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Let Women Be Women:

Equality, Ministry & Ordination

by Peter Toon

Gracewing.  Fowler Wright Books, 1990 

Chapter  6 – Affirming the masculine

      Since the judgement that patriarchy is either a distortion or an evil is a vital, basic belief of most of those who argue for the ordination of women, it is important that we look at “male domination” in society and home and ask what is the will of God for the relationship of men and women.  Together with reflections upon patriarchy and the divine will we shall also look at two other topics which are inter-related – the maleness of Jesus and the language we use in addressing God.

      In the last chapter we placed ourselves under the authority of God-in-Christ, who speaks to us in and through sacred Scripture.  Here, therefore, we must attempt to come to its pages as those who truly believe that its words were inspired by the Holy Spirit and that the same words by the same Spirit’s illumination become for us today the words through which God addresses us concerning his will.  We approach the Bible believing that God has given us a Revelation and provided Reconciliation in and through Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word.  “When the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to buy freedom for those who were under the law, in order that we might attain the status of sons”: and “to prove that you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, crying ‘Abba, Father!’  You are therefore no longer a slave but a son and if a son an heir by God’s own act” (Galatians 4:4–6).

      We approach the Bible not to speculate as to whether or not God could have revealed himself and reconciled us in a totally different way but to receive, meditate upon, consider and accept what God is saying to us.  We read the Bible and study its message as listening, obedient and faithful disciples.  Of course we do not cease to use our intelligence and reason but we come with that spirit captured in the sentence of St Anselm: “I believe in order that I may understand.”  We do not bring to the Bible the “wisdom of contemporary culture” and dismiss everything therein which does not agree with it: but we seek to come to God in humility and teachability recognising that God reveals the secrets of his grace not to the “learned and wise but to the simple” (Luke 10:21–22). 

Patriarchy

      The question before us is not whether the society depicted in the Old Testament or the family life commended in the New Testament are patriarchal.  Let us agree that they are so.  Rather the question is whether in essence or nature they were evil, social structures.  It is my contention that in principle patriarchy is the expression of God’s will for the family because the contents of Scripture witness to this truth.  This position (which has been that of the Christian Church through the centuries) may be put in simple form as follows:

      1.  God as Creator has made, and still makes, human beings in his image and after his likeness.  There is, therefore, a fundamental equality of nature between male and female, and they share a common dignity.  However, they are two different sexes (most obvious in their sexual organs and physical shape) and their equality is expressed in that they complement one another and have equal access to God for fellowship and in prayer.

      2.  God as Creator wills that in the relationship of male and female the man is given the position of headship and authority.  However, this is a rule of love not of caprice; it brings greater responsibility and thus accountability to God as judge.  In turn the cooperation of the woman is offered willingly, not reluctantly, for it is part of her service to her Creator.

      3.  Because of human sin the image of God in which male and female are created is distorted and marred.  Thus there is in the male a tendency to use his authority for selfish ends; human history is filled with examples of wicked treatment of women by men: and there is in the female a tendency to rebel against her secondary position and reject the authority of the husband or father.

      4.  Jesus accepted the fundamental equality of male and female and he emphasised that each had equal access to the Father in his name.  A woman did not have to approach God through her husband’s mediation for Jesus himself is for men and women “the Way, Truth and Life”.  Yet he did not set aside patriarchy: rather by his radical, ethical teaching he recalled people to what God originally intended for the relationship of male and female and promised the gift of salvation and the Spirit to guide and assist men and women to live according to God’s perfect will.  Because the greatest of all is the servant of all, the headship of the male was for Jesus the position of head-servant rather than oppressive master!  Jesus, the Master, washed the disciples’ sweaty feet – the work of a servant or slave.

      5.  Paul followed the teaching of Jesus and provided Christians with the model of Christ’s marriage to his Church as that which they ought to follow: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it to consecrate and cleanse it by water and word so that he might present the church to himself all glorious, with no spot or wrinkle or anything of the sort, but holy and without blemish.  In the same way men ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies” (Ephesians 5:25ff).  The wife who is loved by a husband with the quality of love with which Christ loved/loves his Church will surely be happy to accept him as head.

