Friday, June 27, 2003

Divine Order & Human Relations

(I have written this arising from the news stories surrounding the recent appointment and election of gay men as bishops. It is only intended to be a discussion starter.)

Arguments from DIVINE ORDER work against both the ordination of women and active homosexual men.

For the Church, for her own internal integrity, the only basic argument against the ordination of either women (straight or gay) or homosexual men that holds true is - I suggest - that which flows from the doctrine and theme of ORDER.

In the 21st Century any reasonable argument against the ordination of women to the office of presbyter or bishop must take for granted that women are the equal of men before God in terms of (a) his love for them; (b) his gracious relation to them; (c) his making them his adopted children; and (d) his giving them the gift of life eternal and the beatific vision. Further, in terms of modern post-Enlightenment cultural themes and achievements, it must also take into account that women deserve and should possess equal rights and enjoy the same dignity as men in society.

Thus any argument against the ordination of women that suggests that they are less inferior to men either before God or in modern society/culture will not stand up to scrutiny and should collapse.

This leaves open an argument based on the belief that men and women are equal in dignity, worth, & ability and yet at the same time they are different from each other with complimentary roles or vocations in their relation to one another in life and especially in marriage. To this one then adds the further principle that for the complementarity to be sound and to work there must be an accepted order in the relation between them, that is one must be first and the other second in order [literally subordinate]. And this is how God created - God created man: male and female created he them. The man and woman are equal with the man being first in order (not superior but first).

Applying this principle to the Household of God, and bearing in mind the Blessed Order of the Trinity (the Father together with His Son and His Holy Spirit - the First, Second and Third Persons in Holy Order), one can say that there is given by God a revealed Order for the Church. Some men, but not all men, are set apart in this divine Order to rule over and be shepherds in the Church. This principle may be called "headship". This setting apart of some men into Order is nothing to do with human dignity, worth or ability but is based on the call of Christ to the office. Only the few men who are called may enter the Sacred Ministry (and of course in it they ought to think and act in ways that adorn the Gospel and that office).

It is highly probable that in terms of human abilities there will be in the Church of God both women and men who are better qualified to be leaders and pastors than those whom God calls. Further, in terms of modern laws on human rights and theories of individualism and human dignity, what the Church claims and does in terms of restricting the ordained Ministry to only a few men will be judged as irrational and discriminatory. The only possible basis for the Church's traditional position, if maintained in 2003, is that the all-male Ministry represents the will and intention of Christ, the Head of the Church, for his people. That is, it exists in obedience to Revelation written in Scripture and expounded in Tradition; and, while taking full note of the equality of women, it remains bound - come what may from modern society - to that Ordering, that revealed Order which is the will of the Lord of the Church. Of course, in taking this position the ordained Ministry needs to be humble before God and gracious towards man and prepared for hostility from the world around.

Thus the ordination of only a few males, called of God, into the sacred Ministry is the inclusion of them into Order, a state of being and relations, created by God for the good of the Church of God.

Now to homosexual persons and order.

Now that the Supreme Court of the USA has [June 27, 2003] given full rights to homosexual persons to engage in sexual activities of their own choosing in private, the Church has to recognize that in western culture to argue against the rights of homosexual men and lesbian women to hold offices in the Church is fraught with difficulties. Arguments from history, culture, anthropology and biology against their inclusion into ministries will be met with arguments for from psychology and sociology. Arguments from the Bible & Tradition against will be met with arguments for based on the same Bible (in the light of modern experience and reason).

In this context, it is the same doctrine of divine Order - reflected in both God's creation of the cosmos and in the new covenant in and through Jesus Christ - that allows the entry into the ordained Ministry/into Order only of those men who are chaste in marriage (that is rightly ordered towards one women, a spouse) or chaste in celibacy (that is not wrongly ordered towards a woman in fornication or man in sodomy but ordered towards God in consecration). In holy matrimony and in chaste celibacy there is intended by God to be a right ordering of the sexual nature of human beings and he promises and offers divine help to those who intend to live in this divine Order gracefully.

The possession of what is these days called an orientation towards persons of the same sex is not in itself a barrier to ordination or to church ministries (e.g. deaconess) if this urge is kept under control and turned by grace into a positive care for people. However, in this excessively sexually driven western culture, it may be wise [even as the Vatican is now recommending] not to accept as ordinands men with an obvious homosexual orientation because of the great pressures and temptations they will be under as they seek to be chaste.

So it is ORDER, the order that is within the ineffable depths of the Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity that is the LORD God, the Order which always places the Father first, the Son second and the Holy Ghost third, and which is reflected in both the creation and in the new covenant, that we should seek justification of the historic basis of the Church's male-only ordained Ministry and exclusion from it of all who are first of all not called thereunto and secondly are not rightly ordered in their human relations.

Yet we must remember that this kind of reasoning about Order will seem offensive or meaningless outside the Church (i.e. outside the Church wherein Scripture and tradition is taken seriously and where a vote is given to past generations as well as to the modern ones).
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)

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