On Being Human: Ordination

A Theological Anthropology - Part 3

[Read the introduction to this series “On Being Human: A Theological Anthropology,” Part 1, “On Being Human: Male and Female” and Part 2, “On Being Human: Sexuality.”]

[WARNING: The material below addresses sex, gender, and sexuality and may be difficult or even triggering to readers who have experienced sexual and/or spiritual abuse.]

The Argument in Outline: Stewardship, Embodiment, and Symbolism

1. Men and women are equal in dignity and worth, and both together have been commissioned to labor in partnership in the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission.

2. Because of their differing bodies and differing powers, men and women have distinct ways of being in the world and different symbolic roles in creation.

3. Jesus is king and governs his church, which is a holy family, a temple people, and his Body, through officers who exercise the keys of the kingdom.

4. Conclusion: Because their bodies enable them to function physically and symbolically as priests, fathers, and heads, and because of the nature of the church and the office of elder/pastor/bishop, only qualified men may be ordained as pastors.

Introduction

For many people in the West today, one of the most difficult doctrines to accept is the teaching that only men may be ordained as pastors, elders, and/or bishops.¹ For thousands of years, this has been the teaching and practice of the church. This means the church has either been very wrong (oppressively so) and blind to what God intends, or this new push for the ordination of women (hereafter, WO) is blind to what the church has always seen. This teaching appears so out of step with modern life that it has led many committed Christians who aim to submit their lives to all that is taught in Holy Scripture to reexamine the historic teaching and practice of the church. Many of these Christians have concluded that the Church has in fact erred on this point. But while I cannot address the many, often very different, arguments revisionist Christians have put forward to justify WO, this post aims to argue in favor of exclusively male ordination to the pastorate (hereafter, EMO) and to address some of those arguments.

My goal is to first address the obstacles we face in even imagining how EMO could be the biblical teaching by attempting to describe the social landscape undermining the traditional view. Second, I hope to highlight an often-overlooked aspect of the debate and then offer three arguments that, I hope, make sense of EMO and rule out WO. Third, I will try to address a number of common objections to EMO and arguments for WO.

This article will not make the case against WO by doing detailed exegesis on the very few passages that speak directly to the issue (1 Timothy 2:8-15; 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 14:33-35). I find the exegetical arguments from these passages against WO convincing,² but I know that many do not.³ In my experience, the issue cannot be settled by debating these passages alone. The larger story of Scripture, our anthropology, and the imagination Scripture forms in us determines what we see in those passages and what counts as a more convincing reading. So please do not regard the absence of such detailed arguments as a lack of concern with the biblical text. I’m trying here to make sense of what I think Scripture teaches in those passages because, like with so many other issues, Scripture seems very foreign to our experience on this question.

1. Obstacles to Imagining and Affirming Biblical Teaching

Before I make a positive case for EMO, I must first address what gives rise to this debate in the first place. In short, the shape of modern life in the West makes EMO unthinkable because of the changes to social life brought about by industrialization and because of the egalitarianism brought about by democratization.⁴

Industrialization and the New Social Landscape

Every day in a host of different contexts, we observe men and women working together in apparently interchangeable ways. The vast majority of middle and upper-class life entails men and women in offices, classrooms, hospitals, studios, laboratories, government agencies, and so forth working side-by-side interchangeably. We see women leading teams, running organizations and schools, providing medical care, delivering speeches and lectures, and doing many things that, in the past, were considered jobs that only men were capable of doing. Given the evidence, most people cannot fathom why leadership in the church should be reserved for men. This not only seems to run against the evidence that women can do what men have been doing (equal ability), but it offends the modern notion of justice (equal rights and opportunity). 

I’m sympathetic to the concern that EMO violates women’s dignity and equality, but I think both of these concerns, while arising from real injustices women have faced, confuse equality with interchangeability. As I have argued before, Christianity teaches the equal value and dignity of women and men. In fact, in a world where men not only ruled but brutally dominated, Christianity brought revolutionary transformation by promoting the well-being and concerns of women. But in the modern era, the push for recognizing the value and importance of women has morphed into attempting to create conditions where the differences between men and women are erased and the two become interchangeable.

This task began as the Industrial Revolution rapidly altered the social landscape in the West. For most of human history, women spent a large portion of their adult life either pregnant or nursing, and families worked together while hunting and gathering, farming, or engaging in a trade or family business. But with industrialization, social life began to change rapidly. Men left the rest of the family at home to work in a factory while women were left to work in the private domain of domesticity. New technologies and products made daily life drastically easier but eliminated or modified much of the work and production performed by women. Whereas men and women had previously worked side by side as partners with obvious but needed differences, labor began to be divided into separate realms: the home for women and the workplace for men. This shift has been devastating to the nature of the household and the stability and health of the family. Over time, women began to feel trapped at home and sought education and a place in the labor market. Because of the new economy and still more technology, more and more work became less and less embodied, enabling men and women to work interchangeably on many things. The legal and cultural protections that developed also made it less and less necessary for women to depend on the protection of fathers, brothers, and husbands, giving women more independence. The drastic gains in the care women receive during pregnancy and the numerous ways men can be involved in helping with young children also contributed to massive changes in the nature of the family.

