The palpable enthusiasm of the expression of sheer delight and prayerful goodwill that enveloped Dame Sarah Mullally as she made her way from the chair of St Augustine through the crowded congregation, which had just witnessed her installation as Archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral on 25 March 2026, spoke volumes. The waves of applause and cheering that broke through the reverberations of the great organ and the piercing notes of the trumpets made it more than clear that those present were joyfully aware that they had just participated in something of quite momentous significance in the entire history of the Christian Church: after over fourteen centuries, the highest episcopal office in the Church of England, an institution even older than the English monarchy, had been filled for the very first time by a woman. As Dame Sarah herself said in her address, picking up some words of the Angel to Mary liturgically set for the Feast of the Annunciation that fell on that same day: ‘With God nothing is impossible’ (Luke 1.37).

A prudent sense of realism nevertheless invites us to remember that not all Anglicans shared this celebratory enthusiasm. Even though for many of us, after more than thirty years, the experience of the contribution of women to ordained ministry in the church now seems so normal and indeed a positively wonderful part of our church life, there are still those who sincerely believe that all this is not blessed by God because it is contrary to the divine will. This conviction is based on the contention that the Christian Scriptures witness clearly to the fact that a woman cannot exercise authority over a man and so cannot exercise a ministry of leadership or ‘headship’ in the Christian assembly.Footnote ¹

Perhaps those of us who were actively involved when the issue was being debated fifty years ago may have been remiss in assuming that this theological question had been more than adequately addressed. As one-by-one the Churches of the Anglican Communion across the world concluded a serious study of the question that had been initiated by the Lambeth Conference of 1968, it seemed increasingly clear that the theological objections that had been raised ‘do not constitute a barrier to (a) the ordination of women to the priesthood and (b) the consecration of women to the episcopate, in this Church’.Footnote ² Indeed, perhaps those of us who were involved in the debates of that time did not take those arguments against the ordination of women quite seriously enough and so did not adequately deal with them.

Certainly, it now seems an appropriate time to address this unfinished business by revisiting the arguments of those who still sincerely continue to insist that, in creating humans male and female, it was God’s express intention that a woman should not exercise authority over a man and that therefore women must be excluded from exercising roles of leadership or ‘headship’ both within Christian families and within the extended family of the church.

When we search for more recent examples of the carefully considered articulation of this argument, one notable example has been provided by Dr Claire Smith, a ‘women’s bible teacher’ (for she does not presume to be a teacher of men) in the Parish of Naremburn Cammeray in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, to whom we are enormously indebted for the publication of a sustained series of articles relating to this issue.Footnote ³ The fact that Claire Smith is herself a woman means that her arguments cannot be lightly dismissed simply as an example of an inherited sexist domination of women by self-interested men. Her sustained theological arguments deserve to be considered with the utmost respect and care.

As an enthusiastic supporter of the teaching and preaching authority of men over women and of the alleged complementarity of the essentially different respective roles intended by God for men and women, Claire Smith insists that women may preach or teach in gatherings of women, but not in a Christian assembly which includes men. This is roundly declared not to be a purely cultural matter that is simply relative to the social conditioning of the ancient world. On the contrary, it is said to be inexcusable to allow a woman to exercise authority over a man even in the culture of today, for this Pauline teaching is understood to express the will of God for men and women of all times and places.

Some Christian people regularly rely on sacred Scripture, not only as the ultimate authority in matters of doctrine and ethical teaching, but also for finding ready-made answers in it to the questions of today. This rests upon the basic assumption, however, that our contemporary circumstances and understandings of things are more or less the same as the circumstances in which the Biblical norms were originally formulated and intended to apply. Claire Smith well knows, of course, that this is not so: sometimes the cultural conditioning of the Biblical texts means that norms of moral behaviour and behavioural prohibitions found in Biblical texts that may have been understood to apply in an ancient culture may not necessarily apply in the same way in the world of today.Footnote ⁴ Even so, Dr Smith nevertheless insists, with an unquestioning conviction, that it is clearly not the case that ‘any New Testament passage that gives men and women different roles simply reflects first century culture’. It cannot therefore simply be dismissed as something that is ‘not relevant today’.Footnote ⁵

While insisting that women may not preach or teach in gatherings when men are present, Dr Smith admits, however, that they may prophesy in church assemblies, given that Paul himself clearly envisages this possibility provided they wear a veil when doing so (I Cor. 11.5–6) and provided there is a man present to interpret them should interpretation be needed for the purpose of the edification of others (1 Cor.14.5). This is apparently because, though preaching and teaching would imply some kind of authority over men, prophesying does not necessarily do so. Though the exact nature of prophesying in the New Testament tends to be somewhat illusive and ill-defined, Dr Smith apparently thinks that the exercise of authority is not involved in prophesying because it is more simply a matter of bearing witness to one’s own Christian experience, and she even acknowledges that this can be inspiring.Footnote ⁶ So prophesying is said to be permitted by Paul, provided that when women do the prophesying, they wear a veil. Indeed, perhaps the wearing of a veil in fact indicates some kind of subordination to the authority of males and so validates this kind of women’s ministry as acceptable (1 Cor. 11.10).

Indeed, at one point in this discussion, Claire Smith declares that it is ‘the meaning of the head covering rather than the head covering itself that is most important’. As ‘a veil worn by married women’, its meaning was most likely that it ‘symbolized the husband’s authority within marriage’, and she adds that we can see from 1 Corinthians ‘that it also functioned as an appropriate and meaningful symbol for Christians of the authority and order of gender relationships’.Footnote ⁷

However, Smith then insists that though veil-wearing may have had some kind of meaning signalling male authority in an ancient culture, we cannot assume that it has the same significance in contemporary western cultures, and hence, she concludes that veil-wearing is not an entirely necessary requirement of women who prophesy and pray in church today. Moreover, she even acknowledges that the wearing of veils by Muslim women may be entirely inappropriate in the current context of Australian culture given our contemporary norms of acceptable social behaviour, for this custom could quite scandalously be understood to indicate a kind of docile submissiveness of the kind that might even lead to gender abuse. She therefore concludes that veils today give the wrong message: ‘My understanding from women in Muslim cultures is’, she says, ‘that their headscarf is more a sign of subservience and inequality than a visual reminder of the equality and difference of the sexes’.Footnote ⁸ As a consequence, she openly and rightly acknowledges that Paul’s injunction in I Corinthians 11 that women must be veiled when they pray and prophesy is just a piece of cultural conditioning, which does not necessarily have to be followed today as a directive of the Word of God.

