let’s suppose that Romans 16, 1 does say that Phebe was either a priest or a deacon in the Church. The next question would be: How come later on women were not allowed as priests or deacons? And during what period was it allowed for women to be ordained in the early Church.
for a start your assuming that ‘the church’ was one organisation from the beginning…with a unified theology, it was not! that’s why I refer to the early church as groups of “Jesus followers”
whilst Jesus Followers of various cities were united to some extent in their faith in Jesus the finer points of what they believed were up for grabs.
some form of gentile Christianity (Pauline) did have women priests as evident in the apocryphal story ‘The Acts of Paul and Thecla’ which was clearly written (like all the Gospels and letters) to put forth a particular group of Jesus’s followers Theology and point of view.
The truth is that the Origins of Early Christianity and the writing and complying of the bible (and editing of it) is very complicated and alot is lost in Antiquity. and sometimes 2 or 3 groups of Jesus’s followers got together to form one group and for the sake of unity moderfied their beliefs and disregarded previously ‘inspired books’ a good example is the book of revelations (the Syrian Church refused to accept it a canonical for ages and ages, and to this day Eastern Orthodox have more books in their Old Testament, and the oriental orthodox have even more)
do I know for certain that women were priests in the early church…No I do not…but I know for certain that nobody can disapprove it either!
I do however know for certain that women have been Deacons in the Eastern Half of the early Church…of course people who try are trying to stop womens ordination today are running around saying “oh by they weren’t ordained…it was like a lay diaconate” but the truth is they can’t confirm that either…why the early church would call these women ‘deacons’ (which is an ordained ministry) but not have them actually ordained doesn’t make much scene to me, surly they would have called them another name if the office was different from that of the male diaconate.
but should all this reasoning prove to be false and the bible and st paul really thought such nonsense about women, then once again It doesn’t phase me…already some of the stuff st paul said (as for mentioned slavery) is outdated and disregarded by the bulk of the worlds Christians.
a better question is why Christians are prepared to disregard the slavery comments of saint paul but not his opinion of women??? my answer would be time…Christians have had time to come to terms with Slavery as an evil institution (yet st paul doen’t see it as such) but it is, and we know this not cause the bible says it’s wrong but cause Jesus is always talking us, revelation didn’t end with the bible. in fact so many christians Including catholic whom Roman church often condemned with anathema slaves who fled from their masters, and refused them Eucharistic communion) complained when slavery became illegal saying it was a breach of their God given rights not to be able to own slaves.
we now know better don’t we?
and I would say that given enuff time Women’s ordination won’t such a big issue that it is today. Time heals all wounds, including bad biblical morality.
