A Biblical Theology of Periods
This article was first published in French at TPSG. It has since been republished on TGC Canada.
Discussing periods in public seems like a risky endeavour. Yet I believe our periods have such a huge impact on our lives that we would benefit from having frank conversations on the subject. Plus, I think it is helpful for our brothers to understand their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, their wives, and their female friends better.
Periods in Outer Space
Consider this story about the first American woman in outer space: In 1983, as Sally Ride was preparing for her one-week mission, NASA engineers asked her if 100 tampons would be enough for the week of her period. That would have been over 70 tampons more than she needed! Although these NASA engineers were some of the greatest minds in America, they had little clue about the way a woman’s body functions!
The first person to suggest a discussion on such a topic was a listener of our podcast Chrétienne. In considering her request, I came across a book entitled, “A Brief Theology of Periods” published, and a favourable book review on TGC’s blog. In addition, I learned of three articles published in Evangile21 about periods. So, I told myself that if The Good Book Company, TGC, and EV21 were bold enough to publish on this topic, it’s because there is a true need, and our hearers might benefit from such a discussion.
Broad Statistics about Periods
A few statistics might help place the idea in context:
· Every month, 1.8 billion people across the world menstruate.
· The average woman today has around 400-500 periods in her lifetime.
· Periods are very much part of the way women experience the world as embodied creatures. God has made us with minds and souls and bodies… and for 50% of the population, for around 2280 days of her life, that body is bleeding.
· The average age for the commencement of menstruation is 12.5 years. This is much earlier than would have been the case roughly 150 years ago, when the average age would have been 17 years.
· On average a woman will menstruate until she is fifty years old, for an average total of 37.5 years. During this time, she will menstruate around 500 times.
· Menstrual cycles vary but on average there are 13 per year.
· A woman will menstruate for an equivalent duration of 6.5 years of her life.
· The first tampon was invented in 1937 by an American doctor for his wife, a nurse. She encouraged him to develop and market a more suitable product than sanitary napkins. Tampax, as they became known, met with a great deal of resistance from politicians and the clergy. Religious leaders complained that these “sinful products” would impair virginity. For this reason, until as late as the 1950s, every packet of tampons had to carry the warning “Not suitable for unmarried women.” To this day, in many traditional countries in the developing world, sales of pads are notably higher than tampons.
Periods Around the World
In many parts of the world, periods can be an even bigger challenge than for us in the West:
· In low-income countries, half of the schools lack adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene services crucial to enable girls and female teachers to manage menstruation.[1]
· Women who lack female-friendly sanitation facilities in the workplace lose wages for days of work missed during menstruation and are viewed as unreliable workers, diminishing options for advancement.
· A study in Kenya found that 95 percent of menstruating girls missed one to three school days per month, 70 percent reported a negative impact on their grades, and more than 50 percent stated falling behind in school because of menstruation.[2]
· A survey in Bangladesh found that only 6 percent of schools provide education on health and hygiene, and only 36 percent of girls had prior knowledge about menstruation before their first period.[3]
Incredible Pastoral Care
An African sister once shared her testimony of coming to Christ as a teenager from a poor family. Her parents turned her away and she had to fend for herself. Her pastor was a true shepherd. He showed concern for her spiritually, but also materially, in very practical ways. For example, he asked if she had anyone to help her buy supplies for when she had her menstrual cycle! He then gave her money to buy what she needed, because he seemed keenly aware of how hard this could be for a teenage girl on her own. I find this level of pastoral care incredible!
Our Bodies Proclaim God’s Goodness in Creation[4]
If we turn now to the Scriptures, we read that in the beginning, God created male and female. Their bodies were different by design, and together they were to procreate and fill the earth. Sexuality, procreation, and all that accompanies these was God’s good plan for his image bearers. Our bodies, therefore, proclaim God’s goodness in creation. Because we believe in God’s good design, we can view our bodies, including their childbearing capacity, as good and as glorifying to our Creator. We’ve been fashioned with the ability to conceive and nurture new life in us. This is a gift from God!
Our Bodies Proclaim God’s Goodness in the Fall
Our bodies also proclaim God’s goodness in the fall. Our first parents deserve instant death for their sin. Instead, God shows them mercy. But their rebellion does bring consequences. In the judgment oracle of Genesis 3, the LORD tells Eve that he will greatly increase her pains in childbirth. So, if Eve did menstruate before the fall, it’s safe to assume that her periods were not accompanied by excruciating cramps, PMS, endometriosis, shame, and the uncleanness that later became associated with menstruation.
So, our bodies proclaim not only the truth and goodness of God our Creator, but also of God our Judge. Ever since the fall, the whole process of childbearing, with its various systems and stages, has been accompanied by pain on many levels, not only physical but also emotional. Think of the emotional upheaval many women experience due to the hormonal shifts brought about by PMS. Think of the pain of desiring children and being unable to have them. In such a case, a period is a monthly reminder of a barren womb.
