Clericalism and Women in Ephesus, Part 3

One Ancient City, Two Ancient Churches

We are half-way through a four part series studying the issues of clericalism and patriarchy in the early Christian communities in Ephesus. In case you missed it, see parts one and two.

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Saint John the Divine in Silence, Nektary Kulyuksin (1769)

100 AD: Gospel of John

There is a general consensus that the Gospel of John has multiple editions which were developed in different settings, first in Palestine/Galilee, then in Ephesus, being finalized around 100 AD.¹² The Ephesus connection raises a question implied in the subtitle of this series. Does evidence suggest just one church in Ephesus, which John / the Johannine Community joined? Or were there separate Pauline and Johannine churches in Ephesus at the same time?

Either scenario works for this study, but in my opinion the second option is more likely (and also more intriguing). According to Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Pauline and Johannine churches coexisted in Ephesus toward the end of the first century. It would be completely abnormal had they traveled on perfectly parallel paths without any interaction.”³ Given the differences between Paul and John that we’ll see below, it’s hard to imagine a church with formal offices like elders and deacons and widows—and familiar with Paul’s teaching on the gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Eph 4:11)—transitioning within thirty years to a church that never even mentions the role of apostles, let alone any other formal church office. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s what we’ll explore in part 3 of this series on clericalism and women in Ephesus:

1. John’s ecclesiology is undeniably less hierarchical and less structured than Paul (vis a vis clericalism).

2. John’s ecclesiology is notably more positive about women with respect to teaching/false teaching (vis a vis patriarchy).

The Only Teacher

There is hardly any emphasis at all on authoritative teaching in John, in contrast to what we saw Paul develop from Acts, to Ephesians, to 1-2 Timothy. Jesus promised the disciples—all disciples, not just the twelve apostles—the authoritative teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of Truth”:

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you” (‭‭John‬ ‭14‬:‭16‬-‭17‬a). ‭‬‬

“When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father — he will testify about me” (John‬ ‭15‬:‭26‬).

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come” (John‬ ‭16‬:‭13‬).

The promised sending of the Spirit of Truth does not appear to be directly related to concerns about false teaching. Instead, the Spirit is promised as a paraklētos, a counselor/comforter/advocate who A) helps disciples through the troubling absence of Jesus (14:1, 18, 25, 27; 16:5-7, 16-22, 28; 17:5, 11, 13, 24); and B) who advocates for them in the face of socio-religious oppression (15:18-25; 16:1-11, 32-33; 17:11-12, 14-15).

True Shepherds vs Strangers and False Shepherds

The problem of false teachers/teaching arises in John 10 with the “voice of strangers”:

“They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t know the voice of strangers” (John 10:5)

“All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them.” (10:8)

Similar to what we will see in 1 John, the sheep don’t need anyone in authority to identify strangers and thieves and robbers. The sheep simply know. This is surely related to the ministry of the Spirit of Truth.

While the Teacher in John is the Son/Spirit, there seems to be an authoritative (in the sense of authorized) role assigned to Peter in John 21. Jesus’ image of Peter feeding his sheep (vv. 15 and 17) probably includes teaching (Jesus’ words are life, John 6:63, 68), but the “shepherd my sheep” (v. 16) is also and especially a protective role a la John 10.⁴ While “pastor” is never a title in Johannine literature, it is a function, something that certain individuals are called to do. In addition to Jesus’ commands to “feed/shepherd my sheep,” Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s martyrdom in 21:18-19 echoes Jesus’ repeated statements about laying down his life (10:11, 15, 17, 18a, 18b). Implicitly, Peter’s initial promise to “lay down my life for you [Jesus]” (12:37) is corrected to the proper commitment to lay down his life for the sheep in protection against false leaders, whether they be strangers, thieves, robbers, hired hands, or wolves.

I’m sympathetic to the view that Peter represents hierarchical leaders from early church traditions outside of the Johannine Community.⁵ Peter was already dead by the time John was finished (with ch. 21 being one of the latest additions), so Jesus’ “commission” is not so much about appointing new authoritative pastors like Peter. Instead, at one level at least, it’s about making sure those who were already leading truly led after the self-sacrificial example of Jesus. For an extended study of the Johannine perspective on Peter—and the more critical characterization of authoritative leaders he represents—see my article Questioning Character: Peter in the Gospel of John.

The Beloved Disciple and All Disciples

We don’t know what structure (if any) the Johannine community used to recognize specific individuals entrusted with the authorized responsibility to guard the flock from wolves and false teachers. There appears to be a lot of similarity with the letter to the Ephesians, where the emphasis is laid on the entire community’s responsibility to remain in the truth (even though Ephesians mentions apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers). John only uses the word “apostle” once in 13:16, and it means “messenger” generically, not “apostle” in the sense of the “twelve apostles.” Additionally, John uses the word “disciple” seventy-eight times. All of God’s children are disciples, and all are equally responsible for the health of the household of God.

