Those who would deny women full access to the sacred office of the ministry have argued that there are some deep and significant reasons “in the very nature of things” why men, and only men, should be ministers in the church of Christ. These reasons, whether elaborated in a Roman Catholic or in a Protestant frame of reference, finally reduce to three: the nature of woman, the nature of the ministerial office, and the nature of God himself.
Serious debate over women’s right to the holy office of the Christian ministry is a relatively modern phenomenon. Throughout Christian history it has been assumed—more or less—that women should not be admitted to the ranks of the ordained clergy for the obvious reason that they are women and are therefore subject to the limitations of womanhood. At its meanest, this assumption has been little more than an instance of the misogyny that has marred Christian thought since the days of the early church fathers, a prejudice that occassionally can still be read between the lines of the ongoing discussion, though it is no longer an explicit part of the argument against the ordination of women.
Some cite the erotic stimulus aroused in the male by the female presence. They are careful, of course, to state that this is a matter of male weakness, not female perversity. E. L. Mascall, for example, quotes with approval the argument of N. P. Williams that “men as such are very less likely to be an involuntary cause of distraction to women, under the circumstances of public worship, than women are to men; and that this is a permanent fact of human nature which can no more be abolished by modern progress than the law of gravitation can be abolished by human progress” (Women and the Priesthood of the Church, Church Literature Association, no date, page 8). Another statement of this argument was made by Herbert Carson: “If a man stands in the pulpit the average woman is not unduly affected by his appearance; but if a woman stands there, men, being men, will often find that their thoughts are less on the word spoken than on the speaker” (Reformation Today, Spring, 1971, page 9).
The trouble with this argument is that it proves too much. As Mascall admits, pressed to its logical conclusion it would exclude women from all visible, official participation in worship and, unless the senses of sight and sound are fundamentally different, would appear to exclude them from participation even in an invisible choir, a restriction even more stringent than the limitations imposed by Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic communions.
In truth, the argument that females should not be ministers and priests because males have a “weakness” is wholly without merit. It is simply a disarming nuance of the age-old assumption on man’s part that the woman is a sex object; that she differs from the man in that while he is capable of erotic love, she is made for it. As Byron wrote,
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;
’Tis woman’s whole existence.
Instead of trying to limit the woman in her freedom as a child of God by denying her calling to the ministry on such grounds, men ought to redeem the man/woman relationship in the Church by repenting of their sin.
The Nature Of The Ministerial Office
Every major ecclesiastical tradition recognizes that there is an office of ministry and that ordination is the way one is inducted into it. Hence ordination, however one may conceive it, is (ordinarily) necessary if one is to function as a minister in Christ’s Church with the authority of one divinely called to the task. Since one is “called of God” to the office, one does not simply choose to be a minister as one would choose to enter a profession. One must be called and the call must be confirmed by the Church. The question, then, is: Does God call women, as he does men, to be ministers in his name? No, say those who oppose the ordination of women. And they deny that such an answer is obscurantist, in that emancipated women have excelled in all other professions, by pointing out that the ministry cannot be equated simply with a profession like law or medicine.
But having granted this needed clarification, we can hardly accept this as the final word on the subject. The question then must be asked, “Why should God call only men; why should he not also call women?” To this question it has been answered that what the husband is to the bride, Christ is to the Church in the teaching of the New Testament. Hence the one vested with authority to minister in his name must be one whom God has appointed to function in the Church as does the husband at the natural level, as the head of the family. In other words, to ordain a woman to holy orders would be analogous to assigning her the role of husband and father in the family, a role that properly belongs to the man. We see, then, that so far as the nature of the ministerial office bears on the question of woman’s ordination, the ultimate issue proves to be her relationship of subordination to the man.
