Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: Test Case for Anglican Authority

by James E. Griffiss

from Towards a New Theology of Ordination: Essays on the Ordination of Women, pp.61-70.

Ed. by Marianne H. Micks and Charles P.Price, Virginia Theological Seminary,
Greeno, Hadden &Company Ltd. Somerville, Mass., 1976

James E. Griffiss is Professor of Philosophical and Systematic Theology and Sub-Dean at Nashotah House. He was a consultant to the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops at their June, 1975 meeting.

What I propose here is not to argue for the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate in the sense of attempting to give reasons for doing so. I do not assert that women ought to be ordained. Rather I attempt to explore some of the theological questions which are raised by the possibility that the Church may authorize the ordination of women. As will be evident to anyone reading it, the argument is from a fairly conservative point of view. Personally I have some reservations about the advisability of ordaining women, which are not, strictly speaking, theological. At the same time, however, I am convinced that the theological objections which are raised by some opponents are not only groundless but in fact would be very dangerous if used in other areas. They represent a point of view which is not consistent with a sound theological method. My purpose, therefore, is to explore those two areas which are especially important for Anglican theological method: the authority of scripture and tradition, and the eucharistic role of the ordained priest. In so doing, I shall hope to show that if the ordination of women should be permitted by the Church, that action will not represent a fundamental departure from the doctrine and worship of the Episcopal Church, although it would, of course, represent a change in the discipline of the Church. That the Episcopal Church, as an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion, has the authority to make such a change in discipline is without question. Whether it is prudent for us to do so will have to be decided by those having pastoral care for the Church and not by theologians.

—I—

The Anglican Church claims and acknowledges three basic and fundamental sources for its belief and practice: Holy Scripture and tradition, as they are understood and reasonably interpreted. It was the appeal to scripture, tradition, and reason which enabled the Anglican divines to avoid what they saw as the extreme positions of Geneva and Rome at the time of the Reformation, and it has remained a constant theme of Anglican theological method. As Anglicans we have rejected, on the one hand, a fundamentalist view of scripture and tradition and, on the other hand, an infallible magisterium or papacy. We have had to be content with a theological method which cannot lay claim to absolute certainty, but which can only look to patient and reasoned investigation. For that reason we have throughout our history been engaged in what has frequently been a painful voyage of discovery in order to discern what it is that God requires of us as a people. Sometimes we have made mistakes and other times we have followed the truth. But through it all we have had to ask ourselves over and over again what authority do scripture and tradition have for us and how are we to understand and interpret them. More particularly we have had to ask what importance there is for our understanding of scripture and tradition in the scientific, philosophical, and cultural changes which take place in the world. Those changes have frequently affected our understanding of ourselves as a church and have required of us new developments in our understanding of the faith. For that reason, Anglicanism has been more sensitive to changes in society than any other ecclesiastical body.

In our theologcial history it is possible to say that we have generally decided that in our interpretation of scripture and tradition we must be open to two things of great theological importance. First we have recognized that the Holy Spirit works in the world as well as in the church. Because we have had neither an infallible book nor an infallible magisterium, we have not been able to define in a narrow sense how God may choose to direct us, nor have we been able to deny the possible validity of secular currents. They, like everything else, must be patiently and reasonably investigated. Second, we have recognized that all theological speculation must be rooted in the pastoral life of the church. Theological speculation in Anglicanism has always been derived from and directed towards the situation of Christians in the world. It is not insignificant that the best Anglican theology has been written not by academics but by pastors. It has been the pastoral problem which has presented the question to the theologian, not the other way around.

These two tendencies in Anglican theology have their weaknesses, and one would not want to suggest that they be universal for other Christian bodies. But they have been our particular calling in the theological community. As a result we have been required to explore the question of the authority of scripture and tradition in a manner that is peculiarly our own. In the current discussion of the ordination of women that peculiar approach is of great importance, for it can, perhaps, give us a theological freedom which is not at the present time available to other theological traditions.

The basis for our understanding of the authority of scripture and tradition has been our conviction that both give us in different ways a fundamental witness to the historic life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Their authority is that to which they witness—Christ himself; they are the words which Christian people have spoken about the Word of God and the deeds which they have done in his name. As such they must be evaluated, understood, and interpreted by the church in every time and place. This stance is what the greatest of Anglican theologians, Richard Hooker, meant when he talked about reason. Reasonable people must apply themselves to a continuing re-examination of Christian belief and practice.