The fact that Smith acknowledges that veil-wearing may be culturally conditioned but insists that the authority of men over women which veil-wearing apparently signals is not culturally conditioned seems puzzling. Indeed, this immediately raises the crucial question as to whether the exercise of male authority over women to the point where women are not allowed to teach men or occupy positions of leadership is also a culturally conditioned product of ancient patriarchal society that likewise cannot necessarily be insisted upon today as a directive of the Word of God. After all, it is conceivable that this is so precisely because it too might conceivably lead to a docile subservience of the kind that could lead to gender abuse.

Smith’s well-considered answer to the suggestion that the authority of men over women was just a product of its time as a cultural phenomenon of the ancient world is that it is in fact an expression of the mind of God. Unlike veil-wearing, the basic Biblical teaching of the authority of men over women, which prevents them from being admitted to leadership roles in the Church, particularly involving the exercise of a teaching authority over men, has often been said by opponents of the ordination of women over the last fifty years to be a matter of God’s ‘creational’ will for humanity. This is also Claire Smith’s view. The domination of women by men is not something that has just crept in as a consequence of the social disorder amongst humans resulting from the Fall.Footnote ⁹ It cannot just be regarded as the product of cultural conditioning because a divine warrant attaches to the inhibition of women from preaching and teaching.

It is even acknowledged by Claire Smith that a relation of authoritative command and submissive obedience is established as an alleged basic interpersonal principle in the inner life of the TrinityFootnote ¹⁰ and that this is normative also for the relations of men and women. In other words, the assumption of verse 3 of 1 Corinthians 11 about ‘headship’ is that ‘there is an order in the relationship between men and women that is analogous to that of Christ and God’. Thus, Dr Smith declares that ‘whatever God’s word has to say to us here about authority and order in relationships originates in the life of God’.Footnote ¹¹ This sentiment is emphasised by being repeated: ‘Paul wanted men and women to look different, because in looking different they would align themselves with the order built into creation – and even the life of God’ (my italics).Footnote ¹²

In this way, Dr Smith contends that it is not only God’s expressed will for men and women, as God designed things at the time of creation, and how they should relate in whatever time or place, but that this reflects the eternal ‘headship’ of the Father to the eternal Son or the eternal functional subordination of the Son to the Father, in the internal life of the Trinity.Footnote ¹³ This position almost certainly uncritically follows the argument of an infamous Report of the Doctrine Commission of the Diocese of Sydney of 1999, entitled ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity and its bearing on the relationship of men and women’, which argued for a ‘complementarian’ doctrine of the Trinity involving the eternal functional submissiveness of the Son to the Father, the commanding will of the Father and the submissively obedient will of the Son being held to be obviously different but ‘complementary’.

The application of this verse of 1 Corinthians to the inner life of the eternal Trinity is, however, highly problematic. It is now generally agreed that 1 Corinthians 11.3 is a reference to the headship of God to the historical Christ rather than to an alleged headship of God the Father in relation to the Eternal Word/Son.Footnote ¹⁴ In other words, this reference is to the incarnate Jesus Christ and his human relation to God the Father in the economy of salvation, who in Hebrews is said to have ‘learned obedience’ (Heb. 5.8), rather than to the interpersonal relations of the eternal inner life of God the Holy Trinity. As a genuine historical being, sharing our human nature, Jesus Christ was, of course, subordinate or submissively obedient to God the Father. However, as I have already pointed out elsewhere, the form of interpersonal functional subordinationism in the inner or eternal life of the Trinity of this so-called ‘complementarian doctrine of the Trinity’ is unfortunately problematic from the perspective of orthodox Christianity, if not actually heretical. Talk of a multiplicity of wills in the Trinity (the commanding will of the Father and the obediently submissive will of the Son), even if complementary to one another, suggests both a form of tri-theism as well as representing an apparent lapse into a form of Arian subordinationism of the kind condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325AD.Footnote ¹⁵

By contrast, the inner life of the Trinity in orthodox Christian theology is characterised by an equal sharing of a single divine nature (secured by the homoousion of the Council of Nicaea), and a single indivisible will, not a multiplicity of wills such as is suggested by complementarian talk of ‘the commanding will of the Father and the submissively obedient will of the eternal Son’. Had Claire Smith been able to resist being drawn into this sub-Trinitarian understanding of the internal relations of the Persons of the Trinity, she may have been able to speak unequivocally in orthodox terms of a ‘identifiable Personal difference within the equality of the divine nature’. In this case she may have avoided the charge of promoting the kind of theological complementarianism that implies that there are different wills within the life of the eternal Trinity, with the unfortunate attendant implication of a kind of Arian subordinationism.

It has to be noted, however, that at this point, Dr Smith’s writing tends to become somewhat equivocal. While she clearly wants to insist on the headship and the authority of husbands over their wives in an ordered relationship, she in fact appears to be somewhat uncomfortable with the concept of subordination. Insofar as Dr Smith suggests, for example, that veil-wearing by Moslem women today may signal their subservience to men and not just the kind of ‘difference within equality’ which she attributes to the teaching of the New Testament, she apparently wants to suggest at the same time that this creational ‘difference’ between men and women which she finds in the New Testament is not a hierarchical form of interpersonal subservience or subordination. It is, she says, more simply just a matter of gender ‘difference’ − a matter of ‘“headship” rather than submission’.Footnote ¹⁶ She also cautiously acknowledges that at the end of the day, ‘Women who are gifted are also encouraged ‘to exercise public ministry within the church, as we see in 1 Corinthians 11 – simply, in a way that is sensitive to and consistent with the distinctions between men and women that God has ordained’ (my italics).Footnote ¹⁷ In other words, men and women are said to be of equal status and dignity as human beings while functioning or relating differently so as to maintain ‘distinctions’ between them. This is also grounded in her understanding of the Trinity: ‘Just as Jesus Christ is not diminished in divinity and glory because his head is God, neither are we diminished because our head is man’.Footnote ¹⁸

