Women in the Early Church

In the year 441 at the Council of Orange, women were prohibited from being ministers. What does this tell us? Dr. Miranda Cruz draws out the obvious conclusion that women had indeed been ministering in the church up until that time. Think about it! Women had been ministering in an official role in the Church as late as the fifth century.

In her video, Dr. Cruz unfolds a striking truth about the first millennium of Christianity. We have already seen that women ministered in every role from apostle to deacon in the New Testament church. What you may not have realized is that they continued to minister in the centuries that followed. 

It is really as the Roman church entered the Medieval Period that it increasingly restricted the ministries of women, starting with the time of Constantine in the 300s. At the same time that doctrines like the celibacy of priests and a highly refined sacramental system was developing, the possibility of women ministering was increasingly relegated to the corners of the church.

The First Centuries

In the mid-100s, a novel called The Acts of Paul and Thecla portrayed a woman, Thecla, as an evangelist like Paul. In the decades following this writing, she was sometimes even considered an apostle. The fact that a work such as this one could be so popular even in the late 100s is a testament to the continued role that women could play in the ministry of Christianity at that time.

Around the year 200, there was a controversial group known as the Montanists. They were what we might describe as a charismatic or Pentecostal group today. They believed in prophecy and claimed to receive many prophecies. Although they received a lot of opposition both then (and today), this was mostly because of their charismatic nature rather than because of any specific heresy to which they held.

And, as we have seen, groups that focus on the Holy Spirit are generally much more open to the ministry of women. It is, thus, no surprise that this group included prominent women who spoke prophetically. This freedom of women to follow the Spirit’s lead was no doubt another reason that the group received opposition.

After Constantine became emperor in the early 300s, the institutionalization of Christianity began and, with it, the increasing restriction of women in ministry. For example, one of the decisions of this Council was that deaconesses would be downgraded to the status of laity. They could be considered ministers prior to this time. 

The Apostolic Constitutions date from the late 300s. Dr. Cruz notes that they include instructions on the role of deaconess. Although the Council of Orange would eventually shut this role down in the 400s, it clearly had continued until that time. In keeping with her thesis that the institutionalization of the church under Constantine began to quench the work of the Spirit through women, the first move was made at the Council of Nicaea in 325. 

Archaeology has also confirmed the involvement of women in worship roles in the first centuries. The frescos of the Dura-Europos house church in Syria depict women in active worship roles in the 200s. Other depictions show women officiating in ministry in the 300s. 

As late as the 800s, Theodora is described in an inscription as an episkopa, “female bishop.” She was the mother of Pope Paschal I. Her hands are raised in the manner used when a priest was pronouncing a blessing. Thus, as late as the ninth century, a woman could play a prominent role of this sort.

The Middle Ages

Dr. Cruz then suggests that women still found ways to minister in the Middle Ages even if the institutional church did not give them official titles. It is a reminder that God can always find a way to bring his word to his people through whomever he wishes regardless of the human rules we create to block him. From Amos, who was not formally a prophet, to the untrained revival preachers of the late 1800s, God will use whom God will use whether our institutions like it or not. The Spirit always wins.

With the rise of monasteries, women were able to exercise their gifts in dedicated spaces. Under the guise of the monastery, women were able to preach, teach, and even lead – just without the titles. And on occasion, God unleashed them on the broader church. 

Dr. Cruz gives a couple of examples of women in the Middle Ages whom God broke out of the normal constraints the church put on them. In the 1100s, Hildegard of Bingen not only ran a convent, she went on four preaching tours around the Roman Catholic Church over the course of thirteen years. She preached prophetically against church corruption to men who were her superiors. She was a writer with the authorization of the Pope. And she is one of only four women in history who have been declared a “Doctor of the Church,” a saint.

The same is true of Catherine of Sienna in the 1300s. She preached to a wide Roman Catholic audience, spoke prophetically against the church’s corruption, and even helped the papacy return to Rome after a period when it had been taken away to France. She was also eventually declared a Doctor of the Church.

The Protestant Reformation

The return to Scripture in the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s reopened the door to a re-examination of the Bible about the role of women in ministry. We began to see more and more women speak prophetically. Dr. Cruz mentions women like Argula von Grumbach and Katharina Shutz Zell.

Argula von Grumbach was a theologian who wrote pamphlets and letters advocating for Lutheran reforms. She believed in her authority to interpret Scripture and challenge church leaders based on the Bible. Katharina Schutz Zell, along with her husband, was one of the first clergy couples in the Protestant tradition. She preached, corresponded with reformation leaders, and saw herself as a partner in ministry with her husband.

In the new American colonies, there were also women who became very controversial as they dared to speak prophetically. In the 1600s, Anne Hutchinson held meetings in her home in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where she discussed religious ideas and criticized the established Puritan clergy. Her views on personal revelation and grace over the strict moral codes of the Puritan leadership led to her trial and eventual banishment from the colony.

In the 1700s, Sarah Osborn was a prolific religious writer and teacher in Newport, Rhode Island.

She held religious meetings in her home that attracted both black and white participants, including enslaved people. Osborn was known for her intense religious devotion and her emphasis on personal piety and revivalism.

Dr. Cruz ends her video with this challenging statement: “What we see today is not a bending to culture when women are ordained, when women preach, when women lead. Instead, what we see today is a return to the early church, to the first, second, third, and early fourth centuries where women were ordained, where women preached, where women taught and led.”