For us Anglicans, Holy Scripture has a primary and fundamental authority because it is the witness of the apostolic community to the event of Christ. It provides us with the first theological interpretation of Jesus by the church, and with the beginning of the history of the church as it developed after the Lord’s resurrection. That priority is its primary authority, and Anglicans have generally insisted that one section or part cannot be interpreted out of its historical context. Because we have seen Holy Scripture as a historical document we have taken seriously the consequences of a scientific investigation of its sources and development. We have, therefore, been able to accept and use theological and historical exegesis in our interpretation of scripture, rather than regarding it as a source for proof-texts or as a developed theological system. For that reason the theological use of Holy Scripture must search out that to which it bears witness in its historical and social context, recognizing its authority not in isolated words or phrases but in the commission given to the church to preach Christ.

—II—

In the matter of the ordination of women, Holy Scripture clearly does not say that women ought to be ordained to the priesthood. Neither does it say that men ought to be ordained to the priesthood. It does, however, provide us with the reasons why we as a church may and must make such historical and theological interpretations. The ordained ministry, as we now know it, has its origin and justification in Holy Scripture, but the structure and exact nature of that ministry is not specifically laid out for us. The ordained ministry developed as the church interpreted the apostolic commission. The ordination of women requires a new insight into some areas of Holy Scripture which we may not have been able to see in the past because we were concerned with other, equally important matters. That has happened to the church on many occasions in the past—the immorality of slavery being the most obvious example. But the principle which is involved for a church which claims to deal with Holy Scripture reasonably is a willingness to re-examine its origins.

For Anglicans, tradition is the witness of an ongoing historical community which has attempted to interpret the Gospel and its own past under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Tradition for us is a living reality—our history as a people. Within it one can discover many different interpretations of the Gospel, but always the continuity of witness to the event of Christ. Since the continuity of tradition, and hence its authority for us, is its witness to Christ, one can find new practices and new doctrinal formulations emerging as the church responded to new situations. We are not required, as some Roman Catholics are, to discover in tradition the consistent teaching of an infallible papacy. Tradition is not simply what has always been done. It is rather the history of the interpretation of the event of Christ. Like Holy Scripture, tradition does not give us a specific set of rules which we can apply to every situation which confronts us. Nor does it give us a set of final theological propositions. What it gives us is the historical interpretation of Jesus Christ as the community has believed in him. It was on this basis that the great ecumenical councils could attempt to restate and redefine the doctrine of Christ for a new situation. The fathers of the councils departed from biblical categories and language, and they gave greater emphasis to certain traditional interpretations of Jesus, as they attempted to express the nature of their belief for a world that was radically different from that of first century Palestine. In doing this they believed themselves consistent with the intention of scripture while at the same time accepting legitimate development in the theological understanding of Christ. The continuity of tradition, as is also true of Holy Scripture, is Christ himself, who is at the center of both. Since he is himself, as we believe, a radically new event in history and one who makes all things new, we must be cautious, at the very least, about saying that the church can never do what has not been done before. That would not be tradition, but rather idolatry of the past.

The tradition does not provide us with any reasonable evidence that requires women to be ordained. It does provide us with a custom of long standing that they should not be. The question which must now be decided by the church is whether that custom should be abandoned and a new development in the tradition recognized. For Anglicans, the basis for making such a decision must be rooted in the pastoral life of the church. If the pastoral life of the church seems to be requiring the priestly ministry of women (as many argue), then the ordained ministry of the church should take that form which enables it to fulfill its apostolic commission in this time and place. Obedience to this commission is what faithfulness to tradition means—not only for this issue but for any other which may arise in the future.

What has been said about Anglican theological method and the authority of scripture and tradition does not, however, meet the major question raised by the possibility that women may be ordained. Ordination to the priesthood involves the particular action of presiding at the eucharist, the action most characteristic of the ordained priesthood as we know it in the church today. And for many people that action is the area of greatest difficulty. Many within the church are strongly opposed to the ordination of women because they believe that the ordained priest, especially in his sacramental function, necessarily represents the maleness of Christ. They would understand the ordained priest as alter Christus, another Christ, and therefore they believe that the admission of women into the ordained priesthood would radically alter what we must believe about the human nature of Christ and about the eucharist itself.

