Did the Church Misconstrue Apostle Paul's Writing? (4)
- Elaine R Kelly
- Apr 28, 2023
- 14 min read
Updated: Dec 28, 2025
Paul was a prolific writer, and his letters were widely distributed and are an influential part of Christianity. Since the 4th century, the church has largely viewed Paul's letters as supportive of male patriarchy. Did the church misconstrue or misinterpret Paul's words either inadvertently or deliberately? Did they separate Paul's actions in empowering women from Paul's words restricting women to set limitations on women? Did the misinterpretations cause the church to misstep, stumble, or go off course? We seem to have a new strand of Pauline Christianity that puts a focus on Paul's teaching over the Gospels. This is part 4 of a 4-part series on Paul.
The Early Church Mothers and Fathers
In the early church, women and men both led home churches and were liturgical leaders, speaking, leading, praying, prophesying and blessing the people gathered for worship. In fact, Celsus, a 2nd-century writer, taunted the church for attracting and involving so many women. In the book Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, Dr. Ally Kateusz shows Mary, the mother of Jesus, teaching, guiding, and encouraging the male disciples. Kateusz provides visual evidence in art and manuscripts of women in worship and liturgical leadership. Her book is available for free with open access. Sandra Glahn provides evidence that the early church had an Office of Widows (for women) with teaching authority and responsibilities parallel to the Office of Elders (for men). It was a woman named Paula who inspired the translation of the Bible into Latin and proofread and edited it with Saint Jerome in the 4th century. The Holy Spirit led, and the groups of believers formed to follow.
The Established Church Forefathers
The belief that Paul's letters endorse male leadership at home, church, and society has dominated the church since the 4th century.
Dr. David Fitch, author of The Church of Us vs. Them, says that it was after Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity that the church became organized in a male hierarchical structure. Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325, where the all-male group of bishops of the Christian church could address divisions and come to a consensus on what Christians believe.
The Council established a number of canons, church laws or rules of discipline. The Council organized the episcopal, top-down organizational structure with bishops as regional authorities/overseers, then presbyters/priests/elders, then deacons/ministry assistants. The Council of Nicaea also outlawed the ordination of women. It was also put forward that women were unclean and, therefore, women were not able to touch the elements of Eucharist/Holy Communion. Later, male Catholic priests were prohibited from marrying, in part to keep them pure and "married to the church" and in part because touching a woman would make them unclean.
The Council agreed on the Nicene Creed as a statement of correct doctrine, asserting the equality of the three co-eternal persons of the Trinity, and that the Son took on human form in Jesus. The Nicene Council and episcopal authorities defined Christian orthodoxy and generally accepted church doctrines. Michele R. Salzman states that in the fourth century, the persecution of Christian heretics became a higher priority than the persecution or conversion of pagans. Any belief or interpretation that differed from church orthodoxy was heretical and punishable. When Arius disagreed with the description of the Trinity in the Nicene Creed, bishops excommunicated him from the church, and Constantine exiled him, using secular power to confirm Christian doctrine.
Augustine, a very influential theologian in the 4th century, seems to promote the idea of women taking a subordinate role, especially in the spiritual realm. He had been very sexually active in his youth and begged God: "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet" because he feared God might cure him of the disease of strong sexual desire or lust, "which I wished to have satisfied, rather than extinguished."
Augustine was influenced by Greek ideology, which assigned women roles based on function: a concubine as a tool to satisfy a man's sexual needs; a wife to satisfy a man's reproductive needs. Augustine suggested that men are in the full image of God, with a spiritual nature, and women have a partial image of God, including the fleshly/worldly portion, created for the purpose of man's reproduction. He saw no other reason for God making a woman. He believed a fellow man would have been better for companionship or assistance. He thought any sexual acts not intended for procreation, even within marriage, were sinful acts of lust.
Augustine's interpretations of 1 Corinthians 11 and Genesis 2 led him to teach that women are worldly tempters, only help by providing reproduction, and are inferior and subordinate to men. These negative views of women have become pervasive in the Christian church.
The sixth-century Council of Macon placed abbeys under the authority of bishops, taking leadership away from the abbess and prohibiting women from touching or transcribing Scriptures. The seventh-century Council in Trullo suggested that an ordained priest set aside his wife and she should enter a monastery (canon 48); it prohibited women from speaking “at the time of the Divine Liturgy” (canon 70)[11]. I write more about how the church added restrictions to women that did not apply in the early church in my article on the Church silencing women.
