Commentary: What about Phoebe? When Scripture “contradicts” Scripture, Part 2

  |  Source: Orthopistis

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In part 1, I discussed some arguments against female ordination and the texts most often cited in support—1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2.

I then discussed Baptist scholar E. Earle Ellis’s contextual reading of these passages as one of several possible readings that do not see these texts as universal mandates for the churches.

Now we can ask, “What about Phoebe?”

Romans 16

In the final chapter of Romans (16:1-2), Paul introduces Phoebe to the Roman church. She is called a deacon (transliterated) or servant (translated) of Cenchreae.

Baptist churches that see “deacon” as an office, like J.D. Greear’s church, ordain women as deacons. Others, reading “servant,” do not. This divergent practice among Baptist churches based on Romans 16:1 is why female deacons were not prohibited in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Phoebe, however, was more than a deacon.

The only reason Phoebe needed an introduction to the Roman church was she was physically standing before them as the letter was first read. Phoebe was Paul’s letter carrier to Rome.

As Baptist scholar E. Randolph Richards notes in Paul and First-Century Letter Writing, Paul did not consider the role of letter carrier lightly. Whether it was Timothy, Titus or Tychicus, the letter carrier was Paul’s envoy to the church.

Before leaving, the letter carrier was trained in the art of performing the letter before the community—that is, reading it aloud with certain rhetorical flourishes for persuasive emphasis and dramatic effect. Paul expected the letter carrier, after reading the letter aloud, to answer congregational questions about Paul’s meaning and to address situations, both known and unbeknown to Paul.


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I will repeat: Phoebe was the letter carrier to the Romans. Do you see the issue this raises?

She taught the Scriptures to the entire congregation—both the women and the men. She protected the church from false teachings and used her judgment in theological and doctrinal matters while explaining the letter and working to resolve the disputes between Jewish and Gentile communities. These are all actions Greear says women do not do in Scripture, what he labels “special teaching” or “elder teaching.”

The biblical arc

What, then, are we to do when one Scripture (Romans 16:1-2) seems to contradict another Scripture (1 Timothy 2:12-14)?

Many would say we must listen to the arc of the entire biblical narrative. What is the trajectory of the biblical witness? Toward what direction does it point that would allow continued—yet faithful—movement beyond the written words of any specific passage?

After all, according to Baptist theologian E.Y. Mullins, in The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression, the Bible didn’t create the community. The Bible came into being within the community, a community that continues to grow and develop beyond the writings of the Bible, but always under its direction.

Phoebe demonstrates that Paul himself allowed exceptions to his generalized prohibitive statement about women being quiet in church. Phoebe—as well as Priscilla, Mary Magdalene and others—began the trajectory that ultimately would point toward the reality that men and women are “all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Challenging the arc

Al Mohler seems to reject such a reading of the Bible. He asserts, “the Holy Scriptures have not changed and cannot change.”

Yet in the Bible itself we see change as the community grows in its understanding. For example, the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:29) tells Gentiles to avoid meat offered to idols, but Paul later allows exceptions within nonreligious contexts (1 Corinthians 10:25-27).

Unless you accept the premise that the biblical narrative can create an arc beyond itself, Baptists would struggle for a fully formed doctrine of the sanctity of the unborn. There is not a specific text regarding abortion. Instead, the sanctity of the unborn is argued as the logical conclusion to a biblical arc of passages affirming the sanctity of life of the born alongside the sacred mystery of God’s work in the womb.

Mohler labels attempts to interpret 1 Corinthians 14 or 1 Timothy 2 within a textual or historical context as “revisionist arguments” and “biblical subversion.” Would he condemn Martin Luther’s new understanding of justification from a re-reading of Galatians and Romans, or applaud its launching of the Reformation?

Mohler also appeals to the long history of Christian tradition as evidence against pastoral ordination of women. Would he apply this also to the Anabaptist and Baptist rejection of infant baptism after a millennium of tradition?

As Luther, Anabaptists and Baptists discovered ways we misread Scripture in the past, the churches of the Reformation must always be the churches which are reforming as we continue to read the God-breathed Scriptures within the body of Christ through the empowering work of the Sprit.

Matters of interpretation

One final question: Why do Greear and Mohler take Paul literally, that a woman can never teach or have authority over a man (1 Timothy 2:12), yet they do not take the next injunction literally, that women are saved through childbearing (1 Timothy 2:15)?

They certainly do not believe single and barren women cannot be saved. You see, we all pick and choose what we think is “plain” and what “requires” interpretation. We foreground some texts, allowing other texts to recede into the background, when in reality all Scripture must be interpreted.

It is understandable Greear and Mohler look at Scripture and history and believe women should not hold the role of pastor. It is not acceptable, however, to assert automatically that those who come to a different position are not committed to the authority of the Bible.

Phoebe makes this issue complicated. The biblical position is not as clear as some might think.

One thing the New Testament is not ambiguous about, however, is the importance of seeking unity within the body of Christ. We should all be very careful about inciting division between two groups who both seek to honor Christ and to be led by his Spirit, just because each arrives at a different understanding of the Scripture they both affirm as divinely inspired.

Jay Givens is professor of theological studies and director of the Online Christian Studies Program at Wayland Baptist University.


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