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Let Women Be Women:

Equality, Ministry & Ordination

by Peter Toon

Gracewing.  Fowler Wright Books, 1990 

Chapter  7 – Celebrating the feminine

      My reader may well feel that on the basis of what I have presented in chapters five and six there is little or no place in the church for either the celebration of the feminine or the special vocations of women.  Here I want to affirm that there is a full place for women’s vocations in God’s Church as well as the need and duty to celebrate the feminine. 

Mary, mother of our Lord

      If proof were needed that God genuinely loves women and calls them into his service then it is supplied by the ministry and vocation of Mary, the teenage virgin of Galilee.  Let us take a moment to reflect upon Mary.  She was chosen by God to become the mother of our Lord (who is the eternal Son of God Incarnate).  She conceived his flesh/humanity in her womb, she gave birth to the baby Jesus, she fed him at her breasts and nurtured him, and she cared for him as his mother for thirty years before he began his public Ministry.  Even then she continued to care for him and was there at the end, standing at the foot of his cross.

      Her yes to God both at the beginning when the angel visited her and her continuing yes for the next thirty-three years remain before the church as a supreme example of faith and faithfulness.  For she was both the God-bearer (Theotokos), a unique vocation, and the first disciple of her Son (thus the first Christian).  Thus in the Liturgies of the Church over the centuries she is always named before the apostles: for by the grace and election of God she comes before the apostles and martyrs.  The eternal Son became a male human being: to do so he needed the total cooperation, love and faith of a woman.  Mary was that woman.  No wonder Elizabeth on seeing the pregnant Mary was filled with the Holy Spirit and “exclaimed in a loud voice, ‘God’s blessing is on you above all women, and his blessing is on the fruit of your womb’” (Luke 1:42).  The highest elevation of human nature took place in the masculine when the divine person of the Son of God became man and male; but, the highest elevation of the human person took place in the feminine, in Mary, the Virgin Mother of our Lord.  To celebrate this position of Mary by the grace of God the Byzantine liturgy sings that she is more exalted than the cherubim and more glorious that the seraphim.  The greatest of all creatures after God himself is not an angel but a woman!

      Though to do so is regarded by many as old-fashioned today, I believe that Christians cannot talk about the ministry of women without reflecting upon Mary’s ministry and vocation.  The fact that many Protestants have been hesitant and shy to do this, and some Roman Catholics have been over zealous in doing it, does not negate such reflection.  First of all, in and by Mary we are able to gain a right way of thinking about the Church of God.  A common cry today is that the Church is an oppressive organisation dominated by men for the sake of men.  Yet the Church as seen in and through Mary (the first Christian and because Mother or our Lord also Mother of those who are united by faith with her to him) is not an It but a She.  In fact to use the powerful metaphor used by Jesus and Paul the Church is nothing less than the Bride of Christ who is the heavenly Bridegroom.

      In the second place, in and by Mary, we see that the response of the created order and in particular of the Church to God is to be a feminine response.  She was totally receptive to the word of God addressed to her and the action of God upon and within her.  As the new Eve she symbolised the created order whose proper calling is that of receiving God’s grace and responding in grateful admiration and loving service.  As the first disciple she symbolised the people of the new covenant and new creation whose proper calling is faith with faithfulness and service with joy.  Thus while the names for God are masculine the response God calls for from both women and men is a feminine response – that of humble reception of his initiative of grace and ready and willing submission to his gracious and perfect will.

      Thus we see that woman in the gracious plan of God is destined for something incomparably greater than the vocation of apostle or presbyter/priest.  Only a man can be a priest (if he is fully to represent Christ as a sacramental sign) but only a woman can be and is Theotokos (the God-bearer), mother of our Lord.  It is a woman, not a man, who represents the whole of humanity in saying a joyful “Yes” to the coming of God in the flesh, the arrival of the eternal Word incarnate.  It is a woman not a man who is the supreme model and embodiment of the church as Bride and Mother of believers.  And it is femininity rather than masculinity which symbolizes the right attitude of the whole person before God.  To these thoughts we may add these words from a lecture by John Saward:

“There is a kind of poverty about the male which Christ puts to use in ordination.  The man’s role in generation is outside himself, in the womb of the woman, and in utter dependence upon the power of God.  Woman, by contrast, receives and then retains and nourishes the gift of life within herself.  Similarly, men image Christ in the priesthood, but they are not Christ.  Their inadequacy is shown up by the greatness of the part they play.  By contrast, women symbolize creation and at the same time are creatures.  In other words, women embody the very values they symbolize.  Men do no more than point.”

      Though we may want to argue that the woman’s role in conception is more than John Saward allows, his main point is clear and stands.  Thus we may say that the Church as a whole is Marian, truly feminine, open and ready to receive the energising life and dynamic truth of her Life-giver and Head: yet the male ordained ministry is just one part of the Church, with the humble vocation to serve the (feminine) whole. 