Elsewhere, however, there are indications that much more is at stake than merely a ‘difference’ of gender within human equality or just a ‘distinction’ between men and women that God has ordained. While men and women are said to be of equal status and dignity as human beings, women seem to suffer a kind of diminishment in other more clearly moral or behavioural ways. Indeed, it seems that at the outset more than a matter of mere gender difference is involved, for Smith argues earnestly that the man as ‘head’ exercises ‘authority’ over the woman. Indeed, she quite emphatically says that ‘when Paul uses the word (head) elsewhere in relation to Christ, it always has the sense of “authority over”’.Footnote ¹⁹ It is not just that they are physically different or assigned to different roles while being of equal status and dignity as humans. Rather, the use of the word ‘over’ suggests that the difference of function between them seems not to be value-neutral but in some sense hierarchical.

Elsewhere in the same article, when Smith insists that the exercise of authority by males is the key identifying element of the ‘difference’ between men and women, she even declares that wives should ‘submit themselves to their husbands’.Footnote ²⁰ This is even though Smith wants to speak of this as ‘headship’ rather than ‘submission’!Footnote ²¹ She also thinks of this in a way that is ‘analogous to that of Christ and God’, who are equal in divinity, but this seems to be problematic, for she conceives of this divine relationship in terms of an eternal functional or relational submissiveness that reflects the alleged ‘obedience’ of the eternal Son to the Father. Apart from this being heretical, as we have already noted, given that it implies a multiplicity of wills in the Trinity signalled by talk of the commanding will of the Father and the obediently submissive will of the Son, whereas Christian orthodoxy insists that there is but one, single, undivided and equally shared divine will, it seems that something hierarchical, akin to that which Smith fears might attach to veil-wearing by Muslim women for whom veils are said to signal obedient subservience, does inevitably seem to be an important element of this alleged difference after all.

Indeed, if the exercise of authority of men over women in the church means that women can never be the leaders of men in the sense in which priests and bishops exercise ministries of leadership in addition to their ministries of pastoral care, then clearly, this involves a significant element of discrimination − it is a matter of women being kept in a place that is functionally inferior to men and of men always being functionally superior to women. It hardly needs to be said that a relationship of men to women as ‘heads’ over those who must conform to their authoritatively expressed judgements, in other words, as superiors over inferiors, is something which contemporary culture may find offensive. Even if it might be inappropriate to call this ‘abuse’, if a woman can never be a teacher of men, then in terms of logic this seems necessarily to involve the implicit, even if muted, colouring of notions of ‘domination and submission’ based on gender difference. We may need to acknowledge with candour that the authority of men over women which Claire Smith proposes appears to involve more than a matter of mere value-free ‘difference within equality’ between men and women.Footnote ²²

In any event, Claire Smith’s chief point is to try to insist that ‘the pattern of our relationships is part of the way God made us’ that reflects an alleged functional submissiveness in the eternal life of the Trinity even if this is heretical, and that for this reason, this pattern in which a man is the head of a woman and exercises authority over her, which in turn debars her from exercising a teaching authority over men, cannot be said to be simply a culturally conditioned development of the ancient world but is in accordance with the will of God.

Her reasoning at this point begins with the contention that we know this is so from the Bible itself. She points out that, after prohibiting women from exercising a teaching authority over men, the author of I Timothy draws attention to the fact that ‘Adam was created first, then Eve’ (I Tim 2.13). In other words, an appeal is made to the priority of God’s creation of Adam in relation to Eve in the Creation story of Genesis. Indeed, in this story, Eve is in fact not just created second but is actually fashioned out of a rib which Adam is said to have generously donated (while asleep) to this good cause. Basically, this same thing was earlier stated by Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 11.7−9, which Smith is also quick to quote,Footnote ²³ when Paul stated that woman is not only ‘of’ man but created ‘for’ man, and not vice versa.

The Genesis story on which both Paul and the author of 1 Timothy rely is understandable because in ancient cultures the rib was apparently regarded as a principle of life. The Sumerians are said, for example, not to have had a clear concept of air as important to life and so regarded the movement of the ribs as a basic sign of spontaneous life; indeed, an ancient story of creation by the Sumerian God Enki inherited ultimately from Ur of the ChaldeesFootnote ²⁴ may lie in the background of Genesis 2.Footnote ²⁵ And certainly, across the entire ancient world there was no concept of ‘oxygen’ or of the importance of breathing it for sustaining life. Given this deficit in ancient physiological understanding, it apparently tended simply to be the movement of the ribs that signalled the presence of life − in much the same way that a pulse rate is detected in the neck to check for the presence of life today. Hence, the rib as the ‘principle of life’ was quite naturally used by God to produce Eve (Gen. 2.21−22). All this alerts us to the fact that this passage in Genesis may itself not be immune from cultural conditioning.

At the outset we have to note that in appealing to Genesis, both Paul and the author of 1 Timothy rely on the priority of Adam in the order of creation at a time when the story of creation in six days was understood as a literal account of what actually happened. If we are prepared to acknowledge the demise of its accepted historicity in the scientific culture of today as no longer a literal account of what actually happened, then this obviously diminishes the force of the argument (if argument it is) that the divine will in relation to the nature of the relationship of men and women is expressed though the priority of Adam in the ‘order of creation’. In other words, the contention that an explicit indication of God’s ‘creational will’ concerning the authority of men over women may still be derived from it in a culture in which evolutionary theory prevails and which tends to receive the story as an ancient myth is surely somewhat problematic.

On the other hand, if we are more likely today to speak of the Genesis creation story as a myth, that does not mean it cannot communicate a religious message about God as the ultimate creator of all things or about the relations of men and women and their explicitly stated vocation of the procreation of children − with the term ‘pro-creation’ meaning literally ‘to create for…’ – to create for God. The question is whether its message really also has to do with the perpetual teaching authority of men over women and the unavoidable subordination of women that is involved in banning them from roles of leadership.

