29. Early Christianity Elevated Women's Dignity Outside of Priesthood

An Argument Against Priestesses

As I reflect over what I have written you, I cannot extract from my memory that you would allow Jesus the commission of even "lesser" evils. Jesus was not one to permit the constraints of time and place to distort his proclamation of the Gospel and the new dispensation. Surprisingly, the early Church would take after her Master. Having not long ago celebrated the Epiphany, and the revelation of the great light of salvation to the Gentiles, it might be good for us to ponder their faith and the solemn trust given them.

Their avoidance of priestesses, this is the true word, was not simply omission, but calculated avoidance. Since the Church was very much open to other aspects in the Hellinization process, this avoidance is singularly remarkable. With the multiplication of ministries in the early Church and the functioning of the holy widows and virgins (deaconesses); are we to conclude that it never occurred to women to petition for priesthood? No this seems far fetched. Indeed, given the proliferation of goddess worship and their accompanying priestesses, such a notion was probably more apparent to them than to ourselves. The worship of the Mother Goddess had even taken place in Palestine, according to ancient Syrian records. It is likely that a number of Jezebel's pagan prophets were priestesses for the goddess Asherah. They probably had their throats cut alongside male counterparts when Elijah discredited their sacrifice. Jeremiah, Hosea, and Amos encountered priestesses as well. The substitution of baptism for circumcision, eliminated gender requirements for both those being initiated and for the ministering attendants, (as you yourself mentioned), why is it then that Christians in the Greek and Roman world continued to avoid their use? St. Paul wrote that in Christ there was neither male nor female; but still, no women became priests. They were given roles to play, but forbidden the priesthood. Remember too that these early Christian women were not shy fragile things. Some of them would become holy martyrs for the faith. Athenagoras, himself an archbishop of the Church, remarked: "Our poor Lord did not include in His cabinet of twelve any of those women who contributed with their substance for His sustenance." Well, neither did his later Greek adherents.

I suspect that arguments for the exclusion of women from priesthood seemed too obvious in the early Church to even be mentioned. There is really no clear written testimony until the fourth century. The silence of the New Testament cannot be interpreted as consent on this matter. The community was not prejudicial against the institution of women priests for cultural reasons, indeed, there were many enticements. The only conclusion we are really left with is that the reasons against it were recognizably theological. They saw the male-only priesthood as a mandate from Christ. The situation remains unchanged.