Why apostles are all men

Jesus chose male apostles not because of any gender bias on his part. When it comes to his relationship with women, Jesus was a radical revolutionary for his time. He had an intimate conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, even though she was Samaritan and a woman of ill repute. A number of women appear to have been even closer friends with Jesus, perhaps, even than some of the apostles. This would apply to Mary and Martha. A number of his closest associates were women and these women funded his ministry.

The first witnesses to his resurrection were women. So, the reason God chose only male apostles is debatable, as God does not tell us, but we can be sure it is not because of any anti-female bias.

Buy Now: MP3. Buy Now: DVD. Buy Now: Book Kindle ePub. Buy Now: Book. Question: Why are the twelve apostles all men? The new Jerusalem will have twelve gates, twelve angels, twelve foundations, and on them the names of the twelve apostles Rev.

It is important not to make a leap from the twelve apostles to male leadership in the church. The leap, instead, should be from twelve apostles to the [entire] church of Jesus Christ. It is not male leaders who will serve as judges in the future, nor, for that matter, is it female leaders. Further, the 12 apostles do not set a pattern for future church leadership. We should not assume that the choice of 12 male Jewish apostles constituted a pattern for future church leaders—we know that it did not establish a pattern in its number or its ethnicity, so we should be open to the possibility that it did not establish a pattern in gender, either.

We need to see what the church actually taught about leadership, and what women actually did in the early church. In scholarly debates about the ordination of women, scholars on both sides of the question often try to argue that every bit of evidence supports their particular view, and in some cases it seems that they try to make particular scriptures say something they do not clearly say.

Instead, it seems better to acknowledge that some aspects of the argument lean one way, and some lean the other, and we hope that this admission allows us to look at the evidence more objectively, allowing each verse or passage to convey its own message.

Here we can summarize some of what we have found in this and previous studies:. In coming papers, we will turn our attention to what actually happened in the early church, and what the rest of the New Testament says about women in the church.

Here he cites Acts ; and , both of which specify males. We also note that Acts calls for males even though the immediate need was for people to minister to women. The weakness in this explanation is that the disciples were not one from each tribe, and if they did not accurately represent the 12 patriarchs in genealogy, then it could be argued that they did not have to be accurate in gender, either.

But the conclusion is still the same: Since one factor is obsolete, the other may be as well. To discern whether it is, we must turn to the epistles. Joel Green et al. Skip to main content. You are currently using guest access Log in. Women in Church Leadership - a Series of Study Papers The following study papers were commissioned by Grace Communion International as part of its consideration of whether women may be ordained.

There is no good reason to suppose that first- and second-century Christians made such a distinction. Most striking, Paul's greeting list in his letter to the Romans includes Junia, a female "apostle", so described alongside another "apostle" with a male name. That obviously feminine ending "a" to Junia's name was considered such an appalling anomaly by many later readers of Romans that when biblical manuscripts were copied and recopied over the centuries the name Junia was frequently changed to a masculine form, or was simply regarded without any justification as a man's name.

Nevertheless, early biblical commentators were given a strong rhetorical lead by the great fourth-century preaching bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, who was honourably prepared to acknowledge the surprising femininity of Junia. Then after 1, years there was a sudden contrary turn in the writings of Giles of Rome, in the 13th-century western church; now Junia was a man and biblical commentators didn't correct that until the 20th century.

Devotees of the immortal transvestite comedy Some Like It Hot will recall the millionaire Osgood's cheerful riposte to Jack Lemmon's exasperated final revelation that he is of the male gender: "Well, nobody's perfect. None of this is surprising, since in the last few decades archaeologists have discovered a number of references on gravestones or other inscriptions which show that around Paul's time there was active female leadership in the councils of Jewish synagogues.

Jewish women were sitting alongside Jewish men as "elders", in appropriately gendered variants on a Greek word presbuteros , which Christians soon borrowed and applied to a newly created priesthood. This was the era in which Christian churches were still very close to the synagogues and inevitably there was going to be overlap.

The great distorting factor in Christian history which transcends denominational and many other ecclesiastical divisions is that most history has been written by men. And the truth is that men are for the most part not very interested in women, except in certain very specific ways — most of which have been officially out of bounds, because of the general tendency of past Christian historians to be not just men, but celibate clergymen. There is another wild card to take into account in history: the way that something which once seemed so important to everyone can suddenly seem of no significance at all — and then all the worries are rapidly forgotten, as if they had never been.

Let me point you to one of the most long-lasting examples: the Christian ban on menstruating women from participation in the sacraments or even from approaching the altar.

This prohibition, which seems so bizarre now, is first to be encountered in the writings of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria at the beginning of the third century. An honourable exception — one of very few — to this unexamined consensus was Pope Gregory the Great, writing soon after launching his mission to England under the monk Augustine in Alas, the pope's open-mindedness was probably conditioned by his evident irritation with the Christians already in Britain before Augustine arrived; they not only predated but resisted Augustine's authority.

These native Christians were rigorous about menstruating women and it was their independent-mindedness that provoked the pope's liberal ruling.