Fr Haller on women’s ordination
Posted by Chris T. on Monday, May 5th, 2008
Recently bls reposted this article by Fr Tobias Haller, BSG, about the central dogmas of Christian faith that are violated by certain arguments against women's ordination. I was very taken with the argument when he posted it but had forgotten where I heard it until bls reposted it.
The topic of WO has since come up a few more times in the blogosphere, and I keep coming back to Fr Haller's article as an exemplar of the kind of theological reflection needed to ground the religious experience of Christians formed and nurtured by the sacramental and teaching ministry of women in the wider Tradition. This is the central insight of Fr Haller's post, which deserves a second (and third, and fourth) look:
Which brings us to the serious doctrine this position contradicts. For it is taught that what is not assumed (by Christ in the Incarnation) is not redeemed. And Christ assumed the whole of human nature. Otherwise how could women be saved? Christ assumed the totality of human nature when he became incarnate, and as the Chalcedonian Definition affirms, he received that totality of human nature solely from his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. And she was, obviously, a woman.
The second-last sentence is what I find breathtaking, in conjunction with an insight Fr Haller brings out in his Hooker-esque paragraph at the end of the post: Eve received all of her humanity from out of Adam — which would have easily shored up theological sexism (often referred to as complementarianism by proponents) were it not for the fact that Christ received all of his humanity from his mother, Mary. This provides tremendous resources for fleshing out a theological anthropology that takes more from Galatians 3 ("In Christ…neither male nor female") than from the deeply flawed reading of one of the creation accounts in Genesis, which seeks to enforce a rigid complementarianism.
Though not all anti-WO advocates seem aware of it, those who practice women's ordination do engage in theological reflection on the subject and are not merely buffeted by the winds of secular culture. Given that this is so, it's incumbent upon those very anti-WO advocates to begin to reflect on the experience of those hundreds of thousands of Christians who believe the sacraments they have received at the hands of women are efficacious. Experience alone is never, ever normative for Christians — but active ignorance of compelling religious experience is often an indicator of sickness in the Body of Christ. In my view, that is happening with the issue of women's ordination and has been for decades since it entered widespread practice.
Filed in Eucharist, Priesthood, The Church, Theology |
20 Responses to “Fr Haller on women’s ordination”
One might note that the conjunction is “and”: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female”.
I have to ask if it isn’t those against the ordination of women who themselves are not perhaps also driven by culture. After all, many cultures are quite deeply steeped in thinking of women as inferior. And it this wasn’t imbibed by even many of the Fathers. Augustine after all goes so far as to suggest that women are not created in the image of God, but only men, and women receive that image from their husbands!
Thanks for the correction on the language, Christopher.
We progressives are often charged with neutering the plain language of Scripture to fit our agenda. I wonder how the anti-WO party reads Gal. 3 in a way that does not drain it of its meaning? Do any of my anti-WO care to share? I’m honestly curious.
The only reading I have heard in the past, from anti-WO Lutherans, is that Gal. 3 is meant only to refer to the eschaton and is not applicable to the Church in this world. I think it’s clear that reading is a non-starter.
Could you explain a little bit this idea of sanctifying different aspects of the human condition. I don’t have a lot of experience with it. Actually I’d read the claim a while back attributed to one of the early Fathers that Christ must have died when he was relatively older so that he could also sanctify old age.
From your perspective was the crucifixion even necessary? Wasn’t the human condition sanctified by Christmas?
Abdul-Halim –
It’s not merely the Incarnation that redeems humanity, but the Incarnation as part of the whole salvation story, which includes the promises made to the people of Israel, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the fulfillment of the new covenant, and ultimately the Ascension and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
So the crucifixion was certainly necessary — although as you can imagine there are numerous accounts of why that is so, how the crucifixion was effective, in what measure it counted along with Jesus’ life, his resurrection, etc.
Given that this is so, it’s incumbent upon those very anti-WO advocates to begin to reflect on the experience of those hundreds of thousands of Christians who believe the sacraments they have received at the hands of women are efficacious. Experience alone is never, ever normative for Christians–but active ignorance of compelling religious experience is often an indicator of sickness in the Body of Christ. In my view, that is happening with the issue of women’s ordination and has been for decades since it entered widespread practice.
Father,
I certainly won’t defend “active ignorance,” but while this might be true of some anti-WO advocates, it’s not so exclusively, as I’m sure you know. I used to be a pro-WO advocate, and attended a parish where WO was a fact of everyday life. I realize that there are many thousands who believe in the efficacy of those sacraments, but that’s really only an opening for an argument, in my opinion, and not the argument itself.
