This is an issue that I really want to give more thought to in the future. I have no problem with deaconesses or even a Church ‘office’ for elder women. I have no problem with women as Bible teachers or theology lecturers. I have no problem with women playing leading roles in virtually every single realm of society. However, although I would in many respects like to, I find myself unable to accept the idea of women as pastors and bishops. I also find myself unable to accept some of the more ’symmetrical’ understandings of marriage.

The following are some notes that I wrote a short while ago, but have yet to post on my blog. Some of them might be relevant to the present discussion:

There are real differences between men and women. These differences are not primarily biological or psychological, but symbolic and theological. All other differences grow out of the more basic theological and symbolic differences.

Man was created for worship and the differences between men and women are especially significant in the context of worship. Sex is a liturgical fact first and foremost. The woman was created as the helper of the man in the liturgical task.

I think that the ‘man is protological, woman is eschatological’ approach has something to it. In Scripture the man comes first. Adam comes before Eve. Male circumcision comes before the new birth of Baptism. Christ comes before the Church. The fact that the man comes first does not mean that the man is somehow ‘better’. It just means that man was created to be the Initiator, the woman to be the Perfecter.

Biological differences flow from this symbolic and theological difference, not vice versa. As general norms — and there are plenty of exceptions — men are physically stronger than woman, have deeper voices than women, live shorter than women, etc. Men are better equipped to initiate and set the fundamental direction for the flow of history, women to bring history to its perfection. Man is physically designed to initiate sexual relations, women to bring that to perfection.

Naturally speaking, man generally has the power to dominate the woman, to use her for sex and treat her as a possession and status symbol. However, a purely masculinist society will fail to get off the ground. A society that mistreats its women will, for all sorts of reasons, ensure that it will not progress. A society that fails to educate, honour and value its women will never rise to true greatness. Progress can only be made when the man begins to surrender his natural strength in service of the woman and the children that she bears and stops using his power to dominate them. It is the woman who will unlock the possibility of a future in the face of death. Societal progress is initiated by the man’s determination to leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife in the committed relationship of marriage. It involves the willingness on the part of a father to be committed to the raising of children.

A purely feminist society is a society that has lost its direction and become decadent. It is a society that has lost the strength to make the necessary sacrifices for its convictions and to resist more vigorous societies. By virtue of their greater physical strength among other things, men are the natural guardians of society. Generally it is men who go to war to defend their women and children, rather than vice versa. It is not an accident that strong leadership is generally perceived as more masculine in character. The physical and psychological characteristics that make for strong leaders of society are more commonly found in men. None of this is intended to deny that women can be very good and gifted leaders. My point is that women tend to adopt a different style of leadership to that of ‘strength leadership’ and that such ‘strength leadership’ is quite important when it comes to things like war. There are reasons why the chief guardians of society are usually men.

By creating and equipping men to be a particular type of symbolic being, God equipped them to be the priestly guardians of society (the standing holy army) in a way that women are not. Women can no more fulfil the role of special priesthood than men can be pregnant. It is not just impermissible; it is impossible. They have not generally been equipped with the necessary skills for that task and, more importantly, they are not the sort of symbolic being capable of playing that role.

This feminist stage of society often precedes the collapse of a civilization and is often accompanied by sexual confusion in the form of homosexuality, etc. It is the fate of a civilization whose cultural energy has been sapped. It is the fate of a society that has lost the will to fight and die for what it believes to be true. It is a society without strong guardians. Such a civilization is the prey of masculinist civilizations and lacks the strength that a truly Christian society possesses, founded upon the practice of marriage, where men and women work in harmony. This is one reason why feminized Europe is powerless to resist the threat of masculinist Islam.

The truly successful society will be founded upon marriage, where the husband lays down his natural strength in service of the woman. In such a society the empowering and honouring of women will be seen as crucial for the society’s growth and survival. As the strength of man is to be used in service of the woman, strong men will produce strong women. Men with true strength of character will not be threatened by strong women. However, this empowering of women will not be achieved at the expense of an acknowledgement of man’s natural role as Initiator. The woman ought not to try to undermine the man’s role as Initiator and Guardian. The weakness of many men in today’s society, their passivity and their unwillingness to take the initiative or fight for their convictions has not done women any favours. Women weaken themselves when they weaken men and vice versa.

Man was created as the Initiator and Guardian and it was his failure in this role that resulted in the Fall. Although the woman was the one who ate first, it is in Adam that mankind falls. Adam used Eve as a guinea pig for sin, failing both to take the initiative and to act as Eve’s guardian. Adam stood idly by while Satan tempted Eve.

All of this has great bearing on the question of women leadership in the Church, which is why Paul refers to Genesis 3 in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, which has absolutely nothing to do with the idea that women are more easily deceived than men (frankly, I suspect that the opposite is the case; it is not without good reason that Wisdom is personified as a woman). The ‘teaching’ in view in that passage is the authoritative fatherly direction that the pastor is called to provide to the congregation entrusted to his care. Women are quite capable and are biblically permitted to give all sorts of other forms of ‘teaching’, including theological education, etc. Indeed the Church could do with a lot more women theologians.