None of these things are inherently bad, but it’s important to recognize the ways in which these changes have made it harder for us to see the differences between men and women and therefore to appreciate what each contributes uniquely to things like family, civic, and ecclesial life. To be sure, in the past, there were many things society assumed women could not do that we now know they’re perfectly capable of doing. This shift in perspective has made us skeptical that any of the limits we might ground in our bodies can be transcended culturally or technologically. But as I argued in a previous post, our sexed bodies do give limits to and direct the life we can and should live. While there are many things both men and women can do, the fact remains that our different bodies produce different ways of being in the world and no technology or social arrangement can alter that. If we attempt to treat men and women as interchangeable, we’ll do damage to people and society as a whole.

We have a hard time understanding why it’s relevant, but in regard to WO, it matters that only men can be fathers and that only women can be mothers. This matters not only in reproduction but in the nurture of children both when they are young and when they are old. Just as no man can be a mother, so also no woman can be a father. As we will see below, the male body possesses particular powers that shape his way of being in the world suited to the office of pastor. 

The Egalitarianism of Democratization

The second obstacle to the plausibility of EMO is the egalitarian and democratic spirit of the modern age which has infused the value of equality into almost every area of life. What was once an impulse to ensure the rights of all people to participate in establishing and carrying out government has now morphed into a crusade to eliminate every inequity in society even when an inequity is not the result of an injustice. We no longer aim for a society where everyone may vote, have equality before the law, and pursue a happy life. Now we aim to eliminate any differences in outcome among various classes of people based on race, class, sex, or sexual orientation in any aspect of the social system. The problem is that some inequities between men and women are the result of bodily differences. It should not surprise us that men in the aggregate will excel over women in some fields. But the opposite is also true. Women in the aggregate will outperform men in other fields, but we tend to ignore those inequities.

This egalitarian spirit also calls for the destruction of the patriarchy or of hierarchy generally. Progressives have argued that before the fall of humanity into sin, humanity was characterized by complete equality and mutuality, so hierarchy in human relationships is a product of the fall. But this reading of Genesis 1-3 does not adequately account for the details of the text or for the way Paul interprets them. In two places, Paul notes that God created the man first (1 Corinthians 11:11-12; 1 Timothy 2:13) in order to argue for the authority of the husband or to forbid female pastors.⁵ Furthermore, the very image of headship, a symbol of leadership and authority, comes from this historical creation of the man before the woman. The claim made by progressive Christians that hierarchy only comes after the fall into sin cannot be maintained.

If we consider the various chapters of the biblical story—creation, fall, and redemption—then we will see 1) some hierarchy as part of God’s original design, 2) numerous cases of abuse of authority throughout the biblical story representing a distortion and perversion of God’s good structure, and 3) redemption in Christ restoring God’s design in a fallen world, eroding the abuses common to legitimate hierarchies, and eradicating false hierarchies. For example, God designed the family to be led by fathers. Because of sin, fathers often abuse their wives and children, but when a husband becomes a Christian and reads the exhortations of the New Testament, he will find he is called to exercise his authority in love. Sinful people are inherently abusive and oppressive. Hierarchy is not inherently abusive, but rather it’s a beautiful gift that orders communal life in the family (Ephesians 6:1; Colossians 3:20; Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:8; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1ff), church (1 Timothy 5:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13; Hebrews 13:17), state (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17), and civic life generally (Ephesians 6:6-8; Colossians 3:22-25; 1 Peter 2:13-18).

In a previous article, I argued that the Christian story gives us different perspectives with which we can consider what it means to be human: created nature, fallen nature, and redeemed nature. If we are going to think properly about the question of WO, we must understand that redemption in Jesus Christ restores created nature and takes it to its proper end. God’s grace does not destroy our bodily designs and social structures, nor does it bring about some wholly new arrangement that transcends the natural structure and design. This is important to get right because revisionist or progressive Christians in favor of WO often point to the abuse of, oppression of, or sinful attitude towards women as evidence that we should now, in light of Christ, support WO. But abuse does not negate right use. In other words, it’s a mistake to suggest EMO is rooted in the fall rather than in God’s initial creation design or to suggest that Jesus brings about a new reality that transcends or does something different than restore the creation design. 

Our bodies determine the roles available to us (child, sibling, spouse, parent, ruler) and shape how we’re to inflect what it means to be human in God’s image (son/daughter, brother/sister, etc.). Furthermore, God’s design in the family and the church involves structural hierarchy even though men and women are to live as partners in God’s mission. This is not strange, for almost all teams, communities, and societies have some sort of leadership hierarchy. This does not mean all relationships should be reduced to relations of authority and submission as “traditionalist" Christians tend to do, for, as I have argued before, we all play various roles marked by different types of relations characterized by mutuality, partnership, and equality. But contrary to progressive, egalitarian Christians, authority and submission do characterize some of our relationships (i.e. parent/child).

A Renewed Imagination Shaped by Reconnecting with Our Bodies

At bottom, Modern people generally cannot imagine EMO because the shape of modern life obscures our bodily differences and ideologically predisposes us to view hierarchy and inequity as inherently unjust. But the fact that there are male and female bodies rather than just generic human bodies matters socially, psychologically, reproductively, and symbolically. Together, a renewed Christian appreciation for male and female bodies and a renewed understanding of the biblical story can provide an imagination for what Scripture teaches about EMO. 

None of what I have said thus far establishes EMO. It merely seeks to explain why it is hard for us to be open to the idea that God created the office of pastor for qualified men only, and so to the positive case I will now turn. 