Protestant Reformation Forefathers
The Protestant Reformation aimed to flatten the hierarchical structures, opposing the priest as an intermediary for confession or assurance of forgiveness, and proclaiming that we are all a priesthood of believers. Some Reformers established a presbyterian, bottom-up organizational structure, with Christ as the head of the church and all members equal under Christ. The church officers, pastors, elders, and deacons are chosen by church members and accountable to them. Church officers set the direction and supervise the pastors.
Other Protestants use an autonomous organizational structure, where each individual church governs itself, allowing equal freedom for believers to determine the mind of Christ. In autonomous or independent churches, it is often the pastor who sets direction and confirms doctrinal policies such as whether women may be ordained. Protestant Reformers talked about equality in the priesthood of believers. Martin Luther married Katharine von Bora and apparently respected her as an equal. She managed a large land holding, breeding and selling cattle and running a brewery as well as bearing six children and raising four orphan children. However, Luther opposed women in ministry, stating that women, like children, were not qualified for the office of priest.
Many Reformers did not include women when they said all believers were equal priests:
"Woman was originally the inferior... She is more easily deceived and more easily deceives." John Wesley
"... she should not be free and at her own command, but subject to the authority of her husband and dependent upon his will... 'thou shalt desire nothing but what thy husband wishes.'" John Calvin Commentaries, Genesis Chapter 3
"I... do speak of women as nature and experience do this day declare them. Nature I say doth paint them further to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish: and experience hath declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment. And these notable faults have men in all ages espied in that kind, for the which not only they have removed women from rule and authority, but also some have thought that men subject to the counsel or empire of their wives were unworthy of all public office." John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, 1558
These restrictive views of women are based on the way Augustine and other church fathers interpreted the Bible. Their interpretations were also formed by Greek philosophy, a patriarchal culture, or perhaps a belief that God only entitled men to be Christian leaders or perhaps a desire to maintain the male authority to rule.
Church Foremothers
Some churches agree that Paul endorsed gender equality, that in Christ, there are no more restrictive gender, race, or class distinctions. These Christian denominations accepted women and men as equals in church leadership from their inception, including The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and the Salvation Army. The Moravians founded the Bethlehem Female Seminary in 1742.
Throughout the centuries, women obeyed when God called them to preach and teach. And for centuries, women have explained why the Bible entitles them to be Christian leaders and, in fact, requires them to preach, teach, or write as God gifts them and calls them.
Just a few examples:
Leoba (7th century) was a minister, pastor, and co-worker with Boniface,
Hilda of Whitby (7th century) was an overseer of men and women in an important Abbey.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) founded and led an abbey of the Benedictine community; the Catholic Church respects her as a doctor of the church because of her writings about Christian doctrine and ethics
Clare of Assisi (13th century) founded the Order of Poor Ladies and wrote the first Church rule by a woman for women.
Margery Kempe (1373-1438) wrote the earliest known autobiography in English, a story of her spiritual transformation
Catherine of Siena (14th century) advised Pope Gregory XI and secular leaders
Argula Von Grumbach (1492-1557) wrote and circulated pamphlets
Katharine Schutz Zell (1497-1562) was the most published female theologian of the Reformation era
Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549), protected Protestant Reformer Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples in France and financed translations of Luther's and Calvin's works
Marie Dentière (1495-1561) was an accomplished writer and reformer
Elizabeth Hooton (1600-1672) was the first woman Quaker evangelist
Mary Cornwallis (1736-1770) authored a four-volume commentary on the Bible
Jarena Lee (1783-1864), a Black travelling minister in the United States
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921), an ordained minister in the Congregationalist church
Catherine Booth (1829-1865), co-founder of the Salvation Army
Olympia Brown (1835-1926), ordained by the Universalist Church of America
Sarah and Angelina Grimke, sisters whose faith led them to write and preach for emancipation and women's freedoms in the 1800s
Fidelia Woolley Gillette (1827-1905), ordained in the US, was a minister in Ontario, Canada
Josephine Butler (1828-1906) preached and lobbied for the rights of prostitutes
Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1828-1896) wrote over 50 books, including a story of Martin Luther
Janet Douglas Hall (1863-1946), church planter and preacher in Ontario, Canada
Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), founder of the Foursquare Christian denomination
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), writer and Christian apologist
Lydia Emelie Gruchy (1894-1992), the first white woman ordained as a minister in Canada
Addie Aylestock (1909-1998), the first black woman ordained as a minister in Canada
These are just some of our foremothers, and I mention them here because we hear less about their teachings and writings than those of our forefathers. Why do preachers and theological schools continue to say that there is no history of women preachers in the Christian church?
Pauline Christianity: Does the Church Follow Paul instead of Christ?
