept away in silence till He was left alone with the woman, looking up from the ground, where He had been writing in the dust during the scandalous recital of her story by her coarse-minded accusers, Jesus told her He would not condemn her, and bade her go her way and sin no more. He would not condemn; but He would not condone. That was His position. His mission was not to judge sinnei-s, but to save them from their sin. For condemnation there must be a full and fair trial; and then some things would have to come out which the hasty accusers would be very unwilling to have exposed. Where was this woman’s companion in guilt? Not a. word had been said of him. It would be monstrous to pass sentence on the weaker offender, even if Jesus had taken it upon Him to act as a judge at all. This cowardly conspiracy of silence by which the guile of the man is screened, while the woman is dragged out to shameful exposure and condemned to the lowest humiliation, is an outrage on the first principles of justice, as well as a mean reversal of the root idea of chivalry. Jesus would never sanction it. Under such circumstances therefore He could not think of deepening the misery of an unjustly- treated woman by adding a single harsh word of His own. At the same time, He gave her warning for the future. She was free to go her way, but to sin no more. This agrees with what we read on other occasions of our Lord’s treatment of the unhappy victims of man’s selfish vice. It was the mistake of His enemies to insinuate that He took a light view of the sin of a woman who had lost the pearl of her virtue. And it is equally a mistake to-day for soft-hearted philanthropists to infer from the example of Christ in this matter that the sin involved is not one of real guilt on the woman’s part; though where, as most frequently happens, the poor soul that has been dragged down to the mire is more sinned against than sinning, the guilt of the victim is not the chief point to be considered. Jesus, the very incarnation of holiness, must have felt an instinctive loathing of this evil in all among whom it was found. But His work was to cure, not to condemn. And when He met with penitence He welcomed it. Then the past might be completely forgotten, because the penitent saved by His grace was a new creature. We saw this in the case of the woman who had washed His feet with her tears. Thus in relation to the fallen Jesus appears as. the merciful Rescuer, and He leaves to His Church the legacy of His mission in this field of work among the most pitiable of sinners.

Coming in the next place to the treatment of women by the apostles, we meet with another series of questions. The whole situation is changed owing to the springing up of those free social communities of Christians that came to be called Churches. An important point to be determined now was, what position women should have in these novel associations? Seeing that a Church was a centre of activity, what was to be woman’s work in the Church 1 These questions are stUl discussed among us; and it is not at all easy to see in what way the New Testament precedent can be our guide in settling them. The principles of the gospel must take precedence over individual instances of the application of those principles in primitive times; because, while the principles are vital and external, the application must be adjusted to local and temporary circumstances, and therefore must vary as those circumstances vary. The story of the Acts of the Apostles does not supply much that is novel in the position and work of women. Mary the mother of Mark exercises her hospitality in having a gathering of the Christians at Jerusalem at her house for prayer.^ The work of Dorcas, as we have seen, was the simplest and most retiring form of woman’s ministry.’^ Later in the history, however, we come across women prophetesses in the family of Philip the evangelist. “ This man,” says St. Luke, “had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy.” 2 Eusebius confuses this Philip with the apostle of the same name, saying, “ That Philip the apostle resided in Hierapolis with his two daughters has been already stated,” &c.; * then he goes on to say that Papias, who was their contemporar}’, relates marvellous tales that he had derived from them. From the brief notice in Acts it would appear that these four daughters of Philip had devoted themselves entirely to the work of the Church, for that reason refusing marriage. This seems to be the first instance in Christian history of celibacy in the service of the Church, and here it cannot be aflOrmed with certainty that so much is meant by the historian’s language. Before long we meet with virgins forming a recognised order, but this is more than we have any right to affirm concerning Philip’s daughters. Certainly it would be a great anachronism to think of them as under irrevocable vows like the nuns of later ages. We must travel many centuries before we meet with anything of the kind. The special function of these four daughters of Philip was prophesying. The historian does not give us any specimen of their inspired utterances. But thinking of them after the model of what we read of elsewhere we need not picture to ourselves the startling appearance of four weird Sibyls. Their function would be to exhort their fellow Christians. They would be what we in modern language call “Preachers.” Whether they preached to their own Church, and visited various Chxirches, after the manner set forth in The Teaching of the Ticelve Apostles, or confined their ministration to people of their own sex, we have no means of ascertaining. That they were preaching women in some sense St. Luke’s words plainly declare. The prophets in the early Church were not necessarily people gifted with second sight or the faculty of foreseeing the future. Prophesying is the regular New Testament word for inspired utterance in the Church. In the case of Philip’s daughters we meet with young women on whom this gift has been bestowed and who are free to exercise it. A century later in Phrygia — the very region where Eusebius, apparently obtaining his information from their contemporary Papias, tells us Philip’s daughters had lived — Montanus attempting a revival of primitive Christianity, made it his chief aim to bring back the neglected exercise of prophecy; and with him were associated two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. Others followed, much to the scandal of the respectable Church officials of the day. It is true there was some grotesque extravagance in the prophesying of the Montanists. Perhaps there was some also in that of the Christians of apostolic times. No record of it has been preserved for us, but we must not credit all their contemporaries in the Churches with the large wise ideas of their great leaders the apostles. At all events it is not unreasonable to suppose that some tradition of the work of the four virgins at Hierapolis may have encouraged Montanus in his daring innovations, or rather his bold attempt to revive the already almost forgotten past. And now we of the later times, may we not see in the case of Philip’s daughtei-s some precedent for a larger woman’s ministry in our own day? If Mrs. Poyser, in Adam Bede, had known and understood her Bible better she would not have attempted to explain Dinah Morris’s preaching by saying that she had “a maggot in her brain “; for she would have recognised that her niece was following the example of Philip’s daughters. And if people who object to women speaking and taking part in public life to-day would but prefer knowledge to prejudice, perhaps they too would be less hasty in condemning the brave and gifted women who venture, often with great self-sacrifice, to follow a New Testament precedent. Surely if God has inspired the minds of women with true and wise thoughts, and endowed them with faculties of utterance, He cannot desire them to bury their talents out of deference to conventional notions of propriety. If a woman, sometimes almost indecorously underclad in what is called “ evening dress,” may stand up on a platform to sing before a mixed audience of men and women for their entertainment without anybody objecting, is it not a little hard for her sister, who is gravely concerned with some question of public welfare, and able to speak to profit about it, to be blamed when she appears in public for not confining herself to “ women’s sphere “ 1 We are the slaves of custom. When it becomes usual for the women who are called to that work to speak in public, it will be seen to be no more scandalous than it is at present for others to sing in public. Meanwhile, who shall estimate our loss while these gifts of prophecy are suppressed 1 How many Philip’s daughters may there be among us whose prophetic fires are being smothered and quenched t If the mothers in Israel would tell us what they have come to know of the deep things of God in their rich experience, are there not some of us who would receive their message as a precious prophecy, a rich revelation from heaven? But now we are confronted with St. Paul’s well-known utterances about the place of women in the Church. These have been most unfairly handled from two opposite points of view. Some have found in them an absolute apostolic mandate, forbidding women to speak in public; others have taken them as a sign of St. Paul’s fallibility, and perhaps an evidence that the apostle was a bitter misogynist. It is true that he wrote, “Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak,” &c. But a little earlier in the very same epistle, in which these words occur, we read directions concerning women who prophesy — “ For every woman praying or prophesying with her head unveiled dishonoureth her head.” 2 Are we to think that the apostle contradicts himself in passages so closely following one on the other in the sajiie document 1 Did he change his mind while writing? If so, how could he allow the earlier passage to stand unerased? If not, then how could he give dii-ections about the ’’attire of women when praying and speaking in public just before forbidding them to speak at all in public? There must be some other explanation.