In terms of Br Haller’s specific assertions, I admit that he makes some good points, but I don’t think that he’s settled the question for me by any stretch of the imagination. To my mind, there are two principal schools of argument against the ordination of women: from theology and from tradition. Haller claims that the former is unsound, and that Rome’s policy of not permitting discussion of the matter is proof that this is so. I am not a scholar of the Roman theological arguments, and so I cannot refute Haller here, but I would guess that his five paragraphs do not really do justice to the Roman side.
The argument from tradition has always been easier for me to make, and is relatively uncontroversial historically. The claim that some make that, since some traditions may have been found to be pernicious then this one may be as well, is, strictly speaking, defensible (presuming the truth of the cited premise). However, that’s not an argument, but only suggests the possibility of one. Haller asserts that if a tradition is found to be in opposition to some part of doctrinal belief then it must necessarily be rejected, and I agree with him. He then goes on to assert that the restriction of ordained ministry to males is in opposition to what the Church (notably at Chalcedon) teaches about the nature of redeemed humanity. He seems to say that if women are able to be saved, then they must also necessarily be capable of being admitted to the ordained ministry. This is, in the first place, a false dichotomy, and, if true, also tends to imply that the non-ordained are probably unsaved as well, which I’m sure is not what Haller believes.
He then goes on to a rather muddled (in my opinion) discourse on the nature of sex in human beings, as it relates to the fundamental properties of “humanness.” Here I think he really takes off on a flight of fancy. There appears to be no analysis of the significance of the real differences between males and females, and the significance of Our Lord’s incarnation as a male human being. Perhaps, as Haller thinks, both of these are of negligible importance, but I think that you would have to argue that, and Haller merely assumes it, which of course gets him to where he wants to be in terms of his preordained (pardon the pun) conclusions. (And while Haller does not explicitly resort to this, you will often see claims that sex is completely analogous to skin or eye color. This is both generally unproven, and also “poisons the well” by implying that opposition to the ordination of women is akin to racism, thus taking advantage of most modern Westerners’ rightful abhorrence of same.)
So, in the end, I don’t so much disagree with Br Haller, as I believe that he’s just starting, and has a long row to hoe before he can expect anyone to see the truth of his positions.
Paul –
Thanks for engaging with this. I sort of agree with you that experience is just an entry into discussion, rather than an argument in itself, but I think the massed-up experience we have plus theology is more compelling than that. I guess what I’m saying is, I wish traditionalists on this issue could offer an account of what they think may be going on here, rather than merely dismissing that combination by reiterating the argument from tradition (or from complementarianism, or whatever). We progressives are often put in the position not only to argue theologically for women’s ordination (or, similarly, same-sex marriage) but to account for the tradition of the male-only priesthood and explain why that tradition should not be as central to Christianity as it has been historically. I’m suggesting traditionalists should have to account in some meaningful way for this religious experience, rather than waving it away as some do (but not all).
As for Fr Haller’s piece, I think there are two pieces here that are quite intertwined in the post (and thus intertwined in your response). It’s useful to separate them.
First, Fr Haller points out that the RC church has fallen from really engaging with the WO issue to simply banning discussion of it. It’s the ecclesiastical equivalent of holding your fingers in your ears and shouting “I can’t hear you!” If we are to take the quote from Dignitatis Humanae that I posted earlier in another context seriously (”Truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth”), surely this is not an acceptable response to the crisis facing the RC church. (I think both sides agree it is a crisis, whatever else there is.)
Second, Fr Haller makes the argument, in his Hooker-esque section, that if Christ indeed took up all of humanity — male and female — into himself in the Incarnation to be redeem through his death and resurrection, then we cannot have a male-only priesthood. I don’t think this implies that the non-ordained are not saved at all.
Rather, he is saying that this insight about Christ receiving all of humanness from Mary and redeeming it in his death and resurrection powers a theological anthropology that sees maleness and femaleness as an accident of the individual rather than a theologically-dispositive characteristic of two types of human. (This should address your point about a muddled discourse of sex, too, I hope.)
Let me try to put this a bit more clearly, because I think my comment is getting muddled, too:
* Adam possessed the fullness of humanity and was able to pass that humanity on to Eve.
* Mary possessed the fullness of humanity and was able to pass that humanity on to Jesus at the Incarnation.
* Therefore, there is nothing of humanity that is lacking from either male persons or female persons.
* So maleness and femaleness are accidents of individual humans, not characteristics of humanity separating humanity into two theologically significant groups.
