8 – Misogynist or Misrepresented?

Was the Apostle Paul a Misogynist?

I’ve always loved Paul’s New Testament letters, and after decades of reading them, I continue to be excited by his theology. I’ve also come to appreciate and admire his pastoral heart. But not everyone shares my enthusiasm for Paul. A few passages in his letters have been used to restrict women, especially when it comes to speaking, teaching, and leading in congregational settings.

These restrictions have silenced the voices of individual women, and they have stifled the flourishing of women and girls generally. As a result, the church as a whole has suffered because it has missed out on the ministry of its many gifted daughters.

Some women have been deeply wounded by the misuse of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:12 in particular, and the blame for this misuse has often fallen on Paul rather than on his interpreters.¹ Many see Paul as a misogynist who wanted all women, everywhere and for all time, to be “silent in the churches.”

However, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:12 don’t refer to all women. Rather, they refer to specific people and specific problems in specific church communities.² Cynthia Bennet Brown and Andrew Bartlett explain these verses in installments 10 and 11 of Kyria’s Think Again series.

In this installment, I look at Paul’s general teaching on ministry. In several passages, the apostle gives no indication that women are somehow secondary or excluded from certain roles. I’ll also look at Paul’s ministry terminology and at some of the New Testament women he referred to as ministers.

God’s Design: Equal Honour in the Body of Christ

In 1 Corinthians 12, the apostle sketches the vision he had for the church. He saw the church as a healthy body made up of different parts working together in unity. In this body, every part functions by freely contributing their gift for the common good and for the church’s mission, and no part says to another, “I don’t need you.”

When describing his vision, Paul stated that the parts with less honour, that is, the people with less honour in broader first-century society, which would have included many women, were to be given more honour within the community of Jesus- followers. He further stated that the parts that were already honoured, such as free-born wealthy men, didn’t need to be given more honour (1 Cor. 12:23).³ Paul wanted each part, each person, to be equally honoured and cared for by fellow church members.
Moreover, Paul states that this distribution of equal honour is God’s doing and God’s design:

“God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the less honourable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other” (1 Cor. 12:24 CSB).

Other passages in Paul’s letters indicate that all followers of Jesus are fully included in the Christian community: we are all “sons of God” with the same privileges; we are all led and empowered by the same Holy Spirit; we are all to be regarded as siblings with the same status (e.g., Gal. 3:26-28).⁴

However, Paul’s beautiful vision of unity, mutuality, and equal honour has rarely been realised. Women, and some other parts of the body of Christ, have been sidelined, dishonoured, and told that their gifts and talents are not needed. These are the very things Paul did not want.

Fellowship and Participation in Ministry

Paul understood that the Christian life is about mutual sharing and fellowship. The grouping together of Christians in communities (churches) and how Christians loved and served one another were key concerns of Paul, and he encouraged participation in meetings from all gifted people, as long as it wasn’t done in a selfish or unruly manner.

In 1 Corinthians 14:26, for example, he wrote,

“What then, brothers and sisters? Whenever you come together, each one has a hymn, a teaching, a revelation, another tongue, or an interpretation. Everything is to be done for building up” (CSB).

Paul lists ministries, including the ministry of teaching, in other verses too. In the Greek, these verses give no hint that some ministries are for men only. See Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 4:11, and Colossians 3:16 (cf. Rom. 15:14).

Paul silenced disorderly speech from men and women in Corinth (1 Cor. 14:26-40), and he disallowed unsound teaching from men and women in Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:20; 2:12), but he never silenced edifying speech and sound teaching from anyone. Nowhere in the New Testament are godly and capable women expressly forbidden from ministering in any capacity.

Women Leaders in Churches Associated with Paul

Women were active in prominent ministries in churches at Corinth, Colossae, Philippi, Ephesus, and elsewhere in the Roman Empire. And women ministers worked hard in Rome itself.

Twenty-eight Christians based in Rome are identified in greetings given by Paul in Romans 16:3-16, and nine of these twenty-eight are women. Moreover, six of the nine are described in terms of their ministry: Prisca (or Priscilla), Mary, Junia, Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis. By comparison, only three men in Romans 16:3-16 are described in terms of their ministry, and two of these men were ministering alongside a female partner: Aquila with Prisca, and Andronicus with Junia. Paul even sent his long and expensive letter to the Romans with a woman, Phoebe, who personally delivered it.⁵

Paul travelled and ministered with men and women. Prisca and her husband Aquila were close friends of the apostle; the three had lived, worked, travelled, and ministered together for some time, and when Paul sent greetings to the twenty-eight Christians in Rome, Prisca is named first. This signifies that Prisca was a leading figure in the church at Rome.

Luke recognised that Prisca had been a minister in Ephesus. In Acts 18, he mentions her name before Aquila’s when he recounts how the couple corrected the teaching of Apollos. Apollos was a visiting teacher in Ephesus and an up-and-coming apostle.⁶ Some scholars believe that Prisca and Aquila founded or established the church in Ephesus.⁷

Partnership and Paul’s Ministry Terminology

In Romans 16, Paul used his favourite ministry term “coworkers” when he acknowledged the wide-ranging ministry of Prisca and Aquila among Gentile churches and also alluded to their local ministry in Rome.⁸

“Give my greetings to Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life. Not only do I thank them, but so do all the Gentile churches. Greet also the church that meets in their home” (Rom. 16:3-5a CSB).