Now it is to be noticed that in the later passage the apostle does not use the word “prophesy,” which he employs when referring to the public utterances of women in the Church. The women are to keep silence, because it is not permitted them to speak. It is conversational speech that is here referred to, not the more deliberate solemn utterance that goes under the name of prophecy. This is brought out more clearly by the sentence following the injunction against speaking, where the apostle proceeds to say that if the women would learn anything they should ask their own husbands at home. This can have nothing to do with prophesying, because it was not for the purpose of learning that anybody prophesied. In exercising the solemn gift a man took upon him to instruct or enlighten his brethren. Talking with a view of learning, not teaching, can only be inquiring, disputing, objecting; and the idea seems to be some sort of interruption of the teaching or prophesying that is going on in the Church. St. Paul holds that it is not seemly for women thus to talk — he might almost say “ to chatter “ — in the church. If there is anything that does not commend itself to them, let them wait till the public service is over, and then raise the point in the privacy of the home with their husbands. We have to think of a very primitive state of affairs for this direction to be necessary, a condition in which nothing like our regular set services were held. All is simple and open. There are no forms of worship. The assembly is more like a family than a solemn meeting. Each contributes what it is given him to say for the general edification. But while this is so, interruptions, questions, objections on the part of some of the women, come to be too freely allowed. These must be suppressed. To deduce from this prohibition of disorderly conversation a rule that no woman is ever to appear as a speaker on a platform in a regular and orderly way is to misconceive the situation and confuse things that are entirely different. But now quite apart from this particular direction of St. Paul’s, designed to meet a special and temporary condition in the Church at Corinth, we must remember that the whole constitution of society has changed since the apostolic times. A freedom that would not be wise in Syria or Greece in the days of the Caesars might prove to be not at all inappropriate in England or America nearly two thousand years later. At Corinth in particular, to which place these directions were sent, the apostle might well be anxious for Christian women to maintain some reserve. This city was famous for the cult of Aphrodite, and maintained an establishment of a thousand priestesses devoted to the service of the goddess with foul rites — virtually an attempt to accUmatise!the worship of the Phoenician Astartfe.^ And then the education of woman which is quite of recent days necessarily modifies the whole problem of the sphere of womanhood. So long as women were to a great extent kept in a state of ignorance, they could not be expected to discharge the functions that seem naturally to fall to the lot of the enlightened and cultivated of the present day. That women should be permitted to serve on School Boards and as guardians of the poor, in positions that give scope for the employment of feminine tact and wise motherly sympathy, seems more right and reasonable than that these offices should be entirely reserved for men, when we consider that they involve administration of the affairs of women and children. There is nothing in the New Testament to forbid this. On the contrary, the spirit of the gospel should lead us to encourage it. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in his treatment of the mutual relations of husbands and wives St. Paul assigns the supreme authority to the husband,^ and he is closely followed by the first Epistle of St. Peter.- Some will raise the question here as to how far the regulations are oriental and of temporary service. Where there is perfect love in a true marriage no thought on the question will trouble the harmony of wedded life. But where this is not realised, and where brutal husbands are found playing the tyrant, the larger principles of Christianity come in, requiring justice and kindness, and forbidding this degraded orientalism.

Irrational and unjust restrictions on the liberty of women must be resisted in the name of Christianity. Still the most rr)dern ideas cannot destroy nature. The distinction of sexes must remain. Woman is not man, and as she differs from man in nature so she must also differ in function. It is unnatural to demand that women shall do all that men do. Let us remember that however much its scope may be enlarged her work must be womanly. The circle of her influence may be widened with advantage from the home to the parish, from the parish to the nation; but still it must remain a circle of womanly service wherein the graces of sisterhood or motherhood may flourish and shed abroad their beneficent influence.