This doesn’t mean that maleness or femaleness is as insignificant as eye color — but this, along with the plain sense of Gal. 3:28 and changes in our culture over the last several centuries that have revealed just how absurd even Christian assumptions about the limits of females were, suggests that the argument from tradition alone is very, very problematic. How is it creditable to say that women are not appropriate matter for ordination to the priesthood when we believed a century ago that women were not appropriate matter for playing sports? How can we accept that there is something about the being of women that renders them incapable of standing as an alter Christus when we know it is Christ’s humanness, not his maleness, that was central to the redemption of humanity?
There is a final concern that drives my active pursuit of this — it’s that in the end the opposition to both women’s ordination and same-sex marriage seems to be driven more than anything else by the defense of complementarianism as a theological concern central to Christianity. As you and many of my readers well know, the vast majority of Christian doctrine was formulated in response to theological uncertainty that broke into orthodoxy on the one hand and fruitless heresy on the other. (It is worth noting preemptively that both parties always claimed the Tradition supported them, and more than once the resources used to defend orthodoxy were so “nuanced” that they pushed against the plain sense of several eminent Fathers from past centuries — so WO emerging only recently is no great argument against it alone.)
So the formulation of these pro- and anti-WO positions seems to center on whether gender is an accident of the individual, important concerning a great number of earthly things like child-bearing, general tendencies toward physical strength, etc., but not signifying anything to God, or whether “male and female he created them” is to be held above several other values in the New and Old Testaments as a fundamental doctrine of Christianity.
As I say, there are resources in Scripture that militate against turning “male and female he created them” into doctrine about how God regards humanity in the end. As Christopher notes, complementarianism would seem to shore up sinful tendencies to deny the full humanity of women that are present in all societies, while a gender-egalitarian perspective would seem, in my view, to militate against such tendencies and hew closer to the rule of love offered by Jesus Christ.
So in the end, all of the above won’t get traditionalists to convert to the pro-WO position. In fact, I doubt arguments per se are really possible in this discussion, because so much centers on experiences — of Scripture, of the Tradition, of the ministry of women both lay and ordained, and of the culture at large — that predispose us to one theological anthropology or the other. One is true, the other false. What the above should do, I hope, is get traditionalists to provide the same kinds of defensive accounts that progressives have been forced to provide for decades, accounting for what they think is going on in the arguments and experiences of the other side. (This may be impossible for some traditionalists, as it requires believing that this particular tradition, at least, may be false — I realize that for a variety of reasons that may be a bridge too far for some.)
We are wont to play offense in these arguments — but I think trying to account charitably for why the other side might believe what it professes is more useful. It helps us eliminate what is false in our own beliefs and appreciate what is true in others’. Often, all we need to know is that something is part of long Christian tradition to know that it should form us. But in cases like this, I think that may obscure some pernicious theological traps that are then not uncovered because tradition alone is seen as a sufficient guard against error. It’s our contention that that’s not true, that in fact the tradition against WO safeguards theological complementarianism (we believe it’s false) from the light of truth.
Sorry for tacking something on to that already-long comment, but I wanted to add something about the RC argument against women’s ordination in specific.
I think in the end Fr Haller is right to wonder about the way they no longer even bother to argue for the truth of their position. I hope this doesn’t sound uncharitable, but in my heart of hearts, I think it’s because the position of theological complementarianism is simply not credible to the vast majority of Roman Catholics, and never will be again. (That suspicion that it never will be again is part of what convinces me this is God’s will and not merely a cultural wind finding theological expression among some Christians.) It’s even less credible, I suspect, than the position against birth control or some of the other widely-ignored pronouncements of the Roman hierarchy.
This is in the end why I’m nearly positive that women’s ordination is true. Because I don’t think any other argument can be made against it but the argument from complementarianism — and I just don’t see how the last century hasn’t decisively disproven that argument. Women are capable of 99.9% of the things we’ve thought for centuries they were incapable of — and Paul already tells us that in Christ, race and sex are disregarded. So why should the priesthood be the one place women seem for all the world to be capable of going but, in fact, they can’t?
I really recommend Thomas Lacquer’s “Making Sex”. Complementarianism as such is quite Modern and rooted in Modernity. For much of Christian history, there was only one type of human, males the perfect expression and females an imperfect expression. Complementarianism as has Pope John Paul II suggests two different natures, male and female, which flies in the face of Chalcedon and comes dangerously close in shoring up other concerns to emptying out the salvific work of Christ for all humanity as Elizabeth Johnson has noted in her works.
Father,
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this issue.
