The Greek philosophers, who shaped the thought of ancient Greco-Roman society, tended to interpret the world in terms of oppositions. For this reason, the Greeks and Romans thought of women as the opposite of men, that is, as everything that men were not, and because both societies were rigidly patriarchal they tended to have high views of men and correspondingly low views of women. According to this mode of thinking, since men were rational, women were irrational. Similarly, if a man was supposed to be in control of his desires, then a woman must be incapable of controlling hers. In general, the Greco-Romans viewed women as intellectually and morally incompetent; as Gillian Clark wrote in her survey Women in the Ancient World, “Women were seen as more emotional than men… more gullible, more likely to yield control of their reactions than men [were].”iii Many ancient authors expressed this view of women in their writings, and it was also reflected in medical works that explored the difference between male and female biology. Aristotle, for example, believed that women “were a defective kind of human” whose “reason is simply not in full control of their desires, any more than it is in children.”iv In addition to being compared to children, women were often compared to wild animals that had to be tamed by their male relatives in order to become proper members of society. As Pierre Brulé points out, “Metaphors and symbolic comparisons liken [a young bride] to a goat, especially a wild goat,” that is, to “an animal who has to be brought to heel.”v For members of Greco-Roman society, there was no question that the genders were fundamentally unequal and that all of the disadvantages fell on the side of women.
The Christian Church, beginning with Jesus, had a radical view of the status of women. In the Gospels, Jesus approaches women personally, teaching them about His mission and the Kingdom of God. In the Gospel of John, He initiates a conversation with a Samaritan woman about worshipping God. In doing so, Jesus defies contemporary social customs, since Samaritans and women were both considered so socially inferior that they ought to be ignored entirely. However, he clearly values this woman highly enough to risk incurring the criticism of his peers. John writes,
The woman said to him, “I know the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”vi
On this and many other occasions recorded in the Gospels, Jesus demonstrates that he values women equally with men. John tells us that he loved Mary and Martha, two women who were His disciples, as well as their brother Lazarus,vii and the Gospels contain many examples of Jesus showing compassion toward women who were ill or disabled and healing them.viii The example Jesus set concerning the treatment of women was followed by the disciples and the early Church.
One of the clearest ways in which the early Christians broke from the Greco-Roman conception of women was in their perception of marriage. In the ancient world, marriage was a nonnegotiable transaction conducted between men, a father and potential husband. Women were traded as property for a bride price or dowry depending on the relative social position of the two families. Once married, women were expected to remain almost exclusively inside their houses. In both Greece and Rome, “The assumption was that… [women] must lead a domestic life under male protection, for they are not suited to independence.”ix Sophocles, an Athenian playwright, depicted one woman as saying,
As young girls, I think, we lead the sweetest life of all mortals in our father’s house; for innocence always keeps children in happiness. But when we reach the age of marriage, we are thrust out and sold away from our ancestral gods and our parents, some to strangers, some to barbarians, some to a good house and some to a hostile one.x
This sudden transition could not fail to be traumatic for many young women, but marriage was still preferable to the perpetual childhood that would be the legal fate of an unmarried woman.
Either married or unmarried, a woman was required to remain perpetually under the guardianship of a male relative. In Rome, a woman could be passed from her father’s guardianship to become the legal daughter of her husband, or she could remain under her father’s power even after she was married. Roman law gave the head of the household the “power of life and death over his children, who could do nothing without his consent,”xi and the same applied to a woman’s husband after her marriage. Essentially, women were trapped within the households of their father or husband for their entire lives, as subordinates whose welfare depended on the good will of the men who owned them.
