Continuing from the question asked in the previous post, Nick writes:
…I’ve always been taught that women are not meant to be Priests or Bishops, and some of Paul’s writings seem to back this up. Question 2: Do women have a different role to play in the ministry, and if so, does it preclude them from serving as Priests or Bishops?
Nick is not the first person to write to me about this. The Anglican Communion has been wrestling over the question of the ordination of women for many decades now. There are Christians on either side of the question who wish to uphold the Word of God and respond to God’s call. It would be interesting to sketch out the history of this conversation, but perhaps it will be more helpful to those asking if we look at the theological question. This is easier said than done, given that the question of women’s ordination is front loaded, for obvious reasons, with questions of identity, politics, and sexuality, but for the purposes of this post I will stick to the argument from Scripture, as clarified by reason and tradition.
I should mention up front that some of you may find the argument I make here to be entirely not to your liking. If that is the case, I implore you to stick with it to the end. You will have an opportunity to show me why my argument is way off base. And if I have misunderstood the Word of God, frankly, I welcome the correction.
The Argument in Favor
There have been lots of good theological arguments made for the ordination of women by folks like Rowan Williams, Sarah Coakley, and even the late great Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. All of these arguments, however, boil down to a single, simple principle: Why not? I do not mean to make light of this, as there is behind this “Why not?” a strong sense that God is, in fact, calling many women into ordained ministry, and that if we block their path to respond to His call we commit a very serious sin. Nonetheless, at its core, the argument for women’s ordination is grounded in the principle of equality. “According to the Bible, women and men are equally made in God’s image,” says the website of WATCH, an advocacy group in the Church of England working for the ordination of women as bishops. “Images and perceptions of women that demean that truth are still prevalent across the world and damage all women’s sense of identity and self-worth.” WATCH believes that the denial of ordination to women demeans them and denies them their God given equality. What possible reason could there be for doing a thing like that?
Problems with the Standard Objections
A coherent response to the question of women’s ordination requires a careful understanding of three distinct scriptural principles: the creation and purpose of maleness and femaleness, the doctrine of the Church, and the purpose of the pastoral ministry. Any theology that speaks to one or two of these but neglects the third is woefully incomplete. Opponents of women’s ordination have often relied too heavily on only one or two of these principles, leaving their arguments vulnerable to easy dissection. Evangelicals tend to stress God’s creation of men and women as different, but they often ignore the doctrine of the Church and give only a gloss to the theology of pastoral ministry. It is preposterous to argue that women cannot be ordained while simultaneously arguing that lay people can preach and preside over the sacraments. This kind of argument suggests that pastoral ministry only matters when we are discussing issues of authority and thus plays readily into the hands of those who quite rightly point to such an argument as sexism.
At the same time, however, Anglo-Catholic opponents of women’s ordination often over-emphasize their understanding of the pastoral ministry while failing to elaborate on how this ministry is inter-connected with the doctrine of creation. Anglo-Catholics assert that women cannot stand at the altar in the place of Christ because Christ was male and only chose men. But of course, Christ was also Jewish, which no one argues that Christian priests have to be. The framing of the argument by Anglo-Catholics often makes it sound as if men and women are of completely different orders of creation, which leads to the question of whether or not Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was sufficient to save the souls of women. As Saint Gregory Nazianzus said, “That which is not assumed cannot be healed.” If Christ’s humanity does not encompass the reality of both sexes at the level of being, than His incarnation was incomplete.
The Maleness of Christ and the Femaleness of the Church
All of that said, the story of salvation that the Bible tells us is not gender neutral. The story of creation in Genesis 2 reveals to us that God created human beings male and female for a purpose. The woman is taken out of the man, not as a kind of second class version of him but as a distinct kind of a person who complements and completes his gifts and strengths. The woman is called Eve because she is to be the mother of all living. The man is Adam and he is called upon to care for all of creation, including his wife. This interplay is repeated and emphasized anew in Paul’s description of both marriage and the Church in Ephesians 5. Husbands are to protect their wives, to guide them, to give all to their wives and families that God has given to them, and even to die for them. Wives are to receive the love of their husbands, to respect them, and to share that love with the world. The physical analogue to this is the biological act of sexual congress in which wife receives husband and bears his children.
Ephesians 5:21-33 interweaves this description of the roles of husband and wife in marriage with a mystical description of the relationship between Christ and the Church. In so doing, Paul affirms what he has said elsewhere about Christ as the new Adam (1 Corinthians 15:20-45 and Romans 5:12-14). Implicitly, the Church becomes the new Eve. Jesus acts as a husband to His bride in the way that Adam failed to act as a husband to his bride. Jesus gives everything to His bride, the Church, and she in turn is called to receive it, to respect her husband, and to share all that she has received with the whole world. The Church is Mother because God is Father. In other words, in relation to God, whatever our biological sex, we are all female.
A Masculine Office
How does all of this relate to the ministry? Many opposed to women’s ordination point to passages like 1 Corinthians 14:34-37 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15 as examples of concrete scriptural prohibitions on ordaining women. Feminist theologians have made counter arguments that these passages can be interpreted in different ways. Obviously, a thorough look at this issue has to take these passages into account, but even if we leave these passages aside, the weight of Scripture continues to press upon us the masculine nature of the work of the pastor.
If we accept the evidence of Matthew 16 and John 21 that the ministry of the apostles, passed on to the bishops and presbyters, is a ministry of standing in the place of Christ towards the Church, than it becomes clear why only men were called to this task by Jesus in the scriptures and by the early Church in the apostolic age, despite the fact that women held important roles in the Church and were generally regarded more highly by Christians than by the adherents of any other ancient religion. The work of the bishop and the presbyter is to stand before the people and give them the gifts of Christ, standing not just in the place of Christ but essentially in the place of Adam. Christ did not choose men because men are in any way superior to women. Rather, the work of pastoring is inherently masculine, just as the work of being the Church is inherently feminine.
This only answers half the question though. There’s an old joke that goes, “Do you believe in women’s ordination?” The reply is, “Believe it? I’ve seen it!” There is something patently absurd about arguing that the women who are currently occupying positions as priests and bishops are just playing dress up. I have known and experienced wonderful ministry from ordained women over the years. Most of the women in orders I have known have been fine servants of God who believe deeply in Christ. I would rather have an orthodox woman as my pastor than a heretical man any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Of course, my experience is not, in and of itself, proof that women can occupy the office, but if we believe that the power of the priest is found not in his being but in the Word spoken over him and through him, than it must follow that any person who has received that Word through the Holy Spirit and the laying on of hands is a true priest. To deny that is not only to deny the efficacy of the woman in question but to deny the efficacy of the Word itself.
