The Argument from Tradition
regarding men-only in leadership
The Argument: “For thousands of years, churches have followed a men-only model of church leadership. Many prominent and foundational church fathers, missionaries, leaders, theologians, and saints have followed men-only models of church leadership. Do we think all of them got it wrong? It seems highly unlikely that they were all deceived, and that suddenly now, when our culture is trying to turn men into women and women into men, we’ve discovered that God actually intends men and women to lead together in churches.”
Counterargument 1: The assumption that all prominent and foundational church fathers, missionaries, theologians, and saints have agreed upon and practiced men-only church leadership is false. A closer look at various missionaries, church fathers, leaders, theologians, and saints will show that their opinions on this matter varied. Some supported women in leadership. Some deferred to other’s views. Some were silent. Some seemed honestly confused.
Counterargument 2: Of those early foundational theologians who wrote about the exclusion of women in church leadership, many if not most of their explanations are speculative, unsound, or based on stereotypes or quasi-science. (This is based on my limited readings of early church theologians like Aquinas, Assisi, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, etc.)*
Counterargument 3: While Christianity will always be counter-cultural in some ways, it is unrealistic to expect the church to be unaffected by cultural changes. For example, when Christianity was legalized and became a prominent religion, the church had to come to a new understanding of the Emperor’s authority in relationship to the Pope’s authority. When countries have overthrown their governments, that country’s church goes through a rethinking of its leadership as well. When the grounds for divorce changed in the U.S., the church too changed its thinking about what they believed Jesus meant when he said he didn’t allow divorce except for adultery. There was a time when churches wouldn’t allow a homosexual to darken their doorway, but now that our culture acknowledges that lifestyle as acceptable, churches have welcomed the sinner while learning how to hate the sin.
Complete agreement with the culture probably won’t occur, but changes in how the church is run are expected. As our culture currently reexamines how women may function in the government and workplace, it makes sense for churches to do the same. We may not come to the same conclusions as our culture, but historically, the result of such re-examinations has led the church to understand scripture better
*Oddly enough while writing these blogs, I came across C.S. Lewis’s take on Paul’s 1 Corinthians 11:3. Lewis said, “And it seems to me a quite clear picture; we are to think of some original divine virtue passing downwards from rung to rung of a hierarchical ladder, and the mode in which each lower rung receives it is, quite frankly, imitation.” (C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections. William B. Eerdmans Publishing co., 1980. Pg. 5)
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Very thought provoking