More precisely, the question is whether the appeal to this notion of Eve’s creation second from Adam’s rib in this ancient story can stand today as an indication of the fact that it is God’s will that women must always come second to men and remain under the authority of men. It is understandable that Paul, in his concern to ensure that the behavioural standards of the Christian assembly did not give offence to those in the surrounding culture, was able to make a persuasive or rhetorical use of the Genesis reference to the creational priority of Adam and of Eve’s being created out of one of his ribs. At that time it may have succeeded in its purpose as a way of explaining the clearly observable subservience of women to men in the prevailing cultural environment of Roman society. But if this is to be used as the basis of an argument designed to secure the authority of men over women explicitly as an expression of the will of God so as to govern the relations of men and women of every time and place, we may find it necessary to exercise a little caution.

Certainly, the appeal of Paul in 1 Corinthians and of 1 Timothy to the contention that some kind of ‘creational principle’ is implicit in the fact that Adam enjoyed a temporal priority to Eve in the order of creation is less than straightforward. After all, there are two accounts of creation that are placed side-by-side − in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. In the first of these, after creating the world and first populating it with various species of animals, God is said to determine to create man (Adam) in his own image. The creation of gender difference appears then to be simultaneous, for ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen. 1.27). Furthermore, this is said to be for the explicit purpose of procreation. The element of the temporal priority of Adam over Eve, however, is missing from this version of the creation myth. If anything, if there is a ‘creational’ order here, then unfortunately we must note that the other animals come first and then humans come along after them. Despite this, in Genesis 1:26 and 28, humans are said to have ‘dominion’ or authority over creatures that have already been created. A principle of ‘creational priority’ does not operate.

This same story does say, however, that the light was created before the Sun, for the light was created on the first day in the order of creation and the Sun on the fourth day. Even so, this first Genesis story speaks of the Sun being placed in the sky with a kind of dominion or authority – ‘to rule’ over the day (Gen. 1.16−18).Footnote ²⁶ This word translated ‘rule’ turns up in sixteen verses in the Hebrew Bible and usually refers to kingly ruling, both human and divine. It is of some interest that the word which appears twice in relation to the Sun, in Gen 1:16, and again in Gen.1.18, though translated as ‘to rule’, is actually a noun (with a preposition), ממשׁלת, meaning to refer to the Sun’s being placed in the sky with something like dominion or ruling authority over the light of day, just as the Moon rules over the darkness of night. Given that the light is said to have been created before God’s creation of the Sun and Moon, yet the Sun is said to rule over the daylight hours, and likewise the Moon over the night, the order of priorities is once again reversed.

Apart from the scientific impossibility of the creational priority of light in relation to the Sun, it is clearly difficult to devise a persuasive argument to establish some kind of ‘creational principle’ that is said somehow to be implicit in the temporal priorities of the order of creation as a clear expression of the mind of God.

By contrast, in the creation story of Chapter 2, Adam comes first, and happily the other animals then appear to keep him company (for ‘it was not good for him to be alone’ (Gen. 2.18)). For the same reason, it is in this story that God is said to take Adam’s rib and to create Eve from out of Adam. This appears to be what both Paul and the author of 1 Timothy had in mind when they used this image in affirming the apparent authority of men over women. Initially in this Genesis story, however, there is no mention of gender. In Genesis 2.6−7 Adam is not so much understood in a gendered sense as ‘male’ but simply as an earthling (hence the semantic link between אדם (Adam) and אדמה (earth)). Even so, it is nevertheless not just the temporal priority of Adam in the order of creation as such that establishes his dominion over the animal world; rather, this is secured by the fact that Adam names the other species of the animal world. Admittedly, when Eve is created out of Adam’s rib, Adam names her ‘woman’, meaning ‘from out of man’ (Gen. 2.23), the name in this case being both denotative and conative, i.e., it is being used both referringly and with a specific meaning. Nevertheless, this naming of ‘woman’ by Adam is not explicitly said to be for the purpose of establishing his dominion over Eve, so much as for the purpose of establishing the fact that, unlike the other animal species named by Adam, she is of the very same species as Adam himself. She is explicitly said to be ‘bone his bone and flesh of his flesh’ (Gen. 2.23) − so that together they belong to the same species of animal. Up till this point in the story, it is not so much that man has dominion over woman, but that together they have dominion over the rest of the animal world.

Indeed, as Phyllis Trible has pointed out, talk of gender difference is introduced only once both man and woman are on the ground, as it were, not for the purpose of establishing the dominion of man over woman but for affirming the truth that because they belong to one and the same species, they are able to become ‘one flesh’ − with the implication that they are able to procreate and so to propagate the species together.Footnote ²⁷

It is significant that while both creation stories make the point in different ways that man (Adam) exercises dominion over the other animals (Gen 1. 26/28 and 2. 19−20), there is in fact no explicit statement of Adam’s dominion with respect to Eve. In fact, it is only after the Fall and its disastrous consequences that Adam actually names his wife ‘Eve’, and this is once again with more than a denotative intention. This time her name also carries a conative meaning. She was named Eve ‘because she was the mother of all living’, for ‘Eve’ means ‘giver of life’ (Gen. 3.20). Hence, just as אדם (Adam) and אדמה (earth) are related, so too are אש and אשׁשׁה, ‘man’ and ‘woman’, as gendered members of the same species. It is precisely at this point when, as a punishment for her part in the Fall when she was condemned to ‘bring forth children in sorrow’, that she is also explicitly placed under the ‘rule’ of Adam (Gen. 3. 16).Footnote ²⁸ Even so, Claire Smith mistakenly insists that the pattern of the relationships of men and women ‘are part of the way God made us’. ‘They are not a result of the Fall’.Footnote ²⁹

This was much less complicated, of course, for Paul and the author of 1 Timothy, who were apparently able to receive the Genesis stories as literal accounts of what actually happened despite their inconsistencies and so could freely use the motif of Eve’s being created second from Adam’s rib to a persuasive effect. This had the power both to explain the observable reality of the obvious subservience of women in Roman society and, at the same time, to exhort the Christian community not to disturb the peace by giving offence but by living peaceably in accordance with the social norms of that cultural environment. In the context of the culture of today, however, it is hard to imagine that the divine will for men and women can somehow be said to inhere in this ancient creation myth’s account of Eve coming after Adam, having been fashioned out of his rib, any more than the scientific impossibility of the creation of light before the creation of the Sun can today be thought to express some kind of divinely endorsed ‘creational principle’ relating to the priority of light over the Sun.