But that does not change the biblical reality that the office of priesthood is an inherently masculine office. If a woman can exercise priesthood, she does so as an icon of Christ in His maleness, just as the gathered community that receives her ministry is an icon of the Church’s femaleness, even if every single person in the pews on a given Sunday is male.
Broken Iconography Can Lead to a Broken Gospel
This sort of bending of the iconography can have a disturbing effect on people’s reception of the faith, and that effect cannot simply be attributed to latent sexism. From a biblical standpoint, the chief argument against the ordination of women is sacramental, because it blurs our understanding of what the Bible teaches us that a priest actually is, which inevitably leads to misunderstanding who God actually is. C.S. Lewis put it this way:
What really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word “priest”. The more they speak (and speak truly) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for “visiting”, the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East – he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as “God-like” as a man; and a given women much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.
Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to “Our Mother which art in heaven” as to “Our Father”. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does…
Indeed, if we look at the development of discourse in the Church since the ordination of women, this is exactly what has happened. We avoid using gendered language for God. Instead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we are taught to pray to the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, or worse, the Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, and Life-Giver. We reduce God to a series of functions, denying His essential personality as He has revealed Himself to us. We argue that Jesus could have just as easily been a woman. And this language not only turns the revelation of God on its head, it also undoes the relationship between God and us through which we receive salvation. If Christ could have been a woman, than perhaps the Bride of Christ could be a man. Those who wince at the use of male pronouns for God are just as likely, if not more so, to wince at female pronouns for the Church. But calling the Church she isn’t some sort of quaint practice, like the way we sometimes refer to ships or machinery as ladies. If the Church is not she, than we cannot receive Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, nor can we nurture the world with His love. If the Church is not she, than we are still dead in our sins.
Conclusion
The effort to ordain women as priests and bishops ran largely along political lines in the American Church, relying heavily on secular arguments about feminism and human rights. The same sort of argument has prevailed in other parts of the Communion, although it is worth noting that the vast majority of the Anglican Communion continues to reserve at least the episcopate only to men. The theological question that has never been explored and answered is how, if at all, a female priest can serve as an icon of the male Christ, performing a function that is inherently masculine. Truthfully, this is the question that should have been answered before the ordination of women became a de facto reality, and it is a question that probably would have been best answered at the level of the Communion itself, not by individual provinces, given how much our ecumenical relationships have been affected by this decision.
Yet even as I write this, I cannot help but be painfully aware that there are women in orders who may read this and find it offensive or insulting. I certainly do not mean it to be that way. I would imagine that if I were a woman in orders or seeking orders, feeling very strongly that my calling to the ordained ministry is from God, it would be incredibly difficult to separate the theological question from the question of personal identity. Nonetheless, I think that is exactly what we have to be able to do if we are going to be faithful to God’s Word. This is ultimately a question of how we understand the authority of Scripture and what place it holds in our common life. How we wrestle with this matters almost as much as the question itself.
While I fully affirm the genuine ministry of the women in orders I have known, it does seem that the weight of the biblical and patristic witness comes down in favor of an exclusively male priesthood. However, I am hopeful and even eager to see a theological argument that proves this not to be the case.
Tell Me Why I Am Wrong
To that end, I would like to invite a thoughtful response to this from someone willing to argue the opposite position. I would be especially pleased if this response were to come from an ordained woman and I will happily publish such a response as a guest post on this site. Provided, of course, that we establish a couple of ground rules: Agreement that Scripture is the highest authority for the Christian Church; agreement that the whole of Scripture is inspired and so, as Article XX puts it, we may not “so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another”; and finally, agreement that the maleness of Christ is not entirely accidental but actually has something to do with what Scripture reveals about how Christ saves us. Without this very basic starting point established, it is simply too easy for the conversation to descend into something that is no longer recognizably historical Christian theology. Anyone who is interested in making the case for women’s ordination here, along biblical and historical lines, please write to me at conciliaranglican[at]gmail.com.
This is a highly sensitive subject, and so I want to make note that I’ll be watching the com boxes very closely. Please familiarize yourself with our comment policy before posting.
Great post. Good thoughts. This isn’t an opposing argument, just a wondering on my own part: Is being male essentially masculine or female essentially feminine? Maybe I don’t mean ‘essential’ exactly, but in what ways should we think about masculine and feminine expression as grounded/rooted in maleness and femaleness? If I am male, am I just masculine–regardless of how masculine I act? Or would an effeminate male priest be a ‘broken icon’? Or a woman who doesn’t act or feel or think in ways we consider feminine–does she get being feminine for free, so to speak?
All this has nothing to do with sexual orientation or anything like that. I know many fully heterosexual men who are feminine in many ways, and many (if not most) married couples in which the woman is really the head of the family and runs the house. Should we consider these people and situations broken or at least… un-biblical?
Hi Ryan,
One of the major things that muddies the waters in this conversation is that we have cultural ideas about “masculinity” and “femininity” that sometimes coincide with, sometimes compete with, and sometimes flat out contradict biblical notions of male and female. One of the good things to come out of the feminist project has been the questioning of how we assign gender traits. There are many ways in which our assumptions about what makes a man who he is and what makes a woman who she is are conditioned by culture. Tim and Kathy Keller write about this rather well in their book on marriage, which is definitely worth a read. There is a good and legitimate discussion to be had in our culture about the differences between men and women, and about what aspects of that difference are driven by biology as opposed to those things that are simply sociological constructs. But when addressing the biblical description of maleness and femaleness, we’re not really talking about cultural condition or biological determinism. We’re talking about something that God has written into the fabric of our being prior to the fall, something which may very well be “unnatural” to us as fallen creatures, in the sense that it is not something we do by second nature. It’s not about creating some kind of 1950s-esque world in which women wear pearls while they vacuum and men rule their homes with an iron fist. The biblical understanding of male and female has as much to criticize about that world and that time as it does our own world and our own time.
Ah, that’s very helpful. After I commented, I wondered if rather than “masculine” and “feminine” you meant something more like “man-ness” and “woman-ness.” Which perhaps is what you do mean, although not (I think) in a reductively biological way. Assuming a kind of core gender essentialism (even if not reductive to sexual organs) may be an assumption that others might not make, especially if you begin to imply that there’s some kind of nature in someone that exists but can be more or less in invisible.
1) If we can apply this culture/nature distinction to our own culture (and say some parts of our cultural identity are *accidental*) can we apply it to the world of Israel and the early church?
2) What scriptural basis do we have that men and women have different *natures*? I understand how (for example with the family unit passage in Paul) they perform different cultural roles, but does the Bible explain that they have different natures? It seems like your argument comes down to, “There’s just something about being a man, and there’s just something about being a woman.”
I will check out Keller’s book. Thanks.
“The theological question that has never been explored and answered is how, if at all, a female priest can serve as an icon of the male Christ, performing a function that is inherently masculine.”
I cannot address this issue from a theological standpoint since I am not a theologian, but I can from a sociological standpoint because I am a social scientist. Christ is in the masculine role (or function) in His relationship with the Church and the Church is in the feminine role. And the priest is representing Christ and God so therefore the priest is in a masculine role, and is indeed “performing a function that is inherently masculine.”
However, there is a difference between being a man or a woman and fulfilling a masculine or feminine role. In our society today (Thanks be to God!) we accept that men and women are often quite capable of fulfilling the roles of the opposite gender. Every time a woman takes out the trash, mows the lawn or paints a window frame, she is fulfilling a masculine role; every time a man cooks a meal, grocery shops or soothes his infant to sleep, he is fulfilling a feminine role.
Being a man or a woman is one’s gender identity; it is innate. Gender roles, however, are learned; they are societal expectations and they vary from culture to culture. Most cultures view the roles of protector and provider as masculine and those of nurturer and caregiver as feminine (but not all of them do; there are a few societies, past and present, where these roles are gender neutral, and at least one where the roles are reversed). Therefore, these roles make sense to most of us in the context of the Christian Church. Christ is the male protector and provider, the one who puts himself in harm’s way and sacrifices his life to protect his family. The Church is the bride who accepts his loving sacrifice, loves him in return, and in turn nurtures the family.
So a priest is fulfilling the masculine role of representing God and Christ in relationship with the Church, regardless of that priest’s gender. Many women have proven themselves capable of being police officers, fire fighters, soldiers, judges, governors and senators–all masculine roles. Likewise, women can fulfill the masculine role of priest.
This is the very same point that you are making in the very eloquent paragraph:
But that does not change the biblical reality that the office of priesthood is an inherently masculine office. If a woman can exercise priesthood, she does so as an icon of Christ in His maleness, just as the gathered community that receives her ministry is an icon of the Church’s femaleness, even if every single person in the pews on a given Sunday is male.
Exactly! If all the women in the congregation happened to stay home one Sunday, that would not suddenly make the Church masculine! Nor does having a woman put on the vestments of priesthood make that role feminine.
Unfortunately, some feminists take feminism too far and want to eradicate all signs of gender, and not just contend that we are all equal, but also pretend that we are all alike. I do not agree with removing gender references from our prayers and liturgy. When I say the Lord’s Prayer, I am not praying to a male God. God is not a man or a woman; He is God! I say “My Father…” because I am acknowledging God’s role in my life as my ultimate protector and provider (masculine roles). My relationship with Him is that of a child with her father.
By the way, I have absolutely no problem with female priests (as you might have gathered) but the title “Mother” for a female priest has always stuck in my throat. Now I understand why. They are not in the mother role as priests, so this is not an appropriate title (although calling them “Father” seems a bit weird too; I stick to first name or Reverend).
I attend two Episcopal churches, one in Florida, my permanent residence, and one in Maryland, my summer residence. One church has a female rector, the other a male rector. I look to both of these rectors to provide strong leadership (a masculine role), which they both do. I also look to both of them to provide support for my spiritual growth (a parental/teacher role that is neither masculine nor feminine) and nurturing of my spirit (a more feminine role). These are, in my opinion, also important components of being a pastor. Both rectors fulfill these roles, to varying degrees and in various ways, the male rector actually being a bit better at nurturing than the female one!
And when I receive the host from the hand of either of them, I am not thinking about whether they are a man or a woman, I am thinking that a representative of God has just sanctified this host as a piece of Christ, for me to take in to make me more wholly a part of Christ.
I appreciate the comment and the witness. Some of what I wrote above in response to Ryan applies here as well. This is not so much a question of biological differences versus culturally conditioned differences as it is a question of what has God laid out for us, regardless of how we may naturally (or unnaturally) respond to it. I don’t think there’s really a comparison between the icon of the pastor and the role of secular figures like judges, doctors, etc. If any analogy fits, it would be the analogy between the pastor and a husband, both of which are not simply gendered roles but identities that flow directly out of maleness. A woman can do all the things that a husband is supposed to do and still not be a husband, just as a man can do all the things that a wife is theoretically supposed to do and still not be a wife. The most “mothering” father is not actually a mother and the most “fathering” mother is not actually a father.
I do think the iconography of the Church as female, even when populated by nothing but men, poses an interesting counter-example though. If I were going to explore a theological premise for women carrying out the “maleness” of the pastoral office, I think that is where I would start.
The word “priest” ultimately came from the word “presbyter”, and in 1 Timothy 5:2-3, S. Paul speaks of female presbyters (πρεσβυτερας). How can this be understood?
The word “presbuteros” can be used to describe the office of the priesthood but it can also be used more generally to describe any older man or woman, just like the word “episcopos” can refer to the specific office of the bishop or it can refer more generally to any kind of oversight. In this case, presbuteros is not being used to describe any pastoral office but rather to describe how older men and women ought to be treated by Christians. This is very different from Paul’s usage of the word below, in verse 17, where he is beginning to refer more specifically to pastoral work, although the bulk of his discussion of pastoral ministry is in chapters 2 and 3.
Hi Jonathan,
God is like a good woman – a hen gathering her chicks and so forth. I suggest your argument, whether or not C.S. Lewis’ argument is spliced into it, falls down around the question of whether a woman is truly human and thus may represent Christ who assumed our humanity, or not. On the basis of what you say above your answer to the first part of the question is affirmative and I see nothing in your words above to prevent your answer to the second part being also affirmative.
If an entirely male congregation can live out the church’s feminine role, why can a female priest not live out Christ’s masculine role? That is, I find you confusing as to why a male congregation can be feminine (with respect to Ephesians 5) but a female priest cannot be masculine (with respect to the notion of representation which, interestingly, has no strong basis in Scripture itself!).
In sum: restrict priesthood to males and I suggest we should also restrict it to Jewish males. Understand priesthood in terms of humans set apart to carry forward Christ’s ministry to humanity, the ministry of the Word made flesh (no gender distinctiveness), then humans may be called to that priesthood.
As one who has lived with women priests in shared ministry for decades, and who serves under a woman bishop, I can assure you that there is no necessary connection between the ordination of women and the cessation of Father, Son and Spirit Trinitarian language in favour of gender neutral language. Together we serve the One revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and seek to carry forward the ministry of Christ who came to us as a male human, the Son of God and Son of Man.
Hi Peter,
You seem to be conflating a couple of different arguments together here. Let me see if I can sort them out:
1) It is true that the standard Catholic objection to women’s orders on the grounds that a woman is ontologically incapable of standing in the place of Christ breaks down along soteriological lines. Christ’s humanity has to be a larger and deeper category than either male or female if His saving work on the cross is going to be able to be equally applied to both men and women. But that does not, in and of itself, mean that Christ’s maleness has nothing at all to do with His work on the cross, nor that it has nothing to do with the pastoral office. If the question was simply can women be Christ-like or even represent Christ, the answer has to be a resounding yes. But the action of the priest is also of itself a gendered role. This is why I use the word “icon” rather than just “symbol” because an icon, like a sacrament, makes manifest what it symbolizes. The priest does not just stand before the people representing Jesus, he actively carries out Jesus’ ministry. This is why the question of womens’ orders ultimately returns to the question of Christ’s own maleness and whether or not it matters that Christ was male.
2) Given your statement that “representation has no basis in Scripture,” I’d be interested to know how you interpret and understand the pastoral offices more generally, particularly in light of Matthew 16 and John 21. I do think that the female nature of the Church, even and including her male members, is the most fertile ground (pardon the pun) for making a claim for women carrying out pastoral offices, but that argument has to be developed before it will work. In order to apply it, there needs to be some thought given to the very idea of the priesthood as inherently masculine, which is not something that I hear proponents of women’s ordination readily conceding, let alone exploring. It seems to me that the argument that is much more frequently employed by WO proponents is based solely on equality and the notion that sex is entirely neutral. This cuts the discussion off before it can even really begin.
3) The “restriction to Jewish males” comment is simply a canard. First of all, it is absolutely essential that Christ was Jewish, every bit as much as it was that He was male. The story of salvation would not work if Christ were not the true and full embodiment of Israel. But because He is the full embodiment of Israel, and we are joined to Him, being grafted onto the tree to use Paul’s language, we who are followers of Christ really are true Jews in the sense that we have been given, by grace, what the Jews were given by blood, the fullness of relationship with God. So what matters from an essential standpoint is not who our ancestors were but whether or not we have embraced the fullness of Judaism by being Christians. And I would certainly argue that being a Christian is an essential characteristic of ordained ministry, despite numerous examples to the contrary.
4) I am not arguing that the emasculating of the Trinity that has taken place throughout the Church in recent decades is directly caused by the ordination of women, but that there is a correlation between our un-coupling of the meaning of sex/gender in one place and our un-coupling of it in another. All of it stems from a growing gnosticism that divides the reality of personhood from lived bodily experience. I don’t think that means that every woman who becomes a priest or a bishop is going to suddenly start saying that we can no longer call God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the same impulse that leads us to say that sex is irrelevant to the work of the pastor is also the impulse that says that sex is irrelevant to the relationship of husband and wife and ultimately that sex distinctiveness is irrelevant to how we talk about God Himself. If the one who carries out Christ’s ministry can be she, why can’t Christ also be she? It is not as far a stretch as you think.
I don’t want to go too much round in circles on this, Jonathan, but while appreciating much of what you write above (not least because it remains open to supporting the argument I am making), I do not find anything in what you write which necessitates the person who ministers in the name of Christ being exclusively male. This is not surprising as we do not see gender exclusive ministry in the name of Christ in the New Testament: Euodia and Syntyche are co-workers with Paul; Junia is counted among the apostles; Prisca teaches authoritatively and correctively; Mary is a witness to the resurrection. Sex is irrelevant to the work of the pastor in the same way that sex is irrelevant to membership of the church through baptism. We are all one in Christ and that oneness extends to our ministry in Christ and Christ’s ministry in us: the Spirit is poured out on women and men!
Does it matter that Christ is male? No, not in any ultimate sense. Christ creates and redeems us as humanity, necessarily gender differentiated for the purpose of reproduction, not necessarily to be gender differentiated in heaven (where reproduction will not be required). The Word became flesh and experience temptation common to humanity, assumed all of our humanity in order that all of it might be saved/healed.
Does it matter that Christ was male? It matters that Christ was male in the sense that through the culture of its time, Israel was ‘son of God’ and the one who came from God to embody Israel came as ‘son’; it also matters that Christ was male in the sense that his specific and concrete experience of human physicality was as a male, a real man. Thus we have received him as revealed to us, the eternal Son of the Father. But we need to take great care that we do not move from that revelation to an implicit differentiation in value of men versus women in respect of the gospel, with men able to take up aspects of Christ’s ministry and women not able to do so. The gospel is the salvation of all; all who are saved may minister that gospel to others.
A coupe of quick questions & thoughts:
If we look in Scriptures and the role of women throughout salvation history we will find instances where women assumed a leadership role e.g. Deborah. I would even begin to wonder if we look at Esther as a women that dared to enter the King’s court as an intercessor for her people if that couldn’t be seen as type of a female priest?
It seems that at the very least there were special circumstances where women had leading roles in Israel and in salvation history(see also Jesus geneolgy in the Gospel) then perhaps we are living in extraordinary times where women are needed, perhaps men aren’t standing up and perfomring their role as leaders. We only need to consider the ratio of men to women in the pews, the pervasiveness of pornography and the wide-spread promiscuity of our culture. Until men standup perhaps women will lead Christians through this tough time? Surely the fact that women stayed by Jesus and din’t run away like the other Apostles should tell us something… perhaps who Jesus appeared to first?
Would the typology of the Priest as the bridegroom as an icon of Christ be preserved is a male performed the breaking of the bread but females could “do everything else” is the typology still broken?
Sorry if this is a bit incoherent… *yawn* .. I need to get to bed…
I don’t think that this is ultimately about power or about whether or not women have a role in salvation history. They obviously do. And we certainly see some stellar examples of women leaders and pioneers in the Bible, particularly if you allow in the Apocrypha (seriously, does anyone kick more ass than Judith? I think not.) And it’s true that God has often raised up faithful women especially at times when men were as a whole being less than faithful. Those examples should shake us from complacency and make us re-evaluate what we mean when we start to assign particular traits the qualities of masculinity and femininity.
Thanks for addressing this question, Fr. Jonathan. What should “the people in the pews” do when they aren’t sure about the ministry of female priests? Obviously, there are many ordained women serving in parishes in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. As a parishoner, do I duck out the back door or avoid a church gathering when I learn that a female priest will be ministering in that setting? For people who are uncertain about the ordination of women, yet are part of a church that does ordain women, how should it play out in real life? Do you leave altogether for another parish or denomination? Do you avoid any worship service or church function where a female priest is serving? Do you receive the ministry of a female priest even though you disagree with women’s ordination? This is a live question for me.
I cannot tell you what you should do personally as that is a matter of your own faithfulness to God and Scriptural teaching, but I would not counsel anyone to leave their church because the pastor is a woman nor would I say that it is a matter which in and of itself should lead to the breaking of fellowship with the Church. It might influence how you consider which parish in town you attend or what you do in regards to the call process when a parish is between rectors, But as I said, I do believe that women who have been ordained are truly priests and bishops, fully capable of preaching both the law and the saving gospel to you and administering the sacraments in accordance with God’s Word. You would be better off with a female rector who believes that Christ’s maleness is more than incidental and believes that what Paul says in Ephesians is the inspired Word of God than with a male rector who thinks that Christ is just like a skinnier version of Buddha. If it’s a question of placing yourself long term in the pastoral care of an ordained woman, I think it’s best that you speak with her about your concerns and see whether you can come to some kind of common understanding of what the pastoral relationship is about. But if you’re just talking about a supply priest coming for one or two weeks, I think it’s best just to accept that ministry as it’s offered. Remember, your pastor is not the person wearing the collar. Your pastor is Christ. Think of your obedience and submission in terms of being obedience and submission ultimately to Christ.
What Peter said.
Upon re-reading your post, Fr. Jonathan, I find the arguments you present for the legitimacy of female priests to be more powerful than those against. I’m not hearing that the Scripture clearly says priests must be men. I’m hearing that priests are fulfilling a male role as the representative of Christ and God. I’ll buy that.
Your argument that allowing women priests may somehow undermine the icon of the priest as that representative starts with a quote from CS Lewis. With all due respect to Lewis, his argument breaks down at the very beginning:
“Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman.”
He is not saying that the reformers of his day were saying this. He is saying “suppose” they said this. Well, if a reformer does say that than I would say that one should at that point question the reformer’s logic. Analogies do not always go in both directions. Saying a person’s smile is like sunshine is not saying that the sun is like a person’s smile.
And your argument that indeed some of the feminists in the Church who advocated for women priests have also pushed for gender neutrality throughout the Church, therefore, indeed the icon of Christ as a male has broken down does not quite compute for me. This strikes me as a slippery slope argument that should not be sufficient to deny women with a calling the right to pursue that calling. These are two separate issues and not everyone who agrees with the idea of women priests also agrees with the other idea. I, for one, do not.
I’m just not getting how Scripture is telling us that the priest, as a representative, symbol or icon of Christ, cannot be a woman. The only logic that begins to justify this is the statement that Christ was male and his apostles were also.
IMHO, the only reason God became incarnate in a male body is because the extremely male-dominated society of that time would have ignored a female Messiah. Likewise, Christ picked males from amongst his disciples (who were both male and female) to be his apostles partly because they were male and would be more likely to be heard.
Having said all that, you asked for theological arguments so I will butt out now. Thanks for listening!
Don’t sell yourself short. The argument that you’re making is a theological one, even if informed by sociological realities.
I appreciate this: “Analogies do not always go in both directions. Saying a person’s smile is like sunshine is not saying that the sun is like a person’s smile.” But I think that perhaps you’re missing Lewis’ larger point, which is that the action of the priest, when he is giving us Christ’s gifts, is itself a gendered action precisely because he is standing in the place of Christ at that moment. So it’s not actually an analogy at all. When I say the words of absolution, it is Christ who is saying them. When I place the Body of Christ in a person’s hand, it is Christ who is giving Himself to them. And at an even deeper level, it is Adam restored, reclaiming his bride whom he had forsaken. These are more than analogies. They are mystical realities.
Perhaps it was a slippery slope argument for Lewis, in 1948, to say that the de-sexing of the priesthood would inevitably lead to the de-sexing of God, but if so, it was a slippery slope argument that has turned out to be true. I don’t think that women’s ordination has caused that to happen per se, but that it was an inevitable outcome of the same underlying cause, the loss of a general sense of the embodiment of maleness and femaleness in our culture that has been translated into the Church.
You said:
I’m just not getting how Scripture is telling us that the priest, as a representative, symbol or icon of Christ, cannot be a woman. The only logic that begins to justify this is the statement that Christ was male and his apostles were also.
There are, of course, a couple of passages where this is said explicitly, which I mentioned in passing (1 Corinthians 14:34-37 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15), but I wanted to try to argue from the wider perspective of Scripture, to put those passages in context rather than just zeroing in on them and dissecting them, which is often how these kinds of things go. If we have a strong grounding in how the whole of Scripture speaks about men and women and the role of Christ in salvation, the prohibitions start to make more sense, whereas when we just zero in on them, it’s easy to misunderstand them and simply recoil from them.
You said:
IMHO, the only reason God became incarnate in a male body is because the extremely male-dominated society of that time would have ignored a female Messiah. Likewise, Christ picked males from amongst his disciples (who were both male and female) to be his apostles partly because they were male and would be more likely to be heard.
Well, as I said to Peter above, this is a popular theory but it does not have any Scripture to back it up. It is just conjecture. Moreover, what we do see in Scripture runs contrary to this idea. God chose to become a Jew, an oppressed person rather than someone with power and influence. He chose to become a carpenter from Nazareth which was considered amongst the Jews to be a backwater town (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46). When people attempted to make Him a king or start a mass movement on His behalf, He always shot them down. In short, almost everything about Jesus seems to be designed to run completely counter to the expectations of the society He lived in. By any reasonable assessment, they should have ignored Him, and in the early days after His death and resurrection the people in power largely did. If God’s concern had been to make sure He got everyone’s attention and had a big following, He might have made a lot of decisions differently. But as it stands, that was not His goal at all. He came not to be listened to. He came to die on a cross. He wasn’t trying to change the world. He was trying to save it.
Thoughtful post, with some angles I have not heard explored before. Well done.
As I challenge my parishoners, our job is not to decide what kind of God we want, but to discover the God that really is. Our desires–however motivated–are either in line or out of line with God as he really is and his will.
Peter,
I am certainly familiar with the argument that the existence of various women fulfilling roles of leadership and authority in Scripture must necessitate them also fulfilling pastoral roles. I think that is a rather weak argument since it assumes that any and every person who gives Christian witness in the New Testament is necessarily a bishop or a priest. In fact, this is not the case at all with any of the examples that you mention, save maybe for the ambiguous reference to Junia/Junius in Romans 16:7 which, even if read exactly the way that feminist theologians want it to be read, does not literally indicate that Junia was herself an apostle. The effort that is expended on finding New Testament passages that can be cobbled together to support women’s ordination based on something other than the scriptural passages that actually talk about the pastoral office is itself proof of a kind of clericalism that continues to overshadow much of the Church. We think of bishops and priests not as servants of Christ serving a particular function, necessary to the life of the Church but no greater or worse than those called to various other ministries (as Paul says in Romans 12:1-9 and 1 Corinthians 12), but as the only real and true Christians. Many people enter the ordination process because they’re trying to get closer to God and don’t know any other way how. It’s fascinating that at a time when the number of people in our pews are way down (at least in America), the number of people attempting to enter the ordination process is on the rise. We have not done well at making it clear that there are many valid and necessary ministries in the Church.
The argument that Christ’s maleness is either completely arbitrary or only something God chose to appease the culture of the time is not founded on any warrant of Scripture. Jesus Christ is the new Adam, not the new Eve. The relationship between Christ and His Church is laid out carefully in Scripture. His maleness is not more important than His humanity, but it is not incidental. Part of being human is being male and female. This is why the attempts to revise out the gender in our language about God is so troubling, because it creates a split between body and soul, actually denying the very humanity that we so carefully trying to preserve. There is nothing arbitrary about the Incarnation. Jesus had to be Jewish, in order that all may be saved. Jesus had to be human, in order that all may be saved. And yes, Jesus had to be male, in order that all may be saved.
Hi Jonathan,
I am not in any way assuming what you suppose when you write, “I think that is a rather weak argument since it assumes that any and every person who gives Christian witness in the New Testament is necessarily a bishop or a priest.” My point is much simpler than that: in the New Testament we find men and women fulfilling a variety of roles. On the matter of bishops and priests (that is, as we order them today), we find the New Testament curiously light on information. For instance, we have no idea from the New Testament who presided at the eucharist, whether we ask that question in terms of role/office, or gender. We do have a sense from 1 Timothy of a concerted effort to restrict ministry office to men, but our dilemma is whether what is said there is driven by local Ephesian concerns, or by an intention to set down rules for ministry for all time and all contexts. It is a fair dilemma for biblical students to have as what we find in 1 Timothy is at variance with practice elsewhere in the New Testament church (especially with reference to teaching Priscilla, co-working Euodia and Syntyche, deacon Phoebe, leading Lydia, to say nothing of an argument to be had about the apostolicity of Junia). In sum: whether we view ministry through ‘lay’ or ‘clerical perspectives, women were involved in the ministry of the New Testament churches. No intention on my part to smuggle in ‘clericalism’ with what I write.
As to the non-incidentalness of Christ’s maleness, your words on this continue (rightly) to assert the full humanity of Christ (alongside maleness, Jewishness). But what you say in relation to the priest as icon continues to fail to provide any necessary connection between the priest as icon and the priest as male. Christ the full human being came to save all humanity. If the office of priest is iconic the priest represents Christ the full human who came to save all humans. To constrain women from representing the full human being who came to save them as well as men is a diminishment of women because it denies women who are also full human beings the possibility of representing the full human being that is Jesus Christ.
If only men may take the role of priest we are saying that women are a lesser human being than men because they lack the capacity men intrinsically have to represent the fullness of our humanity. I find that to be a scary position for the church to take. Our cue is that God made humanity, male and female (or, perhaps, male AND female) in God’s image. I cannot be faithful to Scripture and ascribe to women a diminished capacity to bear that image.
Hi Peter,
As can often happen in this kind of conversation, I think we’re using the same words to mean different things.
You said:
On the matter of bishops and priests (that is, as we order them today), we find the New Testament curiously light on information. For instance, we have no idea from the New Testament who presided at the eucharist, whether we ask that question in terms of role/office, or gender.
There’s actually quite a bit of content in the New Testament about these things. There is, admittedly, a less than well developed difference between the bishop and the presbyter in the New Testament, but there’s still a lot of content, from Matthew 16, John 21, almost any chapter one chooses in Acts, Titus, and especially 1 Timothy. Moreover, we know that the apostles presided at the Eucharist since the ministry of “do this in remembrance to me” was commanded of them exclusively in all of the Gospel institution narratives.
You said:
We do have a sense from 1 Timothy of a concerted effort to restrict ministry office to men, but our dilemma is whether what is said there is driven by local Ephesian concerns, or by an intention to set down rules for ministry for all time and all contexts.
This is why I tried not to focus on the 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians passages, to avoid this sort dissection and speculation. I don’t want to go too far down this road, but even if I were to grant the premise that what Paul says in these two letters restricting women’s ministries is only a matter of a local issue, that would still mean that the only place in all of Scripture where the idea of women in orders is discussed, it is explicitly ruled out.
You said:
whether we view ministry through ‘lay’ or ‘clerical perspectives, women were involved in the ministry of the New Testament churches. No intention on my part to smuggle in ‘clericalism’ with what I write.
Perhaps then the breakdown in our conversation has to do with our understanding of the pastoral office itself, given what you say here and above. If you do not see a real and substantial difference between the apostolic ministry of bishops and priests and the other kinds of ministries that you mention, than I can see how you might conclude that there must not be any reason to make a fuss. But I think that the witness of Scripture is that the pastoral ministry is unique, even if it is not superior to other important ministries.
You said:
As to the non-incidentalness of Christ’s maleness, your words on this continue (rightly) to assert the full humanity of Christ (alongside maleness, Jewishness). But what you say in relation to the priest as icon continues to fail to provide any necessary connection between the priest as icon and the priest as male…
I don’t think you are seriously engaging with the soteriology of passages like Ephesians 5. It is clear, in that context, that the saving work of Christ is directly linked with His maleness in that He, as husband, gives all that He has for and to His Bride, the Church, that she might be washed clean and made whole, in order to be in perfect relationship. The priest stands in the place of Christ not just in His humanity in some sort of generic way, but specifically in His role as husband to the Church by giving all that He has to and for her.
Hi Jonathan,
Agreed, parts of my argument are subject to the critique you bring. I won’t reconfigure them here.
Yes, I would be somewhat averse to a substantive difference between the offices of apostles/bishops/priests and other ministry roles (not least because in the NT itself there is some fluidity about who are apostles, and what bishops are in relation to elders).
On Ephesians 5, I simply say what I and others here have tried to say: if the church as the feminine bride of Christ includes men, on what basis do we say that the representation of the masculine husband of the church must exclude women? The precise implication of soteriology is that we are one in Christ and thus any one in Christ may represent Christ who saves us. (I am not asking you to accept this, let alone engage further, but I state this to offer a robust and vigorous disagreement that my thesis fails to take account of Ephesians 5).
If we think of bishops and priests as servants “of Christ serving a particular function, necessary to the life of the Church but no greater or worse than those called to various other ministries” and we are all part of the priesthood (1 Pet 2:9) then how is the presider over worship an “icon” of Christ or as some might say “in persona Christi”?
Something’s not adding up for me with this.
Is the priest/pastor required as an intercessor for us in the ontological manner that say Catholics believe in — i.e. the priest is not longer just a man he is something supernaturally different?
If we are not all priests (i.e. we have a direct connection to God) then what did Peter mean?
If we use the marriage metaphor with Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the bride — then where would the priest fall into that metaphor? Are we all not the body/bride/church? If the priest is not part of the church body/bride — then what does that make him?
As Lewis shows, the priest has a kind of double role, speaking to God on behalf of the people but also being the voice through which the promises of God are delivered to the people. The iconography problem is with the latter, not the former. You don’t need a Roman Catholic understanding of the priesthood as ontological change in order to accept that a) the New Testament does create an apostolic office to carry out a particular role in the life of the Church, and b) the Gospel is not something that we can each bring up in ourselves but has to be given to us from the outside by the means which God has provided for that purpose, namely Word and Sacrament.
I really do appreciate your comments here, especially your guts in quoting from C. S. Lewis’ semi-notorious “Priestesses in the Church?” essay. While we cannot agree on prayers to the spirits of saints we’re definitely on the same page on women’s ordination.
“While I fully affirm the genuine ministry of the women in orders I have known, it does seem that the weight of the biblical and patristic witness comes down in favor of an exclusively male priesthood. However, I am hopeful and even eager to see a theological argument that proves this not to be the case.”
I cannot really understand this statement. If according to biblical, reasonable, and patristic witness women’s ordination is wrong, than one should not wish otherwise, chewing at the wire of the fence, as it were, and one should not “affirm the genuine ministry of women in orders.”
Such a divided stand reminds me of the politician who says he is “personally pro-life but believes in the right to choose.”
God can and does work through those not fully obedient to His call, and it would seem to me that explains why He is working through ordained women in authority over men–even though that was forbidden by the Apostles and the Fathers. As St. Augustine showed us, one can receive the sacraments from a disobedient priest too–and they are valid, as grace comes from Christ–but that doesn’t mean we should affirm the genuine ministry of disobedient priests in the Church.
To be fair, I too kind of wish to hear a good, biblically, reasonably and traditionally faithful argument in favor of women’s ordination–mainly in that it would heal a fissure within orthodox Christianity, but at the same time, I cannot in good conscience affirm the ministry of those for whom, up until now at least, I am convinced are in the wrong office.
“But that does not change the biblical reality that the office of priesthood is an inherently masculine office.”
I don’t mean this in any particular pejorative sense, but I have observed through the years, that most (NOT all) of the female pastors I’ve met do actually show rather masculine traits. Many wear quite short hair, and dress plainly in what looks like–in our culture–men’s clothing (contrary the command of Deut. 22:5), seem quite assertive, and unfeminine. Just in my imagination? Perhaps.
I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this, but…I’m only giving my subjective opinion.
Thanks for this discussion. Wish I had the time to engage at a deeper level. I have to say this is a place where I am on a page very close to Peter Carrell’s for which I give thanks!
The one thing I would highlight is the extent to which Matt 16 or John 21 necessarily deal with the maleness of Christ. The language of Matt 16, speaking of being slave of all might well fit in with the cultural notion of the serving role of women in that society — and I also think of the footwashing in John as a particularly intimate and feminine thing — recalling that it is a woman who does this to Jesus himself in the immediately preceding chapter (John 12).
Also, does the apostle, or bishop or presbyter, actually stand in loco Christi, or rather more as leader of and in persona ecclesiae? Christ is Christ, and we aren’t. I know there is a tradition of the priest as “alter Christus” but there is also patristic record of the “alter Christus” being the deacon — the one who goes in and out of the Doors between the people and the sanctuary.
Thanks again, and all good to you!
You might be interested in watching Ben Witherington III on women in ministry at asburyseedbed.com (one of the Seven Minute Seminary postings from Asbury Theological Seminary).
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Hey Fr. Jonathan,
Thanks so much for the gracious conversation. Sad that we haven’t heard from more women priests.
Overall, I disagree with your argument for a number of reasons. In short, I simply echo Peter’s comments above that you haven’t quite established a link between Christ’s sex and an all male priesthood – on sufficient Christological grounds.
We could go around on this all day, but if we start with something like Chalcedon – that Christ assumed humanity and not just maleness – then we end up with another conversation; one, I think, that addresses many of the concerns you outline above. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I think you’re argument runs the risk of providing an overhistorization of Christ, typical of much modern theology and biblical studies. Isn’t it the case that Christ’s body is not entirely identical with Jesus of Nazareth? In that we no longer only know Christ kata sarkon? If this is so, then I think we have a little leeway when thinking about WO. Of course Christ’s gender matters, but is it an essentializing principle, trumping everything else? Hardly.
(Of course these argument have all been made before, see the Covenant blog: http://livingchurch.org/covenant/?p=1569.)
Again, thank you for the gracious conversation and excellent blog. Always a joy to read – even when I disagree!
Pax,
Robb
Hi Robbie,
Thanks for the winsome way you present your case, and for the link to the Covenant discussion, which I’ll have to take a look at when I get a chance. It is always a joy to find people who are willing to disagree agreeably.
To that end, while you have echoed Peter’s objections, I’ll echo my reply. I think that to split humanity and sex in the way that you and others are suggesting is ultimately gnostic. You asked, “Isn’t it the case that Christ’s body is not entirely identical with Jesus of Nazareth? In that we no longer only know Christ kata sarkon?” No, it is not the case. We cannot split Christ’s body from Jesus of Nazareth and still have Christ’s body. Christ is not a free floating spirit, no longer bound by the messiness of Incarnation. He is a resurrected human being, as bodily as ever, and also as male as ever, just as we will also be male and female in the resurrection, though that distinction will not make any difference in terms of the quality of relationship that we will have with God through Christ.
Another interesting point is that Hincmar of Rheims and the Synod of Douzy both said, “Eva ipsa est Adam.” If Eve “is herself” the Old Adam, why can not a woman reflect the New Adam? There is also the citation, I think in Eusebius, declaring that Blandina in her martyrdom, bore the likeness of Christ. It really is about humanity, not whether one is male of female.
Hi Fr. Jonathan,
Maleness and Femaleness is not a binary option. There are people who are considered ‘intersex’. How does your position handle those people with regard to priestly orders? How do you determine one’s sex? Is it by physical outward signs, by inward genetics, by mental state, by claim, or by some other marker?
The point I’m trying to make is that sex in humans is more like a light dimmer than a switch – and by taking the ‘male only’ position you eventually need to draw a line in that continuum. For ‘most’ people, that is easy – but the stakes are pretty high here. This is God revealing himself to humanity. Where do you draw that line? How does one draw that line without succumbing to Plato’s forms?
I think the female priesthood position is more consistent – though it doesn’t need to be presented that way. I would argue that ‘any’ person (male, female, hermaphrodite, 2-headed, midget, whatever) can be ordained. Neither ones chromosomal structure nor physical traits should stand in the way of a ‘calling’.
For the record, I do prefer a male only priesthood. I do have trouble arguing for it though.
Hi Bob,
I’m fascinated by your last sentence which seems to be in tension with everything you say above. What do you think underlies that preference?
The reality of intersex people is something important for the Church to consider, not just in relation to ordination but in general. I would be lying if I said that I had an exact answer, other than to acknowledge the reality that Christ died for them every bit as much as He died for everyone else. It does seem, in my limited experience, that many intersex people experience themselves as one sex or the other, which may be part of understanding and figuring out pastoral care.
But I think that, however one approaches the very real but very rare phenomenon of intersex, the theology that we accept from the Scripture cannot be reduced to an abstraction of “gender” that divorces body and spirit. You asked, “How do you determine one’s sex? Is it by physical outward signs, by inward genetics, by mental state, by claim, or by some other marker?” These things go together. There is a physical reality to maleness and femaleness that corresponds to genetics, mental state, etc. The one thing that we must not do is to say that it is all about how you feel, as if our bodies are incidental to the reality of who we are. We are our bodies. We are also our souls. There is no grand separation between the two. The second we try to say that there is, we have tripped over the Gnostic’s wire and fallen from the place where the Incarnation can do us any good.
I think my preference comes from recognizing different roles that each gender does better. A similar preference is for women not to be soldiers, or men not to be nurses (I prefer a feminine caregiver in my time of need).
At the risk of a poor (and backwards) analogy, life is a lot like a role-playing game. God gives Males +5 Strength, +3 Leadership and gives Women +5 caring, -1 strength, +4 beauty. Can a woman lift 200lbs? – yes, but MY preference is to go to a person who has the built in Strength bonus.
There is a difference between recognizing these (rather obvious) gender differences, and turning these differences into doctrine. In years past, society saw these differences and forced roles on to people (only Men can be warriors and priests – Women can be witches and Elves can be archers) – but that isn’t how people play the game anymore.
So when you argue that only Men can be priests – I want to believe that, and I see how that +3 leadership bonus can help – but in reality people need proof that women priests are against the rules.
I agree that we are our bodies and our minds together, and salvation is for both parts – together. I am not trying to determine anyone’s sex though – I’m not arguing a position that requires the sex of the person to be known. I just need someone who can get 12 on a leadership saving role of the dice.
My parish priest is a lady, but I admit that I also prefer a male priesthood. I don’t really know why, however. Our priest is, as a previous commenter mentioned, quite masculine in a number of ways. She is a good priest, and I receive Christ’s Body every Sunday from her hands.
I sometimes wonder if we just have to offer our church to God as it is now. Before we make anymore changes. I agree that much is politically motivated, and maybe there have been mistakes. But as it stands now, women priests and all, offer ourselves to God and say “Lord, maybe we are wrong, thank you for giving us this time to be wrong for love of you.”
Thanks so much for all these wonderful discussions! I have been learning a lot.
Hi Fr Jonathan, very interesting article, thank you. The purpose of this post is to make sure I get notified when further comments are posted!
The common objection, people raise is that if a man can represent the church the bride, why cannot a woman represent Christ, the bridegroom.
It comes down to our concept of God itself. Divine transcendence holds that creation is not born from within like from a mother, but from without like from a father. This makes us theist and the language for God is masculine. The incarnation was hence male. Creation is outside us.
The reverse would be adopting pantheism, where creation is born from within us.
This is why theists, in general have masculine imagery for God. I do not see a way around this, without abandoning theism itself.
Anti-materialist pantheism also reduces everything and everyone to bland sameness, which is opposed to the diversity of creation.
Interesting points! I hadn’t thought of God and the Incarnation that way before.
One thing I struggle with is God’s presence. For example, today I was visiting with a friend who is Amish. His church subscribes to theology I don’t agree with (believer’s baptism, Eucharist as memorial only etc) yet when I talk with him, I feel some sort of holiness about him. In the same vein, when I take Holy Communion at my church with our lady priest as the celebrant, I feel the Real presence of Christ. I know that both my Roman Catholic and Amish friends would say that I am wrong. One would say that it’s a memorial ceremony (that a woman has no business presiding over) and the other would say that it’s not a valid Sacrament because the priest’s Orders are not valid (never mind that she is a woman!). Am I delusional? I don’t know, I’m not a theologian. Sometimes these things give me such doubts, but I try to remain faithful to God’s call for me.
Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!
Faith is a gift of God, and it seems like you are really trying and God will reward you for it. I did feel some kind of holiness, when I attended my friend’s Evangelical church too, but with me the distinction is between some or all. I am personally not satisfied with some. I do not want a minimum daily requirement.
I cannot tell you what you should do, because I know I have to shut off the noise from all sides, to make a decision without external pressure.
With respect to this question, Fr Jonathan is right, that the Bible is not gender neutral, and theologically I do not see a way around this without ceasing to be a theist.
“The Church is Mother because God is Father. In other words, in relation to God, whatever our biological sex, we are all female.”
I think this is one of the main errors in both sides of the argument. This ‘sexizing’ of the Godhead is rather anti Trinitarian theology. The nicene theologians understood that we cannot read gender back into the Godhead.
Take Gregory Nazianzen for example, “It does not follow that because the Son is the Son in some higher relation (inasmuch as we could not in any other way than this point out that he is of God and consubstantial), it would also be necessary to think that all the names of this lower world and of our kindred should be transferred to the Godhead. Or maybe you would consider our God to be a male, according to the same argument, because he is called God and Father, and that deity is feminine, from the gender of the word, and Spirit neuter, because it has nothing to do with generation; … It is very shameful, and not only shameful but very foolish, to take from things below a guess at things above, and from a fluctuating nature [a guess] at the things that are unchanging, and as Isaiah [8:19] says, to seek the living among the dead. —Fifth Theological Oration §§7 & 10, in LLC 3:198f.”
This is a fatal flaw, and I do not feel that this sort of bad Trinitarian theology follows from womens ordination, rather it has highlighted an already existent problem among those who seem to think that God is a man in the first place and then try and de-sexise God by changing the names of the Persons, which is heretical. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet we don’t know what begotteness or procession really mean, nor is there a Grandfather as it were , and so we must take Gods naming of Himself without reading back our own ideas of those names back, or we are guilty of idolatry.
Also it seems to me that your understanding of the ‘maleness’ of the priesthood as representing Christs maleness has two fatal flaws.
1. There is from what I understand no treatment of Christs maleness by the fathers but instead it was His being fully human that made Him our representative and High priest.
2. If the Church is feminine as you say and it is so important to keep this gender specific icon stance, then why in your view can men even be part of the Church? You only allow room for men because you believe that the priesthood is masculine, though you say even if the church only has men in it then it is still feminine. Why can men represent a feminine church inconically and yet women cannot the masculine priesthood.
I would have to say that I don’t agree that the priesthood represents us by being male though. I would think that you do agree that women do represent Christ as all Christians do. These arguments that you have presented just don’t seem very convincing to me. I would recommend Thomas F Torrance on this.