Some have said that the differences between Jesus and Paul are so stark that Paul usurped Jesus's message and created a Pauline religion. Pauline Christianity, or Paulinity, describes a belief that there are large differences between Paul's teachings and Jesus's teachings (see post 2 of 4 on Paul), and Paul's writings take precedence. Pauline Christianity describes a movement where the understanding of the Gospel is adjusted to fit a patriarchal reading of Paul's letters. Pauline Christianity endorses male patriarchy.
"Paul's version of Christianity was uniquely his own, very extreme and very different from that of the Apostles in Jerusalem." Sally Mallam, The Human Journey
"The Christ movement was led by Paul. He reconceptualized Jesus as both man and a divine being whose message was religious and nonpolitical." Barrie Wilson in How Jesus Became Christian
"Paul separated himself from Peter and James to introduce his own version of Christianity, which would continue to develop independently of the message that Jesus, James, and Peter preached." -blurb from Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, by James D. Tabor
Barrie Wilson says that there is a stark contrast between Paul's vision of a divine Jesus that dies and rises and the historic Jesus that was a Jewish Messiah establishing the Kingdom of God.
Some say that Paul's version of Christianity was unique and different from that of the Apostles in Jerusalem. Paul believed we could be saved only by Jesus, not by observing the Jewish Law. Unlike Jewish followers of The Way, Paul said that new Gentile believers did not have to follow Jewish laws to become Christians. Jewish Christians often rejected some of Paul's ideas and also questioned his credentials as an Apostle. Paul deviated from Jewish Christians because he said the Jewish Messiah came to save all people, abolishing the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and offering redemption to all people, without the need to follow the Laws of Moses, such as circumcision. However, Jewish Christians lost influence after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, while the Gentile churches founded by Paul increased in influence.
Some sources define Pauline Christianity as different from Jewish Christianity because Paul includes Gentiles and rejects the need for circumcision; effectively, Pauline Christianity is Gentile Christianity. Some say that Pauline Christianity brought Greek ideas, myths, and unpleasant or offensive attitudes into Christianity. In my last post, Is Paul Misquoted?, I showed how Paul quotes Greek ideas, myths, and religious practices in order to refute them.
What does Pauline Christianity look like?
Does the pastor more often preach from Paul's letters or from the Gospels? Do sermons showcase strong men and women of faith (or only the men)? Does the church put a higher focus on the traditional understanding of Paul's doctrines than on the life and example of Jesus? Do Christian teachers ignore egalitarian readings of Paul's letters and perpetuate a misunderstanding that endorses patriarchy and unequal roles and freedoms? Do they minimize Jesus's lessons that the first shall be last and that we must show our love by serving others?
These are ways of prioritizing Paul over Jesus. It's blasphemy. And it doesn't honour Paul or Jesus. If we teach and preach more about Paul's letters than about the Gospels and the rest of the Bible, we are prioritizing Paul. If we follow Paul's limitations on women rather than Jesus's empowering of women, we are Pauline Christians. We carefully curate and enforce Paul's discussions of moral behaviour. Some passages are ignored (such as greeting one another with a holy kiss, washing one another's feet, condemning, manstealers (sex traffickers, pimps) and slave traders (1 Timothy 1:10), looking at a woman with lust (porn) being equivalent to adultery (Matthew 5:27-28).
Other passages are made into church policies, such as silencing women and limiting women's roles and functions. Paul's letters have been taken at face value without reference to Jesus's teaching and actions to uplift women. Paul's writings are frequently interpreted in ways that lead to teaching and behaviours that are unChristlike, unloving, unforgiving, and judgmental. Scot McKnight points out that many of today's churches base preaching and policies on Paul's letters. Any contradictions are minimized; where there are differences from the gospels, Paul's letters are seen as explaining the Gospel message and being the final word.
The church of today appears to follow a Pauline Christianity. We are Gentile Christians, and we are Pauline Christians.
Opposition to Pauline Christianity
Opponents of Pauline Christianity say it does not honour the Bible as authoritative and consistent, and it is distant from true Christianity. GotQuestions, an evangelical Protestant, conservative Christian site, defines Pauline Christianity as teaching that Paul's writings are completely different from Jesus's teachings. It states that followers of Pauline Christianity believe that:
Paul twisted the life and work of Jesus
Jesus was not divine
The Bible contradicts itself
Paul's ideas were not accepted by Jesus's true followers
However, Paul himself proclaims Jesus as divine, our Lord and Saviour; Paul calls himself a slave of Christ.
Which is it?
Pauline Christianity is not consistent with the Gospels; Paul's teachings are hierarchical and oppose Jesus's teachings of radical inclusivity; Paul's teachings about salvation by faith ignore Jesus's teachings about following him and serving those in need.
Paul's letters support patriarchy, and the whole Bible supports patriarchy, if you interpret the Gospels through Paul's letters or ignore the Gospels and the female prophets, judges, deacons, apostles, business and political leaders in the Bible.
