God is Not Fair: Some Thoughts on Women's Ordination - Anglican Pastor
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God is Not Fair: Some Thoughts on Women’s Ordination
By Gerald McDermott|January 20th, 2020|Categories: Opinion|Tags: featured, women's ordination|4 Comments
Editor’s Note: The piece below represents the opinion of the author. Anglican Pastor does not take a site-wide position for or against women’s ordination. We do, however, require both clarity and charity. We ask that your responses to it do so as well.
God is not fair.
He deprives men of the most profound and satisfying experience imaginable. Both men and women participate in the creation of another human being, but only women get to carry that little human being inside their body for nine months, nourishing that baby with sustenance from their own body. Only women get to bring that precious child into the world. In many cases, that child will have a more intimate relationship with its mother than with anyone else in the world.
So if God believes in equality, it is a different equality from what most think. God’s equality does not mean giving every person the same chance to do everything.
Neither did Jesus’ equality mean that. He treated women in revolutionary ways, and had female disciples like Mary who studied with him in ways normally impossible for Jewish women. Women traveled with him and talked with him in public in ways that violated cultural conventions. So when he chose his twelve apostles, it wasn’t the culture or his own fears that prevented him from including women.
This is difficult to think through, because we want to believe that Jesus must have believed in equality as we do. But he did not.
Nor did Paul. Several times he told wives to be submissive to their husbands. He never told husbands to submit to their wives. Sure, he told the members of the Ephesian church to submit to one another (Eph. 5:21). But then his very next word was for wives to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22). At that point, we expect him to follow that up with a word to husbands to submit to their wives, but he does not.
He said women were not to exercise authority (presumably as a pastor in the church) over a man (1 Tim. 2:12). Women—not men—were to have a symbol of authority on their heads (1 Cor. 11:10). A bishop, presbyter, and deacon was—each one of them—to be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. 3:2; 3:12; Titus 1:6).
Was Paul so man-focused because his culture would not permit female religious leaders and he could never imagine such a thing?
Hardly. The ancient world was full of altars and shrines with priestesses at Rome, Corinth, and every major city. Ephesus was dominated by an enormous temple to Artemis (Diana), led by a female priest and her female assistants. So female presbyters in the early Church would not have been revolutionary. They were all over the Mediterranean world, and particularly in the backyard of one of the early Church’s most important centers. Yet none of the elders in the church at Ephesus was female (Acts 20:17-38); all the articles and pronouns designating the elders are masculine.
But are we missing something? Is Paul simply talking about our fallen condition, whereas Jesus wants to redeem us from fallenness and bring us to the new creation which recreates things before the fall?
The problem is that Paul argues for male headship based on things before the fall—not after the fall. He says women should not be pastors because "Adam was formed first, then Eve" (1 Tim. 2:13). That is an argument based on the situation before the fall. He told the Corinthians that men don’t need to cover their heads because "man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man" (1 Cor. 11:8-9). Again, Paul appealed to the situation before the fall.
Perhaps we are revolted by what Paul said and by what Jesus did (or did not do) because they violate what recent cultural mavens have told us. Men and women are absolutely equal in every way, we have been told. Therefore they should have the same role in every sphere of life, and many of us Christians have deduced that they should have the same roles in the church. After all, didn’t Paul himself say that "in Christ there is not male and female" (Gal. 3:28)?
He did indeed. Yet this is in the midst of his passionate argument that we are "justified by faith" (Gal. 3:24) and not "by the law" (Gal. 3:11). In other words, you don’t have to be a Jew or a Jewish man who obeys Jewish law to be saved. All that matters is whether you—Jew or gentile, man or woman—give allegiance to the Jewish messiah (Gal. 3:26). As long as any of these are baptized into that messiah, they have "put on messiah" (Gal. 3:27).
This famous verse—Galatians 3:28—has nothing to do with family or church ministry roles but with salvation through the Jewish messiah. Men and women alike are saved by baptism and faith in that same Jewish messiah, and that has nothing to do with their roles in the home or church.
Paul’s point is equality in justification by the Jewish messiah, not equality in roles in the home or church.
We late moderns want to apply Galatians 3:28 to the home and church, but Paul refused to.
That is our conundrum in the ACNA. We want to extend Galatians 3:28 to realms where Paul and Jesus clearly did not go.
What do we do? Should we feel a bit uncomfortable about trying to improve on what Paul and Jesus thought and did?
Gerald R. McDermott is Teaching Pastor at Christ the King Anglican Church in Hoover, AL.
4 Comments
- Pete January 20, 2020 at 9:38 am - ReplyExcellent article. One of the things that got me to change my view on this issue is that after Adam and Eve both sinned, it was Adam who was first held accountable. This clearly shows the principle of headship. Anglicans that are supporting WO have to go to great lengths to explain away plain passages of scripture. Usually, this done through cultural arguments. But those arguments don’t stand up when fully evaluated. The issue also gets consulted when one speaks of "women in ministry " in general terms. No traditionalist rejects women in ministry. The issue is ordination specifically to the presbyter/bishop offices. It is my prayer that my fellow Anglican brothers and sisters who support WO, would let the Scriptures and the church"s universal and unanimous voice up to the 20th century, to rethink their position even if has social costs to do so.
- Dawson Vosburg January 20, 2020 at 10:02 am - ReplyIt sounds to me like you think these are arguments egalitarians haven’t heard before and scriptures they’ve never thought about. It’s academically irresponsible to fail to read those you critique. I implore you to sit down with works by evangelical and Anglican scholars who seek to be fully faithful to Scripture and tradition who have in fact read the passages you are reading and don’t make the same conclusions. Will Witt, N.T. Wright, and John Stackhouse might be a good place to start. If you’re unwilling to actually read and engage your challengers, what credit will they give you when you make arguments against straw opponents who think "God is fair, therefore women priests"?
- Daniel Logan January 20, 2020 at 2:02 pm - ReplyI would only mention: it is worth bearing in mind that the Rev. Dr. Gerald McDermott, Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School and Director of the Institute of Anglican Studies, has not only read those he critiques, but is in fact personal friends with many of them (e.g. N.T. Wright). One would be hard-pressed to find someone more familiar with the importance of academic responsibility than Dr. McDermott, who has had made regular contributions of both scholastic and popular works for decades.
- Alice C. Linsley January 20, 2020 at 2:53 pm - ReplyIn the context of the biblical worldview, gender equality, as it is formulated today, is meaningless. When Anglicans contemplate reception of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, it is appropriate to see before them a masculine form. Likewise, in contemplation of the Annunciation and the Incarnation we properly have before us an image/icon of Mary, not a masculine form. Likewise, Scripture presents couplets with a male and female figure.The moreh/prophet at the Oak between Ai and Bethel has a counterpart in Deborah at the Palm between Bethel and Ramah. The blood on the doors ordered by Moses to save the households has a counterpart in the scarlet cord hung from the window by Rahab to save her household. The binary feature of the biblical worldview denies the dualistic eqalitarianism of gender equality.