I thank my friend and colleague, Rev. Mark Preus, for continuing to care about what God teaches us to care about. And I commend his thoughtful work to your reading.

Jason Braaten

On Women Writing Theology in the Church

Prepared with prayer and study for the brethren of the Wyoming District and the LCMS

by Rev. Mark A. Preus

In the last decades it has become more and more common to have our sisters write theology in synodical publications.  This practice seems to have begun with Portals of Prayer, and has expanded to the point of writing entire doctrinal articles in “The Lutheran Witness” and even confessional commentary, as recently seen with LLCACA.  This is very alarming, and represents not only acquiescence to societal norms the Church has previously resisted, but also ignorance both of what the Holy Scriptures teach and what the Church catholic has practiced in her history.  The purpose of this essay is to strive for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, so that we might together humbly accept the Word of God on this matter, submit to it, and encourage each other to apply it to our congregations and synod, speaking the truth in love, lest the devil divide us by seducing us from the clear word of God.

The Holy Spirit did not choose any women to write Scripture.  He commends to us women composing beautiful hymns, such as we see in Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Elizabeth, and Mary. This is why the Church has always accepted compositions of songs of praises from women.  Scripture interprets Scripture, and the Law’s and Paul’s forbidding women to teach or to have authority over a man does not include the sacrifice of their lips as we “teach and admonish one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.”[1] (Hb 13:15; Co. 3:16)

God is, however, explicit in forbidding women to teach in the church, and we see this not only from the Scriptures themselves, but from the history of the Church in drawing her doctrine from the Scriptures.  Deborah judged Israel in a time when men were doing what was right in their own eyes. (Jg 17:6)  She composed a song which was sung in Israel, and said that she “arose a mother in Israel” and encouraged leaders and judges to do their job, as her song makes clear. (cf. Jg 5:9-11).  Huldah prophesied, but Hilkiah had to go to her house to speak with her.  It is evident that she did not preach publicly.  (2 Kg 22:14) 

In the New Testament we see that Priscilla did not teach publicly, but with Aquila took Apollos away privately, and explained the way more accurately.[2] We will discuss more specifically the Biblical mandates in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians soon, but for now, I will continue with early Church history.

The only examples I know of women teaching in the early Church are those of heretics, such as Montanus (2nd Century AD), who, as Eusebius says, employed two women to prophesy and act as crazily as he was acting.[3]  Otherwise, women teaching was relegated either to private counsel and advice or to teaching younger women in convents.  An example of this would be Macrina the Younger (AD 327-379), the well-educated older sister of two Cappadocians, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa.  However, though she helped her brothers and had been their teacher in the home, she personally never wrote anything in public or taught in public, except to women under care in the convent.  The closest thing to her writing anything was her brother Gregory’s writing down a private conversation he had with her, entitled Dialogue on the Soul and Resurrection, but even that was obviously embellished by Gregory to model Plato’s Phaedo.  That very literate and educated woman, Macrina, wrote no theology for the church.

The nun Paula, who ran a convent, learned Hebrew so she could help Jerome in his translation of the Bible. Jerome says that she learned Hebrew better than he did, and that she would chant the Psalms in Hebrew.  She challenged many of Jerome’s translations privately with thorough questioning, and strengthened his work.  But she never wrote any theology.[4] In fact, when once she was questioned by a heretic about a bunch of questions she couldn’t answer, she simply asked Jerome to come to argue with the man instead of facing him herself.[5]

This tradition of women teaching women and giving private counsel to rulers, priests, and bishops, continued throughout the middle ages.  One example of particular note was Hilda of Whitby, whom Bede describes as a very motherly figure who encouraged the reading of the Bible and the writing of hymns.  She is perhaps most famous for encouraging an illiterate shepherd named Caedmon to compose hymns to God. She did not teach men publicly or commend any of her writings to the church, though she certainly had more talent to do so than many of us here today.[6] 

It was not until the mystics of the late mediaeval period that women actually wrote for thechurch.  The premier example of these would be Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), who wrote The Dialogue, which claims direct revelation from God.  The book has much that is true and much that is simply neo-platonic works-righteousness. It is not a coincidence that it is mystics, such as Montanus who had women preachers, and Pentecostals today, and Catherine of Siena yesteryear, as well as the gnostic liberals of today’s mainline churches who have allowed women to teach publicly in the church by preaching and writing. There is an element of enthusiasm, as Luther defines it, in all of these.

