Pak: CH751 (b)
Protestant Women After the Reformation
The Already-Not-Yet Nature of Luther's Theology of Ministry in the Eyes of Women
CH751 – Paper 2A, February 22, 2013
What Martin Luther unleashed in Europe was both new and very old. His groundbreaking ideas about common ministry open to all believers is a tricky subject to extrapolate in light of his otherwise uncritical acceptance the theological status quo surrounding women in ministry. Toward the end of Luther's life, Protestant women Katharina Schutz Zell and Argula von Grumbach each in their own ways accepted and rejected Luther's teachings, which were fundamentally Biblical (and therefore truly common). Because Schutz Zell and von Grumbach rely upon theological constructs proposed by Luther, it follows that his proposals about women and the ministry are extrapolated first. Furthermore, his own convictions on women and ministry emerge directly out of his exegesis of Genesis and his interpretations regarding Eve. Therefore, we will begin with Luther on Eve, then how his view informs his beliefs about women in the ministry before moving into Schutz Zell and von Grumbach. For each of these women reformers, one must assume they applied their beliefs to their self-conception, so I will explore their stated convictions prior to speculating about their internal self-understanding. Finally, I will explore points of contact as well as points of tension between each of them and Luther, their theological forefather, within their respective sections.
According to Luther, Adam and Eve were equal in every essential way prior to the Fall, save perhaps for physical ability. Women differ from men "only in sex," such that "otherwise the woman is altogether a man."[1] For Luther, in other words, Adam and Eve were essentially equals prior to the Fall. In Eve, Luther sees "a sort of description of betrothal,"[2] and reflects upon marriage glowingly, calling theirs a "chaste and delightful love"[3] between equals. Unfortunately, the nature of the Fall and its "punishments," "sorrows," and "misfortunes" is such that women have been subordinated to men. Women "will be under [their] husbands power; and he will rule over [them]."[4] Luther's interpretation of this text is less an issue reason than it is of revelation; though it challenges our egalitarian notions, the fact remains that it is a Biblical mandate under which women fall. If women were equals before the Fall, they now suffer subordination to men. Nonetheless, punishment for Eve's sin should be seen in light of the serpent, which was outright condemned. Women may be glad in the knowledge of the "outstanding glory of motherhood and the blessing of the womb"[5] from which will emerge he who will crush the serpent. Part of "those very misfortunes"[6] is that Eve was "placed under the power of her husband, she who previously was very free and, as the sharer of all the gifts of God, was in no respect inferior to her husband."[7] She is no longer and equal partner, for rule is "entirely the concern of males."
Luther does not, in the two works explored here, use the phrase "priesthood of all believers," though he does elsewhere. He does, however, say that the ministry is "universal" and "common to all."[8] Priests were the ministers of the Word of God, charged with the office of preaching and performing the sacraments. In fact, there is no higher office in the Church than the ministry of the Word, the only one that is held common in the same way as the priesthood is held.[9] Of seven different offices Luther describes, they all are within the "common property"[10] and "rights of Christians" and he exhorts all to "Lay hold then of this right and exercise it." As for women and the priesthood, Luther claims that, by Catholic logic, "Even women are priests, without tonsure and episcopal 'character'" so that "when women baptize, they exercise the function of the priesthood legitimately." Some may read this as an endorsement of women, but it does not seem to follow within the context in which it is found, since the reference seems to use rhetorical irony to attack the claims of his avowed Catholic adversaries. Another way of understanding what he is saying might be; 'We can tell Catholic logic is flawed because by it, women are priests and can baptize as though they are legitimate.' Notice his use of polemic in the passage within which this statement rests; women are leveraged to expose the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic sacraments, which are performed "only [by] the priesthood" and yet "of necessity" can be performed by non-priests (which Luther agrees include necessarily women). If we follow this line, his statements later fall much more seamlessly into this logic. Where there might be a link between priesthood and ministry, preaching is perhaps the strongest one might find for Luther. The question of women and ministry, therefore, must also be one of women preachers. Toward the end of his section on women and ministry, Luther seems to suggest that women are not to say anything (much less preach) in "churches where there is a ministry"[11] except "pray, sing, praise, and say 'Amen.'"[12] He equates these activities with "interfering with the office of another" when instead someone should "remain obedient to the office and authority already ordained." Like Jacopo Sadoleto accused the Protestant Reformers of grasping at power, so too Luther accuses women of "[wishing] to be regarded as rulers, not as wives."