2. The Basis for Exclusively Male Ordination to the Pastorate

The positive case for EMO depends upon solid biblical and historical ecclesiology grounded in the imagination the Biblical story provides. Debates about WO very often get nowhere because Christians fail to first address what exactly it means to be ordained and what the structure of the church should be. The debate then descends into absurdity as parties argue about why women may or may not teach Sunday school and seminary classes, serve as ushers, or lead a small group. Because Christians in the West have lost a Biblical way of seeing and inhabiting the world, churches are imagined to be very different sorts of societies than God intends. 

In particular, because of the economic shape of American life and the dominance of consumerism, the majority of churches today are structured and function like corporations providing “spiritual goods and services” with a CEO, board of directors, and staff, and so it makes little sense to exclude women from those roles given the good work women do in similar organizations all around the world. Churches that invent their own modern, leadership structures that imitate corporate or political polity have no legitimate basis for excluding women from leadership. 

To understand EMO, we must have a Biblical vision for the character and structure of the Church. The case I’m laying out, the case I believe best conforms with Scripture, depends on this. Therefore, it will not make sense to those with a loose, pragmatic, or low (autonomous and congregational) view of church polity. However, those in high church contexts that take church history and Scripture more seriously on this topic may resonate or at least feel the weight of the arguments below.

First: Jesus Governs His Church through Pastors

The Church may not take any shape we can imagine or find practical. Neither is it the case that the Church can be reduced to any informal gathering of two or three people indwelt by the Holy Spirit.⁶ Jesus is King and Head of the Church, enthroned at the right hand of the Father, ruling and nourishing the church by His Word and Spirit. This rule is exercised through officers given to the Church (Ephesians 4:7-16) as they preach the Word and administer the sacraments. Initially, these officers included the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, and Pastor/Teachers, but now that the foundation of the Church has been established, Pastor/Teachers continue as the ordinary officers of the Church in this age. Therefore, pastors are to govern, teach, and exercise discipline over the church as ministers under Christ’s rule. 

To ordain is to recognize, set apart, and confer authority to a person to hold and exercise an office (1 Timothy 5:22; 2 Timothy 1:6). Pastoral ordination is a public affirmation that a man has been called by God, through His Church, to rule in the church as a minister of Christ by preaching the gospel and administering baptism and the Lord’s Table as stewards and guardians of the doctrine which has been handed down to us through the Apostles and enshrined in Scripture. Strictly speaking, pastors are to “exercise the keys of the kingdom,” that is, they are to open the doors of Christ’s church to all who believe the gospel and to maintain the life of the Church with the Word (See Matthew 16:17-19).

Pastors do not create laws or rule by the imposition of their own wisdom. Pastors interpret God’s Word and apply it to the circumstances of their particular church and congregants. In so far as they are teaching God’s Word, they command and require obedience. But in so far as they deviate from Scripture and impose their own laws or wisdom on others, they abuse their office and bear no authority on such matters. They are like judges who interpret and apply the law, issuing judgments. They are not like legislators who make laws. They bear executive authority like kings when it comes to carrying out God’s Word in good order in their circumstances, but they do not possess the authority to issue their own decrees, for Christ alone is King.

Understanding the nature of ordination and the authority of pastors is critical to navigating the question of WO. Far too often, pastors have ruled their churches with a distorted understanding of their authority and have abused the power they possess in pulpits and councils. Many pastors exceed their authority by binding the consciences of their congregants with manmade teachings and opinions. Other pastors have failed to involve congregants in ministries and decisions that shouldn’t be limited to pastors. 

In such cases, it is easy to see why people might conclude that EMO is nothing more than protecting male privilege. But if we have a more constrained and clear understanding of what pastors are authorized to do and what their responsibilities do and do not include, we can begin to envision churches where both men and women have important, valuable, and mutually enriching roles to play in the life of the church. 

Second: The Church Exists Institutionally and Organically

The Church must take a particular shape institutionally (doctrine, government, discipline, and worship) but churches have a much richer and complex life than the formal institutional structure. Churches exist organically and possess a dynamic social shape that’s fitting of the context and the particular people involved. Discussions about WO often get confused on this point as well. Some churches consider certain activities and behaviors (hospital visitations, leading a prayer meeting, teaching a Bible study, etc.) to be the role of pastors while others might see these as activities open to various members of the church.⁷

The organic life of the church is far less defined for us in Scripture than the institutional shape. Even institutionally, aside from the particular offices of Pastor and Deacon, churches have the freedom to establish formal leadership and staff in a variety of ways. So there has often been a lot of overreach by Christians that have unnecessarily limited what women are allowed to do in churches and also a certain degree of recklessness in thinking carefully about the activities in which only pastors should engage. The argument I’ve been assembling here aims to focus narrowly on reserving the office of Pastor to which belongs responsibility for matters of doctrine, government, discipline, and worship to qualified men while allowing women to use their gifts broadly for the good of the church in other formal and informal ways. There will still be a feminine and masculine distinction in the organic life of the church, but given that organic life is less structured, churches will find men and women working together in their own context in a way that best fits.

Third: The Church is a Temple People, a Kingdom Family, and the Body of Christ

Finally, we come to the heart of the argument that speaks to both the institutional and organic life of the Church. God’s instruction that only qualified men may be ordained as pastors is grounded in the fact that only male bodies are suited, functionally and symbolically, to pastor given that the Church is a Temple People, A Kingdom Family, and the Body of Christ. When we attend to the rich imagery Scripture uses to describe and characterize the Church and we inhabit the Biblical imagination these images provide, we are able to better understand the role pastors play in ways that diverge from the modern, corporate imagination that shapes so many people’s understanding of the Church and the pastoral office today.

