Pope John Paul II was a feminist!
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
| Kevin Giles
The Pope’s teaching
In his 1988 authoritative encyclical, Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul II broke completely with the traditional interpretation of Genesis 1-3, arguing that these chapters do not subordinate women to men in creation prior to the Fall. Women’s subordination, he ruled, is a consequence of sin (Gen. 3:16) and is thus to be opposed by Christians. The reason why the Catholic Church opposes the ordination of women, the Pope added, is because the twelve apostles were all men. (This conclusion would seem to be inconsistent: the sexes are essential equals but not when it comes to ordination).
Here we should note that interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is the most important exegetical issue in the debate about the status and ministry of women. For one side Gen 1-3 is read to make the subordination of women the God-given ideal. For the other side Gen 1-3 is read to make the essential equality of the sexes the God-given ideal. Paul’s writings are then read one way or the other in the light of the prior interpretation given to Gen 1-3.
In the Catholic and evangelical discussions on the status and ministry of men and women three terms are particularly significant and need to be defined: ‘equal’, ‘different’, ‘complementary’.
Equal
Everyone in this debate affirm the ‘equality’ of the sexes but for those who believe God has given men authority over women this term alludes only to ‘spiritual equality’- equality in sin and salvation. The Pope, like egalitarian evangelicals, insists in contrast that spiritual equality demands social equality. Men and women should be accorded equality of opportunity to use God-given gifts of leadership.
Difference
Again all agree men and women are ‘different’. They have different bodies, chromosomes, and genes and have a different part to play in procreation. For Catholics and many evangelicals these differences do not prescribe what men and women can or cannot do, except in the baby business. They are seen first and foremost as co-humanity. However, for some evangelicals biology supposedly prescribes certain roles to men and women, most importantly the ‘headship role’ to men and the ‘subordination role’ to women. Pope John-Paul II made an important contribution to the debate about sexual differentiation by locating sexual differentiation primarily in the body, which he says is the outward and visible form of the human spirit - i.e. who ‘I’ am. He opposes the idea that it is based in power relations.
Complement/complementary/complementarian
Yet again both sides in this debate agree that men and women complement each other. They however mean different things by this affirmation. The word ‘complementary’ refers to what ‘completes’ the whole, or to what when taken together is greater than the sum of the parts. I call these the partitive and the additive understandings of this word. For those evangelicals who co-opt the term ‘complementarian’ to designate their hierarchical understanding of the male-female relationship the word is given a partitive meaning – men provide the leadership women lack. When Pope-John Paul used the word he used it in the additive sense as do egalitarian evangelicals. The sexes complement each other in the sense that men and women together are more than one sex alone
The ‘co-equal’ Trinity
It should also be noted that no Roman Catholic theologian in any way gives support for the novel evangelical ‘doctrine’ of the eternal subordination of the Son in role and authority. For all Catholics and confessional Protestants, such as Anglicans and Lutherans, the Athanasian Creed is binding. This declares all three divine persons are one in power and ‘co-equal’, ‘none before or after, greater or lesser.’
Kevin Giles has served as an Anglican Minister for forty years. He has written widely on women in the Bible, the church, ministry in the apostolic age, and the Trinity as model for mutually enriching relationships and church health. Kevin will be one of the Key Speakers at the CBE (Christians for Biblical Equality) International Conference to be held in Melbourne June 11-14 www.cbe.org.au