Argula von Grumbach, who writes shortly before Luther's death and well before Zell's letter, has a more advanced understanding of women in ministry than Luther. Watching a young (male) student by the name of Seehofer get dismissed from a Catholic university as a heretic for holding Protestant views and seeing no male voices step forward to his defense, she takes the reigns herself. While she does at some level agree that women are subject to Eve's curse, and holds with Luther that (all things being equal) women should refrain from public expressions, her conscience compels her to speak into the silence left by Protestant men. Though men might be superordinate to women, both sexes are accountable to the Word of God revealed in scripture. She writes twice that the Word is always "before" her, for to it both "women and men"[13] are responsible. More directly to this point, von Grumbach names that it is not God's preference that men should rule over women, but the worldly way in which we find ourselves after the fall. "According to worldly custom I am not your equal, but God loves those who are despised."[14] Her use of "but" serves at least two functions: 1) worldly custom is explicitly contrasted with heavenly/eschatological trajectory and 2) women are despised by the world yet loved by God. Inequality, as a thing of the world, is in place to accommodate human sin. Just as important to notice here is that women are named as a lowly and despised caste that she does not deny and yet does not quite affirm. Therefore she, despised by the world, must override scriptural suggestions of subordination and speak up, for being a woman does not absolve her of the responsibility to rebuke those who need rebuke and defend those in need.[15] In her words, we can also easily read a scathing critique of men, who are equally accountable to the Word of God yet remain silent in the face of injustice done to this young man Seehofer.
Von Grumbach certainly views herself as an educated layperson subject to the Word of God and to the church. She knows Latin enough to notice when Catholic priests butcher the language in calling out "Heretic!" in public. However, because of her talented intellect, she wrestles viscerally with how her role as a woman is socially regulated so heavily. She writes reluctantly, and with no shortage of angst about her genuine awareness of the curse of Eve and the resultant place of women in the church of God. She silenced her skilled tongue and "with a heavy heart... failed to do anything [because] women should be silent in churches."[16] Being bound by scripture is doubly difficult, for on the one hand it insists she remain silent, while on the other, she reads the prophets[17] as compelling her to speak in the face of men's silence. She has none of the comparative frivolousness that Zell would later exhibit. Hers is the call of Jonah, to go where she does not particularly wish to go. Like the prophets before her, she sees herself as meek and of little consequence. As a woman, the identity she "claims for herself"[18] is bound up with lowly children and those "who are in error"[19] and "who murmur." However, it is those same poor souls who are also "humble" and not "without the Spirit of God."
Between Luther and von Grumbach, each would agree that gendered inequality is a worldly reality at best, but being a result of the Fall means that it is not essential to humanity. It is unclear whether von Grumbach would agree with Luther's claim that women "are primarily created by God [to] bear children, be compassionate, and bring joy & happiness to men."[20] She does seem to concede that her speaking out was not a first-order responsibility for her, but that she did so out of compulsion of male silence. Considering her firm conviction that inequality is a worldly custom, she may, however, see the irony of Luther's criticisms of the Catholic distinction between the power and the use of the office of the keys. Luther claims this power and its use "belongs to the church,"[21] to which von Grumbach would certainly agree. However, if there is neither male nor female in Christ,[22] then Luther is no better in his reservation of 'the use' of the keys to men while conceding their power belongs to the common, universal church (which includes women). Therefore, she would argue that his critique of Rome looses its consistency if the power and the use are not also simultaneously afforded to women as well (Catholic or Protestant).
Katharina Schutz Zell wrote her letter to the citizens of Strasbourg about ten years after Luther had died, and would most certainly have been informed of his positions on the ministry. With Luther, Zell maintained a kind of reduced status of women. Though we cannot know for sure based on this one letter, it is possible she based her theological conviction on a Lutheran reading of Eve, who had passed on to all women the curse of subordination to men. About her perceived ministry, she said, "Christ called me, a poor woman, to holy and true knowledge of Him."[23] It is unclear whether she is poor because she is a woman, or if she sees her poverty in some other way, for as the wife of one of the most prominent pastors in a major German city she likely had her material needs quite taken care of. Either way, Christ nonetheless called her, a woman, to the ministry of holy and true knowledge of God. Whatever tension that might conjure up, she boldly goes about her ministry, either ignorant of or despite her poorly status, for she boldly engages in public revision of scripture, saying "fisher of people" who "shall catch people."[24]
Despite her almost certain theological struggle with the genderization of ministry and scriptural androcentrism, Zell sees herself squarely within the bounds of the Bible. She likens herself in her letter to Anna and Simeon of Luke 2 and the "poor little woman"[25] of Mark 5. Her self understanding is carried by her loose convictions about gender and the Bible, comparing herself to a man of the Bible once directly (Simeon was irrefutably a male) and once possibly indirectly. Zell's language about being a "poor, solitary woman"[26] against "someone stronger than [her]" "spreading a wicked and false reputation" in public quickly brings David and Goliath to mind.[27] The fluidity with which she self-describes her gender in Biblical terms may be easier to understand in light of Luther's writings about women being equal to men in sex alone, such that "the woman is altogether a man."[28] Read in this context, it should not disturb us in the least to see Zell, an obviously confident and learned woman, to describe herself in masculine terms.