Paul's letters have been misunderstood and misused by the Church to increase division and segregation.
How can the Church follow Christ and Paul both?
Pauline Christianity would not exist if we understood Paul's letters in context. Pauline Christianity came about because traditional views and church policies are in stark contrast to the model of Jesus and are based on a misunderstanding of Paul's message. The traditional view of Paul's letters endorsing women's submission and silence, together with its focus on Paul's letters for preaching and policy-making, has often resulted in gender-related roles and restrictions. Some women and men believe the traditional interpretation is true, and they are content with their assigned roles.
However, others have found that these interpretations seem to encourage hate and division over love and unity. They ask:
Has the church misunderstood or perverted Jesus's teachings and established a version of Christianity aligned more with Paul's teachings, a Pauline Christianity?
Do traditional interpretations misconstrue or misunderstand Paul's teaching?
My last post showed how Paul's writings can be interpreted to be consistent with the way the Gospel honours and empowers women. Paul tells those in positions of power to lower themselves, overturning Greco-Roman hierarchical structures and opposing patriarchy.
James Tabor believes we have misunderstood Paul when we say he teaches a different message from Jesus and the disciples. While Paul says we are saved by grace, he also agrees with Jesus and James, calling us to show our faith by how we live. "In all his [Paul's] letters, he takes pains to enforce and reinforce the essential ethics revealed in the Torah as applicable to Gentiles upon his followers."
N. T. Wright, a Pauline theologian, believes the church has vastly misunderstood Paul's message. He promotes a New Perspective of Paul. He suggests that Paul's writing does not promote individual justification for a person's salvation and afterlife, but corporate justification as God and humans redeem and renew God's creation. In other words, we need to focus not on saving individual souls but on building God's kingdom here and now. In other words, our actions mark us as members of God's family. N. T. Wright is now on record supporting women in ministry, saying the Bible is clear in endorsing women preachers.
Cynthia Long Westfall, in Paul and Gender, writes, “The conclusion of this study is to call for a thorough rereading of the Pauline passages on gender.” For example, in 1 Timothy, Paul is addressing both men and women who have turned to false teachers. Paul is describing how to deal with the problem by letting them learn; he is not telling women to always be silent.
We have come full circle.
Did the church misconstrue Paul's writing when they took it to mean restrictions must be imposed on women? Is the historic misunderstanding changing the message of the Gospels to a perverted, Pauline Christianity? Does the patriarchal understanding of Paul's letters hurt the reputation of God and Christianity? I'll leave that for you to decide.
Part 1: Is Paul Misunderstood? This article outlines five ways we can react when we see the apparent contradictions between Paul and Jesus.
Part 2: Is Paul a Misogynist? This article identifies interpretations of Paul's letters that endorse male hierarchy. This interpretation has resulted in the church subordinating women to gender-defined, less important roles for centuries. The church traditionally explains apparent conflicts between the Gospels, which lift up the lowly, and Paul's letters, which keep the lowly down, by saying Paul interprets and applies Jesus to the church, or that Paul's letters are more recent and reliable. Do Paul's teachings contrast with those of Jesus? Where there is a conflict, we place a priority on Paul's teaching that women be silent and submissive.
Part 3: Is Paul Misquoted? This article addresses each of the patriarchal interpretations in the previous post and reveals how they are misunderstood or misquoted: Paul is writing to oppose male hierarchy. With these interpretations, there are no conflicts between the Gospels and Paul's letters. Biblical egalitarian scholarship sees how Paul and Jesus both endorse equality through their actions and their words.
Part 4: In this concluding article, I offer some evidence that the church has widely misconstrued Paul's letters to support slavery and sexism. The church has traditionally asked us to hold in tension two opposing ideas: women are equal, and women are subordinate. Does the church give Paul's letters a higher emphasis than the Gospels in its preaching and policy-making? Did the church misstep?
I hope you enjoy a new, refreshing, and empowering way of seeing Paul and his writing in this series.
Elaine Ricker Kelly Author is empowering women with historical fiction about women in the Bible and early church and Christian blogs about women in leadership, church history and doctrine. Her books include:
Forgotten Followers from Broken to Bold, Book 1, A Novel (2022)
The Sword: A Fun Way to Engage in Healthy Debate on What the Bible Says About a Woman's Role (2023)
Because She Was Called from Broken to Bold, Book 2, A Novel of the Early Church (2024)
Walk with Mara on Her Healing Journey: 21 Steps to Emotional Resilience (2024)
Finding Her Voice from Broken to Bold, Book 3, Acts of Early Female Apostles: A Novel (2025)
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