There is also a history of women writing diaries or letters which have been published at various times throughout the Church’s history, such as Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, a series of letters to her Christian sisters back home in Spain from around 381-386 AD. These are full of salutary expressions of piety to her Christians friends.  A more modern example would be Linka’s Diary, an account of a pastor’s wife among early Norwegian Lutherans in America in the mid-19th Century.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the first women to write theology for the synod began with “Portals of Prayer” in either the late 1980s or early 1990s.  It is a recent thing, but has grown exponentially with the growth of so-called deaconesses among us.  I say so-called because they do not resemble the deaconesses of Loehe or of the early church.  All women who served the church in any official capacity were either virgins or widows.  There were never married women. This emphasized that the Church took seriously the duties of a married woman, and the seriousness with which they took Paul’s words to Titus (2:4-5), that the older women “admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.”[7]  Deaconesses certainly never taught young men or older men or led Bible Studies.  Now nearly every issue of Lutheran Witness or any other synodical magazine has women not merely writing about history, but theology.  This is unprecedented in the history of the entire Church catholic, from Adam until today.[8] The pastoral angels (messengers) of earlier times have always feared to tread where we are now boldly walking. 

With this short history finished, I will briefly summarize the very clear testimony of Scripture that calls writing teaching.  First, in 2 Peter 1:20-21, Peter speaks of the prophecy of Scripture being spoken by the holy men of God.  What the prophets and apostles preached and taught, they also wrote down.  God did not choose a single woman to write His words down as He spoke by the prophets and by the apostles of Jesus Christ.  In verse 21 the word “spoke” (in “holy men of God spoke as they were moved, etc.”) is “ἐλάλησαν,” which is the same word used in 1 Cor. 14:34, when Paul says, “It is not permitted for them to speak.” (λαλεῖν)  The speaking that is forbidden to women in 1 Cor. 14:34 is joined to Scripture in 2 Peter 1:20-21.  It is not merely inspired speaking of the apostles that is forbidden to women, but speaking the Scriptures, i.e., teaching.  We already know that this speaking does not include the speaking which the Holy Spirit, who does not contradict Himself, commands when He tells women to sing and puts women’s hymns in the Bible.  To separate the teaching that is speaking from the teaching that is writing contradicts the usage of Scripture.

We have seen our churches deny the clear word of God through red herrings and sophisticated arguments when they insist that women can speak the lessons in the Church.  Listen to God. “As in all the churches of the saints, let women be silent in the churches. For it is not permitted to them to speak, but they are to be subordinate, just as the Law also says.”  1 Cor. 14:33b-34  It is impossible to learn in quietness and submission while speaking the authoritative Word of God to the entire assembly come to learn the Word of God. [9] To say that writing is still being silent would be sophistry, a twisting of the plain meaning of the words.  Writing to the whole church in Portals of Prayer, The Lutheran Witness, theological books or other publications of the synod contradicts this.

But God is clearer in Paul’s first epistle to Timothy (2:11-12), “Let a woman learn in quietness and all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.”  Here the word speak means teach.  Teaching is not limited to the oral word, but, as all Scripture, writing, was written for teaching us (διδασκαλία in Rm. 15:4), and is spoken in church, so also what a pastor writes is his teaching.  The notion that writing to teach could be distinguished from audible teaching as happens in the divine service is nonsensical. 