Changing paradigms of Church leadership have resulted in the marginalization of some of the central dimensions of pastoral leadership. The pastor is the Guardian and Initiator. He is the one who must guard the bride of Christ, protecting and enforcing the boundaries. He is the watchman on the walls. The Church is a family and the pastor is the father figure. He is the holy warrior who must be prepared to go as far as to slay his brethren for the sake of the truth. This is what God called the Levites to do. The pastor is the one who initiates the dialogue of worship as the representative of the heavenly Bridegroom (the symbolic connection between Christian pastors and the fulfilling of the Levirate law is not unimportant: the pastor is called to initiate the process of raising up seed as the symbol of Christ).

Where the Church starts to accept women pastors, what we are witnessing is a dangerous shift in the way that the Church perceives itself and its task. When the Guardians of the Church’s purity and the Initiators of the Church’s worship are women the Church is considerably weakened. The moral, theological and cultural strength of the Church will suffer as a result.

Christian feminists often want to downplay the use of masculine language and imagery for God. There are certain dimensions of God’s character that have suffered as a result. God ceases to be the Father who commands and leads His people from the front, clearly directing their life in the way that He wants them to go. God ceases to be a God of holy violence in guarding the boundaries, a god who would wage a war against evil, bring judgment upon nations, cast people into hell or exact the penalty on sin at the cross.

Metaphors such as that of holy warfare have also come under attack. Women, it is argued, cannot relate to such imagery. The problem is that the imagery of holy warfare is very prominent in Scripture. Marginalization of such imagery can lead (and has led) to a distortion of the Church’s self-understanding. The Church begins to lose direction and clearly defined boundaries. The antithesis is blurred and we no longer bother to make enemies.

The leadership model that I have seen a number of Christian feminists advocate is presented as an alternative to more ‘hierarchical’ forms of leadership, moving Church leadership in a more ‘democratic’ and nurturing direction. What this often entails is a form of leadership that fails to give the Church a firm direction from the front and a form of leadership that takes a far more relaxed attitude to the moral boundaries and the conflict that should exist between the Church and the world. Now, such ‘democratic’ and nurturing leadership is very important in many areas of life and even has a valuable role to play in the Church’s life, but there are some realms where it is completely inappropriate. You can’t lead an army in such a manner. Discipline and strong leaders providing clear direction are essential for the successful running of an army. Although the Church is far more than just an army (which is one of the reasons why women have a very important role to play in shaping the life of the Church), it is not less and women as pastors and bishops threaten the Church’s survival.

There is plenty of evidence, both from plain observation and from scientific research, to demonstrate that men and women think and approach life differently. Men and women can use different regions of their brains when approaching the same task. As a result we tend to excel at different things. The tasks of guarding and initiating are tasks that men are better equipped for mentally as well as physically. However, the strengths that men have in this area can prove to be liabilities in other areas, causing them to be insensitive and unable to appreciate the complexity of some issues. This is just one of the many reasons why men need women to counsel them in their exercise of leadership and to exercise areas of leadership themselves.

Unpacking the protological-eschatological approach, I believe that there is more that we can learn. I suspect that many of our difficulties in the area of relationships between the sexes result from our tendency to think in terms of a static hierarchical order, rather than in terms of order in temporal movements. This is something that the protological-eschatological approach can help us to move beyond.

The man is the ‘head’ — or ‘source’ — who initiates the movement, a movement that is then perfected by the action of the woman. The man must lay down his strength in service of the woman, who then glorifies the man. Much the same thing is true in the Trinity. There is an order and priority in the intra-Trinitarian relationships, but not a static hierarchy. Being the ‘head’ is not so much a matter of ‘authority’ as it is a matter of initiation, of being the ‘source’.

I find approaches like that of Matt Colvin’s treatment of 1 Corinthians 11, where he argues that the passage needs to be read in terms of a progressive unveiling in redemptive history, very helpful. At this stage in history the glory of Christ is to be revealed and, consequently, men should worship with uncovered heads. The veiling of the woman is temporary, until the time comes for the glory of man to be revealed.

In history God separates things in order to bring them into greater unity at a later point. Separation is not an end in itself. In Christ there is no ‘male and female’ (Galatians 3:28). While this clearly means that we are all equally heirs of God, I think that it must have deeper implications still. In the eschaton there will no longer be ‘male and female’. However, this eschatological state is not a negation or pure ‘leaving behind’ of the present male/female order, but a consummation and fulfilment of it.

We will be like the angels and present realities like marriage will pass away into something better still (Matthew 22:30). In the eschaton there will be no more need for sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction seeks to raise seed in the face of death. I think that John Zizioulas is onto something when he connects sex and death in this context. The processes of sex and death preserve our common nature while dispensing with particular persons. Only the resurrection of the dead can overcome this and secure the ontological primacy of the personally hypostasized nature. Since sex was instituted before the Fall, I suggest that the distinction here is one that exists between the natural and the spiritual body. Only the second birth — the birth from the dead — can secure human personal identity and fulfil the purpose of the male and femaleness of creation. This is why there is no ‘male and female’ in Christ. In the light of the resurrection marriage doesn’t mean quite the same thing anymore as the race needs to preserve its common nature in the face of death and no particular person will ultimately be disposed of.

