Recently, a clip went semi-viral in which Bp. Christopher Warner ordained his wife, Catherine Warner, to the office of the presbyterate. In the clip, as Bp. Warner read the oath of canonical obedience; his wife seemingly laughed through taking the due canonical vows.
I will not speculate here on why she did so. Nevertheless, for those of us who take the historic Christian stance that the presbyterate and episcopate are reserved for men, this clip is scandalous on multiple levels. It seems to me that it is impossible to argue that one holds to the ancient, apostolic, catholic faith if one is willing to jettison a tradition universally practiced through the history of the Church. That said, in order to show the goodness and beauty of the male-only presbyterate, it will be necessary to situate this practice within an overarching theological framework that explains why the priesthood ought to be male-only. In this article, I will do just that. First, I will correlate the masculine and feminine principles to the procession of the persons in the Godhead, avoiding the error of Eternal Functional Subordination. I will argue that familial-masculinity (masculinity in the context of the family) is the principle of initiative order for the life of the family, whereas familial-femininity (femininity in the context of the family) is the perfective principle which completes and perfects the initiative movement of order proceeding from the masculine. Next, I will argue that the Church is a family par excellence, in which the priests function as fathers in the administration of word and sacrament. Finally, I will comment on horizons of theological research this framework calls for.
Masculinity and Femininity in the Dance of Three-Fold Love
The Eternal Father, the Unbegotten One, is the font of divinity from which the Son and Spirit proceed. The Father, who is the Sum of all Value, Beauty, and Goodness, contemplates the Highest Ideal as a Perfect Being; therefore, he contemplates himself. The Son is, as it were, the Father’s perfect Idea of Value, Beauty, and goodness—the infinite self-evincing of the Divine Being back to the Father.[1] Jonathan Edwards puts it like this:
“If a man could have an absolutely perfect idea of all that passed in his mind, all the series of ideas and exercises in every respect perfect as to order, degree, circumstance, etcetera, for…the last hour, he would really to all intents and purposes be over again what he was that last hour. And if it were possible for a man by reflecting perfectly, a man could contemplate all that is in his own mind in an hour, as it is, and at the very time that it exists there in its first and direct existence. In such a case, he would truly be two during that time; he would, in fact, be double.”[2]
This “eternal generation [the fathers] held to be a proof that He was of one substance and eternity with the Father; but the relation of Father to Son they held to constitute a priority of order, though not of nature or power.”[3] The begottenness of the Son is therefore that whereby the Son receives his fullness from the Father, who gives himself to his Son via giving the divine essence wholly and completely to the Son.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son as the circulation of love, in whom the Son returns himself wholly and completely to the Father. Lawrence Feingold writes,
“The Son comes forth from the Father as His Word uttered. The Word then breathes forth love for the Father, giving Himself back to Him, and the Father, by the same perfect impetus, gives Himself to His Son. The Spirit thus proceeds from the mutual and eternal self-gift of Son to Father and Father to Son. In this way, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as the bond of unity. The filioque is therefore not merely an abstruse point of theological speculation, but something existentially vital. For if the Spirit truly proceeds from a love that is agape, how could that love be one-sided?”[4]
We may therefore understand the Persons as such:
- The Father is Deity-Given
- The Son is Deity-Given-Back
- The Spirit is Deity-Given-And-Returned
Hence, the divine essence subsists in the Father as the initiative principle of order—the principium of the Godhead[5]–from whom the other divine persons receive their unique hypostatic property. The Son, as the image of the Father, returns himself back to the Father. The Spirit subsists as the circulation of love from Father to Son and Son to Father, such that the Son’s self return to the Father in the Spirit “completes” (speaking only analogically) the circulation of love.[6]
These dynamics of love are, I will show, the archetype upon which Christ’s relationship to the Church is temporally modeled. As the Father gives himself without reserve to and for the Son, so the Son gives himself for the life of the Church, from whom she receives her fullness. As the Son returns himself in love to the Father in the Spirit, so the Church returns herself in love to the Son in the Spirit.