This is true regardless of one’s specific theological view of ordination. It really matters little whether one has a Catholic view of ordination, wherein the essential element is the sacramental commissioning of a priest to pronounce absolution and celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass, or a Protestant and evangelical view, wherein the essential element is the setting apart of a minister to preach the Gospel and shepherd the flock of God. In both traditions it is the woman’s relationship to the man that disqualifies her for ordination. I say this fully aware of the often made disclaimers and realizing that other considerations enter in. So far as the nature of ordination is concerned, those who object to giving it to women always come at last to the same place: the Christian minister is Christ’s representative, and this implies a spiritual authority in the Church that belongs to the man.
The question of female ordination, then, is a nuance of the larger question of female subordination. Contemporary thinkers who stand in this tradition speak not of the inferiority of the woman to the man but rather of her difference from him, especially as this difference is reflected in her role as wife and mother in the natural family, a difference that must be reflected in the Church as the spiritual family of God. The woman was created from and for the man (Gen. 2) and therefore stands under his authority.
The creation account, however, need not be thought to subordinate one sex to the other. Rather, mankind in the divine image is created a partnership of male and female. By the same token the new mankind “foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29, ASV) is likewise a partnership of the sexes. Translated into the language of ecclesiology, this is to say: The Church is a universal priesthood of all believers in Christ, female as well as male. To this affirmation it has been answered that such references as First Peter 2:5, in which Christians generally are called a “holy” or “royal priesthood,” refer to the priesthood communicated to the Church in its corporate aspect. Hence the priesthood of all believers implies nothing for the ordination of women to holy office unless one adopts the radical laicism implied in that form of Protestantism which admits of no essential difference between laity and clergy.
Although I am a Protestant in this radical sense, I am not convinced that such an answer is valid even from a Roman or Anglo-Catholic perspective, since according to the Catholic view, “priestly character,” committed individually by ordination to those who function as priests, arises directly out of the priestly character, which is committed generally to the Church as Christ’s body. But if this is so, if individual priesthood rests upon the general priesthood of the laity, then women, who, like men, are incorporated (symbolically) by baptism into the body of Christ and so made “to be priests unto his God and Father” (Rev. 1:6), are equally qualified to become priests in the individualized meaning of the term. Whatever difference one may postulate between the priesthood in its general and in its individual form, this difference implies nothing for men that it does not imply for women. In fact, since the Church is the bride of Christ and therefore feminine to him, one could just as well reason that the universal priesthood of all believers should find its individual expression in the woman rather than in the man, an inference that the theologians, as males, have never drawn.
The Nature Of God
Theologians have always known and admitted that God transcends the sexual distinctions of our humanity. However, they have hardly been consistent in applying this truth. While they have assumed that God is not female, it has been less clear to them that he is not male either. Although their own bias as men has been a factor in this lack of perception, there are, no doubt, more substantive reasons for the general tendency of theologians to think of God as a male Deity. Scripture uses the masculine pronouns in speaking of God; and this God, who reveals himself in Scripture, is the Father who sent his Son to redeem mankind; and this Son became incarnate as the man Jesus of Nazareth.
Surely it is understandable—if not defensible—that theologians should have inferred from all this that God is more like the male than the female of the human species. Though herself a bearer of the divine image, the woman does not bear that image to the same degree as the man. She is, as it were, one degree removed from the original. This is the way in which the theologians traditionally have understood Paul’s affirmation that the woman is the “glory of the man,” who is the “image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7). By the same token, it is surely understandable that Christian women have struggled with the implications of their faith at this point. Theresa of Avila’s bitter lament, “The very thought that I am a woman is enough to make my wings droop,” has struck a responsible chord in many, and today’s women theological students have turned the saint’s lament into a complaint that they find the male Deity of the theologians more oppressive than redemptive.
