Hermeneutics: On How Hard Hermeneutics Is

It’s an interesting fact that we insist that a church isn’t “scripturally organized” if it has no deacons, even though the scriptures do not tell us what the deacons are supposed to do — at least not very clearly.

But we don’t bother to honor the qualifications list of 1 Timothy 5 respecting enrolled widows, which is very similar to the lists regarding elders and deacons. Indeed, many today would brand a church with female deacons damned for liberalism even though many congregations of the early church had female deacons and the fathers of the Restoration Movement approved deaconesses! Why the reversal?

(1Ti 5:9-10 ESV)  9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, 10 and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work.

“Wife of one husband” in v. 9 is sure a lot like “husband of one wife,” isn’t it?

And we often build our theology of church organization and worship (ecclessiology) on the early church fathers, and many of the early churches had an order of widows.

Bobby Valentine has recently posted a marvelous article on female deacons in the Restoration Movement. Bobby writes,

Isaac Errett was the inheritor of the mantle of Alexander Campbell and editor of the Christian Standard. In 1873 he had opportunity to address texts in 1 Timothy (5:9ff) in this manner,

“The qualifications evidently point to a ministry involving the exercise of hospitatlity, the are of the afflicted, the training of children, and the instruction of younger women in the duties of life. Taking this as referring to deaconesses – and this seems to us the most reasonable interpretation – the text throws more light ont he duties of their ministry than any other in the New Testament. It does not follow that all deaconesses were necessarily widows but that among the widow supported by the church those possessing qualifications could be profitably employed in this office”

(“Deaconesses,” CS [7 June 1873], 188)

His article clearly demonstrates that the early Restoration Movement leaders accepted the idea of female deacons and often considered 1 Timothy 5:9-10 to give a qualifications list. This is consistent with the early church fathers. But the practice entirely died out. Why?

Most of the early Restoration Movement leaders approved female deacons. The early church had female deacons. And yet it’s now unthinkable, a sign of liberalism run amok, even damnable to have female deacons? Why?

I can’t prove this, but I have a theory. In the late 19th Century, the states passed a series of laws giving women the right to own property and sign contracts. One article explains,

In colonial times, law generally followed that of the mother country, England (or in some parts of what later became the United States, France or Spain). In the early years of the United States, following British law, women’s property was under control of their husbands, with states gradually giving women limited property rights. By 1900 every state had given married women substantial control over their property.

In the early 20th Century, the Women’s Suffrage Movement resulted in the right to vote for women. And so these were times, much like the Equal Rights Amendment era of more recent years, when women sought greater rights and when conservative institutions — like many churches — reacted negatively.

An article printed in The Apostolic Guide on July 2, 1886 by A. R. Terrell under the heading, “Should Women Speak in Public?” gives a sense of the reactionary mood of many in the church —

From my earliest boyhood, I have had a very exalted opinion of women, and I do hope and pray that she will be no improprieties in the future which will change that opinion. There has always appeared to be about her a sweetness and delicacy of soul which seemed to lift her far above man in the roughness and coarseness of his nature. For this reason and for Bible reasons I abominate the whole modern heresy of “women’s rights” and everything that squints that way. A female politician makes my flesh crawl. Women’s suffrage is nauseating. Even to think of a woman in the pulpit or on the lecture rostrum is disagreeable to me, for women’s sake and for God’s sake. In the same line of sentiment I disapprove of a woman conducting prayer where there are mixed audiences. I never heard but two women lecture and I trust it will never be my displeasure to hear another. The whole thing is disgusting o me, whether the lecture is delivered in behalf of temperance, politics or religion.

For a delicate refined woman to do the work of one of our politicians or preachers would be a physical impossibility. That there are women brave enough, and energetic enough, to try to do the work of men, I do not for a moment doubt. But that they are able to undergo the trials, the hardships, and the difficulties of man, I can’t believe. Further they must be out in all sorts of weather, and speak from once to twice a day. For women to attempt to do the work of these servants of man and God would result in her death. But, whenever you find a woman who may endure the hardships of man, you may set it down that she is a poor excuse of a woman.

The women who exert almost divine influence over all around them are those sweet, chaste, modest, refined unassuming creatures who do not appear to be trying to influence anyone. I will admit all the rights that such a woman claims–all that I myself possess–if she will let me alone, and keep her distance from me.

(Quoted in this article.) So the best I can figure, our nearly uniform acceptance of women as female deacons (“deaconess” wasn’t coined as a term until well after the New Testament was written) died in reaction to the American political scene. To allow women to hold an office of service would appear to approve their national agenda of seeking the power to own land, contract, and vote, and so many men pushed back in one area where they remained utterly in charge: the church.