The Church as the Temple of God

At creation, God created the Garden of Eden to be a sanctuary or temple on the earth where He would dwell with mankind. Humanity was tasked with multiplying and exercising dominion over the earth and extending this Garden so God’s glory would fill the earth. God formed the Man first as a priest of God’s temple, to guard the sanctuary of God, to teach God’s law, to feed God’s people from the Tree of Life, and to lead worship.⁸ Corresponding to this, Pastors are to guard the holy people of God against all uncleanness (sin and false teaching), to teach God’s Word to God’s people, to administer communion, and to lead God’s people in worship. Pastors guard, teach, and lead worship.

Guarding the church from uncleanness and teaching the Word of God is a type of warfare (2 Corinthians 10:3-6; Ephesians 6:12-13). Much of Paul’s ministry and the ministry of ordinary pastors involves protecting the sheep and guarding the church from error and from the spread of sin (1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 1:12). Priests are soldiers who at times have to go into the combat of conflict. In every age, pastors must guard the church and battle against false teachers within the church (2 Corinthians 11:13; 1 Timothy 6:2-7). But historically, there have been many seasons where pastors have had to battle the powers of the world by suffering at the hands of rulers or the mob as leaders of the church. Men have bodies that are built to engage in these conflicts, so the Church should protect women from the front lines of these battles by only ordaining qualified men.

God dwells by His Spirit with His people. When we gather to worship God, they gather around God’s Word and Table whereby our covenant with God is renewed. Worship rehearses the redemptive story through a biblically scripted conversation between God and the Church. Pastors and congregation both perform liturgical roles in this dialogue. Because male bodies were created to function as symbols of God in relation to His people (see my earlier article), only men may serve as pastors (1 Timothy 2:1-15). Pastors, as ministers of Word and sacrament, act and speak on God’s behalf to the people, and the congregation responds in turn.

Jesus Christ is the true high priest in God’s Temple, yet qualified men serve as priests in the Church.

The Church as God’s Kingdom Family

The Church is the household of God (1 Timothy 3:15). As those adopted into God’s family through faith in Christ, we’re all brothers and sisters in God’s household. Yet there are differences in maturity such that some are older and some are younger in the faith, which is why some are described as fathers and mothers (Romans 16:13; 1 Corinthians 4:15; 1 Timothy 1:2; and especially 1 Timothy 5:1). Elders are those of greater maturity in the faith, and the pastoral office fits within this class (1 Peter 5:5). Just like in a family where fathers are finally responsible for exercising oversight, instructing, guiding, and disciplining, so also in the church, the elders are fathers who exercise oversight, instruct, guide, and discipline. Mature women should come alongside the elders as helpers who provide counsel and assistance as they model faithfulness and offer informal instruction (see Acts 18:26; Colosians 3:16; Titus 2:3-5). So the Church needs fathers and mothers.

The familial nature of God’s people is rooted in the Old Testament where Israel, composed of families/clans/tribes with fathers as the heads, formed synagogues in every town. These assemblies would gather weekly on the Sabbath to pray and read the Scriptures together led by elders, that is, by the heads of several of the families of that community. Often, these elders would hire a Levite to be a permanent teacher of the Law in that town.

Given that most churches today do not function like large extended families but like corporations, it’s no surprise that this familial dynamic where elder saints, fathers and mothers, are intimately involved in the lives of congregants, is foreign to most Christians today. If a church is like a corporation, denying women ordination just appears plain sexist. But if the church is a family, then denying women ordination as pastors simply means that women can be mothers but cannot be fathers.

Jesus Christ is our brother and God our Father, yet qualified men are to serve as fathers in the kingdom family of God.

The Church as the Body of Christ

One of the most familiar images for the Church is the Body of Christ. In this image, each member plays an important role in the functioning of the body to collectively carry out the ministry of Jesus in this present evil age. Jesus Christ is the head of this body, that is, he represents the church and is the source of direction and rule over the entire body for the purpose of service.

Paul explicitly calls the husband the head of his wife and, by extension, his family (Ephesians 5:23-24), and this is a continuation of terminology and imagery used throughout the Old Testament (see many OT genealogies).⁹ Pastors are called rulers (1 Timothy 5:17), a term connected to headship in Ephesians 1:20-23 & Colossians 2:10. They are said to be leaders keeping watch over the congregation (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13; Hebrews 13:7, 17).

The body metaphor is also rooted in the Old Testament people of God. Israel, when numbered and organized to journey through the wilderness (see Numbers) or to return from exile (see 1 Chronicles 1-9), is composed of families/clans/tribes as different members with their own place and role as a body. This body would act as God’s instrument in the world in both salvation and judgment.

Jesus is the head and ruler of His body, the Church, yet qualified men are to serve as heads and rulers in the Body of Christ.

Taken together, the imagery used for the Church in Scripture shows us that the office of pastor requires a male body functionally and symbolically. Jesus is the high priest in God’s Temple people, and pastors are priests in God’s Temple. God is our Father, and yet pastors are fathers to the family of God. Christ is the head and ruler of the Body, and pastors are heads or rulers in the body of Christ. This in no way diminishes the roles of women or non-ordained men, for the Church is a Spirit-filled worshipping people, a family of brothers and sisters who are together heirs of Christ’s kingdom, and a body of mutually dependent yet various members working together to build up the Church and carry out the mission to make disciples of all nations as witnesses of the coming kingdom. 