The Beloved Disciple is implicitly recognized as a trusted teacher. He is largely responsible for the Gospel itself (21:24), but even that responsibility was passed on to whomever finalized the Gospel. The “we” of v. 24, when added to all of the numerous positive “we knows,” “we observed,” and “we believed” in John (cf 1:14, 16; 3:11; 4:42; 6:69; 9:31; 10:4; 16:30) implies more than one teacher helped publish the final form of the Gospel as we have it.⁶ Perhaps that includes the man who was born blind. He is the only person aside from Jesus who engages in teaching activity (9:34; cf his teaching throughout that narrative, 9:18, 25, 27, 30-33). He also says “we know,” just like Jesus (3:11) and the final editor (21:24). This might be unprovable speculation (and other disciple groups say “we know). But the anonymity of the healed blind man aligns with the anonymity of the Beloved Disciple and the anonymity of the final editor(s).

I believe this fits the promise of the Spirit of Truth to all disciples in the Johannine Community, not just a select group of pastors/teachers/elders in the Pauline corpus. The strategy for dealing with false teaching in the Gospel of John is collective attention to the words of Jesus in the guidance of the Spirit of Truth. It is a thoroughly egalitarian strategy—in the sense of non-hierarchical, or non-clerical. But the gendered sense of egalitarian works, too, as we’ll see next.

Women Teachers?

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians shows no concern for women teaching. 1 Timothy does (whatever it means, it’s there), as does 2 Timothy (more indirectly). By the time we get to the Gospel of John in Ephesus around 90-100 AD, there is a notable and unmistakable contrast. Consider, for the sake of argument, worshipping in the same church for 30 years where women couldn’t teach men or occupy any official teaching role. Then a group of Christians move into town, who had fled persecution from Jews in another region. They have this text about the life of Jesus. And women. Are. Everywhere. In their story of Jesus.

• Jesus lets his mother tell him (a male rabbi) and some household servants what to do (2:3-5).

• While men were the first ones to do one-on-one evangelism⁷, the Samaritan woman is the first one to evangelize an entire city. Andrew says, “We have found the Messiah” (1:41), but we are not told that they believed in Jesus as Messiah. In contrast—which in John’s style is quite possibly intentional—the Samaritans explicitly “believed because of what the woman said” (4:39; before they go on to a further stage of faith, believing “because of what he (Jesus) said,” v. 41-42). It is also important to mindfully observe John’s note that the disciples did not question Jesus’ engaging this woman in dialogue (4:27).

• Martha and Mary complain that Jesus could have saved their brother Lazarus but didn’t, and they don’t receive any rebuke from Jesus (11:21, 32).⁸

• Martha gives one of the most exact and exalted confessions of the identity of Jesus: “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world” (John‬ ‭11‬:‭27‬). This is matched by Thomas, who confessed, “My Lord and my God!” (20:28). But there is a subtle difference: whereas Jesus seems to subtly minimize Thomas’ statement of faith (“Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John‬ ‭20‬:‭29‬), Jesus does not give any corrective response to Martha. (Note, as well, Jesus’ implicitly corrective response to Peter’s confession in 6:66-71).

• Mary of Bethany is the only disciple who recognizes that Jesus is about to die, and her beautiful act fills the house like the glory of God filled the Jerusalem temple-house of God (12:1-3). Connected to the narrator comment in 4:27, Judas does not refrain from verbalizing his judgmental version of “Why are you talking with her?” to Jesus. Jesus doesn’t rebuke female Mary. He rebukes masculine Judas.

• 80% of the disciples who stood by Jesus at the cross were women (19:25).

• Jesus joins his mother to the home of the Beloved Disciple. This is not Jesus making sure his bereaved mother has someone to provide for her. “House/home” is not actually in the Greek text of 19:27. It literally says “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own” (see 1:11). If that might imply some primacy to the BD (as opposed to Jesus’ mother taking the BD “into her own”), Mary is nevertheless given a prominent, symbolic role. Just like the BD replaces Jesus in the life of Mary, Mary replaces Jesus in the life of the BD. There is no other way to work out the logic. This might align with

  Anna Anderson
  ’s remarkable work on the biblical typology of the masculine Son and the feminine City. One doesn’t have primacy over the other. They both represent the missions of Son (Jesus/BD) and Spirit (Jesus/Mother).