It seems to me that male leadership (as we presently experience it) in the Church, like the Levirate law with which it is related, is temporary and will pass away in the eschaton when Christ is all in all. In the eschaton women will be unveiled and their glory will be fully seen. The male -> female movement here is similar to the Jew -> Gentile movement. Like the Jews had to do for the Gentiles, men must lay down their lives for the sake of women. Christ is the archetypal mature man, who surrenders His natural ‘masculine’ power in service of His bride.

At the end of the movement temporary sharp distinctions will be consummated in a glorious unity. Some differences may persist, but functionally their significance will be minimal. The blessing of the woman is the glory of the man, just as the bringing of revelation to the Gentiles is the glory of Israel (Luke 2:32). The bringing of glory to the Gentiles must involve sacrifice on the part of the Jews and a willing surrender of what seem to be their greatest privilege — the fact that they alone of all nations received God’s revelation. On the part of women, as Gentiles with the Jews, the temporal priority of men must be recognized and not boasted against. Women must rather rejoice to seek the ‘fullness’ of men.

Seeing themselves as the servants of women, men must seek the full glory of the woman. The task of the man is to willingly surrender his priority, so that the woman can be fully realized. This is how he will be glorified, not by retaining his own priority. Sadly, in reality it is usually the woman who must sacrifice so that the man might glorify himself. It is the unrewarded and unappreciated sacrifices of faithful women that often allow selfish men to advance their careers. The man seeks to fully realize himself by using the woman. Much teaching on ‘biblical manhood’ simply underwrites this pagan attitude. The natural strength of the man is presented as a badge of right, rather than as a sign of duty. Such men will treat women in a demeaning fashion, much as many Jews treated Gentiles.

When a man uses a woman in such a way, the woman gradually loses all identity of her own and becomes defined purely relative to the men (or offspring) in her life — her father, husband and children. It seems to me that the true man is the one who surrenders himself so that the woman can be realized (and women in turn surrender themselves so that their children can be realized). The true Initiator does not lord it over or seek to overpower and dominate others, but courageously serves them in love. He progressively lays down his natural strength so that others might be strengthened and empowered to bring to perfection what he has initiated. The true Guardian willingly buys the safety and security of those he loves at the cost of his own blood.

Al,

The following are just reflections on your post. I am wading through this issue myself.

Man as initiator. How does creation order make males initiators? If your appeal is to phallus, you equivocate on penetrator and initiator. There are plenty of ways, even in the bedroom, in which women as women initiate. So I am afraid the assertion that “men have outies and women have innies, therefore men are initiators and women aren’t” seems to be a non sequitur.

αὐθεντέω (authenteo) in 1 Timothy 2:11-15. The idea of authority in the passage you reference is a VERY DIFFICULT one to understand. αὐθεντέω occurs 1 time in the entire NT corpus and does not occur in the LXX. scriptura ex scriptura explicanda est is true enough, we just don’t have any other scripture to explain this one in terms of the scope of authority St. Paul has in mind here. So is it wise, personified or otherwise, to make such sweeping and life changing judgments about the role of women in the church when we seem to have absolutely no syntactical way to know clearly what St. Paul means here definitively or authoritatively?

The sitz em liben of the passage seems to be engrossed with the Temple cult of Diana – completely run by women. If the prohibition was given to a more particular point of bringing things back into balance in the Ephesian church, what a shame it is that we have marginalized over half the church on a misread. Secondly, there is evidence of presbuterai (female elders) in the very early church. Whether they were office holders in the way we would understand it, is debatable, but the literature refers to them knowingly as presbuterai in their roles serving the church.

Masculine language and imagery for God. Both sophia (GK wisdom), hakemah (HB wisdom), and ruach (HB wind, spirit) are “feminine” case words used in Holy Scripture to refer to God. Pneuma (GK Spirit) is neuter. Don’t we undermine the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures themselves at some level if we fail to make the distinction 1) that the use of gender is a syntactical linguistic device required by case languages like Hebrew and Greek and 2) that the reference of God as a Him in the scriptures is anthropomorphic. Whenever the church has failed to see the transcendence of the anthropomorphic condescension of God to us in the scriptures we rob ourselves of unimaginably much.

Thanks for engaging this issue. I hope it bears much fruit here in the readers of this blog.

Not being a biblical scholar myself, I do not know how Catholic biblical scholars would respond to either the Stancliffe/Wright piece or to Wright’s article. There is much in both with which I find myself in agreement (for whatever that is worth). But the two pieces do not really touch the simple Catholic (and Orthodox) conviction that the male priesthood is a given of the apostolic foundation of the Church. If Christ Jesus has indeed restricted the episcopate and priesthood to men, then his will is good. The theological task, then, becomes one of seeking to understand and interpret this institution as precisely as God’s good, very good, will for us.