I’m old enough to remember how condescending we were toward women members only 30 and 40 years ago. Many of our preachers happily defended denying them authority and the ability to teach by their gullibility! Burton Coffman, who is normally a very sensible commentator, in a note captioned “On the Deceivableness of Women,” states,

It is a gross mistake to view the natural capacity of women for being deceived as in any manner whatever a reflection upon womankind. It is positively her most adorable characteristic. …

But are there not historical examples of strong-willed, powerful women, impossible to deceive, who now and again have held the rod of empire or the affairs of state with great ability? Yes, indeed! But exceptions do not make the rule. Wherever such leadership exists in women, it is still a masculine trait. … Nature produces a two-headed calf now and then, but that is not the rule.

Commentary of 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus & Philemon (1978), page 172. If you read the literature we wrote from about 1980 back to about 1890, you find much the same attitude reflected by many respected preachers, published in our respected publications. These were mainstream views.

But I don’t think they come from the Bible. I think they come from reaction against women seeking greater civil rights — to contract, to own property, and to vote — a very strange place for Christian men to find their principles. It was not conscious, but as women were demeaned to further a political agenda, the low view of women made it into our theology.

Now, there are some lessons to be gained from our history —

1. Our theology doesn’t always come from the Bible. Sometimes it comes from the surrounding culture. Sometimes it comes from reacting against our surrounding culture. The goal isn’t to be counter-cultural — it’s be true to Jesus

We read our cultural (or anti-cultural) views into the Scriptures, often resulting in highly anti-Christian views being read into the text. (Our views on race during the 20th Century would be another not-so-shiny example. If you disagree with my reading of history regarding women, justify the church’s attitude toward blacks in the 1950s and 1960s. The prevailing racism of the Churches of Christ was utterly contrary to the gospel and yet that thinking dominated our behavior and discourse.)

2. Once worldly views slip into our theology, our justifications for those views don’t go away easily. Even today, when most would admit that racial segregation is anti-gospel, we have segregated churches and greatly fear to merge chuches. Someone might lose power. Someone might not get his choice of hymns. Change is hard. Old habits don’t break easily. Old thought habits are especially hard to break.

3. Objectivity is therefore very, very hard to come by. Those who claim to be entirely objective in their reading of the text may be at the greatest risk of error as their claim keeps them from having the humility to check their conclusions carefully.

4. To come closer to true objectivity, we have to discipline ourselves to check our work against others. This means not merely investigating the views of our own tribe, but the views of others — especially those who wrote and thought at different times and thus in different cultures. If you want to learn transcultural principles, it helps to see what the Scriptures look like to other cultures.

But even then, we still have to do the hard work of hermeneutics. And it is hard work. And we have to seek a hermeneutic that we can apply consistently, and have the courage to do so. And the greatest courage — and the greatest love — for many is the willingness to admit being wrong.

We in the Churches of Christ have a culture of debate, where the goal is to defeat the opponent, rather than to seek truth. We have the truth, and so our opponent is wrong, and so our goal is victory.

A better culture would be one of humility — before God, before the text, and before those we disagree with. We should come to the debate willing to admit that we’ve been wrong because the goal is to find the truth in community, to seek truth together.

Read the comments section. How often does reader 1 respond to reader 2 by saying, “Thanks for that insight. I stand corrected.” No, normally, when we can’t answer, rather than changing our views or, better yet, saying “thank you,” we withdraw from the discussion, disappear for a few days, lick our wounds, and then return later to make the same refuted arguments all over again.

It’s not healthy. And it’s tough. I hate it when I have to take down a post and re-write it because I was wr . r. r. r. ong. It’s hard to say. It’s harder to type. But the best hermeneutics come from those willing to be shown wrong.

Sadly, in a denomination that often suffers from a perpetual fear of damnation, members are drawn to the bombastic, confident preacher, because they desperately wish they shared his confidence. They revel in his assurance — and wish they could be as assured. And so another result of legalism is not only to impose unnecessary fear on the members but to empower the arrogant.

May God help us all.

Am I pushing for an order of widows? No. Not exactly. Well, yes. Actually, I think every church should have an order of retirees — who work fulltime in the Kingdom using their wisdom and experience to help God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Do I think the qualifications list in 1 Timothy 5 should define the order? No. Because most of our retirees don’t need to be supported, unlike First Century widows. And we need to include men. And married folk, too. We are living longer. Roman men didn’t worry much about retiring because few lived long enough to retire.

We need a culture of service — where church work is not considered a burden to be escaped but an opportunity to be treasured. After all, we’ll be serving God in heaven (Rev. 22:3). If we don’t like serving God, heaven is going to be hell for us.

