PART 1: WHY IS WOMEN’S ORDINATION PLAUSIBLE? Icons of Christ : A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. Witt, William G. Waco: Baylor University Press 2020. 439 pp. $59.99 (cloth); $44.99 (paper). Professor William G. Witt of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, has recently written a new book defending women’s ordination (hereinafter “WO”) to…
PART 2: WITT’S CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY In the first part of this series, we examined the plausibility structures on which Witt’s book relies for its persuasiveness. We saw that Witt teaches a novel modern anthropology: he sees human beings not as fundamentally sexed creatures in a pervasively gendered cosmos, but as individuals who take on…
PART 3 – ERRORS OF PHILOLOGY Having discussed plausibility structures and history in the previous two parts of this review, we come now to what, for Protestants, will be the central question of the debate: can Witt show that the passages that have long been thought to pose an obstacle to women’s ordination (WO) do…
Part 4: Symbolism and Conclusions In the previous three installments, we have examined the plausibility structures of women’s ordination (WO), Witt’s view of history, and his handling of Greek philology. We now turn to questions of symbolism, a topic that Witt discusses mainly in dialogue with Roman Catholic authors, especially Manfred Hauke.[1] Hauke’s argument is…