Alas, the contention that the temporal priority of Adam over Eve establishes some kind of ‘creational principle’ relating to the dominion or authority of men over women as God’s intention for all time appears to be the product of the wishful thinking of those committed to promoting their own complementarian agenda. Indeed, insofar as it is acknowledged by Claire Smith herself in this same article that a relation of authoritative command and subservient obedience is established as an alleged basic interpersonal principle in the inner life of the Trinity, it seems that this alleged basic interpersonal principle of the divine life has been brought to the understanding of the Genesis texts, and that this colours an understanding of the nature of gender relationships of those said to have been created in the divine image. A highly problematic, and in fact heretical, complementarian doctrine of the Trinity, however, can hardly be regarded with any seriousness as a normative indication of the divine will also for the relations of men and women in the culture of today.

On the other hand, apart from the rhetorical appeal to the priority of Adam to explain and commend the social authority of males over females in their day, both Paul and the author of 1 Timothy seem in fact to have had good reason to forbid women from exercising a teaching authority over men, which in a sense validated their appeal to the ‘priority of Adam’ rhetoric even if it hardly constitutes a cogent argument.

Paul’s insistence that ‘everything should be done decently and in order’ (I Cor.14.40) entailed that women should be restrained from causing a disturbance by speaking at all in the Christian assembly: ‘Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but let them be in subjection’ (1 Cor. 14.34). Paul’s advice, therefore, to earnestly puzzled and questioning women was ‘if they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church’ (I Cor. 14.35). Clearly, Paul understood women generally to be in need of being taught, rather than to be capable of teaching.

Likewise, immediately before forbidding women from exercising a teaching role and exhorting them instead ‘to be in quietness’, the author of 1 Timothy says, ‘Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection’ (1 Tim. 2.11). The suggestion here is that, generally speaking, women in the ancient world did not enjoy the education necessary to qualify to exercise a teaching authority; their place was therefore quietly and submissively simply to learn.

Clearly, the problem of the general lack of education amongst women in the ancient world that is implicit in these texts also meant that there was good reason why they were prevented from being allowed to teach or preach. In fact, Paul is even-handed in relation to the issue of the importance of education before speaking in church: ‘If any man is ignorant, let him be ignorant’ (I Cor. 14.38).

This same concern conditions his approach to the matter of speaking in tongues. Paul observed that tongue-speaking without interpretation does not edify others and should therefore be limited in public worship (1 Cor. 14: 5, 12, 19). Indeed, the priority that Paul gives to the need for edification leads him to declare that he would ‘rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue’ (I Cor. 14.19). In view of the fact that Paul’s emphasis on speaking with understanding in a way that is edifying is sustained over four whole chapters in 1 Corinthians (from 11 to 14), it is understandable that his concern to ensure that good order was maintained in the Christian assembly necessarily entailed that women had to be exhorted to learn and not to teach. Without an education, they were, generally speaking, naturally obliged to respect the teaching authority of men.

Apart from the undisputed reliance on power structures in family and civic affairs to secure the dominance of men over women in the Graeco-Roman world, a lack of education itself therefore explicitly explains the cultural assumption of the subordination of women to men in that ancient world and consequently Paul’s perception of their lack of teaching authority.

It is clearly difficult, however, to sustain the belief that it is God’s unchangeable will for men to teach and preach and women not so much as to speak in church today; in our contemporary western culture women clearly have access to an education equal to that of men, including a sophisticated theological education at a tertiary level. Furthermore, given the possibility of the control of their fertility in the modern world, women are not only as well educated as men but are now free to enter the public workforce in a way that they were not able to do in the ancient world and are obviously doing so today with enormous enthusiasm. Certainly, they are no longer obliged to see their salvation as being only ‘through childbearing’ (I Tim. 2.15) − a text which Claire Smith conveniently avoids mentioning in this article.Footnote ³⁰

Furthermore, in the face of this contemporary state of human affairs, even though Claire Smith insists that her understanding of ‘the pattern of our relationships are part of the way God made us’, she acknowledges that when the New Testament insists on the ‘headship’ of men over women, it only has in mind the relations of men and women in the Christian assembly! She admits that ‘It could be that there are implications beyond this for men and women generally, but if there are, the New Testament does not address them.’ In other words, she is prepared to admit that ‘…there is no sense that all women are to submit to all men or that women may not exercise God-honouring authority in the workplace, the military, politics, and other walks of life’.

Alas, if the authority of men over women that God has allegedly ordained from creation that Smith argues is part of the distinction between men and women, long before the Christian Church emerged on the stage of human history, exactly why then should an inhibition on the exercise of a leadership role involving teaching and preaching prevail only in the structures of the Church? Surely this pulls the rug from under her own argument that the creational priority of Adam expresses God’s intentions for the way men and women are to relate at all times and in all places.

Given that the seriousness of the lack of education to a large degree appears to have determined the place of women in ancient society and bulks so large in Paul’s thinking, how can the conclusion be avoided that, like veil-wearing, an alleged inability of women to teach and preach was also an aspect of ancient culture that does not necessarily still hold sway today? We may be forgiven for thinking that the contention that there is an alleged natural authority of men over women that is expressed in the Genesis creation myth that is said to be explicitly the will of God may be a bit of wishful thinking.

We also have to take account of the fact that the New Testament passages that clearly uphold ‘household codes’ are themselves the product of an ancient culture. In the New Testament, examples of these household codes are found in I Corinthians 11. 3−16, Colossians 3.18−4.1, Ephesians 5.22−6.9, and 1 Peter 2.18-3.6. These specify the essential nature of relationships of domination and submission, not only of husbands over wives, but also of old men and young men, and also between masters and slaves. Once again, these codes do not just uphold social order by the exercise of merely ‘different’ roles without any suggestion of a power dynamic of domination and submission. This was the world of the paterfamilias of Roman society, in which a power dynamic often played out to determine who ruled the household. The authority of men over women, old men over young men, and masters over slaves does not just express a ‘difference’ of roles or functions but essentially expresses a principle of the authority and ruling power of superiors over inferiors.

