Times and Men's Manners

From Women Priests: Yes or No?
By Emily C. Hewitt & Suzanne R. Hiatt, pp. 71-77,

Published by the Seabury Press, New York, 1973.

Opponents of the ordination of women to the priesthood marshal a third type of theological argument-one that carries much weight within Anglicanism. That argument is that an all-male priesthood is a basic element in the faith and tradition of Anglicanism which we are bound to maintain. The force of this argument derives from the fact that Anglicans regard church tradition as an important source of authority and guidance for Christian life today. Church tradition is one of the elements of what a report of the 1968 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops termed “our multiple inheritance of faith.” (1) An outline of the elements of this inheritance provides a context in which to discuss the claim that the ordination of women priests would be a scandalous break with church tradition.

The Anglican Inheritance

According to the Lambeth Conference report mentioned above, there are three strands to Anglican tradition. The earliest strand includes, on the one hand, Scripture, and on the other, “the Catholic Creeds set in their context of baptismal profession, patristic reasoning, and conciliar decision." A second strand of the Anglican tradition is found in the work of the sixteenth-century English reformation for example, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer. The third strand embraces the “responsible witness to Christian truth” made within Anglicanism from the time of the English reformation. This aspect of the tradition includes scholarship, preaching, and the statements of Anglican Councils.(2)

What is the authority of this threefold tradition in the life of the church today? The Lambeth report answers this way:

To such a threefold inheritance of faith belongs a concept of authority which refuses to insulate itself against the testing of history and the free action of reason. It seeks to be a credible authority and is therefore concerned to secure satisfactory historical support and to have its credentials in a shape which corresponds to the requirements of reason .(3)

Anglicans do not accept tradition blindly, then, but in the light of reason. We welcome biblical and historical scholarship in our efforts to come to grips with the meaning of our faithinheritance for the life of the church today; indeed, we consider such tools a part of our tradition. In this context we will examine the claim that church tradition rules out the ordination of women priests today.

The Vincentian Canon

The position of the opponents of women in the priesthood has been stated with clarity by E. L. Mascall:

The Anglican churches have never failed to pride themselves on their faithfulness to Scripture and primitive practice and to condemn those bodies which have innovated upon the Church’s faith and practice. It would be difficult to conceive a more drastic innovation than the extension of Holy Orders to women; for there can hardly be any aspect of the Church’s practice which conforms more closely to the Vincentian canon Semper, ubique et ab omnibus, than the restriction of priesthood to the male sex (4)

The “Vincentian canon” to which the writer refers was a principle set forth in the year 434 by Vincent, a monk of Lérins, urging that “in the Catholic Church itself all possible care should be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere [ubique], always (semper], and by all [et ab omnibus]." (6)

The Vincentian canon is not, in fact, a piece of canon law in the Episcopal Church, or even in the Roman Catholic Church. It serves instead as a theological guidepost for discerning the fundamental tenets of our faith. The late Bishop Kenneth E. Kirk (on other grounds an opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood) notes that there are only “rare cases” in which the Vincentian canon can be applied.’ In those cases, he says, “nothing but absolute and conscientious conviction after the most devout, exhaustive, and heartsearching inquiry would justify even a momentary wavering of allegiance." (7) Catholic churches have a long (and until lately, unbroken) tradition of an allmale priesthood. Does the restriction of the priesthood to males constitute one of those “rare cases” to which the Vincentian canon may be applied?

A Peculiar Tradition

The Rev. Professor G. W. H. Lampe of Cambridge University has termed the all-male priesthood “tradition of a peculiar kind.” (8) It is a peculiar tradition in that it has both wide acceptance and at the same time rests on an uncertain foundation. For a long time, this tradition has been believed to carry apostolic authority, putting it “among that class of tradition by which the church is bound at all times.” (9) This belief, Lampe suggests, rests on the “mistaken assumption” that the tradition was supported by “unchallengeable Scriptural authority” and “a general presupposition of the inferiority of women to men.” (10)

Lampe’s analysis is borne out when we look at the different strands of the Anglican tradition to see whether a doctrine of an all-male priesthood is part of that faith “believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

The most basic element in the faith-inheritance, Scripture, fails to provide support for a doctrine of an all-male priesthood. In the preceding chapters we discussed in detail the inadequacy of scriptural arguments against women in the priesthood; it is necessary to emphasize only a few points here. We should remember that the New Testament does not offer any special arguments against women’s participation in ministry. The limitations which the New Testament imposes ón woman’s role in the church are always based on her (assumed) subordinate role in creation or on her subordinate position after the fall. There is no “special” limitation of woman’s role in the church beyond the standard limitations of propriety in the first-century Hellenistic world. The theological basis (in Paul’s interpretation of Genesis) for these limitations cannot be maintained today. We are called instead to implement the new relationship between men and women that we have “in Christ.”