You see, I think this is the direction of God’s redemptive work in the church. I think widows were only the beginning. As society prospers and people live longer, the application of the principle changes and becomes broader. The command is redefined in terms of our current culture. But the principle given by God stays the same.

About Jay F Guin

My name is Jay Guin, and I’m a retired elder. I wrote The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace about 18 years ago. I’ve spoken at the Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU, Harding, and Tulsa lectureships and at ElderLink. My wife’s name is Denise, and I have four sons, Chris, Jonathan, Tyler, and Philip. I have two grandchildren. And I practice law.
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15 Responses to Hermeneutics: On How Hard Hermeneutics Is

  1. Price says:

    When women can become role models for the younger women and girls, the church will grow stronger.. If the infant church found a way to grace their service with recognition then it seems only reasonable that a mature church could do likewise… Good article… IMHO..;)

  2. Alan says:

    Jay wrote:

    Am I pushing for an order of widows? No. Not exactly. Well, yes. Actually, I think every church should have an order of retirees — who work fulltime in the Kingdom using their wisdom and experience to help God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

    We have some common ground here.

    Our church has an “empty nest” family group, made up of older couples whose children have grown up and left home. Among many other ways they serve, these couples have adopted our single mom’s (yes we have quite a few) so that the single mom’s children have surrogate “grandparents” in the church. The boys have a male figure in the family, a spiritual grandfather. The empty nest couple takes the family under their wing, helping with parenting and acting in every way like good grandparents do. It’s a marvelous thing to watch.

    Most of the early Restoration Movement leaders approved female deacons. The early church had female deacons. And yet it’s now unthinkable, a sign of liberalism run amok, even damnable to have female deacons? Why?

    Your theory is as good as any I can offer. Personally I don’t have an objection to appointing a woman to serve as a deacon.

    I’m still on the fence about 1 Tim 5:9-10 being the qualifications for a deaconess. I lean a little more toward that passage being instructions to our benevolence ministry about who qualifies for ongoing financial assistance. That doesn’t make me less inclined to accept the idea of deaconesses.

  3. Anne says:

    “The early church had female deacons.” –are you talking of the churches in the Bible or from history of churches later than the era the Bible was written?

  4. Charles McLean says:

    Terrell’s reasoning is so reflective of what I have heard among brethren over the years on a variety of subjects as to be a bit frightening.

    “It is impossible for a woman to do a man’s work, specifically a preacher’s work.”
    “Well, I can’t believe she could do it, anyway.”
    “If she tried to do it, it would kill her.”
    “And if she did try and it DIDN’T kill her, then she’s not much of a woman.”

    Would that this kind of muddle-headed thinking had died out with Brother Terrell’s generation, but alas, it survives today. And people still listen to such specious reasoning about other topics –such as, say, spiritual gifts– and then say, “You know, that makes sense!” Arghh.

  5. Charles McLean says:

    Oh, and reading this bit of drivel from Coffman reminds me that commentators are not objective and free of cultural bias– none of us are. One cannot simply segregate such bone-headed comments from the overall mindset of the commentator. While this sort of thinking certainly does not disqualify him from having good insights on scripture, it points out the cultural lenses through which he sees the world… and that “world” includes the scriptures.

    The myth of some sort of objectivity about the scripture is just that. This is one reason we need one another to spur and challenge and sharpen our thinking. If we could SEE the beam in our own eye, we would have removed it.

  6. Anne,

    The answer to your question is that both the church in the Bible and the church after the end of the New Testament had female deacons or “widows” – which, as Alexander pointed out in a comment to a previous post came to include both unmarried men and virgins (morphing into the unmarried clergy and orders of nuns of Catholicism over the centuries).

    In Romans 16:1-2, Phoebe is named as a servant of the church in Cenchrea, which is near Corinth and as a “patron” (or helper, usually financial) of many. Paul instructed the church in Rome, not only to welcome her warmly, but also to help her in whatever she might need from them. The word used in v. 1 for servant is the same word sometimes rendered as deacon. It is not even a feminine form of deacon. It is the same form used, for example, in Philippians 1:1 where Paul addresses “the overseers [sometimes translated bishops] and deacons.”

    You might enjoy reading more about Phoebe here.

    Jerry

  7. Anne says:

    Yeah I’ve heard the Phoebe deaconess before and not convinced that we are talking of a leadership deacon or servant. I haven’t been able to be on here much lately and have missed most of the hermeneutic posts–So now the widows spoken of are deacons?? Did I miss something?

