I believe you confuse some legitimately differentiated categories. Let me make sure I clarify the terms under which I'm talking.
First, as to anthropology: Man (as woman and man) does of course bear the image of God. But that image, in the present age (and here I skip over the various theories as to "when" man as image of God was made male and female and whether male/female differentiations will obtain in the fully realized Kingdom) is an image differentiated in particular persons as male and female. There is no sense of incompleteness in either manifestation of this difference. Just as the Son and the Father are to be differentiated from one another, yet are one God, so men and women are differentiated but are one mankind (I use "mankind" to continue the parallels to Trinitarian theology).
Second: as to the sacrament of the priesthood. The priest, as sacrament, in the tradition of the Church, is not an image of humanity, nor an image of the entire Godhead, but is, specifically, an image of the Father. The sacramentality of the priest is not about whether or not God, as in the Trinity, is masculine, but is rather about a representation of the divinely revealed person of the Father. The Church has understood that to have a human "image" the person of the Father, then a male is the appropriate person of humanity to do so, since males are, biblically, father-begetters. Note the reason why men are priests: it's not because they have gonads. It's because they are father-begetters. (Yes, that entails certain "parts" but the point of the imaging is not sex but person, that of father-begetter.)
Third, the place of women: women, as well as men, are included in the so-called "savlation history" of God as differentiated persons of the human. There is no talk of incompleteness here. Just because women cannot, in the Tradition, be priests, says nothing about their worth or value. It simply says, men are to image God the Father. It doesn't make men more important. The priesthood is not a right that people can demand. The priesthood no more makes women complete citizens of the Kingdom than it does men. Denying women, and most men, access to the priesthood neither makes them less complete. Some men are called by God to the sacrament of Christ's priesthood to, in part, image God the Father. These men, as ordained priests, are no more complete in the humanness or Christianness than other men or all women.
To argue from the sacrament of the priesthood to the arena of salvation/theosis is to confuse categories of discussion. Women are no less members of the Kingdom, even though in the Church's Tradition they cannot be priests, than are men. Indeed, in the East, the number of women saints, martyrs, empresses, etc., are as numerous as those for the men. I know, I pray to the saints daily utilizing the Othodox calendar. Today, in fact, is the feast day of the martyr Tatiana of Rome.
Finally, regarding culture: This is where I find myself completely baffled. Critics of male-only priesthood want to state that for x-hundred/thousand years the Church was dominated by cultural conditions and refused women a "place at the table" with regard to ordination. They then want to state that "now we know better."
Is it just me, or does this strike anyone as a bit contradictory (as well as a bit too condescending)? I'm to understand that previously the Church was bound by cultural conditioning, but our current views are not culturally conditioned? For that matter, how do we know that our views are any more righteous/correct than the previous centuries in the Church, if everything is so culturally conditioned? Are they right just because these current views fit our own terms? Isn't that called question-begging? How can we differentiate between our view being right on our terms, but wrong on the terms of Tradition--if everything is culturally conditioned?
C S Lewis states, in the introduction to On the Incarnation by St Athanasius (this introduction appears, I think, in collections as "On the Reading of Old Books" or something like that):
"Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. . . . We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century--the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"--lies where we never suspected it . . . . None of us can fully escape this blindlness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths we half knew already. Where they are flase they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."
If we could appropriate Lewis' comments in terms of our present discussion, he would argue that, yes, aspects of the practice of Tradition have their blind spots, and yes, our current critics have some ability to point those out. But those who argue against Tradition for the ordination of women cannot say that theirs is a perspective free of cultural bias. That is, just because they can "deconstruct" Tradition with the best of them doesn't make them any more or less insightful than our Traditional forebears.
Furthermore, for all that proponents of women's ordination want to argue that a) the old ways are steeped in a paternalistic, masculine image of God; b) God is without sex and gender; and c) therefore God is to be talked about as Mother--in progressing to c) they violate b). (And of course, I wouldn't accept a) in any case.) In other words, if they were really consistent with their argument, no gender-directed references to God are allowed. If a masculine image of God is incomplete, how is a feminine any more complete? We alternate between two incompletes? Then why is some seminary liturgies is God mentioned from time to time as Mother, or maternal, but when we come to the "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord?" (a Christological reference) neutered to "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord?" Why is it, in the Old One Hundredth not "Praise Him all creatures here below?" but "Praise God all creatures here below?" This is inconsistent. The only rational thing to do would be to neuter all references to God--if proponents of women's ordination really mean what they say about God not having sex/gender, and thus it is inappropriate to refer to him in masculine terms. By calling God Mother, on their own terms they limit God to gender, too, just a different one, and they violate their own critique.
But then, that's my culturally conditioned view, so it can be dismissed on the grounds that it doesn't agree with their culturally conditioned view.
And to add one final response to this excruciatingly long comment: The Tradition does not assert that the dogmatic definitions of the Church are exhaustive views of God. In fact, if you read the Chalcedonian definition you'll find that it doesn't completely state who Christ is. Rather, the Tradition of the Church is typically apophatic: it states that which God is not. Chalcedon on Christ: without change, separation, confusion, division--all alpha-privatives, stating Christ is not these things.
This gives the Church room to speak non-exhaustively, and authoritatively, about God without going off the rails. They provide boundaries we may not cross without doing harm to every aspect of theology, since all theology is connected, and ultimately derives from Trinitarian theology/Christology.
Women's ordination is against Tradition. But it is not wrong simply because it's against Tradition, but also because it presents a Trinitarian theology that is "outside the boundaries" which will lead to deficiences (if not heresies) in Christology and anthropology. I've already alluded, by way of critique, to some of those deficiences above: rights-talk with regard to the sacraments, fulfillment of person through access to sacramental functions, deficiencies regarding the imago dei, etc.
Posted by Clifton at January 12, 2003 01:27 PM | TrackBack