      6.  Jesus and his apostles by their teaching and example made it clear that in the household of faith and the family of God the man is also to be in a position of leadership, headship and authority.  Again, this is the position of being the servant of the servants of God rather than the dictatorial ruler of the faithful.  Further, this does not prohibit the ministries of women within the congregation and from the congregation to the world: rather it sets them in a context of gracious headship and supervision (see chapter 7).

      Understood in this sense, patriarchy is still viable within family and church life today and, moreover, is the will of God.  If the contemporary church sets it aside preferring to follow the wisdom of contemporary culture then the church is disobeying its Lord and cannot expect his full blessing. 

The maleness of Jesus

      “Jesus” is the Greek form of “Joshua” and as such is a man’s name.  Though a few want to suggest that Jesus was not a male but an androgyne (a human being who is equally female and male) there is general agreement that Jesus was really and truly a male human being.  So the question we have to face is this: is there any religious significance in the fact that Jesus was a male?  Or we may want to face this question: Was it vital for our salvation that the eternal Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, become human being as a male?

      It is, I think, in general true to say that many of those who advocate the ordination of women as priests insist that there is no religious significance in the fact that the Incarnate Word became a male human being.  In fact some go so far as to claim that the Word could have become incarnate as a woman and they point to the well-known female “Christa” upon the cross, as dramatically portraying this possibility.

      Here I want to suggest first of all that the maleness of Jesus is entirely appropriate for the vocation of the Messiah, which the Word made flesh received from God the Father.

      The following considerations point, I believe, to this appropriateness:

      1.  Since God as Creator gives to the male the position of head servant in the relationship of man and woman and in the family, the Messiah (= God’s Anointed One) as the Head of the people of the new covenant needed to be a male.

      2.  All the prophecies of the Old Testament which look towards, or point to, the arrival of the Messiah presume that the Anointed One will be male.

      3.  The Mosaic priesthood, whose functions Jesus fulfilled and then made redundant, was a male priesthood and to fulfill it Jesus needed to be male.  Further that priesthood of Melchizedek into which he entered and which he retains is also the priesthood of a male (see for details on this point the Epistle to the Hebrews).

      4.  In revealing to us what names we are to use in addressing and describing Godhead, he has given us the three names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Since the second person is the One who is Incarnate it is fitting that, as the eternal Son, he became human as a male.

      Having commented upon the appropriateness of the male Messiah I must now relate that maleness to the sexuality of the priest and bishop.  One argument for the ordination of women is that women can represent Christ as well and as adequately as can men.  In this connexion the point is often made that the priest is not to be thought of as a representation but a representative of Christ.  Thus it is said that even as a woman can represent a man and a man a woman (e.g. a male ambassador representing the Queen of England and a female ambassador representing a male President), so it is argued a woman can represent Christ, even though she cannot be a representation of him since he is male and she is female.  Thus a woman may preach in his name and preside at the Eucharist in his name for there she is acting as representative and not representation of Christ.

      The importance of this matter of representative/representation within the Church of England may be noted from the fact that it is the first issue singled out by the House of Bishops in their published report to the General Synod entitled, The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood (GS 829, 1988).  They ask whether the function of representing Christ can be appropriately exercised by women as well as men and they have in mind the presidency of the Eucharist.

      In response to the question, my first comment is that if the principle of headship of the man as head servant is previously accepted then this is a non-question for in the Liturgy the head servant will serve the servants of God by presiding over the proclamation of the Word and the administering of the Sacrament.  The debate over representative and representation begins (in this context) only if there is doubt over the question of headship.

