Paul and Gender Quotes

“These concepts and practices are antithetical to the imperial theology of the first century. Today few men suggest that all Christians are obligated to create or submit to an imperial power because Paul commanded submission to an absolute tyrannical imperial power. However, when it comes to women, Paul has generally been read and interpreted through the traditional Greco-Roman assumptions about gender, power, and hierarchy that were foundational for Greco-Roman philosophy and most of the conventional human wisdom of the first century.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“When Christianity was legalized in 313 CE and moved into public space, the terms “elder” and “deacon” quickly became titles of power, authority, and prestige in the gentile world. The fellowship meal became a stylized ritual (Eucharist) that was controlled by men in public space. The positions of leadership became public offices instead of household roles, reflecting masculine concepts of hierarchy in the public sphere. When the context of worship changed, “elder,” “deacon,” and “bishop” soon became titles that were far different from Paul’s use of the terms.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“The wife’s title was the feminine form (οἰκοδέσποινα) of “the master of the house” (οἰκοδεσπότης). Paul uses the verb form of the word in 1 Timothy 5:14: “So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, and rule their households [οἰκοδεσποτέω], so as to give the adversary no occasion to revile us” (NRSV). Most translations demote the authoritative meaning of the word to refer to “management,” which conveys a sense of delegation rather than the authority that the term and the culture attributed to the woman who was in charge of the extended household.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“The foolishness of the cross and God’s choice of the weak, despised, and foolish (1 Cor. 1:28–31) had the effect of commending women and slaves, who were the archetypes of the bottom of the pyramid, while Paul announced God’s intention to shame the wise and influential and render them powerless.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“He rejects leadership that is based on Greco-Roman concepts of wisdom, power, and status (1 Cor. 1:18–31). His teachings are the polar opposite of Plato’s argument that the weak should be ruled by the strong, the ignoble by the noble, and the ignorant by the wise. When Paul rejects the status markers of his heritage, privileges, and attainments in Judaism, he rejects the biological essentialism and the social pyramid of the Greco-Roman system as well (Phil. 3:1–11). He therefore rejects all the values on which status and authority in the culture were based.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Men have historically exercised control over women through their advantages that correlate with the criteria that Paul rejects, and they label domination and control as “servanthood” when they are supposedly using their advantages for what they determine to be the good of the women. In this paradigm, servanthood is redefined as exercising power and authority that is similar to the Greco-Roman model yet with little if any correlation to slavery.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“It is a serious enough problem that sound hermeneutical principles are not being applied consistently to Romans 12:1–8 in regard to women.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“As far as men are concerned, their participation in the exclusion of women from leadership circles, church positions, and places of influence, and the rationale behind it, should be a matter of deep concern if we are to honor Romans 12:3–6. James Dunn suggests, “The emphatic warning against inflated thinking (v. 3) recalls the similar warning against Gentile presumption in 11:7–24 (particularly 11:20), but also the similar theme of the earlier diatribes against Jewish presumption (chaps. 2–4): the ‘us’ over ‘them’ attitude which Paul saw as the heart of Jewish failure and as a potential danger for Gentile Christians must not be allowed to characterize the eschatological people of God.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“A woman’s God-given role and service in the twenty-first century must be constructed by the dynamic transformation of Romans 12:1–2 rather than conformity to a pattern that has been constructed by religious tradition from another time, place, and culture.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Within those accomplishments, women who are believers are able to take verses seriously such as “Whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31 NRSV); this is not invariably about self-assertion or selfish ambition.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“We are desperately in need of a coherent biblical theology and worldview that engage a heavily sexualized culture in this key area. It should be not only about sexual ethics, but also about dealing with crucial related issues that Paul highlighted: sexual immorality, anger, and perceptions of the body and beauty. These continue to be central issues that should be addressed carefully and are among the foremost priorities of the Western Christian community.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Male interpreters projected their own sexual urges onto women, and they combined this with a rejection of the (supposedly) inferior woman for the superior choice of celibacy. This entire trend is completely antithetical to what Paul actually said about sex and the body.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“But notice that Paul’s teaching on the veil in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 insists that a woman who prays and prophesies in the church should be allowed to wear a symbol that was a cultural icon for honor, chastity, and protection. As far as it was in his power, Paul at least symbolically protected women slaves who were believers from being sexually used by those in the Christian community who submitted to his guidance and leadership.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“In fact, Christianity undercut essential patriarchal rights by requiring men to be faithful in the same way that the culture had required women to be faithful.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“William Loader states, “In some ways the change for men in the alternative society is more radical than for women. Making them responsible for their own sexuality removes from them the traditional self-understanding that they must control women and can blame them.