Ordination of Women

‘Can Jesus be preached in the whole world without the institutional church? Can molten gold be carried from place to place in anything but crucibles of iron and steel? (Naumann)’ This image of the Church as a crucible transporting molten gold captures its secondary role in Christianity alongside its service of love, truth and empowerment in Jesus Christ. Charismatics like Naumann are in that flow of the Spirit alongside feminists whose courageous action has challenged male dominance within the institutional crucible in recent years. The crucible analogy captures something of why Christianity is content to retain antiquated institutions as its main concern is not on the carrier but on its effective instrumentality. Crucibles are of not so sightly, tough iron and when in use our eyes are drawn not to them but to the splendour of what they carry. When they crack, though, they prove useless. This analogy may help explain the best aspect of resistance to the ordination of women in the greatest body of the Church, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, who see the episcopate as a focus of unity. Seeing the dispute about ordaining women outside the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II seems to have been driven to settle the question for Roman Catholics with near infallible use of the Petrine ministry: ‘In order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful’. Even if Roman Catholic authority has closed debate on the ordination of women, and there is little debate within Orthodoxy, other Christian traditions have been ordaining women for over a century. 

The exclusion of women from church leadership has been seen as an unjust violation of human dignity, weakening mission through loss of women’s gifts being exercised in oversight. Since the Reformation, part of Christian tradition has raised questions about whether ordination is essential to Christianity. Is it of the ‘esse’ of the Church, essential, or only of the ‘bene esse’, beneficial as leadership is to any organisation? The question of authorising female ordination is complicated by such questions about the constitution of the Church, authority and leadership within it. When Pope John Paul II said the matter ‘pertains to the Church’s divine constitution’ he implied it was not for human agency, even a Pope bearing Christ’s commission to St Peter, to change the divine Saviour’s choice of male apostles as the foundation of his Church. Other traditions who dispute papal authority also dispute the divinity of the Church and the role of sacred ministers in representing Christ, for which the ordination of women is a symbolic dislocation in the traditional sacramental understanding. The ordination of women seems less of a difficulty when this understanding of the priest as ‘alter Christus’ (the other Christ) is rejected. 

The New Testament speaks of Christ’s priesthood and that of the Church as a whole with fewer texts speaking of the priestly nature of the ordained ministry. It also speaks of the equality of men and women in Christ, as in Galatians 3:28, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek... male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Some from the Reformed tradition, so-called ‘conservative Evangelicals’, balance this scriptural teaching of equality between the sexes with a principle of sexual differentiation. The headship principle based on Genesis Chapters 1-2 is presupposed by most of the Bible and spelled out in Ephesians 5:22-25, ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Saviour. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her’. Many scripture commentators though see this sort of headship as something time bound which is justly to be reinterpreted in our day.

Writing as a man about the ordination of women risks being patronising. The matter requires elucidation, so Christian practice to date is seen as less discriminatory than it looks, and yet the look and feel of the matter is affected by the gender of the writer and reader so I apologise in advance of speaking more personally. I have first hand experience of the Anglican debate in both England and the Caribbean in consequence of which I am impatient about reduction of the matter to being a simple matter of justice. It is wrong to change the Church simply because of contemporary beliefs just as it is wrong to dismiss the callings many women have felt towards ordained ministry. To accept the ordination of women in the name of making the Christian good news accessible is only misguided if it compromises foundational Christian truth, the ‘esse’ or essentials of the Church about which the jury remains out ecumenically. With many Provinces now allowing the ordination of women, seen as a God-send to vocations, the Anglican Church has exercised the right to develop its own orders of ministry as it did at the Reformation, allowing married priests, adapting to circumstances.

The progress towards women bishops in the Church of England came in the face of warnings that it would make the goal of visible unity with Rome and the Orthodox ‘unreachable’ (Cardinal Kasper) on account of the Catholic understanding of bishops as a focus of unity for both people in their dioceses and in relation to other bishops across the Christian world. With women’s gifts in leadership exercised at very different levels worldwide the acceptance by some Anglicans of the ordination of women bishops has caused impairment of full communion across Anglicanism. The loss in the ecumenical dimension and the internal divisions associated with the ordination of women have been balanced by the fruitful ministry of many women deacons, priests and bishops among Anglicans and Lutherans in recent years. In elucidating women’s ordination I have an eye to the Church universal, and its reluctance to move on this, but also on how God has used women in ministry. Thinking about things is distinct from the reality of things and this reality for many Anglicans is a given even if it is a qualified gift.

Thinking about the Ordination of Women is distinct from the reality of things and this reality for many Anglicans is a given even if it is a qualified gift as expressed in ‘The Five Guiding Principles’ of 2014: ‘The Church of England is fully and unequivocally committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender... Since it continues to share the historic episcopate with other Churches... which continue to ordain only men as priests or bishops, the Church of England acknowledges that its own clear decision on ministry and gender is set within a broader process of discernment within... the whole Church of God... Since those within the Church of England who, on grounds of theological conviction, are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of teaching and tradition of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England remains committed to enabling them to flourish within its life and structures’. In confirming that these Principles need to be read 'one with the other and held in tension, rather than being applied selectively' Church of England Bishops make explicit the tension women’s ordination creates within and beyond their membership.

I find the image of the institutional Church as a crucible transporting molten gold helpful in explaining the best aspect of resistance to the ordination of women in the greatest body of the Church, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, who see the episcopate as a focus of unity. Looking to the molten gold of the love, truth and empowerment of Christ’s Spirit it is humbling to see the Church’s stewardship of this. It is humiliating for Christians to witness the historic divisions, which do little to commend their cause, shown up in their varied response to righting discrimination against women across the world. For Roman Catholics and Orthodox whatever people think about the ordination of women there is a clear line to be respected albeit, for some, with critical loyalty. For Protestants, save conservative Evangelicals, it seems to be a lesser issue as leadership is key more than ordination. Anglicans fall in between with many women choosing to follow vocations now acceptable to the Church and other individuals keeping under the authority of the church through the ages, effected by judicious ordination of bishops, unable to receive these new ministries. The ordination of women is happening and bringing blessings and challenges across the Christian world. Whether it is to be a phase, like the isolated figure of Deborah among centuries of Israelite judges, or to be a Spirit-led reshaping of the institution of the Church we await the verdict of history.