Tertullian (160-220) is well known for his less than favorable opinion of women which can perhaps be attributed to his North-African origin (Carthage, modern day Tunis). But although he advocated for the exclusion of women from ecclesiastical leadership later in life, we find the following statement in his brief book On Exhortation to Chastity.
"How many men, therefore, and how many women, in Ecclesiastical Orders, owe their position to continence, who have preferred to be wedded to God; who have restored the honour of their flesh, and who have already dedicated themselves as sons of that (future) age, by slaying in themselves the concupiscence of lust, and that whole (propensity) which could not be admitted within Paradise! Whence it is presumable that such as shall wish to be received within Paradise, ought at last to begin to cease from that thing from which Paradise is intact." (On Exhortation to Chastity, XIII)
The original Latin text supports the above reading:
"Quanti (how many men) igitur (therefore) et quantae (how many women) in ecclesiasticis ordinibus (in ecclesiastical order) de (concerning) continentia (continence) censentur (judge/recommend), qui (who) deo (to God) nubere (married) maluerunt (prefer), qui (who) carnis (flesh) suae (theirs) honorem (honor) restituere (restore). (revive)." (http://www.tertullian.org/latin/de_exhortatione_castitatis.htm)
In the same book we find also that Tertullian supported the individual priesthood of all believers.
"Vain shall we be if we think that what is not lawful for priests is lawful for laics. Are not even we laics priests? It is written: “A kingdom also, and priests to His God and Father, hath He made us.” It is the authority of the Church, and the honour which has acquired sanctity through the joint session of the Order, which has established the difference between the Order and the laity. Accordingly, where there is no joint session of the ecclesiastical Order, you offer, and baptize, and are priest, alone for yourself. But where three are, a church is, albeit they be laics. For each individual lives by his own faith, nor is there exception of persons with God; since it is not hearers of the law who are justified by the Lord, but doers, according to what the apostle withal says. Therefore, if you have the right of a priest in your own person, in cases of necessity, it behoves you to have likewise the discipline of a priest whenever it may be necessary to have the fight of a priest. If you are a digamist, do you baptize? If you are a digamist, do you offer? How much more capital (a crime) is it for a digamist laic to act as a priest, when the priest himself, if he turn digamist, is deprived of the power of acting the priest! " (Ch VII)
A "digamist" was a person who after widowhood had married a second time and Tertullian was adamant that second marriages were forbidden although the argument in favor of his position leaves much to be desired.
If the traditional chronogly of his writings is to be trusted, Tertullian changed his mind about the general priesthood and the right for all laics to baptize, teach and offer the Eucharist, for the prohibition for women to to perform these functions is found in his book On the Veiling of Virgins (ca. 213) which is of a later date than On Exhortation to Chastity (ca. 204-212).
“It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church; but neither (is it permitted her) to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say (in any) sacerdotal office.” (On the Veiling of Virgins, Ch IX)
What caused the change? His desire to transform the church into a hierarchial institution in which authority and submission are the guiding principles. Karen Jo Torjesen describes Tertullian’s vision of the church as an essentially Roman institution.
"Tertullian’s description of the Christian community dramatically marks the transition of the model of the church from the household or private association to the body politic. With him the church became a legal body (corpus or societas, the term the Romans used for the body politic) unified by a common law (lex fidei, “the law of faith”) and a common discipline (disciplina, Christian morality). For Tertullian the church, like Roman society, united a diversity of ethic groups into one body under the rule of one law… Tertullian conceived the society of the church as analogous to Roman society, divided into distinct classes or ranks, which were distinguished from one another in terms of honor and authority." (Karen Jo Torjesen, When women were priests (Harper San Francisco, New York, 1993) 162-3)
Only those who were full members of the political body could possess ius docendi (the legal right to teach) and ius baptizandi (legal right to baptize); women could not be full members and therefore they were excluded from the clergy- and laity.
Complementarist theologian William Weinrich considers Tertullian “a representative voice” of the universal church of the second century, (John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Crossway, Wheaton Illinois, 1994, 273) but he cannot do so without excluding women from the church altogether. It is vitally important that we recognize that the early church theologians were as likely to change their minds as are modern theologians and that their views did not always adhere to biblical principles, but that they often used contemporary practices and beliefs in their biblical interpretation.
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