There is no denying that such an understanding of the ordained priesthood is one of longstanding. Even though such a doctrine is not mentioned in the New Testament, like so many other beliefs and practices it has its roots in the New Testament. It began to appear in the tradition with some of the Fathers, especially in regard to the bishop as the one who represented the fatherhood of God. As the church’s understanding of the eucharist changed and as the ordained priest at the eucharist came more and more to stand for Christ rather than to preside over the assembly, the notion of the priest as alter Christus became in the middle ages an ordinary part of the piety surrounding the eucharist. The priest came to represent Christ to the people as he re-enacted the sacrifice of Christ. Such a development was, I believe, perfectly legitimate, and it has been deeply influential in the piety of many people.

Our present task, however, is to ask ourselves whether that particular development of the ordained priest as alter Christus is essentially and dogmatically linked to the doctrine of the eucharist and of the ordained prisethood. If it is not, then of course a further development can legitimately take place in our interpretation of scripture and tradition. My belief, to put it briefly, is that if we examine the tradition carefully we shall discover that much of our thinking and our feeling about the ordained priesthood derives not from Holy Scripture nor even from the tradition, but from post-tridentine Roman Catholic piety—a piety which presently many Roman Catholics themselves no longer find adequate. If we examine the sources, we may discover the truth of a remark made by C. S. Lewis, that those who do not know their history are frequently enslaved to a fairly recent past.

The scientific and critical investigation of early Christianity shows us one thing quite clearly: that ecclesial institutions were very fluid at the beginning of the church’s history.(1) No one pattern at first existed, but finally a definite pattern did emerge. For the early church, as for us today, the intention of Christ for his church became clear not from his specific words, but from the way in which the church pastorally interpreted his death and resurrection and its own apostolic commission to preach the Gospel. The underlying paradigm for the church in the development of its institutions was the mystery of salvation in Christ. In regard to Holy Orders this pattern is particularly clear. Apparently most of the early local churches were led and governed by a presbytery, one of whose members gradually took oversight of the community through his function of presiding at the eucharist. These leaders became what we now call bishops. The other early order which emerged was the diaconate. It gradually lost its significance until the pastoral need of the church caused its revival in this century. The order of priesthood, as we now know it, is not referred to in the New Testament; it only developed when a bishop delegated to another presbyter the authority to preside at the eucharist. The order of priesthood thus emerged as a distinct office in the church, but it was an office which, like the episcopate and the diaconate, existed within the church, not apart from it. It was an office which was exercised with the whole or general priesthood of the people of God—the laos. The priesthood of the church was constituted by baptism. Hence the ordained priesthood was not opposed to the general, baptismal priesthood and it did not diminish the priestly character of the whole church in baptism. Rather it served then, as it must now, for the historical realization and focus of the priesthood of God’s people.

—III—

From this brief survey of the development of the institutional ministry, there are three conclusions which can be drawn because of their importance for the question now facing the Church.

1. The priesthood of the church is fundamentally the priesthood of the Christ who in his humanity offers himself to God. The priesthood of the church is bestowed in baptism upon every baptized person, for that is the sacrament of Christian vocation. The priesthood of the church is sacramentally focused and made concrete in the bishop and the presbyters who have oversight and who represent the community before God; but what is focused in them is the priesthood of the whole church. The ordained priesthood, as it has developed over the centuries, is a cultic office of the church’s baptismal priesthood. It is, then, correct to speak of the priesthood of all believers, as Martin Luther did at the time of the Reformation. It is this general priesthood which is focused in the ordained priesthood. Martin Luther, however, was wrong in concluding, as he did, that therefore a cultic order of priesthood is not necessary for the Church since every baptized person is a priest. But the reason why he drew such a conclusion is very pertinent not only as Anglicans but also to our present concern.

2. By the time of the Reformation something of fundamental importance about the order of priesthood had been lost sight of in the tradition due to social and political conditions and the development of the idea of priest as alter Christus. The priesthood of the whole church had been supplanted by the priesthood of the ordained priest. So Luther’s protest was right even if his conclusions were wrong. He concluded that the priesthood stood between the laity and God, and as such should be abolished. On the contrary, however, what we can now see more clearly is that it is the priesthood of the whole church through its baptized members which offers the eucharistic sacrifice, not just the ordained priest alone. The ordained priest is the sacramental focus of the priesthood of the Church. He does not stand at the altar by himself but with the people of God. Indeed he is alter Christus, but he is such with the laity through his baptism, not apart from it and not by himself alone. Every Christian is an alter Christus; every Christian is the tangible representation of the priesthood of Christ through baptism into Christ. Therefore the ordained priesthood does not stand between the laity and God, but it stands with the laity in its offering and recalling of the sacrifice of Christ. Within the body of the Church, which as a whole images Christ, there is a hierarchy of order, but it is a pastoral hierarchy of service not of gender, for the Church in its priesthood includes all baptized people.

