Galatians 3.28 Part Two

On Tuesday I blogged about Stephen Cottrell's use of Galatians 3.28 in his video supporting the consecration of women as bishops. I looked at he difficulties of translation, and how this suggest that proof-texting of the kind he employs is rather unsafe.

I suspect he knows better, but you can't go through the entire Biblical debate about the role of women in ministry in a short video. But then I'm puzzled about who exactly is the target for this "Enough Waiting" campaign. The worry one might have is that lots of General Synod members haven't actually worked on the Biblical material very hard. Ho hum.

Now, I think a good Biblical case can be made on both sides of this discussion, but I definitely want to challenge the over-reliance there seems to be on Galatians 3.28, as if it simply closes down the argument. It is treated as if it states in simple terms that women are absolutely equal with men in Christianity, end of any discussion. I happen to think that women and men are absolutely equal - hardly controversial - but there is a real debate to be had about whether they are interchangeable without loss in all aspects of the Christian life. Proponents of women's ordination will say they are interchangeable in ordained ministry with gain - the House of Bishops will be enriched by their presence, it is claimed. I'm not so sure it will make any real difference beyond the obvious "equality of opportunity." I don't think parochial ministry has been enriched (or changed much either way for that matter), but maybe that's just me. And perhaps any changes there have been have been more to do with wider changes in society than the occupants of vicarages. But I digress.

What I'm interested in in this post, and the next one, is whether St Paul's letters think that men and women are interchangeable in Christian life without loss. Does he really mean, what Gal. 3.28 appears to say, that in Christ male and female don't exist? This could mean that he believes in some kind of androgyne humanity - male and female really do cease to exist in the baptized because all sexual differentiation is eradicated.

I don't think Paul can mean this, since there seems to be no hint that he thinks Jesus is not a normal human being, as it happens in this case male, even now after his Resurrection. That leaves open the possibility that he thinks there is not male and female, but just male. Again, I don't think that's likely to be what Paul is saying. I would have though it say it explicitly, if that's what he meant. Both these ideas fly in the face of ordinary perceptions, which is why something more explicit would be required.

Instead we get all sorts of passages which make distinctions between men and women in the Christian community, some more controversial than others. 1 Corinthians 7, where he talks about marriage is a case in point. he describes marriage as able to be "in the Lord" (v.39). If it is "in the Lord" then we have the same situation as Gal.3.28 "in Christ," but the fact of marriage assumes male and female for Paul.

So male and female still exist in some sense for Christians. I say "in some sense" advisedly, for it is clear that Gal 3.28 is making an ontological statement. But it's something along the lines of not existing at the level of being part of the Body of Christ, rather than at the level of daily lives. All very complicated and paradoxical. And this doesn't tell us whether having ordained women is something which is right, because we should be working at that Body of Christ level, or not necessarily right because we must work at the level of daily life.

Which brings me around to Bishop Stephen's argument that

if we don’t pass this it would look terrible in the eyes of the world, would hold back our mission, and would also plunge us into years more debate on this issue.

Now, I happen to think that plunging into years more debate on the matter would be a bad thing, since it works against Church unity. That's a good argument for passing the Measure. Of course, it's not clear that it will stop the debate, as we'll then move on to discuss the Code of Practice, and then fight about whether the Code is being properly applied and so on ad nauseam.

But I also think that worrying about looking bad in the eyes of the world is a terribly bad way of making decisions about how we live our faith - and I think Paul would agree with me. the reason I think that is by reading Galatians.

For Galatians is essentially a rant about the Christians of Galatia succumbing to the desire to conform themselves to the community around them, specifically on the issue of circumcision. Paul is furious that they have been led astray by those who would have them conform to Jewish strictures. Whether this is a small group of teachers or pressure from a large body of Jewish Christians is unclear, but the pressure is coming from outside the churches Paul helped found, and it is trying to change them, to make them conform to the expectations and beliefs of others.

Which could look a lot like the way that secular values have come to have such an influence in terms of equality in the Church. If the argument being used in favour of women bishops is that the world expects it, and won't understand if we do it, I think Paul would say "Well, tell the world to [disappear away]!"

Or perhaps no he wouldn't, even if he was in Galatians-rant mood. I think he'd say "Well, tell the world to come and join in with our way of being."

Is that what the Church is doing over women bishops?

Next time: the very difficult case of 1 Timothy 2.15, or why we should conform to the world.

