Fallacy # 6 Women Elders
Schreiner tries to deny the existence of women elders in the Bible, but by doing so, he unwittingly proves their existence.
Find it in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Schreiner: p 220
Madigan and Osiek wrote, “While synods and councils, both East and West, repeatedly condemned the practice of women prebyters, the epigraphical evidence suggest their ongoing existence, even if in small numbers.”[1] Since their disappearance, there has been a great effort to equate woman elders with widows, the widows with deaconesses and the deaconesses with lay-women without an official function to deny the existence of women officeholders in the church.
Do not
rebuke an older man (presbuteros)
harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men (neoterous) as brothers, older women (presbytera) as mothers and younger women
(neoteras) as sisters, with absolute
purity. (NIV)
The combination of presbytero and neos found in 1 Timothy 5:1-2 appears also in 1 Peter 5:5.
Young men (neoteroi), in the same way be submissive to those who are older (presbuteros). All of you, clothe
yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the
proud but gives grace to the humble."
The context of 1 Peter 5 speaks of elders and laity (younger
in faith, not age). Similarly, in Titus 2, the word for the younger men and
women is neos. Incidentally, Madigan
and Osiek write that presbytis and presbytera are two forms which have more
or less the same meaning.[3]
Gregory the Great, the Bishop of Rome wrote a letter to Januarius, Bishop of Calaris, in which he castigated him for his behavior.
The
preacher of Almighty God, Paul the apostle, says, Rebuke not an elder (1 Tim. v. 1).
But this rule of his is to be observed in cases where the fault of an elder
does not draw through his example the hearts of the younger into ruin. But,
when an elder sets an example to the young for their ruin, he is to be smitten
with severe rebuke. For it is written, Ye
are all a snare to the young. And again the prophet says, The sinner being an hundred years old is
accursed. (Selected Epistles, Book IX, Epistle I)
Clement of Alexandria called laity “the young.”[4] Also Matthew Henry recognized that Paul was
writing about office holding elders.”[5]
In the Constitutions
of the Holy Apostles (fourth century) we find a group of women who are defined
as “elder women.” They cannot be part of laity, for they are named after the
virgins and widows.
When
thou callest an assembly of the Church as one that is the commander of a great
ship, appoint the assemblies to be made with all possible skill, charging the
deacons as mariners to prepare places for the brethren as for passengers, with
all due care and decency. And first, let the building be long, with its head to
the east, with its vestries on both sides at the east end, and so it will be
like a ship. In the middle let the bishop’s throne be placed, and on each side
of him let the presbytery sit down; and let the deacons stand near at hand, in
close and small girt garments, for they are like the mariners and managers of
the ship: with regard to these, let the laity sit on the other side, with all
quietness and good order. And let the women sit by themselves, they also
keeping silence. … In the next place, let the presbyters one by one, not all
together, exhort the people, and the bishop in the last place, as being the
commander. Let the porters stand at the entries of the men, and observe them. Let the deaconesses also stand at those of
the women, like shipmen. For the same description and pattern was both in
the tabernacle of the testimony and in the temple of God.....
Let the young persons sit by themselves, if there be a place for them; if not,
let them stand upright. But let those
that are already stricken in years sit in order. For the children which
stand, let their fathers and mothers take them to them. Let the younger women
also sit by themselves, if there be a place for them; but if there be not, let
them stand behind the women. Let those women which are married, and have
children, be placed by themselves; but let the
virgins, and the widows, and the elder women, stand or sit before all the rest; and let the deacon be the
disposer of the places, that every one of those that comes in may go to his
proper place, and may not sit at the entrance.[6]
By the time
the constitution was written, women were segregated from men in the church, but
they had not yet been excluded from serving as deacons and elders. However, they
were no longer allowed near the altar, for by the fourth century the leadership
model of the Church had changed from the domestic overseer in the private home
to the monarchial bishop who presided in God’s stead over a public assembly.
The bishop was seated on a raised dais from which he governed the Church[7]
and it was from this seat that Chrysostom wanted to exclude women.
In what
sense then does he say, “I suffer not a woman to teach?” He means to hinder her from publicly coming
forward, and from the seat on the bema, not from the word of teaching. Since if
this were the case, how would he have said to the woman that had an unbelieving
husband, “How knowest thou, O woman, if thou shalt save thy husband?” Or how
came he to suffer her to admonish children, when he says, but “she shall be saved
by child-bearing if they continue in faith, and charity, and holiness, with
sobriety?” How came Priscilla to instruct even Apollos? It was not then to cut
in sunder private conversing for advantage that he said this, but that before
all, and which it was the teacher’s duty to give in the public assembly; or
again, in case the husband be believing and thoroughly furnished, able also to
instruct her. When she is the wiser, then he does not forbid her teaching and
improving him.[8]
[1] Ibid., 163.
[2] Ibid., 220.
[3] Madigan and Osiek,
171. Epiphanius attempted to deny the existence of women elders by
differentiating between presbytidas
(“elderess”) and presbyeridas (“presbyteress”),
and by claiming the latter had never existed in the church. Yet, Canon 11 of
the Synod of Laodicea used the word presbytides
for women presiders who had an official function (Eisen, 119, 121).
[4] “Let us therefore respect those who are over us, and
reverence the elders; let us honour the young, and let us teach the discipline
of God (Stromata, Book IV, XVII).
[5] “To be very tender in rebuking elders-elders in
age, elders by office” (1 Tim 5:1,” Matthew
Henry's Commentary on the Whole
Bible: New Modern Edition).
[6] Constitutions of
the Holy Apostles, Book II, Sec. VII. On Assembling in the Church.
[7] Torjesen, 157.
[8] Homilies on Romans, Homily XXXI.
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