Those who reject the claim of women that the Church should confirm their call to the ministry and invest them with the authority of office through ordination have pointed out that the teaching that God is the “Father,” who sent his “Son” to be our Redeemer, rests on revelation, not human invention. C. S. Lewis sharpens the issue by asking a series of rhetorical questions: Can one say that we might just as well pray to “our Mother who art in heaven” as to “our Father”? Dare we suggest that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form and that the second person of the Trinity might just as well be called “Daughter” as “Son”? Can we reverse the mystical marriage so that the church is the “Bridegroom” and Christ the “Bride”? All this, Lewis avers, is involved in the claim that a woman can stand in the place of God as does an ordained minister. Hence, to admit women to the office of the ministry would be, for Lewis and those who share his views, to turn Christianity into a different sort of religion (see his essay “Priestesses in the Church,” reprinted in God in the Dock, Eerdmans, 1970).
These profound mysteries of God’s being, mysteries revealed in the Incarnation, explain (allegedly) why our Lord, himself a man, restricted the personal exercise of the ministry in his church to apostles who were men. Being God’s eternal Son, he became a man, not a woman; and for this reason he commissioned men, not women, to represent him in the Church, which is his body, his bride. In fact, the Gospels testify more clearly to Jesus’ institution of the ministry than to his institution of the Church. He founded the Church, one could say, by founding the ministry. Hence the Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20).
It is from this perspective, also, that we must understand the controversial pronouncements of Peter and Paul, leading apostles, that women should keep silent in the church and not aspire to the teaching office (1 Cor. 14:34, 35; 1 Tim. 2:11–14). And because all this is so plain in the New Testament, the burden of proof lies with those who would simply set aside the ecclesiastical tradition of entrusting to men as mere tradition having no authority in the Church today.
Although I cannot here respond fully to this argument, some response to it is necessary, for it is incompatible with my affirmation that human sexuality is a life partnership of equals under God. Obviously there can be no true partnership of the sexes in the life of the Church so long as those vested with the authority to speak for God are men and men only. My response will take the form of a series of brief affirmations.
1. If, as the theologians have taught, there is only a personal distinction in God (Trinity), not a sexual one, then the creation of Man in the divine image as male and female can hardly mean that Man is like God as male rather than female. Since God is a fellowship of persons (Father, Son, Spirit) and Man is a fellowship of persons (man and woman), therefore Man is like God as man in fellowship with woman, not as man in distinction from woman.
2. Such a conclusion, which appears to be beyond dispute, requires that we construe the masculine language about God analogically, not literally, when we interpret Scripture. The univocal element in the analogy is the personal, not the sexual, meaning of the language.
3. Related data of Scripture, when carefully examined, support this conclusion. Even in the Old Testament, where God reveals himself to Israel as like a Father (Mal. 1:6; 2:10), he also reveals himself like a Mother: “Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget you” (Isa. 49:15). The fact that God likens himself to a father much more frequently than to a mother does not alter the analogical character of the paternal, as well as the maternal, language of such Scriptures.
When we turn to the New Testament, the same situation prevails. Jesus likens God to an anxious shepherd who rejoices when he finds a lost sheep (Luke 15:3–7) and to an anxious woman who rejoices when she finds a lost coin (Luke 15:8–10). Such male and female analogies are equally revelatory because Man is like. God as male and female. It should also be noted that whereas a yearling male lamb or a goat answers in type to Jesus, our Passover, sacrificed for us (Exod. 12:5–6; 1 Cor. 5:7), yet our Lord likened himself to a hen who gathers her chicks under her wings (Matt. 23:27). Likewise Paul, who likens himself to a father who begot the Corinthians through the Gospel (1 Cor. 4:15), also likens himself to a nurse who cherishes her children (1 Thess. 2:7) and to a woman in travail, laboring to bring children (in this case, the Galatians) to the birth (Gal. 4:19).
4. Because the language of the Bible about God is analogical, the personal pronouns used of God—he, his, him, himself—in Scripture, theology, and devotion are to be understood generically, not specifically. Although such personal pronouns are necessary because God is not the philosophical absolute or Ground of Being (Tillich) but the God who reveals himself as personal Subject (I am who I am, Exod. 3:14), it is just as wrong to understand these personal pronouns as masculine as it would be to use feminine or neuter pronouns. God is no more (or less) “he” specifically than “she,” no more (or less) like the male than like the female.