That the Church, as the apex of creation, instantiates in time the dynamics of the Son’s self-return in eternity fits with the long-standing view that creation is, in fact, the temporal repetition of the Word. That is, the Word is the prototype for all creatures; the Logos is the exemplar for the logoi. As Mark McIntosh writes,
“Because the Word is the perfect expression of the Father, and because the world is created through this same Word, the world not only expresses the Word who is its exemplar but also, in its inner structure, ceaselessly represents the Word’s own expressive or exemplary quality.”[7]
It is in this sense that Maximus the Confessor posited the Logos as the pre-eminent exemplar of all created things, who contains the pattern (logoi) underwriting all creaturely being.[8] As we have surmised, the Logos in the life of God is the subsistent of the divine essence which returns to the Father in the Spirit. The Spirit perfects all creatures by conforming all creation to the self-return of the Son, and pre-eminently conforming the Church into participation in the Son’s self-return to the Father in the Spirit.
If the form of the Church’s existence is patterned off the Son’s self-return to the Father in the Spirit, then there is a clear answer as to what the Church Fathers were getting at by, at various times, appropriating feminine language to the Son as Sophia[9] or to the Spirit[10]; we can unite these two traditions in the concept that femininity has its archetype in the Son self-return to the Father in the Spirit. Furthermore, as the Son’s self-return to the Father in the Spirit is, as it were, perfective (or the archetype of that which is perfective), so the Church’s self-return to the Son in the Spirit completes the Son’s work in the world (Col. 1:24). And as the Father is the principle of order from whom the three-fold form of the Divine Life proceeds, so Christ’s self-gift constitutes the form of the Church’s life in the world.
We find further evidence of this masculine-feminine correlation in the Genesis account. We are told in Ephesians 5:22-33 that the headship of a man over his wife is patterned after the self-giving love of Christ for the Church, and that the mystery of a man and woman becoming one flesh itself refers to the mystical union between Christ and the Church. When we turn to the Genesis account, we find that the woman is taken out from the man’s side; life flows out from him to her (Gen. 2:21-23). He names her, but with poetry rather than servile designation; his headship, in which she is sourced from him, issues forth in his words meant to name and call forth her beauty and his recognition of a summons to unity with her. Nevertheless, he is in a state of “not-good” until she arrives on the scene (Gen. 2:18). His state of being is only brought to its proper good (and thus perfected) in her arrival, in whom the image of God in humanity is completed (Gen. 1:27-28). His role, in the context of his familial union with her, is thus one of initiative order in which his life is given for her flourishing. Her role, in the context of her familial union with him, is one of taking that initiative order and bringing it to its consummate perfection.
Priests are fathers of God’s Family
That the Church is a familial society is evident by its status as the true family of Abraham (Rom. 9-11, Rom. 4, Gal. 3-4). So understood, it remains to be shown that the presbytery[11] is occupied by fathers of the family of God. His ability to manage his household well and keep his children obedient and faithful to God (not a qualification mentioned for deacons, interestingly) is an indication of his ability to manage the household of God (1 Tim. 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9). This would only make sense if there is some sort of analogue that carries over from the running of a familial household to the running of a Church. Furthermore, the task of teaching falls to him, akin to how the task of washing with the word is appropriated to the father of the family (Eph. 5:26). Finally, the longstanding custom of calling presbyters various iterations of the word “father” (abbot, papa, “the holy fathers”, etcetera) shows an ecclesial consciousness recognizing the presbyters as spiritual fathers of the community.
But, per the argument thus far, if they are spiritual fathers of the community, this can only be because presbyters are the creatures God appoints to occupy the role of the initiative principle of order in the Church. The masculinity of the priesthood, therefore, depends upon the function the priesthood plays in the context of the family of Abraham. But in what way are presbyters the initiative principle of order, from which the life of the Church takes shape (as a river derives its shape from its source)? Here, the “Reformed” part of being “Reformed Catholic” can help us: presbyters are the initiative principle of order by virtue of being appointed to deliver the Word of God for the people of God in authoritative teaching and administration of the divinely authorized visible words of the sacraments. The Church is, first and foremost, a creature of the Word; her form of existence is called into being by the Word, which continually summons the Church to constitute herself along the lines of the word of God delivered in the writings of the prophets and the apostles.[12] That which constitutes the form of her existence as the Church in the world, then, is the word of God—entrusted to the presbyters who are appointed to authoritatively say “thus says the Lord” and pass on what has been handed down (which makes the task of being a presbyter a perilous one, per James 3:1). The means of delivering the authoritative in-forming word to God’s people are therefore also entrusted to the presbyters. These means, it seems to me, are the channels by which the presbyter says “thus says the Lord” (such as in the authoritative exposition of Scripture in preaching or the proclamation of absolution) and the administration of the holy Eucharist, in which the presbyter consecrates the elements by the Word and invocation of the Spirit. In consecration, the presbyter declares (and effects) that which the elements mean, thereby delivering the word by which the elements are hallowed to deliver Christ’s true body and blood.