By themselves and abstracted from the imaginative framework of Scripture, it’s understandable why the traditional arguments against WO don’t make a lot of sense on their own. But once we have gained a vision of what the Church is to be and what therefore pastors are, it makes a lot more sense that Jesus chose only men to be his Apostles, that Paul forbids women from public teaching, that all the pastors in the New Testament are men, and that the qualification lists for pastors assume they’re to be men.

3. Objections and Other Matters

With the positive case outlined, many objections still likely remain. While I cannot possibly address every objection, I have tried to focus on some of the most serious or common that exist today with the exception of those grounded in debates about particular proof texts. I have tried to show above that the traditional readings of the proof texts are correct by pointing to the underlying logic of Scripture regarding male and female bodies and church office.

Objection #1: The Church’s historic teaching was based on misogyny and not Scripture.

The best and most comprehensive version of this objection and the one that seems to have gained the most support recently comes from William Witt in his book Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. Quoting church fathers, medieval teachers, and Protestant Reformers, Witt argues that the church’s historic teaching has been rooted in the belief that women are inferior to men and/or that women are inherently more villainous and/or gullible. He claims it is hatred of women that has been the real reason why the Scriptures have been interpreted to deny WO. But now that we know women are not ontologically inferior to men and can provide alternative interpretations to the relevant texts, there is no good justification to deny them ordination any longer. He criticizes modern attempts to maintain EMO while rejecting the alleged basis for this teaching, saying modern “traditionalist Christians” or “complementarians” are inventing new arguments never employed by the church in order to maintain a teaching that has always been rooted in error.

Witt is correct that when theologians in the past gave explanations for the Scriptural commands of the New Testament about church office, many often gave reasons not provided by Scripture which did express beliefs about the ontological inferiority or villainy of women. Witt provides numerous selections to demonstrate this. However, Witt’s selection of quotes across centuries does not always reveal what he claims. Many of the selections cited in his book that he interprets as espousing ontological inferiority are better understood as recognizing something we moderns have a hard time seeing, that is, the relative strengths of the male and female body. Women are inferior to men in some respects while being superior to men in others. This was a fact of life that pre-modern people freely recognized because it was unavoidable. In many cases, Witt sees misogyny because he assumes the statements are universal (“women are inferior in every respect”) rather than narrow (“women are, broadly, inferior with respect to the particular matter at hand”). While we balk at making these sorts of statements today, pre-Modern people were more clear-eyed in recognizing the relative strengths of each sex. 

Early in his book, Witt says:

If an argument is to be made against the ordination of women, it needs to be an actual argument that makes the case that only male human beings can be ordained by virtue of something specifically significant to their being male, and that excludes women from being ordained by virtue of something specifically significant to their being female. The burden of proof is thus on those who oppose women's ordination...Any argument against women’s ordination needs then to be a properly theological argument, and it needs to make the case that there is something in the very nature of women as a class that makes it inappropriate or inherently impossible to exercise ordained ministry.” 

While I disagree with the overall argument of Witt’s book, I think he’s exactly right on this point. And this is exactly the case I’ve sought to make throughout these articles. I have not argued from the complete inferiority of women but from the differences between men and women and the nature of the church and the pastoral office that make women inferior with respect to the particular pastoral office. While it’s true that many clearly did view women as inferior or villainous, opposition to WO has always been rooted in the differences between men and women, the historic practice of Israel, and an honest and legitimate reading of the New Testament prohibitions. The shape of social life did not give the church any reason to doubt this understanding of Scripture and to change this practice until the shifts of the Modern Era.  Furthermore, the shape of social life before Modernity gave those before us a much greater appreciation for the differences between male and female bodies (as I have argued before) and for their differing strengths.

Objection #2: Women have been given the gift of teaching/preaching and have been called by the Holy Spirit to preach.

Many insist that God has called women to preach and this is evidenced by their ability to preach powerfully. However, we must remember that just because a person is an effective and seemingly powerful preacher does not mean they are called by God to be a pastor. Both Scripture (see 2 Corinthians) and experience (consider the many church scandals over the past decade involving famous preachers) warn against this logic.

That said, given that many men follow their subjective sense of calling over the biblical requirements, it’s not surprising that many women who feel called and gifted to preach will likely follow their subjective sense of calling as well. Few today will be persuaded by arguments such as the one above if they feel God has told them individually what they’re to do. But as with many other situations where a person feels led by God in a particular direction, we must not conflate our subjective discernment, desires, or abilities with God’s will.

Furthermore, spiritual gifts are not the same as abilities. All of our abilities and talents are gifts from God because God is our Creator and He providentially works all things. Every good thing we have is a gift. But our natural or cultivated skills and abilities are not normative regarding our role in the body of Christ. We are to serve in Christ’s body according to need, edification, and rule. Sometimes this aligns with our strengths, and sometimes it does not. We cannot infer our role in the local church merely by pointing to what we want to do or are good at doing.

Objection #3: Women are just as capable of being pastors as men.

This judgment and objection are related to the prior objection about gifting and calling, but it’s slightly different in that it’s a broader claim about the interchangeability of men and women. I have tried to argue throughout my articles that men and women are not interchangeable, and that, on the whole, general differences exist between men and women in regard to how each moves and functions in the world and what men and women symbolize, respectively.