Women as disciples and missionaries

      It is not surprising to those who read the whole of the Gospels, noting our Lord’s clear affirmation of the dignity of women and their profound faith in him that it is the women who are at the cross of Jesus while all the male disciples except one have deserted him.  Women were first to enter the empty tomb.  Women were first to embrace the pierced feet of the Risen Lord and were indeed the first witnesses and ambassadors of the resurrection.  It is they who told the apostles that Jesus has risen from the dead and truly alive.

      Each Good Friday and Easter Day as we read and meditate upon the final part of the four Gospels, I find myself deeply impressed by the faith and grace evident in those women who stood by Jesus to the painful end and who two days later went to his tomb to be with him and to reveal their love for him.  How our Lord must have loved his female disciples, I say to myself, by choosing to show himself as the resurrected Lord of glory first of all to them!

      Though our Lord did not choose a woman as an apostle, he did include women as recipients of the Holy Spirit whom he sent from the Father.  They were amongst the assembled disciples on the Day of Pentecost after his Ascension into heaven (Acts 2) and with the men were filled with the Holy Spirit and endowed with spiritual gifts.  Therefore, it is entirely to be expected that we find women sharing in the missionary task of the Church as that is described in the Acts of the Apostles and referred to in the Epistles.  Luke provides what we may call five vignettes about Christian women.  In the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12–17) and in Lydia (Acts 16:40) we encounter women acting as “mothers” and “hostesses” for the young Christian churches in Jerusalem and Philippi.  They provide a place to meet together with lodging and food.  Tabitha (Acts 9:36ff) also served in this way but appears also to have had a particular ministry to widows – serving as a deaconess.  The daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9) possessed the gift of prophecy and were possibly part of an order of ministry of single women within the apostolic churches.  Finally there is the very important presentation of Priscilla (Acts 18:26) who is mentioned with her husband (a colleague in missionary work) in other places as well (Romans 16:3).  She is a teacher who serves the Lord with her husband and who expounds the way of the Lord Jesus to enquirers, both men and women.

      A careful reading of Romans 16 also reveals that Paul was not embarrassed but rather delighted to have not a few women engaged with him in the advance of the Gospel and the planting of churches throughout the Roman Empire.  We may note Phoebe “a fellow-Christian who is a minister (diakonos) in the church at Cenchreae” (v.1).  Then there is Priscilla whom we have met in the Acts of the Apostles and who Paul describes as “having risked her neck to save my life” (v.3).  Mary is said to be “a hard worker” (v.6) while Junia (with her husband, Andronicus) was formerly a comrade of Paul’s in captivity and “eminent among the apostles” (v.7).  In other words Junia and her husband were a man and wife team engaged in evangelism and churchplanting (“apostle” here meaning “one who is sent on a mission”, an itinerant missionary), and they had worked as such with Paul.  Finally we may note the delightful duo of Tryphena and Tryphosa (v.12) who are said “to work hard in the Lord’s service”.

      Though the vocation of women as missionaries for Jesus was accepted with gratitude, there is no record either in apostolic times or in the centuries immediately afterwards of a woman being set apart to serve a congregation as a presbyter or bishop.  There seems to have been an understanding and acceptance that only men, called by Christ and empowered by his Spirit, were to fulfill these vocations of ruling “the household of faith”. 

Deacons and Nuns

      In the period after the apostolic age women continued to live as faithful Christians and so what they had done in the first decades of Christianity they continued to do.  Their homes were centres of fellowship, teaching and evangelism.  They told of their love for Jesus and their salvation in him when they went to market and other public places and occasions.  However, it seems to have been the case (the evidence is scanty) that they were less evident in public ministry (e.g. husband and wife teams of evangelists) as the years rolled by.  However, we do know that there were orders of “widows”, “virgins” and female “deacons” whose duties in the churches were specifically related to ministering to women through visiting and teaching, assisting at their baptisms and burials and so on.  With the arrival of the monastic movement in the fourth century these orders for women gradually disappeared as women entered convents to serve God in and through the community life and outreach of these fellowships of dedicated women.  We all know what a tremendous service convents of nuns have rendered to the Church and society in general through their intercessions and their loving service in teaching, nursing and spiritual counsel and other forms of ministry with and for Jesus.  In the Middle Ages scholastic theologians, with their typical thoroughness, produced arguments for a male-only priesthood which may seem to us somewhat exaggerated and unnecessary, since at that time few women if any at all thought God was calling them into the order of priests or bishops.

      With the arrival of the national Protestant Churches in the sixteenth century, and later of evangelical denominations such as Methodism, the situation of women in the congregations became not unlike that which we noticed in the Acts of the Apostles and in Romans 16.  Though women were not pastors or involved in public preaching, they were there proclaiming the Gospel by using their homes as loving centres of faith and fellowship, evangelism and mission.  Further some of them were able to join with their husbands to work as colleagues especially with children and deprived people.  Then, of course, some women took to writing to produce literature whose aim was to explain and commend the Gospel of Jesus.