Claire Smith tends to imagine, however, that the social arrangements of the household codes, unlike veil-wearing by women, are not to be understood as being culturally specific products of an ancient patriarchal society. Rather, they are to be received as the Word of God expressive of God’s will, even in the cultural context of today.

We have to take account, however, of the widespread appearance of almost identical household codes in Greek ethical teaching from the time of Aristotle and XenophonFootnote ³¹ and onwards into the Stoic philosophy of the ancient Roman world from which these texts come, which makes it difficult to sustain the belief that these Biblical household codes are not themselves coloured by the cultural conditioning of their time. It is not possible simply to interpret them as directives embodying the eternal mind of God without exercising some caution. Given that one part of Scripture is not to be interpreted in a way that is contrary to other parts of Scripture, and that elsewhere in the New Testament an alternative set of distinctively Gospel values may be found that has to be brought to bear upon them, we may hesitate before declaring that they simply express the mind of God.

For example, Paul himself boldly declares that there is to be no division between those baptised into Christ: ‘There can be neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male and female’ for ‘all are one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.28). This surely has to be brought to bear upon the Christian reception of the authority structure of the household codes, which at first sight seem to suggest the dominance of men over women.Footnote ³² After all, a fundamental principle of the service of others, rather than exercising power or authority over them, is enshrined elsewhere in the New Testament texts − in St Mark’s Gospel, for example, with its ‘plain teaching’ (Mark 8.32) about the specific nature of Jesus’ messiahship other than in terms of power and authority and essentially involving the service of others. Likewise, this entails the call to a specific kind of discipleship that involves following in the same lowly way. Indeed, Mark has Jesus repeat this teaching of the suffering servant-Messiah three times (Mark 8.31, 9.31, and 10−32−33), and this is followed by the three-fold call to true discipleship. This is a discipleship involving seeing clearly exactly what kind of messiah Jesus actually is and then following ‘in the way’ of the Cross, after the manner of Blind Bartimaeus, who sees clearly and then, as the paradigm of the true disciple, follows Jesus ‘in the way’ (Mark 10.52). As Mark presents it, this is the essence of the Christian good news. And this is not to mention the general tenor of Jesus’ own teaching about ‘the first being last and the last being first’ (Matt. 20.16). Clearly, we should not be surprised to find that these Gospel values have a transformative impact on culturally conditioned talk of the superior authority not just of men over women, but also of old men in relation to young men, and masters in relation to their slaves in the Roman world.

Many of us are therefore of the view that, rather than simply assuming that the New Testament appearance of the household codes means that the codes are themselves to be received as the Word of God, cognisance has to be taken of the fact that the Christian Gospel brings something uniquely transformative to them. Indeed, apart from the fact that these texts embody material that is essentially of a piece with the thought of the Stoic world, we have also to note that they themselves even indicate that they are transformed by the appeal that is regularly made in them to the norms of Christian love: Husbands are to love their wives ‘just as Christ loved the Church (Eph. 5.25). Indeed, in the household code of Ephesians the self-sacrificing love of Christ the servant, when brought to the household code, actually turns its original value system on its head; for, instead of ruling with authority, husbands are called upon to follow the model behaviour of Christ the servant ‘who gave his life for the Church’. Clearly, the power dynamic of the authority of the paterfamilias of Roman culture is, in a sense, inverted when husbands are exhorted to give themselves to the service and protection of their wives. In fact, it is notable that the demand that wives must simply ‘submit’ to the authority of their husbands is modified by the impact of the model of Christ the lowly servant of all on the role of the husband.Footnote ³³

Even so, Claire Smith has an additional argument up her sleeve in her quest to insist upon the authority of husbands over wives and of men over women in the Christian assembly. This conviction is said to be supported by the use of the word ’head’ in the household code of Ephesians at verse 23 of chapter 5 and, very importantly also, in 1 Corinthians 11.3.

Claire Smith does not fail to note a recent interest in the view that ‘head’ may in fact mean ‘source’, as in ‘head of a river’ rather than a kind of ruling authority over others. Despite the suggestion of Genesis that there is a sense in which Adam is the ‘source’ of Eve, Claire Smith believes that to understand the meaning of ‘head’ in an authority-free way as simply ‘source’ is wrong. In this she uncritically follows the argument of Wayne Grudem in Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth Footnote ³⁴ , who in turn quotes a personal letter dated 14 April 1997 received from Peter Glare, the then current editor of the Liddell-Scott Lexicon Supplement, whom Grudem calls ‘the preeminent Greek lexicographer in the world’.

Though Liddle and Scott cited the sense ‘“source” of a river for kephalē’ to mean ‘a point of extremity’, Glare insists that such a meaning when applied to a human person does not exist. Rather, kephale is the word normally used to translate the Septuagint Hebrew ro’sh, and this, he insists, does seem frequently to denote a leader or chief. Glare therefore concludes that ‘the sense of the head as being the controlling agent is the one required’ (my italics). Claire Smith also embraces this conclusion on purely lexicographical grounds, saying that ‘an extensive study of this word “head” in ancient Greek literature shows that when it is used as a metaphor in the context of references to human relationships, it is associated with the concept of authority, not with “source” or origins’.Footnote ³⁵ Thus, she concludes that ‘Paul is using the word ‘head’ to talk about order and authority in relationships.Footnote ³⁶ Thus, ‘when Paul uses the word elsewhere in relation to Christ, it always has the sense of “authority over”’.Footnote ³⁷ The unavoidable conclusion is therefore that the word ‘head’ carries the meaning of ‘authority over’, especially in 1 Corinthians 11.3.