  8. JC says:

    Amen, brother Jay. Thank you for illuminating a topic long ignored. As with so many of your posts, I appreciate your willingness to address our culture of “rightness” over scriptural honesty. We unfortunately suffer from many years of culture and political shaping of the transformative power of the gospel. We must be a church of transformation – transforming people, transforming church community, and transforming public community. Please continue to challenge our thoughts and pracrices. As a local church shepherd, I believe we must provide a better model for our children and disciples-to-be to base the church of tomorrow. Pushing outside the walls of our buildings and impacting our communities with the “original gospel” free of the pollution of the past centuries of religion and cultural practices. Keep writing!

  9. Jay Guin says:

    Anne,

    It’s hotly disputed whether the First Century churches had female deacons. Many very conservative scholars think so. Many do not. It should not be seen as a conservative/liberal issue.

    However, it’s unquestionably true that there were female deacons in the centuries that followed. The female-deacon texts are as old as the a cappella music texts.

  10. Jay Guin says:

    Anne,

    The early Christians — after the apostolic age — some of them concluded that the widows were deaconesses. Many very ancient churches had orders of widows who were considered deaconesses. You’ll find the evidence in a comment Alexander helpfully posted. Their role is unclear but we do know that many (all?) were assigned to help in the baptism of women.

  11. Rose Marie says:

    For six years I have been leading a periodic class that was instituted with the idea that the older women should teach the younger. The first issue that we explored was the different ways that differing denominations understand and support the ministry of women. I did not state my own preference. I actually have not defined my exact thinking on this subject. It is just too easy to read that verse that states that women should be silent and then to quit thinking.

    However, that is not my purpose in posting this comment. My observations over the past six years is that younger women just are not too interested in classes for women. They are interested in teaching small children, VBS, and participating in service opportunities and some attend the co-ed classes on most Sunday mornings. I could accept the blame for their non-interest, I suppose. But we have had guest speakers and other women teach. I wish I were not saying this, but it seems that they are not interested in the wisdom that comes from older women unless it is targeted to a specific non-spiritual ministry. For instance, child education, health issues, or saving unborn babies.

    I will say that the older women of the church continue to support these classes, and even seem to be blossoming in their interest and their knowledge. Anybody else got any wisdom on this subject?

  12. abasnar says:

    … a specific non-spiritual ministry. For instance, child education, …

    Why should this be non-spiritual? The idea of having older women teaching younger women comes from Paul’s letter to Titus, and that’s part ofthe “curriculum”:

    Tit 2:3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,
    Tit 2:4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,
    Tit 2:5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

    Discussions on the role of women in ministry among other denominations is tiresome and I can understand (and even hope) that sisters are more interested in the topics Paul lists to be trained in.

    Alexander

  13. Charles McLean says:

    Rose Marie, I don’t think Paul was envisioning “classes for younger women”. (It’s pretty common for us to take scripture and try to plug it directly into our own cultural customs, and it’s not always effective.) I don’t think the curriculum of which Paul spoke really fits Sunday school at all. As a parallel, it is not likely that you would get much interest from kids if you offer to teach them soccer inside a classroom. As to young women having “interest”, the shoe should really be on the other foot, IMO. Paul is trying to get older women to take an interest in younger women. If our interest is in getting the younger women to attend a class, that was never the point. I remember years ago being unable to park in my own driveway many days because there were younger women in my home, befriended by my wife who was “teaching” them by living her life with slightly younger women in tow. She was interested in them as sisters, and they learned from her.

  14. Charles McLean says:

    Rose Marie, it sounds as if those young women are asking you for just what Paul was asking for. If you are interested in helping a young woman learn to train her children, attend to her health and her family’s health, and support her efforts to protect the unborn, then she may develop an interest in your “spiritual” wisdom. If you don’t have that level of interest in her life where she is, why would you expect her to pursue you for other wisdom?

    If, in your SS classes, you have strong Biblical or spiritual content, perhaps the elders should open up such useful classes to everyone and not segregate it. Your post suggests not so much that anyone is doing anything “wrong”, but rather that there is a mismatch between what you want to teach and who is being invited to the class.

  15. Alabama John says:

    Rose Marie,
    You would get even more participation if you also shared recipes. Sadly, that is what many younger women see the older women as good for.

    Many of the younger generation see us, men and women as outdated in high tech and todays living as well.

    Try showing the importance of the Bible women starting first with those at Jesus’s tomb.
    A series on the importance, faith, love, and obedience of Bible women would sure get interest up.
    Behind every successful man, there is or was a great woman. If any of us had to make a list of those we really believed made heaven for sure, women would outnumber men by a large margin.
    Self esteem in religion among women is badly needed.
    Go for it!

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