      It was perhaps inevitable that within one or more of the many Protestant denominations that had come into existence by the nineteenth century a woman would be appointed as a pastor of a congregation.  That wonderful woman, Catherine Booth, began to preach in public in 1860 alongside her husband, the first general of the Salvation Army.  Soon afterwards the call of women to positions of leadership and to public preaching was formally recognised in the Salvation Army.  But the more traditional Protestant denominations of Europe waited until after the Second World War to agree to go ahead with their first ordinations of women.  By 1990 most of them, but not all, have women clergy serving congregations.  It is important to recognise, however, that the setting apart of women as preachers and pastors in Free Churches did not arise directly from any secular feminist pressures.  Rather, it was a sense of desiring to participate fully in the life of the Church and a knowledge that on “the foreign mission field” women had functioned in practice if not in name as pastors and presbyters.  In contrast, the conservative denominations which have not allowed women to become pastors claim to be following the teachings of Paul (especially in 1 Timothy 2–3) and do not allow women to preach in the main service on the Lord’s Day.

      How does a person who believes that women, though equal before God in every respect, are not (according to his revealed will) to be pastors or presbyters or bishops explain the preaching and sacramental ministry of women which is apparently (obviously) so often blessed by our Lord?  The answer is simple and is provided by James I. Packer: “God has blessed his people before through intrinsically inappropriate arrangements and might be doing the same again” in the case of women pastors.  For “the kindness of God in practice does not resolve matters of principle” (M.W.P. p.viii). 

A way forward within Anglicanism

      What is needed is the affirmation and practical realisation of the full participation in the every-member ministry of the congregations of the baptised by women as well as men.  God has given to each Christian both natural and spiritual gifts and these are surely to be used for the edification of the whole body, the mission to the world, and to the glory of God.  Unless this is clearly understood and accepted then there will be constant complaints that some women are deprived of “ministry to which they have a call”.  There are so many ways in which men and women, sharing in the one ministry of Christ, can actually minister these days – through music, visitation of homes, hospitals, old people’s centres, in administration of affairs of the congregation, in caring for and instructing children and young people, in hospitality, in physical work for those who need help (e.g. the elderly living alone), in Bible study and prayer groups and in many other activities (which may be noticed in any active parish congregation).  Then, of course, there is the ministry of prayer.  This is a ministry which all can perform for we are encouraged by our Lord and the apostles to make intercessions for all people.  It is easy to describe it but difficult to do it in practice.

      The question, however, remains as to what forms of public ministry women can perform if they [along with the majority of men who do not receive Christ’s call] are excluded by the will of the Lord Jesus from the office of presbyter/priest and bishop.  Obviously there is already open to them the office of deacon and the Church of England in 1990 has about 1200 female deacons.  However, there is a difficulty here.  This office has been devalued and distorted by becoming a kind of stepping stone to the presbyterate/priesthood.  In the Anglican Communion it has been the custom to ordain the ordinand as deacon one year and as priest the next year.  So the period as a deacon has become a kind of apprenticeship or probationary period waiting for the real thing – the ordination as priest.  This office of deacon must be restored to a genuine office of public ministry in the Church so that women and men can enter it and do so with a sense of call and with a commitment to be deacons for life.  Though there has been much talk about this restoration very little has been done about it.  As long as a person who is a deacon thinks that he/she must move up the ladder to become a priest as soon as possible then the diaconate has little relevance as a public vocation and ministry in God’s Church.  Therefore before we can sort out appropriate forms of public ministry for women we need both to accept and practice an all-member ministry in our congregations and to create a diaconate which is a vocation for life and which has a real accepted content of duties and tasks (which do not include the presidency of the Eucharist and the public preaching of the Word).

      In the Church of England, in particular, if there is a renewal of the diaconate, then there will have to be a major shake-up of the way in which the ordained ministry is understood, organised and financed.  The work of the parish rector or vicar is seen as what a presbyter/priest actually does and this is the model which lies behind much of the debate about ordination.  Then most of the money raised by the Church Commissioners, and given in collections in the parishes, goes to provide stipends for the support of incumbents (rectors and vicars) in individual parishes.  Ways will have to be devised which fully utilise and reward financially on equal terms those female and male clergy who are permanent deacons or are in such other offices for women as may be devised and authorised.  At the moment there is not equality in opportunity, standing or financial remuneration for women who have particular vocations within the official ministries of the Church.

      I have no doubt that if we could give our whole attention to working out the public ministries into which our Lord is calling women today, instead of using our minds and energies to argue about equality of opportunity and identity, then we would quickly make progress in devising official ministries for women which could and would honour God, exalt Christ, and fulfill their vocations to work full-time within and for the Church.  Such official ministries could start from those of deacon and nun by developing them as well as by adding to them others which specifically relate to the mission of the Church in the modern world. 

Conclusion

      By the grace of God the highest elevation of a human person took place in the feminine, in Mary, mother of our Lord.  In her receptivity and faithfulness Mary symbolises for the whole Church (and creation) its proper response to God’s initiative of grace.  Thus the Church is truly the Bride of Christ in reality when she is responsive to the attention of the Bridegroom.

      Women not only symbolise creation they also receive gifts of the Spirit in the new covenant for a rich variety of forms of ministry.  Though they are not called to those public ministries which imply headship they are being called by our Lord to a variety of ways of serving him today: when the clamour to make it possible for them to be priests dies down we shall hear “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” concerning their public vocations in the Church.