Euodia and Syntyche were likewise among Paul’s coworkers, and the apostle described these women as having shared his struggle in the cause of the gospel (Phil. 4:2-3 NASB). “Coworkers” was his most-used word for a fellow minister, but Paul frequently referred to his ministry colleagues simply as “brother” or “sister,” or as a diakonos.

The Greek word diakonos can refer to an ordinary servant, but Paul never used it with this meaning in any of his letters.⁹ Rather, he consistently used the word with the sense of “an agent with a sacred commission.”¹⁰

Paul describes several men, including himself, as a diakonos. In Romans 16:1-2, he refers to Phoebe as a diakonos and as a “sister,” and he tells the Romans that she is “a patron of many and of myself.” As a patron, Phoebe was a woman with wealth and influence.¹¹ Apphia, addressed in the Letter to Philemon, is also called a “sister” and she may have been a patron of a church in Colossae.

Another of Paul’s favourite ministry terms is apostolos (“apostle, emissary, missionary”). In Romans 16:7, he described the ministry of Andronicus and Junia in glowing terms and stated that this couple were “outstanding among the apostles” (Rom. 16:7 NIV & NASB 1995). I’ve written more about Junia here.

Reflecting the hardship of ministry in the first century, Paul also used “labour” words when referring to the ministry of identified male and female ministers. He commended the ministry labours of four women in Romans 16. One of these, Persis, he described as “the beloved, who laboured hard in the Lord.”¹² This phrase, with the word “beloved,” cannot have been made by a misogynist.

Paul often used two or three different terms or expressions when describing and commending the ministries of his male and female friends. However, he never called any of his associates “pastor,” “elder/ presbyter,” or “overseer/ bishop,” not even those who seem to have been in charge of a congregation such as Stephanas, a man in Corinth, or Nympha, a woman in Laodicea, or Prisca and Aquila, a couple who ministered in Rome, Ephesus, and elsewhere.

Conclusion

Paul mentions at least eighteen women in his letters, and he spoke about their faith and ministry. He used the same ministry terms for them as he did for his male ministry colleagues. And there is not the slightest hint of censure from him about women such as Prisca who functioned as leaders in their churches. Rather, there is acknowledgement and praise.

Paul did not want women to be silenced and their ministry gifts suppressed; he knew that when one part of the body is stifled or suffers, the whole body suffers (1 Cor. 12:26). He would be grieved to know that the statements where he addressed problem speaking and unsound teaching have been misunderstood and broadly applied in ways that he never intended.

Paul wanted all Christians to minister and serve one another according to their abilities. His overall theology of ministry, which he applied to all Jesus-followers, was: You have a gift; use it to build up others in the Lord. Paul was not a misogynist. As someone who was passionate about the health and mission of the church, he valued both his male and female ministry colleagues.

Footnotes

1. I acknowledge that a number of New Testament scholars do not believe 1 Timothy, and a few other New Testament letters, were written by the apostle Paul, but by a later author writing in Paul’s name. However, I’m not convinced of their arguments.

2. It’s possible that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 are not Paul’s own words.

3. Honour was greatly prized and competitively sought in the highly stratified Greco-Roman world.

4. I’ve written about Galatians 3:28 here.

5. As Paul’s patron, Phoebe may have sponsored his letter to the Romans as well as delivering it.

6. Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned by name, and always as a couple, in six New Testament verses:

1. Acts 18:2 (where Aquila’s name is first);
2. Acts 18:18 (Priscilla first);
3. Acts 18:26 (Priscilla first in older Greek texts, except for Codex Bezae and later texts influenced by this 5th-century manuscript);
4. Romans 16:3 (Prisca first);
5. 1 Corinthians 16:19 (Aquila first);
6. 2 Timothy 4:19 (Prisca first).

7. For example, Ian Paul, Revelation (Tyndale New Testament Commentary; IVP Academic, 2018), 78. A note on Priscilla and Aquila in the ESV Global Study Bible includes this statement, “On his way back to Antioch, Paul left Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus to establish the church in that city.” (Source: ESV.org)

8. E.E. Ellis has observed, “The designations most often given to Paul’s fellow workers are in descending order of frequency as follows: coworker (synergos), brother (adelphos) [or sister (adelphē)], minister (diakonos) and apostle (apostolos).”
Ellis, “Paul and his Coworkers” in Dictionary of Paul and his Letters, Editors: Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph Martin (InterVarsity Press, 1993), 183.

9. I avoid using the word “deacon” as a translation of diakonos for mid-first-century ministers. The position and roles of deacons in later centuries are not identical with the ministries of mid-first-century diakonoi.

10. For example, Timothy is described as a diakonos of Christ (1 Tim. 4:6); Paul describes himself, and others, as being a diakonos of God (e.g., 2 Cor. 6:4); Phoebe is described as a being a diakonos of a church—a church being a sacred community of “saints” (Rom. 16:1).
I further discuss “agent with a sacred commission” as a meaning of diakonos in my essay, “What did Phoebe’s position and ministry as διάκονος of the church at Cenchrea involve?” in Deacons and Diakonia in Early Christianity: The First Two Centuries, Bart J. Koet, Edwina Murphy and Esko Ryökäs (eds) (Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 91–102.

11. Being a patron of a congregation or a missionary was a vital role taken by women and men in the early church.

12. Paul used “labour” words (verb: kopiaō; noun: kopos) several times in his letters in the context of his own evangelistic and apostolic ministry, and the ministry of others (e.g., Rom. 16:6 and 12; 1 Cor. 15:10; 1 Thess, 3:5; Col. 1:29). In Romans 16, he positively acknowledged the ministry labours of Mary of Rome, Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis.