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In the preceding chapter we examined and rejected the argument that women should be subordinate to men in our life together in Christ. We consider here the second type of theological argument advanced against women in the priesthood-that God intends women and men to fill separate roles in the life of Christ’s church. The unhappy history of the “separate but equal” doctrine in certain branches of our civil life has been no deterrent to its use in various guises by those who oppose the ordination of women priests:
If women are incapable of receiving Holy Orders, it cannot be just because they are, in the vulgar sense of the word, subordinate to men, but because of the particular way in which masculinity and femininity are involved in the whole dispensation of redemption.(1)
According to opponents of women in the priesthood, there are different spheres for the ministry of men and women. These are defined by biblical imagery and biblical and traditional precedents. An all-male priesthood is dictated by the fact that the priest is a God-symbol and God has traditionally been represented through male imagery. Likewise, the priest is a representative of Christ, who was incarnate as a male. No woman can represent Christ to God’s people. Not only was Jesus male, but so also were his chosen followers, the Twelve. If Jesus had intended women to minister as priests in his name, surely he would have selected women to be among the Twelve Disciples.
The model for women’s ministry, the argument proceeds, may be seen in the life and witness of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Women are blessed with a special ministry in motherhood and the home which precludes their assuming priestly functions. Some or all of these points are frequently gathered together as a basis for asserting that the priesting of women would be against the will of God for his church.
Before we take up each of these arguments in turn, we should recall that New Testament writers never suggest that the proper place of women in the church is determined by the masculinity of God or the fact that Jesus and the Twelve were male. As Stendahl points out: “In all of the texts where the New Testament speaks about the role of women in the church, we have found that when a reason is given, it is always by reference to the subordinate position of woman in the order of creation.” (2)
God the Father
Opponents of women in the priesthood argue that the priest must function as a God-symbol in the church. Women are disqualified from serving as priests because they do not embody certain qualities which are associated with members of the male sex. Albert J. duBois, writing in The Episcopalian, phrases the argument this way:
The male has the initiative in creation. The act of blessing, which is the fundamental priestly act, is creative. To say “Bless us” is the supplicatory prerogative of any minister, but to stretch out a hand and say “Bless this” is to initiate a creation. In this the male priest reflects the creative activity of God the Father .(3)
A similar point is made by the Rt. Rev. C. Kilmer Myers:
A priest is a “God-symbol” whether he likes it or not. In the imagery of both the Old and New Testaments God is represented in masculine imagery. The Father begets the Son. This is essential to the givingness of the Christian Faith, and to tamper with this imagery is to change that Faith into something else.
Of course, this does not mean God is a male. The biblical language is the language of analogy. It is imperfect, even as all human imagery of God must be imperfect. Nevertheless, it has meaning. The male image about God pertains to the divine initiative in creation. Initiative is, in itself, a male rather than a female attribute .(4)
It is no easy matter to sort out precisely what. is being asserted by these writers ( with the exception of Myers’ point that God is represented in Scripture through masculine imagery). But surely this much is claimed: (1) God’s work as creator of all is an exercise of masculine initiative; and ( 2 ) a priest’s exercise of male initiative in the sacramental acts is analogous to God’s creative activity. Let us examine these claims. We will return later to the question of the masculine scriptural imagery of God.
Both writers assume that God acts in a “male” capacity as creator of all things. But despite the masculine biblical imagery, Christians must assert that God cannot be comprehended and classified by the language with which we speak of him. This point has been made by another opponent of the ordination of women priests:
. . . our objection to the ordination of women to the priesthood (and the episcopate) is not rooted in our doctrine of God. We do not argue that God is masculine, and it is an axiom in Christian theology that God is without sex, or, more accurately, that he comprehends within the mystery of his being all the positive values of sexuality-masculine, feminine, or whatever -and that to a degree beyond human imagining .(5)
Anglicans especially should be warned against a view of God as “male” or “masculine.” The first of the Anglican Articles of Religion (which have served since the sixteenth century as useful touchstones in matters of doctrine) explicitly denies that God can be reduced to the images we usually employ in speaking of him: “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions . . . .” (6) We must be careful not to allow the limits of our language to carry us along to a crude anthropomorphism. It verges on anthropomorphism to suggest that God’s “male” character is evident in some designated sphere of his activity.
Both the above-quoted writers also assume that the priest exercises masculine initiative or creativity in a manner analogous to God’s creative, initiating capacity as Father of all. Both writers believe that men are able to act in the image of God in a creative, initiating role that women are unable to fill. The assumption that men and men only are able to act in a creative, initiating role does not hold up well in a world that knows women artists and heads-of-state. But there is another difficulty with this notion. There is a theological difficulty with the claim that either man or woman can show forth God’s initiating, creative capacity. In his commentary on Genesis 1:26, Alan Richardson, Dean of York, says:
It has become the fashion in certain quarters to assert that God’s likeness in man is most clearly perceived in the fact that man shares in God’s creativity; we hear much about man’s “creative” powers, as artists, craftsmen, scientists, and so on. The imago Dei is made to consist in man’s capacity for creative activity. This is not what the Bible teaches. It is clear that [the author of Genesis 1:26] thinks of the likeness of God in man as manifest in man’s sharing in the Creator’s dominium over the rest of the created order, especially over the animal world. (7)
The word “man” used in Richardson’s passage refers, of course, to man created in the image of God, male and female: “Let them [male and female have dominion . . . .” Neither men nor women may be compared to God as creator. Our role-and it is a role that men and women share-is the exercise of God-given authority over the rest of creation. There is no basis for the theological argument that “the male priest reflects the creative activity of God the Father.” The image of God is reflected in neither men nor women in this way.
However serious the theological difficulties inherent in analogies between God the Father and male priests, there is no doubt that most of the biblical imagery of God is masculine. Such imagery is not “invariably” masculine as is sometimes claimed, however. (8)
In Luke 15, we find one of the best-known series of Jesus’ parables. Jesus uses three stories to help his followers understand the will of God: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. In each of these stories one of the characters represents God. In the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, the God-figure is a man, but in the parable of the lost coin, the God-figure is a woman.’ Jesus also uses maternal imagery to describe his own relationship to his people: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Luke 13:34) .
Remarkable as it may seem, the predominantly masculine imagery , used to describe God, from the days of Ancient Israel to our own, has not prevented God from calling women to represent him before his people. Both Israel and the early Christian communities knew and honored women among their prophets. Prophets are recognized as representatives of God among his people.
Jesus and the Twelve
It is often asserted that women must be excluded from the priesthood of the church because God became incarnate in a male person-Jesus of Nazareth. Proponents of the view recognize that the incarnation involves the “scandal of particularity”-that the saviour of the whole world became flesh under specific conditions of race, religion, time, economic status, and sex. It is understood that Jesus could not have existed in history and belonged at the same time to every social group; God particularizes in order to universalize. At this point in the discussion, opponents of the ordination of women to the priesthood assert that though other particularities of Jesus’ historical existence were accidental, his sex has special significance:
Being a Jew, being a Palestinian, being a first-century manall these are what we might call, in the language of Aristotelian metaphysics, the “accidents” of Christ’s humanity; but his being a man rather than a woman is of the “substance” of his humanity. He could have been a twentieth-century Chinese and been, cultural differences notwithstanding, much the same person he was; but he could not have been a woman without having been a different sort of personality altogether.(10)
The importance of Jesus’ sex is underscored by the fact that he chose for his official followers twelve men-a precedent for the traditionally male priesthood of the church.(11)
These arguments appear to take seriously the historical circumstances of the incarnation, but in fact, by their overemphasis on the sex of Jesus and the Twelve, they leave much out of account. We should take seriously the fact that Jesus’ earthly ministry occurred in continuity with God’s work for and among the people of Israel. Jesus, Christians believe, was the Messiah anticipated by the Jews. If we see Jesus in this way, we will take seriously not only his maleness, but also his Jewishness, his Davidic ancestry, and his status as freeman rather than slave. We will regard all these attributes of his person not as “accidents” but as attributes of theological significance.
The theological significance of these attributes-male, Jewish, free, of Davidic descent-lies in the fact that God’s saving work in Christ is also seen by Christians as the fulfillment of God’s promises to the people of Israel. Jesus both fulfilled the law and the prophets and initiated a new age in the relations between God and his people. The Messiah was to be David’s royal son: a Jewish male, freeman. Gentiles held no theological status in Israel, and the position of slaves and women, although it varied somewhat during the history of Israel, was never equal to that of men. Only a man could fulfill the expectations of the Old Testament. As Leonard Hodgson puts it:
[Jesus’ earthly life was lived within the circle of the Jewish religious thought of His time. He had come as Messiah to be offered in sacrifice as the Lamb of God for the taking away of the sins of the world. For this a male without blemish was required by Jewish law. (12)
The appointment of the Twelve should also be looked at in the context of Jewish religious thought of the first century. The Twelve are symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel and serve as the fulfillment of the prophecy of the restoration of Israel. Jesus gathered the Twelve in fulfillment of the prophecy that the heir to David’s throne would bring back together the scattered tribes of Israel. According to Jewish theology, the representatives of the twelve tribes would, of necessity, be Jewish freemen.(13)
The significance not only of the sex, but also of the race and number of the disciples, is further suggested by Urban Holmes in his recent book The Future Shade of Ministry: . . . the fact that Jesus did appoint the Twelve (which is probably a historically accurate record) would have nothing to do with the establishment of an institutional Church as we know it, but would be an eschatological sign in anticipation of the fulfillment of Israel in the Kingdom that was about tó come, the Twelve not functioning as apostles (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:30) but symbolizing the Twelve Tribes of Israel on the Day of the Lord (14)
The New Israel
The personal characteristics of Jesus and the Twelve are not insignificant. They are theologically significant for the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies made under the old covenant between God and his people Israel. But they are not therefore determinative for our ministry in the New Israel, which came into being after the resurrection. Holmes urges caution in seeking models for ministry in particular elements of Jesus’ earthly ministry:
. . . we should be careful about any arguments concerning the nature of the Church and the function of the ministry derived from the historical Jesus. It is with the Resurrection event that the whole question becomes alive. For Paul and Peter as well as ourselves it is the central reality of our Christian faith. Jesus is raised and glorified, he is the “first fruits” of what we are and are not yet; and we are sent to make known the mystery of his person throughout the world until all be fulfilled in him (15)
The implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection were not immediately apparent to his followers. It took time for them to understand that the Gospel was for Gentiles as well as for Jews. The controversy between those who saw Christianity as a Jewish sect, open only to the circumcised, and those like Paul, who insisted that salvation in Christ was for all people, echoes throughout the Book of Acts and the Epistles. Acts 10 tells how Peter came to realize that Christ’s saving work extended to Gentiles. Peter was in the home of Cornelius, a centurion in Caesarea, and was astounded to see that Cornelius and other Gentiles who were with him received the ecstatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. “Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” he asked (Acts 10:47).
At length it became clear to the early Christians that in the New Israel the old theological distinctions between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, were broken down. Membership in the body of Christ was open to all people, irrespective of the divisions that had existed under Jewish law. It is then no less a sign of the reconciling work of Christ that Gentile men can minister as priests in his name than it would be for women to do so. The ministries of both groups flow from the universal nature of God’s saving work in Christ and the universal mission of his church.
Motherhood and Ministry
Opponents of women in the priesthood urge the Christian woman to follow Christ, but by a particular route. She has distinctive functions in building Christ’s kingdom and she should look to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and other prominent Bible women for models for her life. Above all, her role in building the kingdom is associated with her ministry as Christian wife and mother.