I would first say that I agree with both you and Fr Haller that it is unfortunate that the Roman church has gone so far as to effectively prohibit any discussion of the WO issue. However, in my opinion, this stems from an internal problem which mostly concerns the proper teaching office of theological faculties, as against the academic freedom of particular theologians. So, I think it is, in fact, reasonable to expect that the Roman theological positions will be taught as authoritative at institutions of higher learning that are formally affiliated with the Roman church. This was not (and still is not) happening in some places, and I believe that both Inter Insigniores and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis need to be read in the context of this internal reform.
Your wish for traditionalists to actually engage the theology and breadth of experience of those who are pro-WO is entirely justified, it seems to me. I will try to say something about the question of experience first. To begin with, I think we can agree that experience has a necessarily subjective component, which must be taken into account when trying to determine what a certain experience (or body of experience) implies. So, when we discuss an “experience of the ministry of ordained women,” what are we really talking about? What characterizes these experiences that would support the pro-WO position? I submit that to answer these questions it is necessary to ask a further one: What are the marks of the sacerdotal office? Among them are pastoral care and teaching, certainly, and I know that there is substantial evidence that women can fulfil these duties as well as men can, in some contexts. But here there is no contradiction with the traditionalist position. One can argue–quite effectively, I think–that the Roman church, especially in the wake of the Counter-Reformation, neglected and repressed these gifts in women. We have seen some efforts made to regain a proper balance again, but I would agree that we have a ways to go. Nevertheless, it can’t be said that the experiences of pro-WO advocates are being ignored insofar as these aspects of ministry are concerned. The contentious question is, then, the issue of the Eucharistic sacrifice, and I’m not sure how valuable experiences are in this area. In the first place, if there is not a shared sacramental theology common to the participants in the discussion, the question of what experience means in terms of celebrations of the Lord’s Supper presided over by a woman becomes very difficult to analyze, and thus compare. It seems to me, that if we are going to take into account the experiences of pro-WO advocates as to the question of sacramental validity, it is necessary to restrict our data set to those who subscribe to both an ontological change on the part of the person being ordained, and also an ontological change on the part of the elements during the Eucharistic sacrifice. Otherwise, again it seems to me, that we’re comparing apples to oranges, and by definition cannot come up with anything that would be persuasive to someone who is a traditionalist according to mind of the Roman church.
Now onto (philosophy and) theology, and I fully admit that I’m out of my depth here. Fr Haller is entirely correct in asserting that, at a certain fundamental level, humanity is one, and that all humanity has been redeemed by the incarnate life, death, and resurrection of the Saviour. Further, this fulness of humanity is now a part of the Godhead itself in heaven. However, it seems to me to be rather a leap to claim from this that “we cannot have a male-only priesthood.” Rather than looking first at the cultural, anthropological, and sociological issues which you then take up, I think that it is first necessary to see if there is commonality regarding the nature of revelation, the Church and its authority, and general principles of sacramental theology. Thus, it is the Roman position that the fulness of God’s revelation to humanity was accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ, and that the Church received from him the authority to interpret that revelation. Whatever our various opinions of what happened structurally to the Church after Pentecost might be, I would hope that we’d agree that this is so. If not, then I don’t think that we even have a common starting point. So, as the Church went forward from t=0, she defined various doctrines and disciplines regarding, among other things, the sacraments. Among these was the restriction that the ordained ministry was restricted to males, and the reasons for this have been discussed at various times and in various places, but the discipline itself remained entirely constant until very, very recently. Now, it might seem as though this is just a restatement of the argument from tradition, but I submit that the argument from tradition is a proper theological argument. Indeed, the Roman position is that this is primarily a question of discipline, and not one of direct revelation. So, we read in Inter Insigniores: “In fact a vocation can not be reduced to a mere personal attraction, which can remain purely subjective. Since the priesthood is a particular ministry of which the Church has received the charge and the control, authentication by the Church is indispensable here and is a constitutive part of the vocation.” You see there is no assertion that God has directly revealed that women cannot be ordained, but rather that God has given “the charge and the control” to his Church, and she sees no reason to overturn the venerable arguments in favor of the current restriction. Pope John Paul II reaffirms this position in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, saying, “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.” This, then, is where one could make the cultural, anthropological, and sociological arguments in favor of changing the tradition, and admitting women to the ordained ministry. And, Father, you make those arguments, discussing the admission of women to sporting competitions, the professional workforce, etc. The Roman church and the various Oriental churches have not, however, found these arguments persuasive thus far. And I would add that it is both offensive and poor arguing to suggest–as some do–that the pro-WO position has simply been ignored, and that the various arguments have not been considered. The Anglicans remain split on this issue to a certain degree, with a preponderance of pro-WO sentiment, but again, there is the issue of sacramental theology to consider, and, for example, the acceptance of this innovation by a person who believes that the celebrant at Mass presides over a purely memorial action contributes little to this discussion. I’d imagine that the position on this issue among Independent Catholics varies, but I wouldn’t even begin to guess at numbers or percentages. And, once more, it still also hangs on what they believe more generally about the sacraments.
