Adelphoi,
A discussion starter.
Those who argue that it is only men, called, prepared and tested, who are to be ordained as presbyters and bishops in the Church of God have to explain their position most carefully these days (if and where people are willing patiently to listen or read!). The reason for such clarity is that their doctrinal stance for this conservative position can be so easily misheard, misunderstood and misinterpreted. And they can be villified.
First of all, they have to make clear that they accept wholly the equality of women before God for the gift of his salvation & their equal dignity and worth with men in human society. They must make very clear that they do not propose any doctrine of the inferiority of a woman to a man, as was assumed by such great thinkers as Thomas Aquinas & Richard Hooker, based on the science of Aristotle. In fact, they need to teach that man and woman are so created as to be complementary the one to the other, equal but different.
In other words, they must make it abundantly clear that they do not espouse but rather they reject any notion of the inferiority of woman. And here they depart from much of the medieval, Reformation and post-Reformation teaching.
In the second place, they have to make clear that the only sound biblical and theological argument for allowing only some men to be ordained and thus against the ordaining of women to offices of pastoral leadership and oversight is based on the doctrine of Order. In the strict meaning of the word, they believe in the subordination of woman to man, that is, that woman is second in order to man in God's divine ordering of his creation. The basic biblical text is from Genesis 1:27, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Here there is man whom God has made as two sexes, male and female. The order of the two sexes is the male first and the female second, but this ordering does not imply any inferiority whatsoever of the one who is second in order. In fact one has to be first in order and the other second.
Within the Order of the Holy Trinity, as revealed unto us, the Father is always the first, the Son second and the Holy Ghost third, but each of the Three Persons is equal in deity, glory and majesty to the Others (see the splendid statement of all this in The Athanasian Creed). It was Arianism not Orthodoxy which proposed a Trinity of three Persons not equal in deity and glory.
Man, made in the image and after the likeness of God the Holy Trinity, is an ordered creature and the ordering is first male and second female.
Now a prohibition of the pastoral leadership of a woman in the church has been often based in the past on the old Aristotelian biology and anthropology (accepted regrettably as true by many churchmen over the centuries). That is, women are deemed to be inferior to men. Such a position, though held by many of the great minds of the Church from ancient through to relatively recent times, must be rejected and rejected soundly.
Often the Aristotelian science has been fused with the biblical and patristic doctrine of Order. Today we must tear them apart to reject one and to keep the other.
Not sufficiently often has the biblical and patristic argument of Order been used carefully and in its fullness by those who believe, teach and confess that only certain males are proper candidates for ordination. Here the ordering of humanity is seen as reflecting the Order within God the Holy Trinity. Further, and specifically, the Order within the Church as the Family of God is also seen as reflecting the internal Order of God as God. In the New Testament this doctrine of Order is expressed in various ways, one of which is the Pauline doctrine of "headship". Again it must be emphasised that second in order is not inferiority.
Further arguments such as (a) that Jesus Christ only chose man as apostles and that the apostles only chose men as presbyters and bishops, and (b) the celebrant at the Eucharist is to be a man in order truly to represent the action of Christ who is Man, are probably best used as supportive rather than primary.
The only way to teach and defend the ordination of only some men (duly called and prepared) is on the basis of the Name and Nature of God as the Holy Trinity and the Order that He has placed within Man, within humanity, within male and female and within the family. In other words unless a high doctrine of Scripture is accepted and the patristic dogma of the Blessed, Holy Trinity is received, there can be no sound doctrinal argument in favour of the long tradition of a male-only presbyters and bishops.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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