Our Bodies Proclaim Hope in God
Praise God that the story doesn’t end in Genesis 3. Even after the fall, our bodies proclaim hope in God. And the rest of the story, and in particular the barren wombs that are made fecund, teach us hope in the Redeemer. We explored this idea a bit in the episode on childbirth as a theme of biblical theology. God chooses to bring glory to his name by bringing a dramatic interruption to the menstruation of the matriarchs of Israel, allowing them to bring life into the world. And through their seed came the Deliverer, who also experienced a supernatural birth. Mary’s personal experience confirmed that the angel Gabriel’s announcement was true when her periods ended, and her belly began to grow.
Leviticus 15 and Women’s Uncleanness
And yet, the question arises as to what we are to make of the laws in Levitical 15 about menstruating women. If we read them through our Western frameworks, they seem degrading to women. But, as I’ve written in a series of articles about how to interpret difficult passages of the Bible, we need to remember a few things when we face questions we can’t answer on our own. First, God is good. Period. We must settle that in our hearts before we go any further. And, second, we need to do the hard work of peeling back the layers of time to understand something perplexing in its cultural and historical context. That takes hard work. But it’s rewarding indeed.
Kathleen Nielson on Leviticus 15
One author that helps us as we seek to interpret Leviticus 15 and other passages like it is Kathleen Nielson. In her book Women & God: Hard Questions. Beautiful Truth, she says the following:
Why would God call a woman “unclean” when she has her monthly period? Two things help us here: first, if we read all of Leviticus 15, we find equal attention given to men’s reproductive discharges, with equal contamination and equal requirements for purification. God’s not out to get women; he’s seeking to communicate something about cleanness and uncleanness among all people. And that something doesn’t just have to do with protection of his people from diseases easily communicated through blood and semen, though that was one good effect of these laws.
The second, larger, point is this: through these ceremonial laws God was communicating his holiness and his mercy. We have to read through Leviticus to grasp the detailed requirements for purification and blood sacrifice, all of which point to the way our sin disqualifies us from approaching a holy God. For us to come before such a God in worship, sin must be dealt with—and God mercifully provided a way.
Discharges of blood and semen in themselves are not evil. These discharges were symbols of uncleanness. Blood in itself represents life: “The life of every creature is its blood” (Leviticus 17 v 14). So the loss of blood, as in a woman’s bleeding, was directly associated with death—death that came on the human race as God’s judgment for sin. These Old Testament purification rituals point backward to the fall and point forward to the Lord Jesus, who shed his blood to cleanse us from our sin and give us eternal life. In Luke 8 v 43-48, we see Jesus welcoming a desperate woman with a chronic discharge of blood who had, in faith, touched him and been healed by him. These Old Testament laws help us grasp the beauty of that scene.
Understanding the Difference Between Sin and Impurity
I find this explanation super helpful. I would add a couple of comments:
1. When we look at all the possible cases of impurity in the Torah, impurity seemed the norm and purity the exception.
2. As Kathleen mentions, unclean did not mean sinful. After all, burying the dead was not sinful, yet it made you unclean. Having marital intercourse wasn’t sinful (the Bible encourages it!), yet it made a couple unclean. Having leprosy wasn’t sinful. Much like menstruation, it was something a person had no choice over. A woman is not making a choice to turn away from God one week of the month. She is simply living in the body God gave her. Notice that there is no sacrifice required for a woman following menstruation. Therefore, a woman is not by nature bad because she is menstruating. And if she's not bad, then she's not being punished. If she's not being punished, there should be no shame during her monthly periods and the actions that surround them, including her times of impurity. This is important to remember because, depending on how we were raised, many women have grown up with a great deal of shame about their bodies in general, and menstruation in particular.
3. In the Ancient Near East, regularly menstruating women were fewer than they are in the West today, because women married younger and bore more children. It was not unusual for a woman to have 10 kids. And keep in mind that pregnant women were not ceremonially unclean. Also, women weaned their little ones later, at age 2 or 3, so that they did not resume normal menstrual cycles as early as we in the West do post-partum. We tend to marry later, bear children later, have fewer children, and wean them sooner, so that we are likely to menstruate for a lot longer than our ancient Israelite counterparts. This is significant because it means that all women were not barred from entering God’s presence for a full week every month. The number of women this applied to was likely much less than we imagine.
Periods and the Church Fathers
Unfortunately, throughout Church History, Church Fathers misunderstood the Levitical laws and transposed them onto the Church:
· As early a 241, Dionysius , Archbishop of Alexandria, wrote to declare that, "a menstruating woman should not approach the Holy Table, nor touch the Holy of Holies, nor go to a church, but should pray elsewhere."
· Local councils in France: Orange (441) and Epaone (517) decreed that no women deacons could be ordained in their region. The reason was the fear that menstruating women would defile the sanctuary.
· Bishop Timothy of Alexandria (680) stipulated that couples should abstain from sexual relations on Saturdays and Sundays before receiving communion as well as during the day. Women who were menstruating could not receive communion, could not be baptized, and could not visit a church at Easter.
· Bishop Theodore of Canterbury (690), ignoring Pope Gregory the Great's letter to his predecessor, forbade menstruating women to visit a church or receive communion. Women remained unclean for 40 days after giving birth.
To Be Continued
In the second part in this series, we will conclude this discussion by exploring what the New Covenant teaches us on this subject and lessons about periods for the building up of the body of Christ.
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