• Mary Magdalene is the first disciple to see the risen Lord, the first one to hear the climatic proclamation of the message of Jesus—that people now truly have the right to be children of God (1:12-13; 20:17)—and the first one to proclaim that message (20:18).

While implicit and narratival, the evidence for women teaching and leading in the Johannine Community is comprehensive and overwhelming. To be clear (and complicated), that doesn’t mean women were pastors and elders. As implied above, I’m not convinced that John’s community had officially recognized church officers. That might have changed by the time of 2 and 3 John, as we’ll see below.

Summary

In conclusion, the Gospel of John suggests that women were equal members and ministers in the Johannine church of Ephesus. They were equally able to teach alongside men, because men could equally teach alongside men, not just pastors and elders. Put differently, the Gospel of John—and the Ephesian church responsible for it—protected against the related problems of clericalism and patriarchy.

Or put differently yet again, for the precise historians who (accurately, I believe) point out that this is all conjecture: even if we can’t know much for certain about the historical Johannine church in Ephesus, the above portrait is what a church consistently and thoroughly influenced by John’s Gospel should look like—to use the words of Wes-Howard Brook below, “radically egalitarian and pneumatic.”

Quote from Wes Howard-Brook

“Power, in the Johannine community, resides neither in the pope nor in the people, but rather, in the Paraclete. It is this Spirit who is both teacher and guide (14:26, 16:13). “Discernment of spirits,” not power politics, is the Johannine means of shaping the life of the church (1 Jn 4:1-3). John’s gospel, then, presents a church that is radically egalitarian and pneumatic. The Spirit cannot be contained in ecclesial offices but blows where it wills (3:8). All members are equally capable of becoming vessels for the word the Paraclete speaks to the community…One implication of the radical egalitarianism of the fourth gospel is its rejection of distinctions based on gender, race, or class. If Peter is a “shepherd,” the Samaritan woman and Mary Magdalene are both “apostles” (4:28-29, 39; 20:17-18). If the Twelve are noted as primary followers of Jesus, Martha is the one who speaks the titular “confession” of faith in Jesus (11:27). If Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea offer a form of honor to Jesus’ dead body (19:38-42), it is Mary of Bethany who anoints his live body in anticipation of that burial (12:3). Whatever arguments are to be made in today’s church for a distinction in roles based on gender can find no support in John’s gospel…This egalitarianism extends also to those otherwise rejected because of poverty, ill health, or other signs of marginalization. The fourth gospel’s church is one where formerly blind beggars and others without official sanction can and must teach the privileged elite so as to save them from their own blindness (3:2-10, 9:34).⁹

Question

Do you see the differences and distinctions between the Pauline material we examined in parts 1 and 2, and the Johannine material in the Gospel of John? Can you see more clearly why Johannine scholar Paul Anderson would say, “That’s why we have different ecclesiologies. They are all biblical”? (See interview here). Paul’s ecclesiology for the Ephesian church led by Timothy is different from the ecclesiology practiced by the Johannine Community in Ephesus. And they are both biblical, in both senses of the word: ‘in the Bible,’ and ‘faithful to the bible’!

1. For dating the writings of the community of John (Gospel, Letters, Revelation), I am following Martinus de Boer and his synthesis of Johannine scholarship. See de Boer, John 1-6, 188-199.

2. I was initially skeptical about a connection with Ephesus, until I paid more attention to the many similar themes in Ephesians and John. This doesn’t by itself prove anything, because we could explain those similarities through shared tradition like the OT (which is surely in play). But there are some notable distinctives: robust trinitarian theology in Ephesians 1 and John 14-17; similar development of marital and temple imagery for God’s relationship to the people of God; similar dark/light imagery; etc.

3. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Ephesus: Texts and Archeology (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008), 233.

4. Not to mention the echoes of Ezekiel 34 that are present in John 21:15-17, which emphasizes the protective and healing role of the shepherd.

5. This is a highly debated subject in Johannine studies. I believe Paul Anderson makes a good case for this way of reading John’s ecclesiology in The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6.

6. On multiple authors of John’s Gospel, see R. Alan Culpepper, John the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); de Boers, John 1-6.

7. Andrew is specified (1:40); technically, we do not know the gender of the other JBaptist disciple he was with (1:37).

8. Some interpreters think there is an implied rebuke of Mary in Jesus’ intense emotions in 11:33, but I think it’s more probable that Jesus’ emotions are directed at the oppressive Jews as well as his own impending death which the raising of Lazarus will guarantee. See my post Angry Jesus and Lazarus the Leader, as well as Helen Orchard, Courting Betrayal: Jesus as Victim in the Gospel of John, 150-160

9. Wes Howard-Brook, John’s Gospel & the Renewal of the Church (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), 173-174, emphasis added.