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Young women are being driven to eating disorders by their desire to be attractive in terms of the cultural standards and in competition with actresses and models. Paul seems to recognize the driving force behind the phenomena. There needs to be much more discussion about the symbolism of clothing, and there must be authentic spiritual vitality in a rigorous pursuit of godliness that goes far beyond pleasing men. The painful reality may be that Christian men similarly influenced by the media will not find a woman who adorns herself with good works attractive. Christians need a wake-up call to rewire their sexual orientation by rejecting narcissism and ideals of beauty that are unnatural, unhealthy, and ungodly.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“One of the outcomes of Paul’s and Peter’s teaching on women dressing modestly and appropriately is that they are asking women to lay down what has been their primary source of power over men. There is no room for manipulation or seduction in the church. Believers are to be a people characterized by servanthood,”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“The elimination of circumcision canceled the other sources of ritual impurity caused by the body. This has a direct application to the priesthood of the believer and the representation of Christ: having the same genitals is eliminated as a factor.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“The house church was not sacred space, but also, Paul claims that God’s people sanctify others, such as an unbelieving spouse or children. Therefore, though women were a dangerous source of contamination in Judaism, they (and male believers) were a source of holiness in the Pauline mission. Ceremonial purity, which separated those who are impure at table fellowship, was a major issue among the Jewish Christians, but Paul insisted that Jewish and gentile Christians eat together (Gal. 2:11–14).”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“In 1 Timothy 2:8, Paul singles out anger and arguing as a problem among the males at Ephesus. This is often overlooked because the instructions to women and the prohibitions in 1 Timothy 2:9–15 have interested commentators more, so their focus tends to be on how the topic of prayer in 2:8 is related to the instructions to women. However, there are complementary instructions, to men first and then to women, addressing gender-specific issues that are part of the false teaching at Ephesus (1:3–7).”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Second, men were thought to be disciplined and females undisciplined; but self-control is a godly value that is important for all to attain, and these word pictures help women as well as men.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“The gymnasium was an essential element of the Hellenistic city, where males exercised in the nude in order to develop the Greek ideal of a beautiful body. Two things are of interest. First, all readers, male and female, are invited to enter into a masculine mentality when Paul uses athletic competition to illustrate spiritual reality.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“In contrast, as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza observes, the common initiation ritual of baptism indicates that women became full members of the people of God with the same rites and duties as Jewish converts.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Scholars have been confused about how a husband can sanctify his wife, but that is because they treat the information as abstract theology and miss the power, meaning, and association of the metaphors. In effect, Paul flips the patron metaphor of being the wife’s head (protector and source of life). Instead of expecting or demanding client reciprocity (submission), the head supplies low-status domestic service to the body that is ordinarily expected from women or slaves. The head nurtures (as a mother/nurse cares for a baby), feeds, and cares for its own body. In effect, Paul has told the husbands to wash their wives’ feet and much more. He has given an explicit application of Jesus’s summary of the law: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“So Jesus is the model for the husband’s role of protecting his wife. The rest of the passage is a fascinating study of role reversals in which Jesus gives his bride a bath and takes responsibility for providing bridal clothes that are treated for stains, laundered, and ironed (metaphors for sanctification). These metaphors for sanctification not only are a model of a husband directly serving the best interests of the wife in her well-being and development (cf. Phil. 2:1–4); they also depict Jesus Christ as doing women’s work (stereotypical female domestic chores),”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Paul’s primary means of subverting the Greco-Roman household code was the same as Jesus’s method. Jesus taught that any leader among the disciples had to become everyone’s slave (Matt. 20:27; Mark 10:44).”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Paul in fact subverted the Greco-Roman household codes by reframing the basis, purpose, and motivation for the behavior of social inferiors, and by adjusting and restricting the privileges of those who have power.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“Subverting the authority of the household was tantamount to subverting the authority of the empire.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“They had multiple identities, roles, and responsibilities that they needed to navigate with care, because even though they were heirs of the kingdom in the church, in the worldly society there were expectations, demands, and obligations that had to be met and entailed behavior often inconsistent with their true status in Christ. For Paul, there were at least three reasons why these expectations, demands, and obligations needed to be fulfilled. First, it was a primary goal for the church community to live at peace among the people and structures of the Roman Empire in order to thrive (1 Tim. 2:1–3). Second, survival was a goal, and it was important that the community did not flout the laws and core commitments of the Roman officials and local authorities in order to avoid being the victim of their sword (Rom. 13:1–7). Third, the expansion of the gentile mission was a primary goal, and there was no personal sacrifice that Paul was unwilling to make to win more people to Christ: “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22 NRSV). Paul sacrificed social rights, power, and status that belonged to him in the eyes of the Roman Empire, to serve the gospel and follow Christ’s example (Phil. 3:4–8), and he wanted his communities”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ

“For Paul, ethics, holiness, and holy behavior are an essential part of the eschatological Christian community. Our future hope defines our present-day reality. The character and the state of the believer are supposed to provide a distinct contrast with the rest of the world.”
― Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