The one challenge that Stancliffe/Wright present against this Catholic conviction is the paragraph on Rom 16:7. This is, IMHO, one of the weakest arguments presented by the authors. As I wrote a year ago:

“I confess that I am a bit surprised by the weight the authors put on the question of Junia/Junias in Romans 16.7. Let us suppose, for the moment, that the name is best rendered in the feminine (though don’t tell that to Epiphanius, who reports that the Junias [masculine] mentioned in Rom 17:7 became the bishop of Apameia). On the basis of this one debated text are we suddenly justified in jumping to the conclusion that the long-standing belief that Christ chose only men for the Apostolate is wrong? Are no other interpretations possible? Might it not be possible that Paul is using the word “apostles” in a wider, less technical sense than what we are used to? Perhaps “apostles” here refers to missionaries or church messengers. Perhaps, as several of the Church Fathers believed, Andronicus and Junia were husband and wife, perhaps even a missionary team. Or perhaps the phrase ‘episemoi en toi apostolois’ (notable in/among the apostles) does not necessarily mean that Andronicus and Junia were actually Apostles with a capital “A.” In a 2001 article published in New Testament Studies, M. H. Brurer and O. B. Wallace argue, on the basis of their comparative study of the extant Greek literature, that the phrase is best interpreted as “well known among/to the apostles” (see John Hunwicke). Ultimately, we know virtually nothing about Junia. We do not know in what sense she may have been considered an apostle. We do not know how she functioned within the life of the apostolic Church. We do not know her relationship to Andronicus. Yet on the basis of this one controverted text, the authors assert that the example of Junia authorizes the departure from catholic practice. St John Chrysostom certainly had no problem acknowledging Junia as a woman and he praised her devotion (”Oh! how great is the devotion of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!”); but he did not infer that women should be ordained to the episcopate and presbyterate, which he believed was restricted to men by divine law (see On the Priesthood).”

The following is a response to some of the questions that have been raised in response to my comment. Unfortunately, it is very lengthy, as it is designed to be as comprehensive a response as possible. I apologize in advance.

My comment was mostly composed of notes that I wrote on the subject and so it is not as polished as it could be. Many of the responses show that what I was trying to say has been misunderstood at key points, so I hope that the following will go some way towards clarification.

My argument is not ultimately based on the nature of our physical bodies. If that were the basis for my argument, it would be a poor basis indeed! My argument is ultimately based on a fact that the Scripture gives significant weight to: the man was created before the woman. Scripture presents this detail to us as more than just an accidental feature of the narrative, but as a fact that should shape our understanding of the way that men and women ought to relate. As Paul points out, the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman (1 Corinthians 11:8-9). The man precedes the woman in the creation order (1 Timothy 2:12).

Paul presents this fact as a fact that is of liturgical significance, as a basis for differentiating between the roles of men and women within the context of worship. In Genesis 2:15ff Adam is given the task of guarding and keeping the garden. Eve is not given this task in the same way, but is created as Adam’s ‘helper’ in his performance of the task. Adam is responsible for the task of guarding and keeping the garden, which is why he is responsible for the Fall. Adam is also responsible to be Eve’s teacher. Eve is not directly given the commandment not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam is, and he is responsible to guard and keep his wife, as well as the garden. When he stands idly by and allows Eve to be tempted, and uses her as a guinea pig for sin, he fails in his task.

Already at the very beginning we see that man was created, in some sense, as the leader and the woman as the helper. The man initiates and the woman brings to perfection that which the man has initiated. If this were not the case then we would not have fallen in Adam, but fallen in Adam and Eve, or fallen in Eve.

The fact that the woman was created as a helper for the man in his task is also significant. The woman is created in a way that equips her to provide what the man cannot provide for fulfilling the task committed to the man. In Genesis 1 we see that the task of being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it, is given to humanity in common and not just to the man. It is the task of guarding and keeping the garden and its worship that is the man’s especial task and responsibility.

As we read on in the biblical text it becomes clear that the Garden of Eden was not just an isolated and particular location, but is the more archetypal realm of worship. The cultural and political task of man takes place in the wider world, the liturgical task in the garden. The garden is the centre of life, from which life flows out to the land and then to the world. The garden is the realm in which man relates directly to God.

We see this more clearly when we study the worship of the Temple and Tabernacle. The Tabernacle and the Temple follow the model of the Garden of Eden in important ways. They represent the places where man relates directly to God, the places of God’s particular presence. It is from the Tabernacle and the Temple that all of the life of the people of God must flow. The Tabernacle and Temple stand at the heart and centre of the people of God and represents the place of beginnings. It is the place of order, an order that must be brought to bear upon the rest of the world as mankind goes out into the wider creation and relates all of it back to the worship of the Tabernacle and Temple.