Finally, Paul goes on in 2 Timothy 2 to say, “For Adam was created first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression.”  This is what the Law, the Old Testament says, as Paul explains to the Corinthians (1 Co 14:34), “but they are to be subordinate / in submission, as the Law also says.”  Paul tells us that God making the woman after the man means that women may not teach the churches.  Paul says that because the woman, not the man was deceived, therefore women may not teach in the churches.  In addition to this, we have God telling the woman, and therefore all women, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”  That fact that many women, especially today, do not have husbands, does not mean they can have authority over men.  The natural order remains when things are disorderly. 

Why has this happened to us?  Why have we allowed women to teach by writing?  In the recent publication of LLCACA several women taught the church by writing articles on our very own Large Catechism, a document that was written primarily to help pastors teach!  We Lutherans are functionalists when it comes to the ministry, that is, without the man functioning as a minister, he isn’t a minister of the Word.  The functions of the office are preaching, teaching, and administering the sacrament (AC V, XIV, XXVIII).  Women are teaching in our churches by writing theological essays and articles for the church and its congregations.  This is not only contrary to the express will and word of God, but denies our Augsburg Confession, article XIV, “Our churches teach that no one shall preach, teach, or administer the sacrament unless he be rightly called.” 

We may not look to instances such as of Melanchthon, who wasn’t ordained, or other exceptions in a desperate attempt to ignore what God is even now telling us about what we are allowing to happen in our synod.  We do not take exceptions and expand them so as to contradict the plain and clear meaning of Scripture.  The world has been our enemy, but we have been too friendly with her.  The teaching God commends to women is for the older to teach the younger women to love their husbands and children and work at home, etc.  The fact that we have a world where women are educated is also not an excuse.  Macrina, Paula, and Hilda, those virtuous women who took care of poor girls who had no husbands for lots of reasons, were more educated than all the women in our synod and more than most of us.  Let no one speak of a “waste of talents,” as if these talents cannot be used “in quietness and submission,” as the Law of God says, in the vocations God gives to women. 

I do not know where the teaching that women may write “devotionals” comes from.  Our Lutheran mothers did not do this. The only women I can think of who did this were mystics, whose writings are actually quite dangerous.  Portals of Prayer may seem insignificant, but it is the most widely read teaching - and it is teaching - among our shut-ins and older generation.  Who gave us the right to make this distinction between “teaching theology” and “doing devotions” publicly in the church? 

We do not ask “how will people react to this?” if we wonder whether we can speak this or should speak this. We speak it because God says it.  We teach with all patience.  If anyone thinks he is spiritual or a theologian, let him acknowledge that this command that women not teach by writing theology in the church is not a command of St. Paul or Mark Preus, but it is a solemn command of the God whose ministry of the Word we are solemnly commanded to administer in His name.  I recommend that the brothers in the Wyoming District exhort and admonish the synod, its officers, editors of The Lutheran Witness and our publishing house, to heed the clear voice of Scripture in this matter, and turn away from doing this.  Any other alternative is guilt upon our heads and shame upon our churches.  Amen. 

[1] Prominent examples of Lutheran women writing hymnody for us to sing in Church are Elizabeth Cruciger (1500-1535, author of The only Son from Heaven, Anna Sophia von Hessen-Darmstadt (1638-1683, author of Speak O Lord, Thy Servant Heareth, Anna Hoppe (1889-1941, author of O’er Jerusalem Thou Weepest). 

[2] The Greek word used is προσλαμβάνω, which is used in Mk 8:32 and Mt 16:22 when Peter took Jesus aside.

[3] Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, 5.16.9. The Montanists claimed that the apostolic gift of prophecy had to continue to the end. 

[4] Jerome’s Letters, 108.27

[5] Ibid. 108.23

[6] Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ch. 23.  Hilda lived in the mid to late 600s AD.

[7] Cf. also 1 Tim. 5:14, “Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.” 

[8] Other sects in Christianity, as the Papists, accepted women teaching through writing much earlier.

[9] The tolerance of women speaking the lessons and silence on it is another issue that has been dealt with by many pastors by simply forbidding laymen to speak the lessons; but the history of the church shows that we have employed laymen in speaking the lessons for training purposes or placing them in a kind of Hilfamt in every age.