Just in time for an October post. It’s gonna be a difficult post (aren’t they all?), but an important one. As always, it’s going to be way too fast and way too light on the details.
Gender roles--what are they? The woman stays at home and cooks and the man makes the money? Well. Not exactly. I think these sorts of social arrangements are a consequence of deeper, important characteristics in the two genders. I don’t think that it’s wrong for a woman to work outside of the home, or for a man to help in the rearing of children. Nevertheless, I do think there’s something to be taken from the traditional arrangement. How could such an arrangement have arisen in the first place, and why?
What I mean by these deeper, important characteristics largely, though not exclusively, reduces to procreation. Procreation puts a much higher strain on a woman than on a man, and social roles flow out of this restraint. Pregnancy, birth, and nursing are demanding roles that call on women more than on men. Gender roles flow out of this more basic biological reality.
Hold on, though. Not all women have babies, and many have only a single child. A single child can definitely put strain on a woman, but not so much so that it should have repercussions extending to more general social roles, right?
I have a two-part response to the above line of reasoning: I think almost all people should marry, and I think that contraception is immoral. A married couple should always be open to the possibility of life. This will naturally lead to an increase in offspring, increasing the social cost on women. Gender roles flow from these facts.
I think this captures the general point. I think that, more broadly, women and men are designed in such a way to support this arrangement. Women are often more intrigued by a prospect's financial security, for instance. Men are more interested in beauty. These are general trends that are reflective of deeper psychological designs, and these psychological designs also underlie social norms to an extent.
One more point. I’ve argued only for vague gender roles with fuzzy lines. Women can still work and men can still raise children. But the Bible gives us a clear and definite prohibition on the possibility of female pastors. No fuzziness there. Can we possibly justify such a definite prohibition?
Sure. If God says so, then we should follow it. Presumably there’s nothing inherently wrong with eating shellfish (it’s now permitted under the New Covenant), yet God had prohibited it under the Old Covenant. It became wrong to eat shellfish under pain of violating a commandment of God. God’s command is enough.
But if we can have more than “Because God says so,” then presumably we should both want and try for it. While I won’t here try to provide reasons for why God would prohibit shellfish (hint: enshrining symbolism, marking his people), I’ll try to do so for the prohibition on female pastors.
Paul himself shows us that the prohibition on female pastors is based in creation and not in positive law. The prohibition is tied up with our sex, and our sex is essential to us. So what about our gender? God could be enshrining the distinction between men and women. He could be providing strict role models for how men should provide for and defend and love the church. He could be providing models for how women should best love and relate to their husbands. These guidelines enshrined in the prohibition are based on something inherently designed in our sex.
Here’s one suggestion from Pruss: Or perhaps the symmetry-breaking [that is, that there’s a prohibition on female pastors] came from the contingent structure of our sinfulness. Perhaps the contingent fact that men tended to oppress women more than the other way around made it appropriate for the Logos to become a man, so as to provide the more sorely needed example of a man becoming the servant of all and sacrificing himself for all.
Man’s sinfulness inclined him towards a more general violence to each other and to women. Men are responsible for almost all violent assaults. Most prisoners are men. Perhaps the reason God forbade female pastors is so that men could have the example of a loving, sacrificing, male-only club. An all-male pastorhood is a concession to our particular manners of sin, and not at all a sign of our superiority. It’s more a sign of our failures and what sort of corrections that we need as a sex. God’s replacing the all-male club of Atilla the Hun, William the Conqueror, Julius Caesar with the all-male club of John the Beloved, Paul the Most Sinful, and Peter the Broken.
There’s strongly fuzzy suggestions for our social roles given us by our gender, the way we procreate, and the way our underlying psychology works. God enshrines these fuzzy suggestions in a not-so fuzzy prohibition. 1.) God’s command is enough to justify a strict prohibition, but it seems clear that God’s strict prohibition is based on our more fuzzy social roles, which themselves 2.) seem based on essential procreative roles.