It is in the realm of the Tabernacle and the Temple that priests are responsible. The priests are the guardians and keepers of the holy place and are also peculiarly responsible for guarding and keeping the house of Israel. They are the ones with the task of guarding and maintaining the moral boundaries of the people of God. They provide the fundamental direction for life by teaching and guarding the standards of the Law. It is from this fundamental direction that all of the rest of human life and cultural activity develops.

Very significantly, God never makes any provision for priestesses; there are only male priests. There are queens and prophetesses, but no priestesses. Kings (rulers under God) and prophets (members of the heavenly council, ruling with God) are far more exalted roles than those of priests. They are responsible for far greater areas (the king rules the land; the prophet brings God’s Word to all of the nations). However, the priest is the initiator and guardian. It is with the priest that things begin.

From the outset it is made clear that the priest is supposed to be a man of holy violence. Levi was already renowned for (unrighteous) violence in the book of Genesis. In Exodus 32:25-29 the Levites were set apart for priestly service after defending the covenant at the price of the blood of their brothers. In the worship of the tabernacle the priest is the one who bears the knife or sword to cut up that which is brought near to God. The priest spends most of his day in the task of killing. If unclean people approach God the Tabernacle is the place where deadly force will be exacted upon them, either by God, or by His standing army of the Levites.

This pattern of priests as men of holy violence is seen throughout Scripture. Phineas is set apart for high priesthood as a result of thrusting a spear through a man and a woman. Samuel is seen as the one who guards the boundaries as a man of holy violence by hacking Agag to pieces. We see that, when waging war, the Israelite army took on a sort of priestly level of holiness. The Levites were at the centre of Israel’s war camp in Numbers 2 as the crack troops. They are the ones who are taught to have eyes that do not spare when it comes to the exacting of divine judgment.

When I speak of man as the Initiator and Guardian, this is what I mean. The man, unlike the woman is given the task of special priesthood. The task of the priest is the task of leading special worship, maintaining the boundaries that God has established (‘guarding and keeping’) and providing the fundamental direction from which the rest of life develops.

Women are certainly priestesses in the Church in some sense. They share in the priestly task of the Church. However, when it comes to the priestly task they are always ‘helpers’ and never leaders. Serving in the capacity of special priesthood is something that is limited to men alone.

As the Church has begun to rethink what it means to be the Church, it has started to lose sight of the fact that the Church is very much about making war (contra Daniel). It is certainly about far more than this, but it is never about less. The pastors of the Church have the task of special priesthood, setting the fundamental direction for the task of the Church, leading the Church in the realm of special worship and maintaining the boundaries by means of robust Church discipline. This task is a task that has been given to the man.

My argument is not an argument from biology. However, biology is not opposed to symbolism and theology (I think that Daniel is missing my point here). The physical, mental and psychological constitution of the man suits him for the task of the priest. The woman is not suited for the task in the same way. In my experience, the concept of sacred violence (whether understood literally, or as a guiding metaphor) is something that many of those in favour of women priesthood most strongly object to. I was just reading a book by Elaine Storkey a few days ago and she made the point that women find it hard to relate to the idea of warfare and we need to start to move further away from this guiding metaphor (again, certainly not the only such guiding metaphor) within the Church. This, of course, makes my point, which is that men are constitutionally suited for the task of leading holy warfare in a way that women are not. She also argues (as a leading Christian feminist) that women tend to favour a different style of leadership, which again makes my point. God has established male leadership in the priesthood for a reason.

Sacred violence is one of the most basic tasks of the priest, offensive as this may be to contemporary sensibilities. I fail to see sufficient serious and humble engagement with the biblical text on this point. What I usually encounter is a rejection of the theme altogether, despite the positive way in which the theme is treated in Scripture.

The fact that men are priestly has broader implications. The priest is one who serves the bride, rather than ruling over her. The priests lead the people in important senses, but they do not rule over them. They serve them. In general, as a sex, males are called to give the fundamental direction to cultural life. They are particularly responsible for the task of guarding and keeping cultural and moral boundaries and others within the culture. It is men, for instance, who bear the responsibility to go to war to defend women and children. Only a degenerate culture sends its women and children to fight for its men. Women are only called upon to fight in extreme and unusual situations. Only dishonourable men stand idly by (like Adam) and leave women to stand in the breach and uphold the boundaries for them. Men are called to lead the way in this task.

This also applies in the context of the family. The father bears particular responsibility for setting the fundamental direction of the household. This is not a direction that should be imposed upon the household by force. The husband acts as servant and protector for his wife, not as a ruler over her. Biblically it is the father who bears particular responsibility for discipline (in both its positive and negative sense) and correction. Much (quite possibly all) of the discipline may be exercised by the wife and mother. However, the wife disciplines her children as the helper of her husband. Where proper discipline has not taken place, the buck stops with the father. The husband is particularly charged with the task of acting as priest for the wife and children by guarding them from outside harm of any form.

Life flows out from the sanctuary and back into it. It is the man who initiates the movement of life in the sanctuary and it is the woman who is most responsible for perfecting this movement in the realm of the wider world. The movement out into the world must involve the laying down of man’s strength in service of the woman, who will complete and perfect what he has started. If men just seek domination over women, life will never flow out beyond the sanctuary. As life flows beyond the sanctuary into the land and then into the wider world, the role of the woman is to become more prominent.

