Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Religion

Program

Religion, MA

First Advisor

Kim Papaioannou

Second Advisor

Laurențiu Moț

Third Advisor

Zoltán Szallós-Farkas

Abstract

The place of women in the world has changed and progressed in the past decades. When I was a young girl, women were not really valued in the Church and in the service for God. There were always excuses not to allow them to serve God and they were rejected in a lot of areas in the Church service. However, the worse thing is that frequently women are the ones who are belittling themselves, who denigrate themselves, who undermine themselves or the capacities that God gave them to be used in Church. This occurs because they had been educated this way and do not know anything else. Therefore, they continue in the tradition they had been brought up, formed, instructed. The devaluation of women throughout history is the result of sin in the world. However, the status of women has been raised. Through Christ, women have the opportunity to live another life, a life that they were not expecting in the human’s institutions and traditions.

I undertook this study for all the women in the Church, who think that God does not esteem them enough to be in ministry. This study is to help women to understand how priceless they are for God and how much God considers them as a precious stone, even in the ministries that God gives to the Church. Even if women’s lives change with the coming of Christ, were they able to minister in the mission that Jesus gave to his disciples? Was it possible for the Holy Spirit to use them in this mission? This mission could be done in which areas, and with which gifts?

In this dissertation, I expose a small background determining how women were considered in the New Testament. This dissertation shows firstly the role of women through history in the world in parallel with the women in the Church. It will explore how women were considered in Jesus’ eyes, and in the Holy-Spirit’s perspective and then developed into what ministry they can be involved in and what are the requirements or the criteria for such ministry. Finally, the possibility of women becoming ministers will be explored and compared with the criteria given above.

Subject Area

Women in the Bible; Women--Rome; Women--Greece; Women in church work; Women in Christianity

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/theses/139

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