But, apart from what the Roman and Oriental churches have definitively pronounced for the time being, it is possible to discuss whether a change to the pro-WO position would be a good thing, and whether the rejection of the change is itself pernicious, and ultimately harmful to the Church. I would suggest that it is helpful to talk about this in the context of a more generalized approach to sacramental theology, and the relation of sacramental matter to both revelation and the authority of the Church. I take as a common point of departure the assertions that Ordination is a sacrament, like Baptism and the Eucharist, and that the requisite matter for these sacraments is a question of revealed truth and/or discipline. Again, if there is not agreement here, then there can be no resolution to the question at hand, nor does there need to be one. To begin with, I think that we can generally agree that the traditional matter for Baptism is water; for the Eucharist, wheat bread and wine; for Marriage, one man and one woman; and for Ordination, a male human being. So, can we determine whether, and under what circumstances, the Church could allow the use of, say, turkey legs and orange juice for the Eucharist, or rice or sand for Baptism? If the answer to the first part of that question is in the affirmative, then the pro-WO advocate can go on to suggest the conditions that now make this particular innovation a prudential one; however, if the answer is negative, then the pro-WO case is much, much weaker. If I understand your points correctly, Father, you appear to suggest that the change is warranted because the tradition is based entirely on the argument from complementarianism, and since this argument has been decisively disproven, the matter of the sacrament of Ordination can be changed. I don’t think that complementarianism needs to be defended, however, because it appears to be largely irrelevant to the Roman position on this issue, with which I agree. That said, if we are to discard theological complementarianism completely, it is incumbent–it seems to me–on those who wish to do so, to suggest some other philosophical basis for the place of sex and gender in the created order. And it should also be said that WO is not the only controversial issue which needs to be resolved in this context. There are those who believe, for example, that Marriage need not only involve one man and one woman, but that the number two remains completely sacrosanct. Again, there is a need for answers which also fit into the sacramental theology of both the particular ecclesial body proposing the innovation, and also the wider Church.
Let me conclude by again expressing my gratitude to you, Father, and also to Fr Haller, for taking the time to engage these important issues in such a rancor-free way.
Paul –
Thanks for your response. As you note, if one agrees to the points where you suggest agreement is necessary to further conversation between traditionalists and progressives — and unless I missed something, I think I and some other “traditionalist progressives” or progressive high-church Catholics do agree with all of them — then we get into deep water indeed.
When it comes to suggesting an alternative, Catholic theology of sex and gender, that is only beginning to happen, among some theologians who are a bit out of the mainstream simply by virtue of dealing with “women’s issues”, which are often marginalized in theological circles. Sarah Coakley comes immediately to mind — and her work is almost absurdly dense and pretty dry. Although she draws very heavily on patristic sources (especially Gregory of Nyssa), I doubt her work would be terribly accessible to traditionalists because she simply doesn’t unpack numerous assumptions held in common by Christian feminists.
Although feminist theology was a very big part of my formation, this specific aspect of it is not something I’m an expert in. I do see that it would be worth exploring some more — though I’m strongly convinced the traditional accounts of gender are deeply flawed, the crisis we’re faced with obviously demands new philosophic and theological accounts. Perhaps Christopher can offer some — I think he is actually far better versed in this stuff than I. If not, I’ll certainly try to blog about it more in the future — probably in the fall since Coakley and a number of other works I would need are packed away in storage.
As for changing the traditional definition for appropriate matter for the sacrament of holy orders, I take your point that this is really what is involved and as such it’s a grave change to the discipline of the wider Church. However, it’s worth noting that the proper matter for the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are explicitly revealed in Holy Scripture. This is not the case with holy orders — the best that traditional theology can do is introduce arguments about the sex of the Twelve which sound rather hand-wavy to anyone not already committed to a male-only priesthood.
So I understand that for traditionalists this is a grave change and you see an analogy to how radical (and I would agree unacceptable) it would be to change the matter for Baptism or the Eucharist. However, as you point out, the matter for holy orders is not considered to be a case of direct revelation but of the Church interpreting revelation and trying to understand what God’s will is from that interpretative process. So the analogy is not perfect.