      In the second place, I would like to say that if sexual correspondence is held to be required for truly representative ordained ministry the argument for an all-male presbyterate because of the maleness of Jesus Christ is compelling.  The late C. S. Lewis argued that when a Church ordains a woman as a priest it becomes “less like a church” because its order then witnesses a degree less clearly to the spiritual reality which makes the Church, namely the gracious, lordly, saving ministry of Christ.  In the army, Lewis wrote, “you salute the uniform not the wearer.  Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally and till the Second Coming of Christ) represent the Lord to the Church; for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to him.”  In the orders of both creation and redemption, what the man is to the woman is an emblem of what God is to all humanity: “we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge.”  Where our knowledge lacks fullness we ought not to innovate!  (Undeceptions, 1971, pp.195–6)

      Those members of the Church of England who look to both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism for doctrinal light in these circumstances note that there is a rich vein of theology in both to support the concept of representation.  In Orthodox theology the bishop or priest is often presented as the icon or image of Christ and therefore it is insisted that the maleness of the priest is necessary for him genuinely to be an icon.  This may seem rather an exaggerated claim to those who are unfamiliar with the place, meaning and function of icons in Orthodox worship.  However, Elizabeth Behr-Siegel, a female theologian of Orthodoxy writes that in offering the Eucharist the bishop or priest “becomes … the icon of the Word Incarnate.  It is this iconic character of the figure of the priest in Orthodox Worship that ... embodies the strongest argument against the admission of women to the sacramental priesthood” (M.W.P. p.109).

      Likewise in Roman Catholic theology there is a rich and long-standing teaching that the bishop or priest as he presides at the Eucharist is there to act in persona Christi (in the name and person of Christ) as alter Christus (acting for Christ).  Underlying this doctrine is the belief that the priest is a sacramental person whose effectiveness to be such depends both upon the authority conferred by ordination to the priesthood and by the obvious nature of the sacramental sign (i.e. the priest himself as male).  If the priest were a woman then the natural resemblance to Christ as male would be absent from the celebration of the Eucharist, where it is Jesus, the male Messiah, who is the true yet invisible President of the divine Feast.

      Therefore it would seem that there is much religious significance in the maleness of the humanity of the Word Incarnate.  On the one side it is in and through his maleness that Jesus is united to the reality of male headship as the Creator’s plan, and to the prophecies of the Old Testament which looked for a male Messiah.  Then, on the other side, the maleness of Jesus requires that the priest be also male in order to be a true sacramental sign of the One of whom he is both representative and representation (icon) – Jesus, the High Priest in heaven. 

Addressing God in worship

      All informed Christians believe that God as God, or God as Yahweh or Jehovah (Exodus 3:13–15), transcends sexuality.  Though Creator of the two sexes, God as the infinite, eternal, holy Deity is neither male nor female.  However, the threefold name by which the One God in Trinity is made known in the New Testament is “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.

      Until very recently this did not pose a problem for Christians.  They accepted that the eternal God is neither male nor female and they also accepted that this God is to be named and addressed in primarily male terms – “Father, Son, King, and Lord”.  It was taken for granted that since these were the names used by Jesus Christ and his apostles then this is how God wished to be addressed.  So a typical Christian prayer was addressed to the Father in the name of the Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Converts were baptized in and the Blessing was given in the same threefold Name of the One God.

      Of course there are many descriptions of God in the Bible (as a quick reading through the Psalter will show) and amongst these are some which are similes drawn from the experience of mother birds and women.  So God is likened to the protective mother bird (Isaiah 31:5), the mother eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11), the midwife (Psalm 22:9), the nurse (Number 11:12), the mother who conceives (Numbers 11:12), the pregnant mother (Isaiah 46:3; 49:15), the mother giving birth (Isaiah 42:14), the mother who suckles (Isaiah 49:15), the mother who quietens (Psalm 131:2) and the mother who comforts (Isaiah 66:13).  In this connexion we may also note that Jesus likened his own feelings to those of a mother bird: “O Jerusalem ... how often have I longed to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings....” (Matthew 23:37).