The women bishops debate again: Galatians 3.28 Part One

I stumbled across the piece by Stephen Cottrell (Bishop of Chelmsford, and generally speaking someone I rather like) for the Archbishop of Canterbury's "Enough Waiting" campaign, which is aiming to get the legislation on the consecration of women as bishops through the General Synod meeting in two weeks time.His main point is to expound Galatian 3.28 as one of the

climatic passages [of the Bible] – the one through which we then interpret many others 

Now this verse came up in the discussion group here in College yesterday evening, and I promised to blog about some of what we discussed, since it seemed pretty interesting and challenging stuff. But, as I come to think of it, there's so much here that it probably needs several blogs to go through it in anything like a thorough manner.

So here's the first installment.

Bishop Stephen reads Galatians 3.28:

"There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, for you are all one person in Jesus Christ."

I haven't been able to track down the translation from which he's reading.

[Update 18/6/13: I've just found out that this is the reading of the New English Bible]

Although it's not a bad translation, it's not perfect, so I offer my own, extremely literal translation:

"neither exists Judaean nor Hellene, neither exists slave nor free, not exists male and female; all for you one are in Christ Jesus."

OK, that's pretty much gibberish in English, even if Yoda had been saying it. We need to supply auxiliary verbs, change the double negative construction, use more familiar terms and rearrange some words:

"there does not exist Jew nor Greek, does not exist slave or free, does not exist male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Which just goes to show what a tricky job translation can be!

But what difference does it make? Well I think a few things stand out.

Firstly, the point that "there is no such thing/does not exist" as these three dualities. the Greek word used is stronger than the simple "there is" of the AV(KJV), and also used by NIV; even the "there is no longer" of NRSV doesn't quite get it. So the vast majority of Anglicans hearing or reading this passage won't appreciate what's going on here. There is an ontological claim being made - i.e. a claim about what does and doesn't exist at the level of true reality. This is reinforced by Bishop Stephen's translation saying, reasonably enough in terms of the Greek, "you are all one person" - in reality, there is only one Christian (i.e. Jesus) and our separateness is just an illusion (!).

Now it should be fairly obvious that in the first Christians' and our daily lives, these dualities and our separateness haven't just evaporated. So Paul isn't making a practical point about daily life here, he's talking about deep theological realities. Thus at the level of secular equality between men and women, this verse gives us no help at all - it is irrelevant. But then let's all hope that the Church is trying to be theological, rather than simply playing at gender politics.

What Gal. 3.28 does relate to is the change made by our baptism, as verse 27 makes clear "... for whoever is baptized into Christ has put on Christ..." Opponents of the consecration of women point out that Galatians 3.28 is about our baptismal status, and therefore says nothing about ordination.

But this depends on your view of what ordination is. For the Archbishop of Canterbury, ordained ministry is derived from the fact that all Christians are a "priestly people" by virtue of their baptism. Thus ordination does relate directly to baptism. This view of what ordained ministry is is a common one, and on this reading Gal. 3.28 is applicable to the debate.

On the other hand, it might be held that the priestly role of Christ is derived from being " a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek." ( Heb 5.6 NRSV, cf v.10). Since Melchizedek was not of Israel (Gen.14.18), this priesthood is independent of the priesthood of all believers. Both priesthoods meet in Christ, but they are not identical. On this understanding of ordained ministry, also widely held, Gal. 3.28 is not applicable to the debate.

See how difficult it is to rely on one verse to back up a theological viewpoint? I'm not the first to make this point (see Bishop Tom Wright on this passage) and doubtless won't be the last.

That's before we even get onto the other point which some translations obscure: the transition from "neither...nor" to "not...and" when it comes to "male and female."

Why this should be the case, I honestly don't know. Tom Wright has an explanation which seems to me plausible. I've seen this change given as grounds for believing that this phrase is a later interpolation (though sadly I can't track this down at the moment). I think that's unlikely (although it is odd that male/female occur nowhere else in Galatians), but in any case, it's in the canonical text, and whenever it was written, by whomever, we must not simply take it out. That would be to re-write the Bible to say what we want, rather than letting the Bible change us.

Whatever the explanation for the change, I think it shows that there is rather more going on in this passage than is imagined in the straightforward proof-texting approach of Bishop Stephen and so many others in favour of the consecration of women. The whole of scripture must be read in the light of the whole - this is the Anglican way: Article XX "it is not lawful for the Church to ... expound one place in Scripture, that it be repugnant to another."

Both sides can make arguments from scripture; neither should rely on single verses taken out of context.

To be continued...