According to one opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood, woman’s role flows directly from her biological potential for motherhood:
The femininity of woman is clearly marked out by her bodily functions. By nature she is destined for a different life from the man’s. However much she tries to avoid this (and the modern methods of avoiding it are many and full of dangers), she can never really escape it. For every normal woman is a potential mother. . . (16)
By contrast, the same writer states, “every man . . . is a potential priest.” (17)
The implications of woman’s role as Christian wife and mother have been described in a widely quoted essay by the Rt. Rev. Kenneth E. Kirk, the late Bishop of Oxford. In his view, “The sex-relation once set up must have priority over all other natural relations.” (18) The duties of wife and mother involve the “loving submission” (19) of wife to husband which would be threatened by the ordination of women priests, even if ordained women were celibate:
Even if ordination and matrimony were canonically declared to be mutually incompatible, so that no ordained women were allowed to marry, and no married women to be ordained, the wife and mother would be severely tempted to arrogate to herself a sexual equality with, if not superiority to, her husband analogous to the position of her ordained unmarried sister; dangerous strains would be introduced into domestic life; and the integrity of the Christian doctrine of the married relationship would be gravely challenged .(20)
The assumptions underlying this discussion of woman’s role should be examined in the light of the Gospel message concerning the new life men and women share in Christ. In Chapter 5 we considered the view that women are subordinate to their husbands in their new life together in Christ. An examination of the biblical evidence concluded that there is no legitimate scriptural justification for the subordination of women to men in the Christian marriage relation or elsewhere in social life. The rule of men over their wives is clearly a result of the fall (Genesis 3:16) and is precisely one of those sinful conditions of human existence from which we have been saved by God’s work for us in Christ.
The preeminent importance Bishop Kirk attaches to sexual and family relations in Christian life is problematic as well. This emphasis is not peculiar to those who oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood. It is frequently difficult-especially in America with its almost cultic emphasis on “togetherness” and family life-to untangle the Christian Gospel from visions of the “good life” projected by such secular sources as Good Housekeeping and the Ladies’ Home Journal.
Bishop Kirk does have a scriptural basis for his assertion of the centrality of woman’s role as wife and homemaker. He quotes from Genesis 1:28, in which God tells the first human couple, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” 21 (As this instruction is given to both Adam and Eve, one may wonder why fatherhood is not given more emphasis by Bishop Kirk.)
By contrast, we find that Jesus’ teaching warns against preoccupation with family relations:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. -Matthew 10:34-38
In his personal dealings with women, Jesus never gave special directions for their behavior as women; he treated them always as equals of men. In fact, if his attitude toward woman’s role can be drawn from the Gospel reports, we would have to assert that he rejected a stereotyped view of woman as homemaker and cbildbearer. In Luke 10:41-42, the Lord gently rebukes Martha for her preoccupation with household duties; he would rather she acted as did Mary, who had chosen to listen to Jesus’ teaching. On another occasion, he rejects the view that Mary his mother could be reduced to her reproductive functions. A woman in a crowd addresses Jesus saying, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you sucked!” To which Jesus replies, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27-28) . According to Jesus, Mary’s blessedness consisted not in maternity as such, but in her obedience to the will of God . (22)
Nor does Paul provide support for a Christian emphasis on family relations. In 1 Corinthians 7:7 he writes, “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.” Paul’s own personal inclination was toward celibacy, but he was accepting of married life for those who chose it. Paul emphasizes the importance not of family life, but of the spiritual aspects of the new life we have in Christ, urging Christians to “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 14:1) .
The author of 1 Timothy (23) strikes an unusual note in his insistence that “woman will be saved through bearing children” (2:15) . The whole passage in which this phrase occurs has so frequently been used as a basis for defining the Christian woman’s sphere that it should be considered carefully:
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.1 Timothy 2:11-15
According to this New Testament writer, Eve is responsible for the fall and woman is therefore in a subordinate position to man even in our new life in Christ. In fact, Genesis divides the blame and the burdens of the fall between Adam and Eve ( 3:16-19 ) , but this point has apparently eluded the writer. The author’s emphasis on the subjugation of women falls short of conveying the Gospel message of for giveness of sins and a new man-woman relationship “in Christ.” What we are left with is the personal opinion of the writer that women are saved through childbirth.