It is in this way that the relationships between men and women follow the pattern of the life of the Trinity. There is a constant movement of giving and receiving within the life of the Trinity. However, my point is that this movement is not purely symmetrical. Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 11 is that the Father is the source and initiator of the movement, setting the fundamental direction. The giving and receiving operates in terms of this. It is not a one way movement in the case of the Trinity, nor is it a one way movement in the case of men and women. As Paul observes, the man is never independent of the woman (1 Corinthians 11:11-12).

The wider cultural task of Genesis 1 is one that has been given to humankind in common and not to the man or woman in particular. However, even in the task of sexual reproduction we see the pattern that man initiates that which only the woman can bring to perfection. Having initiated the movement, man must serve the woman in the task of bringing the movement to perfection. When man seeks domination this perfection cannot be achieved.

In the wider world beyond the sanctuary the roles of men and women are not differentiated in the same way. The fact that man is the leader in the sanctuary realm does not mean that men must lead in every realm. As already pointed out, there is no problem with queens and prophetesses. This is why I have no difficulty with women playing a leading role in every single realm of human life, outside of that of special priesthood. In fact, if my reading is correct (and I am pretty certain that it is), it can be seen that such a role of women is not just permissible, but necessary. The human project will fail unless it is brought to its perfection by women. The fundamental cultural direction that is provided by men must be brought to its height by women. Men cannot do this in the same way. This applies in all sorts of areas. Theology is one such area. The Church needs women theologians and I believe that women theologians can bring to the theological task things that men lack.

The movement from male initiation outwards can be seen in the Bible itself. The story of Scripture begins with Adam. Much of the OT is a story of fathers and sons. Firstborn sons have a particular significance in the Exodus and are eventually replaced by the Levites. The religious life of Israel is dominated by men and it is the role of men that is particularly focused on. The priests are men. The community is marked out by the sign of circumcision, something which, incidentally, gives particular significance to the importance of shaping and controlling male initiation. Women do not receive the covenant sign in the same way, but come under the men who do. They receive the covenant sign vicariously.

In the NT things change somewhat, as the cultural movement begun in the OT begins to spread out into the wider world. Men and women both receive the covenant sign of Baptism in the same way. The male role of initiation, maintained by the rite of circumcision and the exclusion of those with damaged genitalia (Deuteronomy 23:1), becomes downplayed, as even eunuchs can be baptized. The role of women within the Church becomes more pronounced than the role of women was in the life of OT Israel. This is not because the OT was bad, nor is it a negation of what we see there. The change is due to the fact that the NT is the time when the movement started in the OT begins to near its completion.

The NT begins with the role of the woman Mary, in whom the great task of Israel is fulfilled. Christ is not born through the potency of man, but the man Joseph must learn to be the servant and guardian of his wife Mary, in whom is fulfilled what he could never achieve. What we see, then, is the sacrifice of male power at the moment of completion. The man reaches a point where his natural strength fails him and he must be content to remain as a humble priest, protecting the woman through whom salvation comes. The movement of Scripture involves a breaking and humbling of the natural power and potency of the male sex as men learn to be husbands who love and serve their wives, rather than macho men who dominate and abuse the female sex.

A new movement begins in Christ, who lays down His life for His bride the Church. The final consummation occurs when the glory of Christ is revealed. The true glory of Christ is, of course, the Church, just as the Gentiles to be the glory of Israel. The macho hero who seeks to glorify himself is thus excluded. The Church is the completion of Christ — the totus Christus.

So what does this mean for concrete gender roles? I don’t believe that women are constitutionally capable of being special priests, just as men are not constitutionally capable of being pregnant. However, in most areas of life what I have said above has little or no bearing upon what roles men and women can perform. Men and women are different, though, and for this reason they will usually bring different strengths to whatever task they perform. Consequently, how they perform their roles may differ.

As I do not believe that my position generally has much bearing on what roles men and women can and cannot perform, I don’t want to give the impression that we have anything beyond pretty general guidelines in this area. The guidelines that we do have are helpful, though. The man sets the fundamental direction for the task and then must surrender his strength and serve the woman who completes it.

This pattern is seen in many ways in Scripture and is taken for granted in many ways. We could say that the man is particularly responsible for the task of establishing and forming; the woman is particularly responsible for the task of filling and perfecting. The role of the man corresponds more to that of the Son; the woman to that of the Spirit. The Spirit is the Helper who perfects and brings to completion what Christ begins. In Scripture, for instance the man is generally presented as the one who builds the house; the woman is presented as the one who makes it into a home. It is the man who establishes the relationship of marriage (‘a man shall leave his father and mother…’); it is the woman who perfects the relationship in various ways, not least in the bringing to birth and raising of children. While many men make women sacrifice so that they can advance their careers, etc., the task of the man really must be that of serving the woman to bring to completion what he has started and lacks the power of his own to complete.