Over the last decade, however, this lexicographical approach to the interpretation of the meaning of words has been thoroughly scrutinised and shown to be found wanting – if not to lead to an unacceptable kind of faux theology. In an article entitled ‘The meaning of ὑποτάσσω in Ephesians 5.21−33: A Linguistic Approach’ that was published in 2017 by Karl L. Armstrong of McMaster Divinity College, for example, the heuristic approach of Grudem and Glare has in fact been thoroughly demolished.Footnote ³⁸

Armstrong reminds us that, as long ago as 1961, James Barr demonstrated the errors of etymologising, and particularly of what he termed ‘illegitimate totality transfer’ involving the importing of the known meanings of words in dictionary definitions into the interpretation of the alleged meaning of a word in an author’s actual text without paying sufficient attention to the linguistic context in which it is actually used.Footnote ³⁹ Furthermore, the exact context of a word (such as κϵφαλή/head) may not just be limited to its actual placing within a sentence, for a whole paragraph or extended passage of writing may be of significance in yielding its precise meaning. This means that we cannot simply assume that the meaning of a word is somewhat static, as in a dictionary definition, or that it always remains constant, as though in matters of meaning one size fits all; rather, linguistic meaning is far more fluid. Dictionary definitions themselves are constantly subject to change in accordance with the actual historical use of words in specific contexts. As Wittgenstein has taught us, ‘meaning is use’.Footnote ⁴⁰ In other words, the crux of what James Barr pointed out some sixty years ago is that a problem can arise when a meaning is taken from one context and by a kind of direct transference imposed upon another. This means we cannot simply assume, as Claire Smith appears to do, that the meaning of ‘head’ in ‘ancient Greek literature’ automatically applies to Paul’s intended meaning specifically in 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5. In fact, insofar as Claire Smith’s interpretation of the word ‘head’ in an explicitly authoritative and hierarchical sense is based upon a dictionary definition drawn from its lexicographical usage in ‘ancient Greek literature’, this may not be precisely in accordance with what Paul intended to communicate. Indeed, as we shall see, it may actually mean something nearer the opposite of what Paul had in mind.

Certainly, when we examine the key noun κϵφαλή in Scripture, it does not have a one-size-fits-all range of meaning. While it can mean ‘head’ in a literal senseFootnote ⁴¹ it can also mean a person’s hair – as also today in ‘a head of hair’.Footnote ⁴² Then there are metaphorical uses of the term where the meaning is less determinate, as when ‘coals’ are said to be ‘heaped on a person’s head’ or when blood is said to be ‘on their heads’.Footnote ⁴³ In these cases, the sense of a form of authoritative leadership is entirely missing.

Moreover, Karl Armstrong has in fact demonstrated that, in the specific instance of the use of the term ‘head’, the context, not just of a single sentence but in the extended passage of Ephesians 5, words interrelate in a way that is crucially important for discerning very significant nuances of meaning. This means that in Ephesians specifically, the interrelation of words in the whole section in chapter 5 from v. 21 to 33 has to be brought to the task of the interpretation of Paul’s meaning.

Very significantly, the word κϵφαλή (head) is used in Ephesians 5.23 in close relation to soma (body) and sarx (flesh) in v. 28, 29, with an apparent allusion to Genesis 2.24 where husbands and wives become ‘one flesh’. Armstrong points out that, by highlighting the letter’s use of κϵφαλή (‘head’) in this symbiotic, ‘one-flesh’ context from Genesis 2:24, Paul’s instruction is that husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies, and even that ‘he who loves his own wife loves himself’ apparently presupposes a sense of mutuality. In fact, Armstrong concludes that, despite the attempt to align ‘head’ with the concepts of authority, rule and compliance, the language of service, love and respect that is used in Ephesians 5. 21−33 is not at all congruent with the notion of a superior social status of one over another.

Armstrong also offers a linguistic analysis of the Greek verb ὑποτάσσω (to submit), which is also associated with κϵφαλή (head) within the household code of Ephesians 5:21−33, specifically in relation to the relation of wives to their husbands. Armstrong points out that the choice of ὑποτάσσω instead of άρχω (to rule, govern), which is more prevalent in Graeco-Roman household codes,Footnote ⁴⁴ is of enormous significance. In fact, while άρχων (ruler) is used on many occasions in the New Testament (Mtt. 9.18; Lk. 8.41; 18.18; Jn 3.1; 12.31; 14.30; 16.11; Rev. 1.5), it is never used in reference to household relationships.

Furthermore, the appearance of ὑποτάσσω in the middle voice in Ephesians 5.21 and 24 describes a voluntary act of submission to another person, as in Christ’s act of self-humiliation in Philippians 2.7−8. Armstrong also therefore argues that its middle voice construction and its pairing with the reciprocal pronoun ἀλλήλων (one another) signify a voluntary, mutual submission between spouses rather than a hierarchical, one-sided obligation. Thus, he notes that Ephesians 5.21 calls on husbands and wives to embrace a respectful mutuality, ‘subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ’ (ἐν φόβῳ Χριστοῦ) − where ‘fear’ has the sense of ‘respect’ rather than a subservient ‘trembling in fear’.Footnote ⁴⁵ This means that, though Paul starts with a reference to submissiveness, he ends with notions of mutual love and respect. Armstrong therefore concludes that this mutual ethic is an outworking of being Spirit-filled (Ephesians 5:18) and being grounded in Christ’s sacrificial love. In other words, the language of care, service and sacrifice in relation to both Christ and husbands means that even as ‘head’ of his wife notions of authority and rule are replaced by a husband’s giving of himself for his wife. This means that, far from its use as a metaphor for human relationships associated with the concept of authority and rule as in the household codes of the Graeco-Roman world, this in fact draws a contrast in a way that is quite radically different from Greco-Roman patriarchal models of marital relations. There is in fact a sense in which Paul is actually at pains in Ephesians to distance his understanding of the relationship of husbands and wives from that regularly found in ‘ancient Greek literature’.

Clearly, we have to conclude that Claire Smith’s attempts to align κϵφαλή (head) specifically as Paul uses it with the concept of the authority of a superior in social status based on the lexicographical study of its use in ‘ancient Greek literature’ are rendered entirely problematic. Certainly, Grudem and Glare’s talk of the authority of a ‘controlling agent’ is way off the mark. Whether we are able to bring this to bear on the use of the word ‘head’ in the chain reference to God/Christ/man/woman in 1 Corinthians 11.3 is more difficult given the free-standing nature of the verse, though we can hardly set up some kind of contradiction between Paul’s words to the Corinthians and those to the Ephesians. And even here in Corinthians Paul starts also, very importantly, by saying that we are to be ‘imitators of Christ’, and given that husbands are said to be head of their wives just as Christ is head of man, and indeed the ‘head of his body the church’ comprised of men and women (Col. 1.18), it would be hard to eliminate overtones of Christ’s voluntary self-sacrificial love in the exercise of his headship in a relationship of mutual love and respect − ‘subjecting themselves to one another’ − rather than the authoritative control of one over the other.

