Views on Women in Early Christianity

Abstract

The issue of women in the early church received much attention in the latter half of the twentieth century and this interest continues today. This is a topic of immediate interest to contemporary ecclesial concerns. The Roman Catholic Church, through its claim of direct continuity of apostolic succession, still denies women’s ordination. For many of its members the continuation of that practice is disappointing after Vatican II raised the hope for change. In response, it is clear that some studies will advocate the opposite point of view and state that the early church did not share the conservative contemporary viewpoint. Such is the case in Karen Jo Torjesen’s book When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (1993). Although the book’s thesis as stated in its title has not won the general acceptance that the author may have intended, a steady stream of anthologies and other source collections in recent decades has given us better access to, and insight in, the variegated nature of women’s roles in this period (see Daniélou 1961; Gryson 1972; Wilson-Kastner 1981; Broo-ten and Greinacher 1982; Laporte 1982; Clark 1983). Meanwhile, the range of interest reflected in them is shifting from the institutional to the sexual, as contemporary critical theory is applied to the issue of sex and gender in antiquity (Boswell 1980,1994; Brooten 1996; Burrus 2000,2004, 2007).