If we look narrowly at some pastoral functions, there is a lot that pastors do that women are perfectly capable of doing as well as men. Women are just as capable of thinking critically and theologically, speaking publicly, and leading teams and organizations. The Modern world has demonstrated this to be the case. This is because men and women are both human with more in common than what’s different about us. But we do inflect a different way of being human in the world, and these inflections matter when it comes to church office.

Women cannot be men or bring what men bring to pastoral ministry. She cannot be a father, a priest, or a head/ruler. She cannot fully lead the Church in ministry or worship because she doesn’t have the body for it. In the same way, a man cannot fully be a mother or sister even though he may be able to function in many similar ways. Furthermore, a woman cannot be the living symbol that a man can be.

Women should be encouraged to learn, study, and teach Scripture and theology. No one should be prevented from studying deeply in order to know God, grow in wisdom, and train others to be mature disciples. Women should be incorporated into discerning what’s best for a local church on any number of decisions including the vision and direction. Women should be involved in caring for church members and confronting sin. But in all these things, they must be helpers that advise and assist such that pastors bear the final responsibility for leading the Church. 

Objection #4: Women were the first witnesses of the resurrection and proclaimed the gospel to the Apostles, so there evidently were women preachers and there should be today as well.

Of all the arguments I’ve heard, this one is treated most often as a slam dunk, case-closed argument. But it is perhaps the weakest argument for WO because it is a false analogy. I don’t know of anyone who argues that women should not share the good news of Christ’s resurrection with others. All Christians are indeed witnesses and proclaimers. This is a universal privilege. But bringing the good news to our friends, family, and neighbors is not the same as preaching to the assembled church, and it isn’t the same as sitting among the elders to rule a church.

Objection #5: There are female prophets in the Bible and there was at least one female Apostle, so women should be ordained as pastors today.

It is true that there are several women named as prophets or prophetesses in both the Old and New Testaments.¹⁰ Furthermore, one of these prophetesses, Deborah, was a Judge in Israel. Further still, the New Testament teaches that women will and may prophesy.

However, we must distinguish between what has often been called the general offices of prophet, priest, and king that all humans (by nature of being made in God’s image) and all Christians (by nature of their baptism) inhabit and the special offices of prophet, priest, and king that only qualified men inhabit.

Prophetesses were women who held the general office and are not, therefore, analogous to pastors in that they do not rule and guard the people of God. Prophesying is not the same thing as preaching the Word publicly to the gathered church. Furthermore, special office prophets were called directly by God rather than ordained into a public vocation through human, institutional means, and they rarely had official positions of leadership in Israel. Moses was an exception because he uniquely served as a mixture of prophet, priest, and king. There’s no indication that any prophetesses ever served in an official capacity. They all seem to have unofficial roles where they spoke from God to Israel in ordinary and private circumstances. This seems to be the case with prophetesses in the New Testament as well (See Acts 2:17; 21:9; 1 Corinthians 14:1-40).

As for the Judge, Deborah, she differed from other Judges in that she never led Israel or an army but stood out among those holding the general office. As a mother of Israel, a counselor, and a truth-teller who sat and decided cases under a palm tree in the hill country during a time when Israel lacked central leadership because they had no king, she called on Barak to step up and lead.

At the very least, these great women who faithfully served the Lord demonstrate that women should not be silenced or relegated to merely passive participation in the body of Christ. God’s people have always needed mothers who give counsel, teach, rebuke, go on missionary journeys, and speak God’s words to God’s people. For example, in Acts 18:24-28 we learn that Priscilla instructed Apollos who needed a deeper understanding of Scripture to attend his powerful preaching skills. The few verses that speak of women needing to be silent in the churches (1 Corinthians 14:34; 1 Timothy 2:11-12) must be understood narrowly about a particular type of speech (public proclamation of the Word) rather than absolutely as forbidding any speech in church or a teaching role anywhere.

Finally, it is not true that there was at least one female Apostle. The supposed evidence for this claim comes from Romans 16:7 where Junia and, likely, her husband Andronicus are said to be “well know to/among the apostles/Apostles.” This verse is loaded with ambiguities that are hotly debated, and that alone should give us pause when it comes to reversing a long-standing understanding of ordination. Here are a few of the issues involved.

1. Some have argued that Junia is not a woman’s name but a man’s, though this seems unlikely based on the most recent studies. Others have argued that Junia is another name for Joanna, one of the women who traveled with Jesus during his ministry and was a witness to his resurrection. That Paul calls her and Andronicus “kinsmen” and “in Christ before me” suggests that they were Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah early on.

2. Translations differ as to how to read the prepositional phrase and what that suggests about her membership among the Apostles. Was Junia well known to/by/among the Apostles because of her labors and imprisonment with Paul or was she herself well known as an Apostle?

3. If indeed she was considered to be an apostle, what kind? The word can be used to refer to the foundational 12 witnesses to the resurrection appointed by Jesus (Matthew 10:1-4; Acts 1:26), to others that bore equal authority in the early church like Paul and James the brother of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:7-8), or to anyone who served as an official messenger or envoy of a church to another church (see John 13:16; 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25). 

The best reading of this verse is that Junia and her husband traveled with Paul and labored with him in gospel ministry which resulted in imprisonment with Paul which was then reported to the Apostles. But even if Paul is saying Junia was herself an apostle, he almost certainly would be using that term to denote her role as an official messenger. By itself, this verse cannot answer the WO question. We have to depend on the larger and more foundational questions these articles have sought to address.