And to clarify my concerns, I don’t believe the entire position is based on complementarianism — Christopher is right that that’s a relatively recent theological development. But tying it to complementarianism, as Rome has done (along with its anti-same sex marriage position) has brought them to the edge of a troubling precipice. But without that argument, there’s just the Church’s interpretation — and while I have a pretty high ecclesiology, I simply don’t believe the magisterium alone can solve the problem by fiat. The conversation in the Roman Church needs to involve more than RC cardinals — and I guess that’s my biggest concern. The conversation is very different there than in the Anglican or Independent Catholic or even Lutheran worlds.
Christopher,
I must adamantly correct the notion that you propose that Augustine held that women were not created in the image of God.
In The City of God, Chapter 22, Augustine states:
“regarding the resurrection of both sexes…
Female sexuality, however, is not a defect but belongs to nature…clad in a new beauty that …will serve to glorify the wisdom and goodness of God who created what did not yet exist and then rendered incorrupt what he had created.”
Thank you! A humble Augustinian friar
Father,
I don’t have any sort of background in feminist studies, so I would be far beyond my abilities to even discuss what modern writers have said conerning some of the traditional ideas about sex and gender. To be quite frank, even the traditional ideas are unfamiliar to me, at least in terms of a formal philosophical or theological approach. I would assert that the human race is divided into two sexes; a position that is itself controversial, as can be seen in the combox of Fr Haller’s ‘blog. This division is a part of the created order, and therefore good. Too, the Incarnation of God was as a male human being, and this by deliberate design. More speculatively, there is a decided (but by no means exclusive) preference for patriarchal language being used to designate the First Person of the Holy Trinity (i.e. God the Father). One could counter these assertions by saying that the accidents (in the Aristotelian sense) of sexual reproduction are merely a result of natural selection, that the maleness of Christ’s human nature is utterly inconsequential, and that the use of patriarchal language is purely cultural. At that point, however, I’m not sure that I would understand such a belief system to be Catholic or a Christian in a way that would be meaningful to me.
Quite beyond these basic issues of human nature there is, as we have been discussing, the idea of a common sacramental theology, which I firmly believe is necessary in order to talk about this issue in a way that is both respectful and–perhaps–fruitful. I think that your appellation of “traditionalist progressives” is useful here. As I said above, it seems to me that it makes sense to discuss this topic only among those who subscribe to both an ontological change on the part of the person being ordained, and also an ontological change on the part of the elements during the Eucharistic sacrifice. (Which is not to say at all that those who don’t subscribe to both of those things are not allowed to participate in such discussions, but only that there would be little hope for a broader agreement because terms and concepts are being used in radically different ways.) To the best of my knowledge, your jurisdiction requires belief in both of the above points, and according to the traditional sense. So, in my opinion, we are able to use concepts like form, matter, minister, and validity in a way that both of us agree about.
I am a little surprised that you have introduced the Classical Anglican distinction between Baptism and the Eucharist, which are considered to be the only two Sacraments, strictly speaking, and, what the American B.C.P. refers to as “sacramental rites” (which would include Confirmation, Anointing, Penance, Marriage, and Ordination). This, it appears to me, is preparatory to your later argument that seems to suggest that the Church has authority to alter her practices with respect to such rites, but not, presumably, with respect to Baptism and the Eucharist. This is fairly crucial, because it is generally accurate to say that the matter, form, etc., of the Sacraments are regulated by the Church’s discipline. It then becomes important to also agree on the relation between the Church’s teaching authority (which includes her various disciplines) and the idea of divine revelation, which we have primarily through the Holy Scriptures, whose canonicity itself, keep in mind, is a function of that same authority. So, with that in mind, I question your assertion that, “the proper matter for the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are explicitly revealed in Holy Scripture.” With reference to the Holy Eucharist, we know from the Pauline accounts that, in places, the Eucharistic sacrifice occurred in the context of an actual meal, which was sometimes being conducted in a disgraceful manner (1 Cor. 11:20). S. Paul admonished the Church at Corinth, and instructed them to use only bread and wine, as he had “received of the Lord .” This was, I think it is accurate to say, an exercise of the Church’s authority. Similarly, the Church followed the example of the Saviour and his twelve Apostles in appointing and ordaining only men as bishops, and later priests. I am not sure this is any more “hand-wavy” than following what the example of the Last Supper in regulating the Eucharist. No, the analogy is not perfect, but it is persuasive.
Finally, I tend to agree that, insofar as any Roman theologian ties the traditional position on the ordination of women to complementarianism, they are in danger of painting themselves into a corner. And I would also strongly agree that the conversation in the Roman church needs to involve more than the cardinals and the bishops. And this is happening on a certain level. But ultimately the authority rests in the hand of the Roman Pontiff and his Senate; that is a part of their ecclesiology. And you will recognize that any jurisdiction has a need for the exercise of authority at times, even the Independent Catholics.
