Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
I want Jesus. Sorry.
What did Jesus teach on the place of women? And if nothing, why not? Not important? Left the mopping-up duties to Paul?
Again, my sense is that Paul addressed the tumult in the church by pointing to conventions and norms of social behavior. Why should the newly freed Christians become libertines, or up-end social convention? Why did Paul have to write, "Those who stole, steal no more"? Or point out, drunken-ness, or fornication, and reprove such behaviours? Because he was dealing with it: it was coming into the assembly. But that wasn't ever the core of the Christian message. So don't base your "normal church life" on ancient social convention.
Yet 2,000 years later this word is used as leverage to keep others in subjection. Like OBW said, the SBC and/or others could play the same game: Ham's race were supposed to be slaves, or were supposed to be in lesser position. It's in the Bible; it's God's ordination - don't rebel against the divine arrangement.
So Tertullian doesn't cut it, unless you can show me Tertullian sourcing Jesus and not Paul. And did he or Augustine ever explain why Jesus didn't teach on women's place in the social order, church or otherwise? Or did Augustine just quote Paul? If you can't trace your teachings back to Jesus then you're a tape recorder, playing Paul and Tertullian and Augustine, trying to re-create by-gone social conventions, because they once were effective. Show us Jesus teaching this, or at least strongly inferring it. Think, don't just play ministry tapes.
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If you think that Jesus was for gender equality then you would be mistaken. There is nothing in scripture or in early church writings to support that. I could pretend to be a catholic or orthodox at the moment and also highlight that early church fathers who were disciples of the disciples themselves did not share much of a different view to the ones I have already quoted.
Jesus's lack of teaching on the matter more or less proves that he upheld the status quo at the time. He addressed issues of hypocrisy, adultery, money, prostitution, etc ,but never once said that women are now equal to men.
Consider the following examples of how Jesus was not for gender equality:
Jesus only hired males for his 12 disciples, never once giving a woman the chance to rule over the 12 tribes of Israel or sit at his right or left hand side in the kingdom.
Scripture shows that women served Jesus and the disciples while they reclined at tables. The male/female roles are clear - women subservient to men.
He asked a woman to get him a drink in John 4:7. He did not bother to get it himself, he expected to be waited upon by the woman, who had to lift a heavy bucket of water from the well I would imagine. Showing the role of women in servitude and submission to men.