This idea presents immediate difficulties because of its apparent inconsistency with other parts of the New Testament. 1 Timothy 2:15 is not easy to reconcile with Paul’s injunctions to all Christians to desire spiritual gifts such as prophecy and with the conspicuous absence of motherhood from Paul’s extended list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:27-28. As one commentator put it in a tongue-in-cheek aside, the notion of being saved through motherhood “does make salvation rather complicated for some of the Holy Virgins, but then, as Jesus remarked, ‘With God all things are possible.’ ”(24)
Furthermore, the passage reflects a Jewish attitude toward motherhood which is no longer appropriate after the birth of the Messiah. Andre Dumas analyzes the Jewish attitude this way:
Before the birth of Christ woman was blessed as the mother of all living people. Her true and special priesthood was to bring into the world sons who would perpetuate the Chosen People until the coming of the Messiah. Her fruitfulness was a sign of the blessing of Yahweh . (25)
The coming of the Messiah changes woman’s situation. She no longer has a “special priesthood” in her role as mother: “Since the birth of Christ maternity in itself is no longer a vocation which mediates grace." (26) Dumas points out that the “special priesthood” of women in childbearing was the fundamental reason for their exclusion from the priesthood of Israel. (27) To suggest that women may not be priests because they area]] (potentially) mothers is “an anti-messianic regression”: “Therefore one can no longer say: the ministry is for men, and maternity is for women. If one did, one would be failing to realise the radical difference between the Levitical priesthood and the Christie priesthood.” (28)
The Christic Priesthood
What is the nature of Christie priesthood? Perhaps we have a glimpse in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians:
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God, who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. -2 Corinthians 3:56
Paul was a Jew and a freeman. But he does not claim that his ministry flowed from these things. The only thing sufficient for his ministryand surely the only thing sufficient for the Christie priesthood-is “from God,” the gift of the Holy Spirit.
1. Mascall, Women and the Priesthood, p. 34.
2. Stendahl, The Bible and the Role of Women, p. 38.
3. Albert J. duBois, “Why I am Against the Ordination of Women,” The Episcopalian, Vol. 137, No. 7 (July, 1972), p. 22.
4. Myers, “Should Women Be Ordained? No,” p. 8.
5. Boyer, “Some Thoughts on the Ordination of Women,” p. 72.
6. The Book of Common Prayer, p. 603.
7. Alan Richardson, Genesis I-11: The Creation Stories and the Modern World View (London: SCM Press, 1969), pp. 54-55.
8. Boyer, p. 72.
9. These and other instances of Jesus’ “feminism” are discussed in Leonard Swidler, “Jesus the Liberator,” The Church Woman, Vol. 38, No. 3 (March, 1972), pp. 14-16.
10. Boyer, pp. 74-75.
11. Ibid., p. 75.
12. Leonard Hodgson, “Theological Objections to the Ordination of Women,” The Expository Times, Vol. LXXVII, No. 7 (April, 1966), p. 211.
13. M. E. Thrall, The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: A Studyof the Biblical Evience (London: SCM Press, 1958), pp. 87-89; Dumas, “Biblical Anthropology,” p. 34.
14. Urban T. Holmes III, The Future Shade of Ministry: A Theological Projection (New York: The Seabury Press, 1971), p. 12.
15. Ibid., p. 13.
16. F. C. Blomfield, quoted in Thrall, p. 102.
17. F. C. Blomfield, quoted in Mascall, p. 27.
18. Kenneth Escott Kirk, Beauty and Bands and Other Papers (Greenwich, Conn.: The Seabury Press, 1957 ) , p. 182.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 186. For another view of the Christian marriage relation, see Bailey, Sexual Relation in Christian Thought, pp. Z60-303.
21. Kirk, p. 181.
22. Swidler, p. 16.
2 3. The authorship of 1 Timothy is uncertain. See Paul Feine, Johannes Behm, Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, trans. A. J. Mattill, Jr., rev. ed. (New York: Abingdon, 1966), pp. 261-272.
24. Atkinson, A Position Pacer, p. 2.
25. Dumas, p. 32.
26. Ibid., p. 33.
27. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
28. Ibid., p. 33.
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