3. But, Christ himself was a male. Does that say anything about the ordained priesthood? In fact it says more about the doctrine of Christ than it does about the cultic office of the ordained priesthood. Jesus was a male and a Jew; that is the particularity and concreteness of the Incarnation. For the Judaism into which he was born, maleness and jewishness were equally important, because those represent the two basic categories through which, for the Old Testament, human beings can be understood. They are either Jew or gentile, male or female. But we believe that Jesus Christ in his sacrifice on the cross and in his resurrection include all categories—both Jew and gentile, both male and female—because he establishes a new humanity. And we believe we are doing that very thing when we incorporate human beings into Christ in baptism. Christ is not only a man and a Jew; he is the Man in whom men and women, Jew and gentile, are united to God through his high priesthood.

To say anything less would not be faithful to the catholic tradition as it was stated in the ecumenical creeds and in other early christological formulations’ When the church reflected upon the mystery of the Incarnation and when it attempted to state its belief in theological terms, it recognized that the humanity of Christ cannot be identified exclusively with jewishness or maleness. The ecumenical creeds speak always of Christ not as male but as man. While this distinction is obscured for us in English, it is obvious in the Greek language of the creed. Christ is spoken of as anthropos, a term which points beyond the distinction of male and female, rather than as aner, the term which is used in the particular sense of a male. This is not to say the Fathers were anticipating some contemporary theories about androgyny. It is rather to say that the risen Lord creates a new and redeemed humanity which incorporates all of those distinctions which distinguish human beings from one another. The distinctions are incorporated into his priesthood, that priesthood in which the church shares through baptism. It is therefore theologically necessary to say that Jesus in his perfect and full humanity—in his person as the God-Man—is imaged in both male and female, in both Jew and gentile. Whoever presides at the eucharist can image Christ as the Anthropos of God in whom all humanity is redeemed.

There is, I believe, no more reason for saying that the priesthood of Christ cannot be sacramentally focused through a woman than for saving it cannot be sacramentally focused through a gentile. The church, as it responded to its apostolic commission, early decided that in order to be a Christian one did not have to be a Jew. We read the debate in the Book of Acts. The victory which St. Paul won over the other apostles was in its own way a very radical one, even though it may not appear so to us after nineteen hundred years. It represented a significant departure from the tradition of Judaism which had restricted the covenant between God and man to those who were the descendants of Abraham. Paul saw that God’s saving work in Christ extended to all human beings, not just to the Jews, and that all human beings could be incorporated into Christ through baptism. As has so often happened in the past, it may well be that the Holy Spirit at work in the world and new pastoral needs within the community are enabling the Church to see one aspect of scripture and tradition in a new way. Both scripture and tradition are living because they witness to the one who is Lord of all history and all time, and it is possible that the Holy Spirit may lead us into new ways of understanding them.

As I said at the beginning of this paper, there are many practical and prudential questions which must be resolved if the Episcopal Church is to allow the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. But I do believe that, if the Church should decide to do so, it will be a legitimate development within catholic tradition—a new thing, yes. but a development which has its foundation in the only foundation which the Christian community can have, namely, in the mystery of Christ himself. Only the Holy Spirit will show us finally whether we have followed truth. It is important, however, for Anglicans to remember that we began our ecclesiastical history with just such a doubt when we separated ourselves from much custom, piety, and tradition at the time of the Reformation. If we believe that the Holy Spirit has guided this Church into a richer appreciation of its catholic heritage during the past five hundred years, then I see no reason for thinking that we shall be deserted now.

Notes

1. There are many studies of the origins of the ministerial office in the New Testament. The most readily available is Raymond E. Brown, Priest and Bishop (New York: 1970).

2. Again the most readily available edition of the Latin and Greek texts of the Ecumenical Creeds is Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II (New York: 1896).

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