Objection #6: Denying ordination to women as pastors causes abuse, but ordaining women would make churches safer.

This objection is fundamentally different than the others I’ve sought to address in that it makes a moral argument in order to suggest the traditional reading of Scripture must be incorrect. On an existential level, this is perhaps one of the most common reasons why people have abandoned the traditional view of EMO. With an explosion of sexual and spiritual abuse scandals across denominations, networks, and theological traditions, many have concluded that the fundamental problem is that women have not had a seat at the leadership table. If women were allowed to lead, there would be less abuse and abuse would be handled properly.

This objection seems to fall short for two reasons. First, there’s no evidence that the presence of women in leadership will reduce abuse scandals. The #MeToo movement exposed numerous institutions as corrupt and abusive where women have positions of leadership (for example USA / Michigan State University gymnastics, Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly). Furthermore, #ChurchToo shows us that abuse scandals were not limited to churches that only ordain men. Many of the sexual and spiritual abuse scandals involved ministries, churches, and denominations where women served as pastors (for example Willow Creek, L’Arche, Hillsong, Meeting House, The Episcopal Church). What is abundantly clear from these abuse cases is that in almost all of these cases, men are the abusers. This should not surprise us given what we’ve explored about male and female bodies. Generally, men are stronger and more aggressive, and what is needed to oppose wicked men is good men who will not allow their organizations and churches to enable or turn a blind eye to abuse carried out by evil men.

Second, abuse does not negate right use. Or to put it differently, any good and proper form of church government can be abused, and so we cannot jettison a particular structure of government just because people sin. Certainly, if a system or set of rules can be shown to necessarily cause a particular sin, we must consider abandoning it. Jesus teaches that we should look at the fruit of a person’s ministry to judge whether or not they are a true or false prophet/teacher. That principle could apply to institutional arrangements as well. But when there is strong evidence that Scripture teaches something, we must not abandon that teaching just because people sin. Scripture must norm how we answer the question of WO, not our evaluation of whether or not EMO works well.

Objection #7: There is evidence of women deaconesses, so that proves women may be officers in the church. 

Romans 16:1 does indeed tell us of a woman named Phoebe who was “a servant/deaconess of the church at Cenchreae.” This suggests Phoebe held the office of deacon or deaconess, although it is possible that Paul was simply describing her as a servant (same word) of the church. However, whether or not Phoebe held the office of deaconess, that question has little to no bearing on the question of WO to the office of pastor because the nature of each office is distinct and carries different qualifications.

In the Presbyterian Church in America, women may not be ordained as either an elder or a deacon. While I am happy to abide by our Book of Church Order, it is less clear to me that women may not be deacons according to Scripture.

In brief, the reasons I am open to the ordainination of women as deacons are as follows.¹¹ First, there is nothing about the office of deacon that suggests a male body is needed functionally or symbolically. The office of deacon is a spiritual office of sympathy, mercy, service, and administration. Deacons care for the poor and sick, and they oversee the resources of the Church to aid those in need and to promote good order in worship and ministry. They serve under the authority of the elders. None of these duties suggest that deacons bear the sort of authority in view in 1 Timothy 2:12. Contrary to some ecclesial traditions, I don’t believe deacons exercise the keys of the kingdom. They are not interns preparing for pastoral ministry. But deacons do have a type of administrative authority that women already exercise in almost every church I have ever seen. For example, women organize volunteers to serve in the nursery. They provide and coordinate meals for those in crisis. They run background checks on volunteers. They plan, coordinate, and execute events, retreats, and church conferences. They plan, offer administrative help, and oversee staff, budgets, and expenses. In short, much of what church “directors” and “staff” do could reasonably fall under the work of deacons.

Second, I know of no passage that teaches women may not be deacons. While I do believe Scripture explicitly forbids women from being pastors, the exclusion of women from the office of deacon seems to be an argument from silence. 

Third, in addition to Phoebe in Romans 16:1, one other New Testament passage suggests women did serve as deacons in the New Testament era. Paul, in 1 Timothy 3:11, seems to give the qualifications necessary for a woman to be a deacon(ess), though it is possible that he is talking about how deacon’s wives (same word as women) must behave. The latter possibility seems unlikely to me since nothing is said about what is required of pastors’ wives in the verses immediately prior, which I presume would also be important and an odd omission.

Finally, there is good evidence from the early years of the church that women carried the title of Deaconesses.¹² It’s possible this title was not used for an office in the church so much as a description of their behavior or role as assistants to the deacons, but that seems unlikely to me.

Conclusion

These explanations will likely not be satisfying or convincing to many people who have been deeply malformed by the modern age which obscures the differences between fathers and mothers. That said, I don’t believe these intuitions can be completely destroyed. No matter how modern and secular, a grown man dying on a battlefield will still cry out wanting their mother’s comfort. He’ll still look for his father’s approval and pride after a great accomplishment. A grown woman will want to share her exciting news with her mother and long for the safety of her dad.

A male pastor represents God to us in a way that a woman cannot, both in the pulpit and in pastoral oversight throughout the week. This does not, of course, mean that pastors always provide this well. In fact, plenty of men have proven to be incredibly abusive, negligent, and narcissistic in their pastoral roles. But just as we cannot conclude fathers can be replaced by mothers in the family given all the failed father figures, neither can we conclude pastors may as well be women. We need mothers in the church, but mature women need to play a distinct role in the church as examples, counselors, advisors, and encouragers rather than those who father the family by exercising the keys of the kingdom.

