1-2 Timothy, Titus

xli Author’s Introduction Gendered Letters What does it mean that humankind is created male and female? What behaviors are especially feminine or masculine? Which domestic and ecclesial functions ought to be assigned based on a person’s biological sex? How should women and men understand their value in relation to each other? Such questions have troubled Christians since the founding of the first churches when, it is reported, men and women participated together in worship, mission, and leadership. Early Christian texts disclose many profound conflicts about gender roles, about perceptions of femininity and masculinity, and about the relative status of women and men within the communities. Disagreements about gender ideals existed within individual congregations : How ought women to be clothed when they pray? How should unmarried women behave? Tensions arose between groups as believers argued about church administration : Could women function as teachers, as deacons, as prophets? How should widows serve and be cared for within the communities? Those outside the faith speculated about the relationships between men and women in these households of faith: Were Christian men incapable of controlling their wives? Why were women in charge of some events? Who was kissing whom during their rituals? xlii 1–2 Timothy, Titus Gendered Instruction in the Household of God More so than other New Testament texts, the letters known as 1 Timothy , 2 Timothy, and Titus, called collectively the Pastoral Letters, express strong opinions about these conflicts around gender. Their author is familiar with Jewish, Christian, and Roman popular and philosophical discussions about the different natures of and distinct roles for women and men. His own beliefs epitomize the “traditional” gender ideology: that because men and women are biologically different, they ought to behave differently in the family and society. One key feature of the gender-differentiated hierarchy that the Pastorals ’ author adopts is patriarchy: the “rule of fathers.” In a patriarchal arrangement, the free male head-of-household is given political, legal, and financial power that is denied to his wife, children, and slaves. Their social status is defined as in subjection to the man in authority over them as husband, father, and master. The author of the Pastorals views God as “Father,” the patriarchal head-of-a-very-large-household, so that the idea of “God’s household” functions as the ground of a practical theology that decrees every “family member” ought to take up their subordinated position in relation to this father and master God and after that to God’s designated male leaders: Paul and his representatives, Timothy and Titus. Indeed, the Pastorals assert that the organization of the whole cosmos is based on God’s οἰκονομία, “household management” (1 Tim 1:4). This foundational concept sets the stage for these three letters in which households and their members, relationships, and purposes consistently appear as teaching topics. Our author believes that both household and house-church—however they may have overlapped in reality—live and move and have their being under God their father and overseer. God’s activities on behalf of humanity and the churches are echoed in the domestic roles assigned to free Roman male citizens as husbands, fathers, and masters. When the author commands, “be subject to rulers and authorities” (Titus 3:1), he is endorsing not only patriarchy but also kyriarchy. This term, invented by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, signifies the overarching authority of “lords.” In classical antiquity, the rule of the emperor, lord, slave master, husband —the elite, freeborn, propertied gentleman to whom all disenfranchised men and all wo/men were subordinated—is best characterized by the neologism kyriarchy. In antiquity, the social system of kyriarchy was institutionalized either as empire or as a democratic political form [18.118.0.240] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 06:34 GMT) Author’s Introduction xliii of ruling that excluded all freeborn and slave wo/men from full citizenship and decision-making powers. Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social and religious structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression. Kyriarchal relations of domination are built on elite male property rights and privileges as well as on the exploitation, dependency , inferiority, and obedience of wo/men who signify all those subordinated. Such kyriarchal relations are still at work today in the multiplicative intersectionality of class, race, gender, ethnicity, empire, and other structures of discrimination.1 There is no doubt that the gender ideology of the Pastorals is patriarchal and kyriarchal since it values the male, the...