Armstrong’s study concludes that the passage represents a radical departure from ancient hierarchical norms towards a sense of mutual interdependence and the equality of husbands and wives and thus presents a counter-cultural vision in which marital roles are actually redefined through reciprocal respect and love, all grounded in reverence for Christ. Indeed, when it is observed that the threefold ordering of Christian ministry of deacons, priests, and bishops is cumulative, given that the initial ministry of deacons is not superseded and left behind but continues as the basis of all ministry, so that even those in positions of Christian leadership as priests and bishops perform a fundamental ministry of service, this Gospel insight also turns talk of the exercise of power and authority, with inevitable overtones of domination and submission, on its head. By a paradox, Christian leadership is a form of service rather than being a ‘controlling agent’.

This reenforces the view that the Stoic household codes as they are found in the Biblical texts are themselves significantly modified by the impact of the revelation of God in Christ. The Stoic ideal of the submissiveness of women and the exercise of power and authority by males over females in the Roman world is transformed by the impact of the Christian Gospel upon it.

Moreover, it is not just that wives are to obey their husbands and that husbands are bidden to love their wives as Christ loved the Church; in addition, the institution of slavery is apparently accepted by Paul as a normative element of the society to which he, as a citizen of the empire, naturally belonged, for he says that slaves are ‘to obey their masters’ by ‘doing the will of God from the heart’ (Col. 3.22; Eph. 6. 5, 6). In this case, however, masters are in turn exhorted not to be over-threatening (Eph. 6.9) and to render to their servants what is ‘just and equal’ (Col. 4.1.). Furthermore, in both Colossians and Ephesians it is said that masters are to remember that they also ‘have a Master in heaven’. Clearly, in the New Testament a new content of compassion is being brought to the transformation and moderation of the institution of slavery, as we hear of it in the Stoic household codes of the ancient world.

Furthermore, it is clear that the impact of the values of the Gospel on these household codes does not occur all at once but has only gradually worked itself out in human history. In the course of time, the institution of slavery has not only been modified by the impact of the Gospel’s call for more loving, just and equitable behaviour on the part of masters; rather, in the course of time, the institution of slavery has been abolished altogether. Likewise, in our own time, at least in societies of the western world, the hard-won freedom of women from being treated as the property of their husbands has worked itself out to the point where women receive an education equal to that of men and are able therefore to contribute to society as their equals. And if consistency may be accepted as a virtue in rational academical study, then we cannot argue that references to slavery in the New Testament are culturally conditioned products of their time, which today we are not obliged to accept, while continuing at the same time to argue that references to the domination of women by men are not likewise culturally conditioned products of a past age. It is hardly consistent that today we deplore the institution of slavery and the thought that slaves must simply obey their masters and remain silent under suffering, but at the same time continue to entertain the thought that wives should always obey or ‘submit to’ their husbands or that women generally should always be subservient to men in authority over them. If the institution of slavery is dismissed as just an example of the cultural conditioning of the relevant Biblical texts rather than the Word of God so that there is no thought that it has to be upheld today, we have to ask why it is not the case that the submission of women to the authority of men is not also a matter of ancient patriarchal cultural conditioning rather than an explicit directive of the Word of God and so is no longer to be upheld today either.

Clearly, it is not that the household codes in the New Testament are themselves to be received as the Word of God; rather, they are culturally conditioned products that have been formulated in an ancient Stoic cultural environment; the Word of God that utterly transforms them has to be heard in and through them rather than simply to be thought as being equated with them. It is gratifying that, after the reading of scriptural lessons in the context of worship, the most recent Australian Prayer Book (A Prayer Book for Australia, APBA) replaces the declaration ‘This is the Word of the Lord’ with the exhortation ‘Hear the Word of the Lord.’ God’s truth is something that may be discerned in and through the words of Scripture, rather than simply equated with it.

All the while it has to be remembered that this is not a matter of a liberal-minded accommodation of the Christian good news to the social norms of contemporary western culture; rather, it is just the opposite: it is a matter of discerning and expressing what actually is the will of God in the specific context of this kind of culture, just as Paul and the author of 1 Timothy sought to discern and express the Christian good news in terms of the culture of their day. It is certainly problematic that the subordination of women to the authority of men may be said with any conviction to be the will of God.

I think we may confidently conclude that the arguments that have been raised ‘do not constitute a barrier’ to the ordination of women to the priesthood or their consecration to the episcopate. Clearly, given that Claire Smith is prepared to concede that Paul’s directive about veil-wearing is culturally conditioned and thus out of place in contemporary western society, where it may even be thought scandalous, we are also obliged to acknowledge that talk of the submission of women to the authority of men which veil-wearing apparently signifies may also be judged to be equally scandalous.

Things are obviously different in the Taliban culture of contemporary Afghanistan, but in the context of our contemporary western culture, in which women as well as men are educated and thus equally equipped to exercise a teaching authority, it is understandable that it is likely to be judged offensive if it is suggested that a person’s authority to teach is not something to be judged by the degree of their expertise but simply by their chromosomal identity.

We have therefore to conclude that, if in an ancient culture women were by and large uneducated and were not therefore admitted to roles involving an authority to teach, then the contemporary entry of women into all levels of education dictates that it is now time for the legitimate teaching authority of women to be recognised, not just in the teaching of other women, but in the teaching of men also as their equals in the mutually submissive service of the Gospel. Thus, the notion of the alleged teaching authority of men over women may justifiably be judged not to represent the mind of God. Indeed, we may all justly applaud and celebrate this with appropriate enthusiasm, as, after centuries of the domination of women by men, we today marvel that ‘with God nothing is impossible!’