13th March, 2006

JIM REIHER

If one criticism is heard time and again, to keep women as a gender group out of leadership in the church, it is this one: Jesus had only male apostles. Therefore, men are meant to be the final authority in the earthly expression of the Kingdom of God. David Wetherell, for example, writes about Jesus: “Although his attitude to women was different from that of others, he did not appoint any women among the apostles...The fact is, that Christ, already unprecedented in his social teaching and out of step with his time and culture, could have appointed women apostles, but did not do so”.

THE 12 APOSTLES: A sculpture of the scene of the Last Supper (with Jesus' 12 male apostles) with by Brazilian sculptor Aleijadinho. PICTURE: Clésio DaGama (www.sxc.hu)   "Just because the first 12 apostles were men does not imply that all apostles have to be men. Indeed there is one named apostle in Romans 16:7 who is a woman - Junia. Once the message passed out from the borders of Israel, and the purpose of the symbolism of the 12 apostles had been served, women could become apostles too."

This is an important question to think about. We apparently can not explain Jesus choosing just male apostles, simply as an act that was culturally appropriate - after all, Jesus was to break all kinds of culturally appropriate norms in the days ahead! So why not break one here too - if God's will is for women and men to be leaders in the church, why not state that from the beginning?

In reply, let us observe a few important considerations.

Firstly, and most significantly, Jesus was establishing the New Covenant, and doing so specifically in Israel. He was deliberately setting up a visual picture of the New Covenant, by naming 12 men to be the New Covenant counterpart to the 12 sons of Jacob: the 12 tribes of Israel. The Old Covenant had 12 men as it's calling card or trade mark - the 12 sons of Jacob - the 12 tribes of Israel. The new Covenant would have 12 men named to be its first apostles - as the trade mark or the greater covenant - the very one the old covenant pointed to and looked forward to.

Richard Longenecker in his Acts commentary recognises this symbolic function of the 12 apostles. When Judas betrayed Jesus and suicided, he had to be replaced. Longenecker (emphasising the actual number of apostles more than the gender of them) writes: "The ‘remnant theology’ of Late Judaism made it mandatory that any group that presented itself as ‘the righteous remnant’ of the nation, and had the responsibility of calling the nation to repentance and permeating it for God’s glory, must represent itself as the true Israel, not only in its proclamation, but also in its symbolism".

But just because the first 12 apostles were men does not imply that all apostles have to be men. Indeed there is one named apostle in Romans 16:7 who is a woman - Junia (see chapter 8 for more detail on her). Once the message passed out from the borders of Israel, and the purpose of the symbolism of the 12 apostles had been served, women could become apostles too.

There seems to be two groups of apostles in the New Testament. John Stott calls them the Apostles of Jesus and the Apostles of the Church. The first group were made up of the 12 and can't be replaced any more. Note Acts 1:21,22: “Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.” There needs to be 12 men to be symbolic of the new covenant who could also act as witnesses. The church's apostles - like Barnabas, Silas, Timothy and Junia - were more like missionary church planters. But note the emphasis of Luke in Acts 1. The role of the 12 was to be that of witnesses. Even though Jesus did overthrow cultural norms at times (eating on the Sabbath, not washing the right ritualistic way before eating, etc) he knew that witnesses in the eyes of the Jewish law, had to be men. A woman's testimony was not counted as legally binding or even trustworthy. Now Jesus could have said “away with that - I'll make the women part of the 12 witnesses anyway” - but He chose not to. He wanted the initial witnesses to be accepted as witnesses: that was their main reason for being a part of the 12.

Later - after the symbolism of the new Covenant was established, and after the message began to spread to other nations and cultures - it was then more clearly appropriate to include women in leadership, even at apostolic level.

Equally importantly, the 12 apostles were not leaders of local churches. None of them became a settled pastor of a local congregation. They were wandering preachers, witnesses and church planters. The leadership of local churches is a totally different issue. Leadership of local churches - senior ministers - is really the big sticking point of the contemporary debate. Most churches that keep women out of leadership also don’t have apostles - male or female! They only have ministers and higher levels of ministers (bishops, cardinals, etc). So, linking the number of apostles to the gender of ministers is questionable in itself.

Also, the first 12 apostles were all Jews. They were not just men - they were Jewish men. Should all church leaders in final authority today be Jewish male Christians? No one would say, “Yes”. But Jesus only chose Jewish men. He could have selected some Gentiles who followed him. We know he always attracted a crowd - beginning in Galilee - which had a very mixed population of Jews and Gentiles. He commended a Gentile’s faith as being greater than any he had seen in Israel, and a late recorded example of Gentiles following Jesus or inquiring after him, is in John 12:20-22.

Note too, that the famous 12 apostles were not all that important after Pentecost: Peter, James and John are clearly leaders in the early church in Jerusalem, but what about the rest? What do we know of the others? We know more about other men and some women than we do about the doings of James the Less, or Simon the Zealot, or Thomas, or most of the others. The symbolism had been noted: the witnesses had witnessed - their importance dwindled.

Jesus did choose 12 Jewish, male, bearded, sandal wearing, Aramaic speaking, Greek writing Apostles. He did. Should we make all leadership in the church fit all those requirements? We began this chapter with a quote that implied that if Jesus did not break a cultural norm, then we should not change away from that. The problem with such a view is that we all do break lots of the cultural norms that Jesus kept. We do not eat the things Jesus ate, or prepare food the way he did. We do not dress the way Jesus dressed. We don’t groom ourselves the way he did, and we do not use his original language. In many things that Jesus did, we have left them behind, because they are irrelevant to our culture. We can likewise leave behind the initial appointment of just men to the position of the first 12 apostles. That was not the be-all and end-all of church leadership. It was the beginning - not the model.

The above is an extract from Jim Reiher’s latest book 'Women, Leadership and the Church', published by Acorn Press, 2006. It is available at Koorong and Word and sells for $16.50 (GST included).

Jim Reiher (BA (double major in history), BA in Theology, Dip Ed. MA in Theology (Hons)) is a full time lecturer for Tabor College Victoria, lecturing in church history and New Testament; and also has speciality interest areas in women’s ministry, creative ministry, and the New Age movement. His views are not necessarily those of other Tabor faculty members or of Tabor College.

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