With its typically progressive approach to the status of women, the early Church redefined the marriage relationship. In the book of Acts, Luke’s biblical history of the early Church, he highlights a woman named Pricilla.xii She and her husband Aquila were missionaries who accompanied Paul on one of his journeys. Together, they are credited with instructing Apollos, a major evangelist of the first century, and “[explaining] to him the way of God more accurately.”xiii Luke clearly indicates Priscilla’s agency and her interdependent relationship with her husband. She is certainly not Aquila’s property, but rather his partner in ministry and marriage. Marriage was also not considered mandatory for women in the Christian community, and the unmarried women and widows of the early Church were given important roles in ministry. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, expresses his esteem for unmarried women, who are not “anxious about worldly things” but “about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.”xiv Widows, rather than being abandoned to poverty after the deaths of their husbands, which could force them to return to their fathers’ homes or to remarry, were taken in by the Church. In return, these widows took on spiritual and ministerial responsibilities. The third century Apostolic Church-Ordinances instructed that,
Three widows shall be appointed: two, who persevere in prayer, because of all those who are in temptations and for revelations and instruction concerning what is required; but one, who, abiding with those who are tried by sickness, is of good service, watchful, informing the priests of what is necessary.xv
The revolutionary stance the early Church took on marriage afforded a range of opportunities to wives, maidens, and widows that greatly exceeded that available elsewhere in contemporary society.
Another way in which the early Church departed from Greco-Roman beliefs was in regard to its beliefs about the moral capacity of women. The pervasive Greco-Roman view that women were intellectually and morally incompetent profoundly affected their treatment under the law and ultimately resulted in a moral double standard by which women were judged harshly for crimes that were not even considered offenses when committed by men. As previously discussed, Roman law required women to be constantly under the protection of a male guardian; indeed, “Roman woman existed legally only in relation to a man.”xvi By requiring women to have a guardian, the law placed them in the same legal category as “children and the mentally disturbed.”xvii Women’s perceived susceptibility to vice resulted in strict regulation of their behavior. Under the law code of Romulus, both drinking and adultery were crimes which were punishable by death for women.xviii Cato, a Roman statesman of the third century BC, wrote that men had the legal right to execute their wives for adultery without trial. On the other hand, he says, “If you [a man] should commit adultery or indecency, she must not presume to lay a finger on you, nor does the law allow it.”xix Cato also spoke in defense of a law that denied a woman the right to spend her own money, saying, “The woman who can spend her own money will do so; the one who cannot will ask her husband.”xx This measure reflected the Roman belief that a woman’s natural instinct was always toward luxury, and thus toward moral depravity. This instinct could only be contained by subjecting women to the rule of men. Because Roman society saw men as having greater restraint, they were allowed to spend as they saw fit. These laws concerning adultery and extravagance, indulgences acceptable for men but not for women, are only two examples of the double standard applied to the moral behavior of men and women in Greco-Roman society.
In the Gospels, Jesus insists that men and women be held to the same moral standard. In the Gospel of John, a group of Jewish religious leaders bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus, demanding that she be stoned according to the Law of Moses. Jesus replied to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Since her accusers were forced to admit their own unrighteousness, the woman was not condemned, and Jesus bid her depart and “sin no more.”xxi It is notable that the woman’s accusers clearly practiced a double standard in their judgment. While they attempted to have the woman stoned, they made no attempt to bring the man with whom she committed adultery to justice. Jesus, with his lesson about forgiveness and repentance, prevented them from executing their double justice.
In his letters, Paul provides a uniform code of moral behavior by which all Christians, both men and women, are to abide. For example, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, he writes,
Finally, then, [brothers and sisters],xxii we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you in the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his [or her] own body in holiness or honor.xxiii
In accordance with the example set by Jesus and the teaching of the apostle Paul, Christian men and women alike were called to live according to the same moral standard. This was an important step toward the equal treatment of women under the law.
While in Greco-Roman society women were denied access to roles of authority or influence through a variety of social, economic and legal restraints, Christian women took on important roles in the Church community. Many women are mentioned in the New Testament for their roles in serving God and the Church. Paul writes in the sixteenth chapter of Romans, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the Church at Cenchreae, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.”xxiv In the same passage, Paul sends blessings to other women who are ministers of the Gospel including Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphaenea, Tryphosa, and Julia.xxv He does not distinguish between the men and women he greets, but mentions all by name and praises all for their service to the Gospel. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “In the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman,”xxvi and the early Church developed into an authentic culture of interdependent relationships between the men and women. It becomes clear in passages such as this that the mission of the early Church to spread the good news of grace for the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life available through faith in the risen Christ was so important as to obliterate any distinction between its servants. Men and women were united in this common cause.