As the movements of life reach their height the role of men begins to fall away and the role of women takes over. I do not believe that this is primarily a matter of what jobs women can and cannot perform, so much as it is a matter of how they are enabled to perform those tasks. I see a need for cooperation between the sexes in practically every area of life. The action of filling and subduing the earth is one performed in cooperation, each sex bringing its peculiar strengths to bear in a common and concerted action of mankind (like the actions of the Trinity). In some actions one sex may be particularly prominent, but neither sex is designed to ever act completely independent of the other.

I am well aware that many Christian feminists will protest against this picture as sexist. However, I submit that this is the pattern that Scripture generally works in terms of. I do not believe that this robs women of power. Quite the opposite. I certainly do not believe that this limits the role of the woman to wife and mother (anymore than it limits the role of the man to husband and father). Women need men and men need women in every area of human life and action. What I believe is that genuine mutuality and reciprocity exists and that the woman isn’t just left as man’s subordinate. There is, however, an ordered movement, much as there is in the Trinity.

In response to Daniel, the reference to ‘being like the angels’ is not a denial of future bodily existence. Frankly, it is rather insulting to be told that I have a ‘scattered conception of the eschaton’ when he is the one who fails to recognize our Lord’s words from Matthew 22.

In response to Bekly, the last thing I want to do is to found my position on a few isolated prooftexts (anymore than I want to found it on the shape of human bodies). I am rather seeking to articulate a clear and detailed picture, drawing upon deep rooted and significant themes in the biblical text. I believe that these themes are significant as they are especially brought to our attention by explicit statements or frequent repetition. It is precisely this engagement with the deeper themes of Scripture that I find sorely lacking in most Christian feminist accounts, which often fail to go far beyond sweeping applications of verses such as Galatians 3:28, questionable arguments about fringe characters such as ‘Junia’ and the dismissing or minimization of the supposed ‘prooftexts’ for opposing positions, without presenting alternative readings of any depth.

When Paul teaches on the relative roles of men and women, he describes these roles in terms of the order of the life of the Trinity (1 Corinthians 11), the order of the sexes established in creation and undermined in the Fall (1 Timothy 2; 1 Corinthians 11) and the pattern of redemption in Christ (Ephesians 5). It is for this reason that I find the contrary arguments so unsatisfying. They tend to dismiss deep theological readings of the role of the sexes by claiming that Paul is merely writing in response to certain cultural issues in his own day.

The masculine language for God is another case in point. Part of what it means for us to be God’s image is that we are created male and female. Men and women image God in different ways. The intraTrinitarian relationships are also, as I have argued, in some sense paradigmatic for relationships between the sexes. As a result of this, the use of masculine language cannot be simply dismissed as unimportant. 1 Corinthians 11:7 even speaks of the man imaging God in a peculiar sense that the woman does not (just as the woman will image God in peculiar senses that the man does not).

I have already said that I have no problem with a sort of office for the ‘elderess’, so this need not be an issue between our positions.

What I would like to see in a response is a serious attempt to engage with the deeper themes of the biblical narrative, such as the creation account. Mere engagement with a few isolated texts is not very convincing.

Hi,
I am not sure how much light I can shed on this problem, but I will try. I came from a conservative evangelical background that forbade ordaining women, but worked through the issues to a different view and am now married to an ordained woman. I am also part of a congregation with a woman pastor; 2 of the 3 other (part-time) ministers on staff are also women and 2/3 of our deacon body are women. In our congregation, we have to let men preach from time to time just so the children don’t grow up thinking that men are forbidden to preach! :-) I also was trained in biblical scholarship in seminary and graduate work.
But the ecclesiology I inhabit (Anabaptist/Baptist) is so different from that of either Rome or Canterbury, that I do not know just how applicable my insights will be. In my tradition, we think of the terms “bishop” and “pastor” as interchangeable and do not have any extra-congregational “bishops.” Also, our understanding of authority in the church is not a top-down heirarchy such as exists in both the Roman and Anglican traditions. Finally, we deny the very concept of “apostolic succession,” except as being faithful to the teaching of the apostles. Those differences might make a world of difference in how one views the concepts of the ordination of women priests and bishops. (Alas, those differences in ecclesiology also cause trouble for us Anabaptists and Baptists when we try to strive for ecumenical unity; the nature of the unity we seek is more like harmony or brotherhood/sisterhood and not formal, institutional unity. Thus, to others we often seem anti-ecumenical, even those of us who participated in the World Council of Churches or similar bodies.)

With those caveats in place, here goes;

1)It is so established among biblical translators that Junia was a woman and “Junias” not a name until much later that even conservatives who disagree with ordaining women have largely ceded this point. Instead, they try to argue about the rest of the sentence in which Junia is mentioned and claim that she was “esteemed BY the apostles” instead of “outstanding AMONG the apostles.” While this is gramatically possible in the Greek, it is highly unlikely. There are no authorship questions with Romans–Paul wrote it. And Paul never made the opinion of the apostles that big a deal–sometimes calling the Jerusalem crowd the “super-apostles” and making other sarcastic comments.