      To describe an aspect of God’s care for his children is not the same as to address him.  Jesus gave his disciples the model prayer “Our Father...” and in all the prayers recorded in the New Testament there is no indication that God is to be addressed other than by the names taught by Jesus and the apostles.  Amongst these there is none which is feminine.  Nowhere is there the slightest hint that we ought to address God as “Mother” or refer to the Godhead through the female pronoun “she”.  Therefore if we approach Scripture wanting to learn what God has to say to us then it is these masculine names of “Father, Son, King and Lord” that he will teach us to use when we address him in worship and prayer.  Certainly this is how the Church has understood the Scriptures over the centuries.

      Brian Wren, a hymn writer and a passionate advocate of addressing God through feminine as well as masculine names, has analysed several popular hymnbooks, the Methodist Hymnbook (London 1983) in particular.  He has found that in them “the dominant metaphor system is KINGAFAP” by which he means “the King-God-Almighty-Father-Protector” (What language shall I borrow?, 1989, p.119).  His intention is to try to change this system by including in worship a variety of female metaphors like mother, sister and midwife.  He may succeed in some Free Churches but he has a big job with the major Churches because we find a similar pattern to his KINGAFAP in all the Liturgies of the Orthodox, Catholic and [most] Anglican Churches as well as in the ecumenical creeds.  For example the Apostles’ Creed begins, “I believe in God the Father Almighty....”

      In and of themselves, and by themselves alone, it is true that these names of and for God can seem at times cold, forbidding and heavily masculine.  However, their meaning is not established by the way they are used either by the popular media or in the history books or by individual imagination.  It is established by the meaning poured into them by Jesus and his apostles against the background of the Old Testament.  They are not to be seen as names for God arising only within human experience of God; but, rather, as names which, while having a reference-point in human experience, gather their meaning from the words of Jesus and the apostles.

      Over the centuries theologians of the Church have been very much aware that such names as Father, Son, Lord and King when used of the Godhead are not being used as they are when they are used of human beings.  So some have made use of what is known as the doctrine of analogy to seek to explain how these words function in discourse about and prayer to God.  They explain that this is an analogy sui generis (of its own kind) – that is unique.  It is not derived from the experience of human fatherhood but from God’s own act of revelation in deed and in words.

      God, as God, has established by his self-unveiling what is meant by Fatherhood.  We must never forget that God was Father before he was Creator of the universe.  As Father God did not create the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Son is eternally begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.  Therefore within the eternal holy love of the Blessed Trinity the Father eternally begets and the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds.  Out of this eternity the Father created the universe (out of nothing) through his Word (Son) in and by the Holy Spirit.  To ponder this for a while will hopefully make clear that to introduce the image of Mother alongside or to replace Father brings confusion into our attempts to think aright concerning both the eternity of the Godhead and the eternal relations of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity.  Thus we may go on to say that masculine symbolism for God points to the eternal movement of God, the Father, to the Son and Holy Spirit within the Holy Trinity, and thence to the world in initiative and creativity.  In contrast feminine symbolism points to the movement of God returning to himself in the role of the Spirit within the Church which is responsive as the Bride of Christ.

      In the last analysis the way we address God in public worship will be determined by our doctrine of divine revelation and whether or not we accept the classic doctrine of the Trinity.  If we see in Scripture the record of that revelation and thus look to it and the doctrine of the Trinity as arising in and from it as the basis of our faith and practice we will hesitate to call God by any other names than those he has made known. 

Conclusion

      Male domination is not the ministry or vocation to which God calls men.  Rather he calls them to take their role of headship seriously as a duty unto himself and in loving service to others.  This call is addressed both to fathers as heads of families and pastors as heads of the congregations of the family of God.  Unless they do both family life and church life will be poorer because of this omission.  God also calls women to cooperate with men to ensure that the will of God is expressed both in the family and in the church.

      In that Jesus Christ revealed how the male can both lead all and be the servant of all there is nothing for women or men to be embarrassed about or ashamed of in genuine patriarchy!  Further, in that God calls us to use masculine symbols in our naming of him, and in that he fills these with heavenly content and meaning, there is no need for women to be embarrassed to use them!