Nor does one find in the creeds of the church an affirmation of an all-male priesthood as one of the basic tenets of the faith. To be sure, there are occasional pieces of canonical legislation prohibiting women from Holy Orders (11)(hardly surprising when one considers the opinions of some of the church fathers concerning women), (12) but no evidence for a doctrine of an all-male priesthood as a basic tenet of faith. The Rev. Dr. J. Robert Wright of The General Theological Seminary provides this historical summary:

The history of impediments against the reception of Holy Orders as seen in the early canons, in St. Thomas Aquinas, and even in impediments recognized by the Roman Catholic Church today, indicates that they have varied greatly and are all timeconditioned. Examples: In the early canons, one is disqualified from the office of priest if he has ever had a concubine; if he has married a widow, a divorced woman, a harlot, or an actress; or if he or his wife has ever committed adultery or fornication. When we look at St. Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of the faith in the thirteenth century, we find that female sex is seen as an impediment to Holy Orders, for the reason “since it is not possible in the female state to signify eminence of degree, for a woman is in the state of subjection:” (Note that he does not deny ordination to women by claiming that a priest is a symbol of a god who is masculine.) Aquinas would also deny ordination to those guilty of homicide, to those of servile status, and to those of illegitimate birth “since a man’s good name is bedimmed by a sinful origin:” (13)

Indelibale Character

Occasionally, an opponent of women in the priesthood will insist that St. Thomas was uttering more than a “time-conditioned” principle when he said that women were incapable of receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders. Women, it is suggested, cannot receive the “indelible character” of a deacon, priest, or bishop. But this argument, as Leonard Hodgson has shown, cannot be advanced without twisting the meaning of the terms “indelible” and “character” from their theological context and, at the same time, effectively denying that women may be members of the body of Christ.

The word “character,” Hodgson points out, refers to “spirítual potency,” not to physical attributes. In St. Thomas’ terms, the priestly or episcopal character is given to the spirit, not the flesh. “So to say that a woman is incapable of receiving the priestly or episcopal character involves saying that her sexual differentiation carries with it a deficiency in spiritual receptivity and power.” (14) Hodgson continues: “What then of ‘indelible’? This simply means that in certain sacraments-baptism, confirmation, ordination-their grace is given once for all. They are not to be repeated.” (15) If a woman cannot receive Holy Orders because of the “indelible character” of the sacrament, there is no reason to think that she can be validly baptized or confirmed, either.

The Anglican Approach

The fact is that the all-male priesthood is not part of the common mind of the church, found in Scripture and the Creeds and given deliberate theological formulation elsewhere. We are, therefore, under no solemn obligation to preserve it. Anglicans are deeply committed to the principle that traditions, even ancient ones, may be reconsidered and altered. Bishop Kirk describes the Anglican position thus:

In rejecting the claim of the papacy to an administrative supremacy jure divino, the Church of England once and for all committed herself to the position that no principle, however fully divine authority has been claimed for it in the past, is in fact exempt from reverent and unprejudiced reconsideration.(16)

The Anglican Articles of Religion provide explicit support for the view that customs which are time-conditioned may be reviewed and revised:

It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word (17)

When we draw on the threefold inheritance of faith, we do not find that tradition bars the ordination of women to the priesthood. An all-male priesthood is not an element of the faith believed “everywhere, always, and by all.” It is one of those customs that may be changed as long as “nothing be ordained against God’s Word.” The vision of a new man-woman relation “in Christ” leads us to reject the assumptions about the inferiority of women that have for so long protected the tradition of an all-male priesthood from critical reexamination. The report on “Women in the Priesthood” of the 1968 Lambeth Conference evaluated the argument that our tradition prohibits women priests this way:

If the ancient and medieval assumptions about the social role and inferior status of women are no longer accepted, the appeal to tradition is virtually reduced to the observation that there happens to be no precedent for ordaining women to be priests. The New Testament does not encourage Christians to think that nothing should lie done for the first time (18)

Notes

1. The Lambeth Conference, 1968: Resolutions and Reports (London and New York: S.P.C.K. and The Seabury Press, 1968), p. 83.

2. Ibid., p. 82.

3. Ibid.

4. Mascall, Women and the Priesthood, p. 35.

5. Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (rev. ed.; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959) p. 171.

6. Kenneth E. Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927), p. 97. Jaroslav Pelikan notes, “Despite the thickness of various textbooks on dogma, the actual number of doctrines defined officially as binding de jure upon all believers is relatively small. . . Even the doctrine of the death of Christ as vicarious satisfaction, while the common property of most Western theologians regardless of denomination, has never attained the dogmatic status of the doctrine of the two natures of Christ” [Historical Theology: Continuity and Change in Christian Doctrine ( New York: Corpus, 1971) , pp. 20-21].

7. Kirk, p. 97.

8. G. W. H. Lampe, “Church Tradition and the Ordination of Women,” The Expository Times, Vol. LXXVI, No.4 (January, 1965), p. 123.

9. Ibid., p. 124.

10. Ibid.

11. For an argument against women in Holy Orders based on such a canon, see George B. Armstrong, “The Impossibility of Ordaining Women,” The American Church News, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1 (Lent, 1972), p. 9.

12. E.g.: Tertullian, “Do you not know that you are Eve? . . You are the Devil’s gateway. . . How easily you destroyed man, the image of God. Because of the death which you brought upon us, even the Son of God had to die,” quoted in Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 45; Epiphanius, “. . . a feeble race, untrustworthy and of mediocre intelligence,” quoted in Lampe, p. 124.

13. J. Robert Wright, “Yes, Ordain Women,” The Episcopal New Yorker Vol. XLVIII, No. 6 (June, 1972), p. 2.

14. Hodgson, “Theological Objections to the Ordination of Women,” p. 213.

15. Ibid.

16. Kirk, p. 92.

17. The Book of Common Prayer, p. 609.

18. The Lambeth Conference, 1968, p. 106.

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