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  • Introduction to On Being Human: A Theological Anthropology

  • Part 1 On Being Human: Male and Female

  • Part 2 On Being Human: Sexuality

1. From here on out, I’ll generally use the term “pastor” and sometimes “elder” since the New Testament, in my view, uses all three terms interchangeably to describe ministers of the word and sacrament. Scripture distinguishes between elders who labor full-time in gospel ministry and those called to make a living through other work (1 Timothy 5:17-18). In the Presbyterian Church in America, full-time gospel laborers are called ministers, and among the elders, only they may preach regularly and administer the sacraments, which constitute 2 of the 3 aspects of exercising the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16:19). For the purposes of this article, I will not address this division but will speak generally about pastors exercising the keys of the kingdom.

2. Johnson, Blake. “Reading and Applying 1 Timothy 2:11-15 from A to Z: A Liturgical Approach" Cateclesia Institute, January 2022. https://cateclesia.com/2022/01/24/reading-and-applying-1-timothy-211-15-from-a-to-z-a-liturgical-approach/

McIntosh, Adam. “Did Eve Ruin Female Ordination?” Theopolis Institute, May 2022. https://theopolisinstitute.com/did-eve-ruin-female-ordination/

3. Errington, Andrew. “The Logic and Practical Implications of 1 Timothy 2:11-15” Cateclesia Institute, January 2022. https://cateclesia.com/2022/01/17/the-logic-and-practical-implications-of-1-timothy-211-15/

4. Many have pointed out that the Revivalism of the 19th Century in America had a profound impact on the imagination Christians have of the Church, which has become a very different type of society than it has previously been. Rather than being a “people,” a social body of committed relationships governed by authorities, the Church is largely viewed as a service organization with voluntary membership, stakeholders, and administrative policy-makers. 

5. Again, in his important tome, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980), Stephen B. Clark demonstrates that while the central focus of Genesis 2 is the partnership between man and woman, the story also portrays subordination in their relationship through several narratival elements: 1) the centrality of the man in the narrative, 2) the fact that humanity is represented by the man/Adam, 3) the creation of man first, 4) the man’s naming of the animals and the woman, 5) God addressing the man with His law with the expectation to pass it on to the woman, and 6) several of these elements remain intact and are confirmed again after the rebellion of humanity in the Garden. (See pages 25ff.)

6. I don’t have space here to explain why this is the case. It is, nevertheless, a very common sentiment among mostly American Christians based on a misreading of Matthew 18:20. Throughout Scripture, God has always formed a visible and organized people with whom he established a covenant and into which he rescues people. In other words, God rescues people and forms a community on earth that he structures. He establishes boundaries, leaders, entrance rites, communal rites of fellowship, and standards which must be maintained. No one is saved on the basis of becoming a member of a church, but salvation includes being brought into the church.

7. See John Frame’s “May Women Teach Adult Sunday School Classes” for an argument along these lines, namely, that there exists a special teaching office reserved for qualified men and a general teaching office including all Christians.

8. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 2:12-14 that because Adam was made first and then Eve, Adam bore responsibility as a priest in God’s House (Eden) where he was to guard, teach, and lead in worship. Because he failed to drive out the Serpent and to teach God’s law faithfully, Eve was deceived. The purpose of Paul’s recalling of the Genesis 2-3 narrative is not to suggest women are inherently gullible, as some have claimed, but to remind those in Ephesus that it is still the case that only qualified men should serve as priests in God’s House, the Church, rather than being negligent as Adam was. All of this serves to explain his comment about functioning as a pastor in public worship: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:12). This is not a universal statement about women talking in Church generally or even about addressing the congregation. It’s about taking up the role and function of a pastor as a teaching authority to the gathered church. This is not demeaning to women, for it is through Eve and many after her that our Savior has come, and women even now may serve as mothers in the church.

9. See Dr. Preston Sprinkle’s exploration of the meaning of the Greek word “kephalē” translated as “head” and Paul’s rhetorical use of the word in overturning the oppressive hierarchy of his day. The article rightfully points out that kephalē generally conveys the idea of authority and only rarely should be reduced to the notion of source (which is what most that argue against male-only-ordination often claim), or, if it conveys some sense of source, it’s conceptially linked to the idea of authority. Sprinkle helpfully shows that the Apostle Paul’s rhetoric in Ephesians challenges the Greco-Roman understanding of patriarchy by arguing that “heads” exercise authority by laying their lives down for others in love as Christ did. In my view, recognizing Paul’s subversive argument can be taken too far to suggest “headship” is *redefined* and does not, therefore in Christ, involve authority but service. Rather, it’s best to understand Paul to be arguing for a renewed understanding of authority that imitates Christ and returns to what creational authority was intended to be.

10. Miriam with Moses (Exodus 15:20); Deborah with Barak (Judges 4:4-5); Isaiah's wife with Isaiah (Isaiah 8:1-4); Huldah with her husband Shallum (2 Kings 22:14, 2 Chronicles 34:22); and Anna, the daughter of Phanuel (Luke 2:36).

11. See a helpful overview of the arguments on both sides here.

12. See, for example, Pliny the Younger’s epistle (X.96) to Emperor Trajan in about 112 AD where he mentions that he arrested two women called deaconesses and tormented them for information. Pliny was the governor of Bithynia which is on the northwest side of modern-day Turkey.