5. Since the trinitarian fellowship of the Godhead knows no distinction of male and female and since the human fellowship of male and female knows no discrimination against the female as less in the divine image than the male, therefore the Incarnation in the form of male humanity, though historically and culturally necessary, was not theologically necessary.
To the argument that God must have known what he was doing when he became incarnate as a man, the answer may be given that indeed he did! And what exactly was he doing? He was entering into the stream of human life, and this life had a history. God was crossing the line, coming from beyond time and place into our time and place. Hence he could not ignore the actualities of the human historical situation. But this is just to say that there is no ultimate reason, in the nature of either Man the creature or God the Creator, but only a proximate one in history—and that a history marked by sin and alienation—why God should uniquely reveal himself in a man rather than in a woman. The faith of the Christian, to be sure, acknowledges that Jesus, a first-century Jew, is Lord. But this confession implies not that salvation is of the male but that it is of the Lord. This is the meaning of the confession that makes one a Christian.
As the Incarnation cannot be understood apart from the actualities of the historical situation in which it occurred, so it is also with the male constitution of the original apostolate. Although in Christ there is no male and female, the apostles whom our Lord commissioned had to preach in a world that knew male and female in terms of hardship and submission. While our Lord’s intent, through the preaching of the apostles, was to redeem mankind and so create a new humanity in which the traditional antagonisms of the sexes would be reconciled, such redemption could not be accomplished by simple confrontation. One can understand, then, why he chose only men to herald the truth of the Gospel in the Greco-Roman world of the first century. But one should no more infer from this fact that the Christian ministry must remain masculine to perpetuity than one should infer from the fact that the apostles were all Jews that the ministry must remain Jewish to perpetuity.
6. Congruent with this last consideration is the fact that the New Testament itself points beyond this limitation of an all-male apostolate, and it does so in a remarkable way when one considers the times and circumstances in which the Church was born. Here I have in mind such considerations as the following:
a. According to the fourfold gospel tradition, the risen Christ first appeared to women and commissioned them to tell his brethren. Hence women were the initial witnesses to the event that is at the heart of the apostolic message and the basis of all Christian kerygma.
b. Women shared in the Pentecostal effusion of the Spirit. Hence there is no reason to suppose that they observed a discreet silence when the Church was born, since Peter himself quotes Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (Acts 2:17). Reinforcing this account is the statement that the daughters of Philip exercised the prophetic gift (Acts 21:9), as well as the statement that women prophesied even in the Pauline churches (1 Cor. 11:5). Further, as the same apostle says, the Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20), some of whom, it would appear, were women. In other words, the essential qualifications and gifts that men brought to the office of ministry in the New Testament, women also brought.
c. Paul speaks of Euodia and Syntyche of the Philippian church as they who “labored with me in the gospel” (Phil. 4:3); he greets Priscilla in Rome as a fellow worker (Rom. 16:3); he commends Phoebe, the bearer of the Roman epistle, as a helper of many, whose business in the capital city warranted the support of all the saints (Rom. 16:1).
In the light of these considerations, I conclude that women have full title to the order of Christian ministry as God shall call them. Let those who scruple consider what it has cost the Church not to use the talents of the woman. Let anyone consult the hymbook and see what women poets—Fanny Crosby, Charlotte Elliott, Frances Havergal, Christina Rossetti, Anne Steel—have taught the people of God to sing and then ask what it would mean if such women were allowed to move beyond the relative anonymity of the hymnal to full visibility in the Church as evangelists, preachers, and teachers. And let all who would help them attain such visibility remember that sharing the ministry with women does not mean requiring them to think, speak, and act like men. This would be to misunderstand the meaning of our sexual complementarity. Because God made Man male and female, in the natural realm men are fathers and brothers, while women are mothers and sisters. So it must be in the spiritual realm. And when it is, then, and only then, will the Church be truly the family of God.