2) There are 2 ways that the term “apostle” is used in the NT: As a designation for the 12 disciples who made up Jesus’ inner circle and later formed the nucleas of the early church. Or, as a missionary, one “sent out” to evangelize in different parts of the Roman empire and plant new churches. Paul almost always uses the term in the second way. In calling Junia an “apostle,” he was almost certainly saying that she was a missionary evangelist like himself.

3) On the argument that men were created first and so have a different authority–the Genesis passage also has the animals created before men, should we give them more ordained authority than men? The chronological difference does not easily translate to a difference in authority.

4) It is not clear that the same things are being addressed in the Corinthian correspondence as in the Pastoral epistles. In the latter, women, especially young widows, seem to have been spreading either gossip or a heresy which denied the importance of marriage and of creation. The Pauline author’s “I do not permit a woman to teach or usurp authority over her husband,” is probably better translated as “I am not [for now] permitting,” because the women had been so deceived and erroneous. They needed to learn in quietness first.

5) In the Corinthian correspondence, Paul often quotes his opponents before answering them, but the original mss. had no quotation marks or even punctuation. So, it is possible that such sentences as “Women must be silent,” or “let them learn from their husbands at home,” were the slogans of Paul’s opponents, not his. It is difficult to tell.

6) “Head” in Greek often has the metaphorical meaning of “source,” (e.g., “head of a river,”) but seems to lack the authority metaphor that we use. So, calling man the “head of the woman” may be a ref. to Gen. where Eve came from Adam’s side–not a claim of male only authority in the church.

7) The “head covering” could refer to women having long hair or to a priestess’ headdress. I agree with Cynthia that the underlying concern of Paul seems to be that the radical egalitarianism of the early church (so unlike either Greco-Roman or Jewish culture) still not become a unisex denial of differences or a stumbling block to potential converts. Short hair or uncovered hair was a symbol in that era of prostitution–Paul is concerned that the liberated women of the church in Corinth not appear to be sexually loose or immodest. (Today, it is patriarchy that is the stumbling block.) Apparently women were allowed to pray or prophesy as long as their heads were properly covered.

8)Ministry is based on gifts–the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit which does not discriminate on the basis of gender. Gal. 3:27-28 roots a radical egalitarianism in baptism/new life of Christ. So the popular bumper sticker, “Ordain women or stop baptizing them” seems entirely appropriate to me.

9) There are too many NT examples of women in roles that subordinations would forbid to them for the subordinationist argument to be correct. It’s not just Junia. Phoebe is called both a deacon and an overseer. Priscilla (along with her husband) taught Apollos (elsewhere called an apostle) “the way of God more accurately.” Priscilla and Aquila were clearly a missionary team and Priscilla may have been the author of Hebrews. The 4 daughters of Philip were evangelists and prophets. Etc., etc. The subordinationist view runs right into these numerous counterexamples.

I cannot answer the question of the special place of Anglicanism to Rome–especially when the Church of England may be older than the evolution of the Bishop of Rome’s office from “first among equals” to monarchial Western Pope.

Doug,

I see from my reference tracker stats that this has spawned a discussion on the BH list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bibhorizon/message/93878
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bibhorizon/message/93865

I’m curious, what’s being said?

Cynthia

My name is Eduardo Mangiarotti. I’m a Roman Catholic priest (well, I’ve been one… for almost a year now!). I got my bachelor’s degree in Theology last year and I’m currently pursuing my Licence in Theology (something between the Master and the PhD, so to speak). One of my main areas of interest is Ecclesiology, and looking for information on what’s the current debate in the States regarding this matter. I’d like to know what’s your opinion on the subject, and which are, in your opinion, the main authors in this field currently publishing or teaching in the USA. I will continue to read your blog with great interest. Thanks!

Taylor,
Anglicanism is not simply a Sola Scriptura appeal. If you read Wright’s document in response to Kasper, you see clearly that he is responding to Kasper’s appeal to tradition as well as Kasper’s scriptural arguments. However, as a “mediating” denomination (in some sense) Anglicanism is involved in dialogue with Protestant groups that do hold to a view of Sola Scriptura. Thus, it only makes sense that you would find in other documents Wright interacting on a purely exegetical level. Further, and this is important, Wright is by vocation not only a Bishop but also a professional exegetical theologian. It’s not surprising that he’s operating from that venue, is it?
Read Abp Rowan Williams and you’ll find a much different m.o. He’s a systematic theologian and one who is comfortable in dialogue about tradition. You’ll not be able to write him off as Sola Scriptura so easily.
I have to admit to a certain amount of frustration at how quickly some Roman Catholics in this discussion have written off Anglicans and Protestant using straw man and ad hominem arguments.
It’s strange to me that when Roman Catholics so clearly want all denominations to “return to Rome” (if I may use that phrase here), many (but certainly not all) Roman Catholics don’t know much about many of the denominations aside from generalized notions of Luther and the southern baptists they see on TV. Of course, the same phenomenon can be found among Protestants – but the stakes are lower for them, one might argue.