Jesus sought out a despised Samaritan woman, and sent her to preach. Jesus gave the "children's bread" (healing for the Jews) to a woman of Canaan.
In
his letter to the Galatians, Paul included women but not barbarians (largely unconquered
or uncivilized peoples) in his list of equal persons (ex., the Germanic peoples
were considered barbarians, along with some primitive tribes within the Roman
Empire).
In his letter to the Colossians, he included barbarians but not women.
But his message is clear and inclusive in both passages, that, in Christ, all humans are functionally
equal, not simply equal in essence or value. During the days of slavery and Jim
Crow, black people were considered functionally inferior.
Today, truly God-fearing
people understand how abhorrent such ideas are. Paul understood the concept of human
equality as soon as he was converted, but he also understood that the idea would
be foreign and likely offensive to the early Church. He well knew that voicing
the concept would potentially cause dissension within the churches, and
could cause many new converts to stumble and walk away from Christianity altogether.
He obviously did not feel the threat of disunity or reduction of church membership
good enough reasons for compromising on what was right. Yet those are the very reasons
cited by some egalitarian writers as reasons to bar women from certain leadership
positions in churches.
For Paul to elevate barbarians, slaves, and women to
equal status with Jews, citizens, and men, was radical. In Paul’s culture,
barbarians had no standing. Their legal status was barely above that of slaves.
They had no real rights, and were accorded little to no respect. Women in Athens
Greece (the Greek culture of Rome) were compared to barbarians as good reasons
for their inferior legal and social status.
Both Jesus revolutionary example and Paul’s radical teaching, exposed
racism and sexism as illegitimate paradigms.
No comments:
Post a Comment