Women also played a particularly important role in the logistical aspects of the growth and maintenance of the Church. John Wijngaards writes that women were frequently responsible for “instructing catechumens, welcoming strangers, placing orphaned children with foster parents, visiting the sick, mediating in quarrels, and advising bishops and priests on the needs of their parishioners.”xxvii All of these services to the community were considered critical to the mission of the early Church. In Acts 12:12, reference is made to a woman named Mary holding a religious gathering in her home: “When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.” Because such important activities took place in a traditionally feminine sphere, women’s opportunity for leadership greatly increased.xxviii In Acts 16: 12-15, a new convert named Lydia also provides a meeting place for Christians. Luke says of her, “And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.’ And she prevailed upon us.”xxix By hosting these gatherings of believers, women like Mary and Lydia “played an integral part in the establishment and continuance of a local church.”xxx These small gatherings eventually evolved into local congregations. The participation of women in the embryonic stage of the early Church is a clear indication of the important role that they were to play in the spread of Christianity.
Several women are mentioned in the New Testament who served the Church in other ways. Tabitha, whose story is told in Acts 9: 36-43, is one of the women who seems to have played the role of a deaconess. Tabitha was noteworthy for “her generosity towards the disadvantaged” and “being raised to life again by God through Peter.”xxxi Ben Witherington writes in Women in the Earliest Churches, “Perhaps the main reason for the Tabitha story is that Luke wishes to reveal how a woman functioned as a deaconess, a very generous supporter of widows.”xxxii Women in the early Church could also be considered prophetesses.xxxiii In Acts 21, Luke mentions a man named Philip the evangelist who “had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied.”xxxiv With regard to these women, Witherington remarks that “prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit,” and that because this gift is most often identified with leaders of the Church, “Philip’s daughters are probably depicted as included among these leaders.”xxxv By showing hospitality, sharing the gospel, and giving generously to the needy, the women of the early Church contributed greatly both to the spread of Christianity and to the support of the Christian community of which they were a part.
By allowing women to take on roles of responsibility and influence, the Christian community invited persecution from the Roman government, which was concerned that allowing women so much freedom would make their society unstable. Pliny the Younger, a Roman magistrate, wrote a letter in 111 AD to Emperor Trajan regarding the punishment of two women slaves who he believed to be Christian ministers. According to Margaret MacDonald writing in Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion, “The fact that these women had a prominent ministerial role in the Christian community – a ministry apparently not hampered by their status as slaves – was in all likelihood a significant factor in their visibility and subsequent arrest.”xxxvi However, it was not merely their placement in positions of authority that troubled the Roman government. In his critique of Christianity written in the third century A.D., Octavius Minucius Felix expressed shock that both men and women congregated to feast on Christian holidays.xxxvii Therefore, it was not simply the Christian ministry and teachings that non-Christian officials found threatening, but rather the undermining of the Greco-Roman social structure.xxxviii The violence with which the liberation of Greco-Roman women by the teachings and practices of Christianity was met is a testament to its revolutionary nature.
Both men and women were martyred during the first centuries of the Church for their beliefs and Christian service. xxxix In Acts 8: 1-3, Luke writes,
And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
In the year 64 AD, Emperor Nero enforced strict persecution of Christian men and women as punishment for their supposed involvement in the great fire of Rome, and later this persecution spread throughout the Roman Empire. Jean LaPorte writes in her book The Role of Women in Early Christianity,
Christian women suffer their share in the persecutions…Sometimes the women show courage and such a sense of the divine that they become examples and leaders among other confessors. Usually they endure the trials as well as men, thus proving that men and women are equal before God and receive the same gifts of the Holy Spirit.xl
The martyrdom of women who kept the faith alongside men in spite of persecution is irrefutable evidence of their dedication to the Gospel message, that through faith in Christ “that they may have life and have it abundantly.”xli
The Christian faith was founded on the principle that every member of the Church is equally valuable. As Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, “In Christ Jesus…there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male not female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”xlii This radical unity was totally at odds with contemporary Greco-Roman opinion, and it allowed women to experience unprecedented freedoms and to contribute to the early Church community in ways that have endured to the present day.