Zell and Luther would both have no problem with a woman's close association with (and maybe even the subordination to) her husband. Zell frequently refers to the reputation and status of her husband to legitimate her own. She even evokes Luther's famous line before the Diet of Worms; "here I stand before many... as a young woman in my fathers house, in my marriage, and now in my grieving widowhood."[29] Luther too relies upon the language of the man's "house," not just by interpreting Eve as being a building based upon female physical features,[30] but also in that "the wife is to be a mundane dwelling place to her husband."[31] Zell's obviously supportive relationship with her husband, one of the first Roman priests to marry and be excommunicated, did not reflect Luther's vision that "a wife should be concerned with the affairs of her own home and not go too far away from it."[32] Quite the confident and outspoken woman, she had no problem taking affairs close to her heart, such as the Word of God, out into the street and even into the pulpit.[33]
As we can see, each of these two women tried desperately to honor the frameworks in which they found themselves. Unfortunately, the profound inclusivity that Luther inaugurated carried with it a set of assumptions that seemed to these women to be self-contradictory. Either ministry was broken open to all believers, many of whom were women, or the Protestant project still needed reform. There were fundamental points at which they agreed with Luther and refused to conveniently ignore the issue of Eve's curse, but there were also points which they departed quite strongly (and not without confessional misgivings) from his insistence upon the domesticity of their entire sex. They surely found that women were still pursuing reform, these women who came after the Protestant moment. Theirs is a witness that indeed that the church always needed to be reformed and reforming.
Footnotes
[1] Luther, On Eve, 137
[2] Ibid., 133
[3] Ibid., 134
[4] Ibid., 198. It is unclear to which translation Luther is referencing, though it is likely his own.
[5] Ibid., 201
[6] Ibid., 202
[7] Ibid., 203
[8] Luther, Women and Ministry, 22. He uses this latter phrase three times, with the third found on page 23. He adds the qualifier "universal" twice.
[9] Ibid., 34
[10] Ibid., 23
[11] Ibid., 63. This line of his seems to drop with irony, leaving one to wonder about the "papist" offices ordained before Luther and his reformers. After all, what "signs and deeds" did God show to Luther that they were no longer 'offices' or ministries? Furthermore, how does this conflict with Christ's own exasperation at a generation that demands signs and wonders in the first place?
[12] Ibid., 65
[13] Argula von Grumbach, Account of a Christian Woman, 151 & 156, emphasis added. Notice the order von Grumbach uses - women precede men. This might imply either women's increased scrutiny emerging from the Fall or, alternatively, some kind of privileging of women in her text
[14] Ibid., 154, emphasis added.
[15] Ibid., 158
[16] Ibid., 159. Zell cites Paul's claim in 1 Timothy 2.
[17] Ibid. Specifically Isaiah and Ezekiel.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Luther, Women and Ministry, 63
[21] Ibid., 26. Here Luther is suggests that Rome claims the power of the keys is common but their use is restricted to the Bishops. He attacks the distinction as Rome constructs it, but preserves it in his exclusion of women from some forms of ministry.
[22] Galatians 3:28
[23] Katharina Schutz Zell, A Letter to the Whole Citizenship of the City of Strasbourg, 223
[24] Ibid., 236-237. The Greek word anthropos is gender-ambiguous, though most (if not all, including modern) translations render it "men."
[25] Ibid., 230
[26] Ibid., 226
[27] Ibid., 231, emphasis added
[28] Ibid., 229. Goliath spent 40 days calling out curses and rants against Israel before David fell him with his sling. Ironically, David's older brother, seeing him descending the hill to accept Saul's challenge, accuses him of the very thing Sadoleto accuses Protestants of and Luther accuses women of - pride and ambition. (1 Samuel 17: 28)
[29] Luther, On Eve, 137-138
[30] Zell, 231. Emphasis was added to the terms that evoke her husband in direct relation to herself.
[31] See Luther, On Eve, 132; Their bodies are to be "thicker in their lower part but more drawn together in the upper."
[32] Ibid., 136
[33] Luther, Women and Ministry, 64. By all appearances, the Zells wed two years prior to the Luthers…