He also wrote this, which has been up for controversy for some time given that of course it makes sense in Augustine’s historical context. Likely it does, but the dangers are there nevertheless no matter how gentlemanly or kindly he might have been toward women because the texts do take a life of their own:
The woman together with the man is the image of God, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God: however, in what pertains to man alone, is the image of God just as fully and completely as he is joined with the woman into one (De Trinitate, 12, 7, 10)
It is interesting that Augustine suggests that at that point where she is assigned as “helpmate” woman is not the image of God because of her secondary status (which assumes that being created after Adam–notice the emphasis on Gen. 2 account, implies secondary status) it is precisely in this Servant role that Christians best understand what is the image of God at all. And after all, God is often spoken of in precisely the same Hebrew term, helper, when relating to the Israelites.
And lest you think it only I who has understood Augustine thusly, here is Aquinas, which shows that irrespective of what Augustine might have meant, or his benign treatment of actual women, texts take on a life of their own:
The image of God, in its principal signification, namely the intellectual nature, is found both in man and in woman. Hence after the words, “To the image of God He created him,” it is added, “Male and female He created them” (Gn. 1:27). Moreover it is said “them” in the plural, as Augustine (Gen. ad lit. iii, 22) remarks, lest it should be thought that both sexes were united in one individual. But in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as God is the beginning and end of every creature. So when the Apostle had said that “man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man,” he adds his reason for saying this: “For man is not of woman, but woman of man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for man.” Summa Theologica I, qu. 93, art. 4 ad 1.
This line of thinking tends to posit that in helpmate status women are not imago dei or in the telos of women, that their end is men, rather than God, because it is men alone who bear that image without fail.
The point I think Fr. Haller makes is to reorient us to understand that the Image of God, Jesus Christ, receives his humanity entirely from a woman. It turns upside down this type of thinking and relocates how we think about image of God at all. The Image of God is Jesus Christ, God’s own self-revelation of who God is and what true humanity looks like, which to my mind points us toward fruits of the Spirit and virtues, those attributes of living out life in faith in response to this God, which itself is at the heart of Augustine’s argument as the total direction of his thinking is that the Image is something being formed in us–it’s eschatological.
Now that isn’t to say there aren’t correctives in the tradition. As Fr. Haller notes of Hincmar of Rheims’ quite remarkable statement: “Eva ipsa est Adam.”
Dear Christopher, thanks for posting this, and Paul and the other Christopher, and others for the additional comments.
It all boils down to what we think the Chalcedonian definition means, and how seriously we take it. My sense is that the cultural influence of patriarchal forms of family structure in our tradition may have made the import of the Chalcedonian definition difficult to see — even by those who first made it! But here are some implications:
Human beings are, for the very most part — genetic and other variations notwithstanding — either male or female.
Jesus was male. His maleness appears to have been necessary in order that he might fulfill certain prophecies concerning his role as Messiah.
For the Incarnation itself, however, in its capacity to remove the stain of original sin, and restore human nature through the atonement, to its full stature as imago dei, his maleness is not important (indeed, it might be an obstacle if it were held to be so), but rather his humanness is. For it is “human nature” that he assumed, in its totality.
Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine. He obtains his divine nature only from God (he is homoousious with the Father), and he obtains his human nature solely from Mary (he is homoousious with humanity through the Theotokos). Everything human about Jesus comes from a woman, just as everything human about Eve came from Adam.
When it comes to perception, all that can be visibly discerned about God, and the divine nature, is thus presented to us in union with the human nature in the one man Jesus Christ — but his maleness is not a reflection of something he obtained from God (for God is not male — maleness being a human, not a divine attribute; and there’s plenty in the Fathers to prevent the error of thinking God to be male!); it is rather a part of the human condition, but in this case not a “significant” part except in fulfilling the prophecies concerning Messiah. (This ties in with the repudiation of iconoclasm; thus a woman can be as much an icon of Christ as a gessoed and gilded panel!)
The assertion (made in Inter Insignores) that a human priest must share this one characteristic (maleness) with Jesus in order to be “perceptible” as a priest rests on no doctrinal foundation; in more recently abandoning this assertion, the Roman Church has realized, it is best not to argue these matters, (lest it find itself, as in the case of the arguments advanced on the subject at Trent, having to abandon the explanations) but to appeal to the tradition of a male priesthood, the apostolic college’s monosexual nature, and state that the church does not feel itself competent to make a change. (I see a loophole there, by the way, as if to suggest the church may one day feel itself competent to do so, perhaps in the light of a better understanding…)
So, the issue is the tension between the acknowledged tradition, and a theological principle of greater, indeed foundational, importance.
