Grabbing Paul by the Patriarchy: 4 Reasons Why the Apostle Wasn’t Patriarchal

Besides Jesus, Paul is the most well-known figure in church history. But unlike Jesus, I’ve never liked him. 

Maybe it’s the bragging (Oh, I’ve been shipwrecked like a thousand times!). It could be his writing style—no one besides Shakespeare gets away with such long run-on sentences. Or maybe the slavery thing. Paul’s tacit support of human bondage makes him hard to take. But I think above everything, it’s his apparently low view of women that makes Paul seem petty. He is connected with some of the most patriarchal verses in the Bible. In the letter to Timothy we read, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (1 Tim. 2:11). Gross. Or over in Colossians he writes, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (3:18).

Want to learn more about patriarchy in the Church? Check out our podcast episode, “Unholy Trinity: Patriarchy”!

Paul has been used and abused by theologians from St. Augustine to John Calvin to create doctrine and dogma that subjugates women. But what if they (and we) have gotten Paul wrong all along? What if, instead of being a staunch supporter of conservative “family” values, Paul was a radical revolutionary when it came to many things, including gender equality? Below are 4 reasons why Paul wasn’t as patriarchal as many of us were taught.

1. Not Everything We Attribute to Paul Was Written by Him

Scholars now believe the New Testament contains three Pauls: the revolutionary Paul, the conservative Paul, and the reactionary Paul. Each voice is unique, showing how the thirteen letters traditionally attributed to Paul’s authorship seem to fall into three distinct categories: letters actually written by the historical Paul, letters written later by a Pauline disciple, and letters whose authorship can’t be narrowed down. Scholarly consensus concludes that only seven letters are genuine to Paul: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon.

What this means, of course, is that some of the more problematic verses about gender inequality come from one of Paul’s followers, not Paul himself. But as writer Barbara E. Reid warns, “In these later letters written in Paul’s name, we see a concerted effort to restrict the leadership of women. While reading these letters, it is good to remember that they represent only one voice among many in the early church.” The “Paul” that appears in the remaining letters is much tamer than the historic Paul. Scholars believe that as the Church grew and became more enculturated by the Roman Empire, many of the more radical stances about gender equality would have been domesticated.

2. Paul Wasn’t Writing to Us

As New Testament historian John Dominic Crossan writes, “It is wise to remember that, when we are reading letters never intended for us, any problems of understanding are ours and not theirs. When we read Scripture, we are reading someone else’s mail.” How true. When we pick up a letter written by Paul to a particular church community, we would be absolute fools to assume he was speaking universally to us. In wisdom, then, we approach the text and ask which commands are universal and essential, and which are more culturally conditioned and can therefore be set aside.

We all do this already anyway. How many of us still follow the Levitical command not to touch a dead animal (all hunters are out), or to stone their children when they disobey, or not to wear clothing made with mixed fibers? We read these texts and automatically realize they weren’t written to us and can therefore be set aside, so why don’t we do that when it comes to texts that subjugate women? 

3. Women Were a Huge Part of His Ministry

A closer reading of Paul’s letters reveal his vision for gender equality in the way he talks about the numerous women that supported and participated in his ministry. For Paul, it was just a given women participated as full members in the Jesus community. In fact, he almost takes it for granted to even have to mention it. It was after all Priscilla, Nympha, Mary, and Lydia who were the heads of house churches during Paul’s day. Phoebe, a deacon in the church, a woman, is the one who carries and therefore reads and explains Paul’s letter from Corinth to the church in Rome. She is also apparently Paul’s benefactor. In addition, Paul uses the phrase “to work hard” four times in this chapter and exclusively ties the phrase to women (Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis). In its original context, the phrase refers directly to “apostalic activity,” meaning these four women were doing the work of Apostles. 

4. He Mentions Female Apostles

Even more interestingly, Paul makes special reference to two couples, Priscilla and Aquila—notice the woman is mentioned first—and Andronicus and Junia. For the first thousand years of Christianity, commentators and theologians recognized these two sets of people as married couples. However, at some point after that, commentators and theologians actually changed the story, stating that “Junia” was short for the male name Junianus and that Paul wasn’t referencing two married couples, but rather one married couple and two dudes. According to Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their book The First Paul, they did this out of desperation. If Junia were allowed to remain female, then Paul’s mention of her as being “prominent among the apostles” would mean it was possible for a woman to be an apostle. Gasp!

Ultimately, Paul is a product of a hierarchical, patriarchal, and class-based society that ranked everyone and everything according to their place in culture, which makes Paul’s claim in Galatians—“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”—feel far more revolutionary in its first century context than it does today. For Paul, Jesus unleashed an entirely new world, with new rules and new relationships. The resurrection upends every social, cultural, racial, national, and theological difference that sets human beings at odds with one another. Paul is inviting all of us to live into this new world and to help bring it to completion. This one passage, by the actual Paul, is the foundation for the apostle’s view of gender equality. Writer Mimi Haddad says it well: “Any rationale for superiority based on race, class, or gender is eclipsed by our newness of life in Christ.” 

Maybe we’ve never known the real Paul after all—that original figure, whose mystical experience with Christ led him to advocate for a world turned upside down, a world of radical equality for men and women.