Tobias, Christopher, and Paul –
Thanks for your comments. (Thanks especially to Tobias for extending the remarks in the original post here.)
It’s worth noting, too, that the theology that regards women as not being made in the image of God, to which Christopher refers, is not dead by a long shot. It is still bearing lots of bad fruit. I just heard a segment on NPR this evening that included an interview with a woman who was told just that by her priest (RC) when she asked to serve at the altar as a girl. That drove her away from Christianity — I am not surprised that when Christian clergy teach falsehoods contrary to Scripture, they drive people away.
So while I do recognize the integrity of the many traditionalists who participate in this conversation in good faith, part of the reason I sound strident at times is because I know that the anti-WO theologies and prejudices that are really widespread don’t rise to the level of more learned discourse on the subject.
I want to add my thanks for the reasoned tone of this discussion.
At the same time, I want to say how strange it feels to me as a woman with a vocation to ordained ministry to read it.
Here’s a not particularly theological exercise — though it does have theological implications. Imagine a blog had a conversation entirely by women, some from traditions that allow the ordination of men, others from traditions that do not, about whether or not men were proper matter for ordination. You are a man listening in. What do you feel? What do you think?
Of course some of us have been raising this kind of question since the 1970s. It is good –and again I thank you for your civility– to reflect and speak, and also very odd to witness this endless conversation yet again, a full generation after very similar ones in many churches. (Including some very fine scholarly and pastoral discussions among Roman Catholics in the 1970s in the wake of both Inter Insiginores and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.) Small wonder that so many have washed their hands of this and ended up in the Women-Church movement.
It also helps me, as a straight ally, understand what my lesbian and gay sisters and brothers experience when people in the church talk about them and not to them.
I know your purpose was not to exclude (and knowing Chris T. personally, I know this would never be his way, on the contrary; he is a most gracious host here, as is Tobias on his blog) but wanted to invite you to stop and think –beyond theologies of ordination, ecclesiologies, and theories of gender– what it is like when we reverse the genders, and what your experience would be if we did so.
Peace to you,
Jane R.
Sorry, typo — that’s Inter Insigniores.
Jane –
Thanks for your comment, and for being gracious about the messy and troubling reality of men discussing women’s ordination without female input. I have tried and failed over the years to figure out how to make these discussions both a safe space for women and a place where anti-WO traditionalists can feel like their arguments are being engaged seriously. Although I think these conversations are positive in the end, I’ve never yet figured out how to strike that balance in a way that doesn’t marginalize or exclude.
The exercise you suggest is a tough one for anyone in a privileged group, but it’s very useful. I remember the first time I read a feminist text that used “she” as a gender neutral pronoun. Although I felt I was fully committed to equality, that choice really stuck in my craw. I was distracted the whole time I read the book by that pronoun — I thought it was just a given that equality implied choosing truly gender neutral words, not compensating the other way. But I walked away with a tiny sliver of the experience women have reading such texts every day. (It also confirmed to me that the fight for equality is not merely about staking out a vision of equal treatment, but using exercises like that in a dialectic that draws people toward equality.)
Actually, Jane, I had a momentary experience of that some years ago at a liturgy celebrated by my sister in Christ Clare. It was in the old chapel at Graymoor (Fr Paul was probably spinning in his tomb just outside!) at the old Eastward facing altar. When Clare reached the part of the Eucharistic Prayer referring to the Incarnation “from the Virgin Mary” it hit me: only women should be priests. The priest isn’t alter Christus, after all, but altera Maria — the one whose agency assists in the coming-again of Christ into the world; just as Mary brought him into the world from her own flesh, so the priest acts almost as midwife in this consecration of the bread and wine to be his body and blood. I’ve never forgotten that moment…
Tobias –
I think you’re absolutely right that that ought to be part of our theology of the priesthood. I posted some thoughts along these lines drawing from Teresa Berger, John Paul II, and Sean Cardinal O’Malley.
To be honest, I’ve read too much (believe it or not) Joseph Ratzinger to buy too deeply into the identification of men with Jesus and the Father on the one hand and women with Mary and the Church on the other. I’m sure Ratzinger has defended those images in places, but in his work on Mary you’ll find very moving accounts of his personal identification with Mary and repudiations of a hyper-masculine Jesus, which one sees, among other places, in American evangelical culture.