Areas for Further Research
Though the presbytery is masculine, any rightly ordered family will have mothers. The family of the Church, then, will have spiritual mothers alongside spiritual fathers. And here, I believe orthodox Anglicans have much work to do in thinking carefully about the role of the deaconess. I will not enter here into a discussion of whether the deaconess is a proper part of the holy order of the diaconate or not. Although that discussion is important, it would require a whole other essay to properly treat. Nevertheless, however one answers the question of diaconal ordination, we must first characterize properly what it means to have a “Marian Charism”, and how the role of the deaconess, distinctly from male-deacons, brings unique feminine gifts to bear.
Second, the paradigm I’ve offered here can help calibrate our thinking about masculinity and femininity in general. It would be a mistake to assume that the way masculinity and femininity operate in the family and, by extension per the lines described above, in the Church is identical to the way they operate outside the family and Church. Nevertheless, whatever we say about masculinity and femininity in general must cohere with the way they express themselves in the family and the Church. That is, the virtues that characterize the way masculinity and femininity display themselves in marriage and the Church must be operative throughout the lives of men and women. Once again, much more careful thinking is needed here.
Nevertheless, we can say why the presbytery is masculine. Masculinity has as its archetype the Father’s role of the initiative principle of order, in which he gives himself to the Son and sets the taxis of the other Persons. That which the Father is in the Godhead correlates to the role of fathers in the family. Fathers, as the heads of their families, are the initiative principle of order in which they give themselves to order their families unto flourishing. The Church is a spiritual family, in which presbyters play the role of spiritual fathers by being the initiative principles of order in the family of Abraham via delivering the authoritative word of the Lord through the appointed means by which that word is delivered (Word and Sacrament). For this reason, orthodox Anglicans must say “no” to female priests and “yes” to the historic, catholic and apostolic heritage of good ecclesiastical order.
Notes
Image Credit: Unsplash.
[1] John D. Dadosky, “God’s Eternal Yes!: An Exposition and Development of Lonergan’s Psychological Analogy of the Trinity,” Irish Theological Quarterly 81, no. 4 (2016): 397–419, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021140016659714.
[2] “Unpublished Essay on the Trinity” in Steven M. Studebaker and Robert W. Caldwell, The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards: Text, Context, and Application (Ashgate, 2012), 25–26.
[3] Harold Browne, An Exposition of the 39 Articles (E. P. Dutton & Company, 1887), 67.
[4] Lawrence Feingold, “The Word Breathes Forth Love: The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity and the Complementarity of Intellect and Will,” Nova et Vetera 17, no. 2 (2019): 513, https://doi.org/10.1353/nov.2019.0032.
[5] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. The Aquinas Institute (Emmaus Academic, 2012) I.q33.a1.
[6] I develop and defend this in more detail in Sean Luke, “Holy Triune Love: A Reformulation of Divine Simplicity,” TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 9, no. 1 (2024), https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v9i1.82023. See also Nicholas E. Lombardo, “Where Does the Holy Spirit Proceed To ?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 23, no. 4 (2021): 473–501, https://doi.org/10.1111/ijst.12511; Lombardo, Nicholas E., “The Return of the Holy Spirit to the Father,” Louvain Studies, no. 2 (2021): 114–30, https://doi.org/10.2143/LS.44.2.3289492.
[7] Mark Allen McIntosh, The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology, First edition (Oxford University Press, 2021), 28.
[8] Torstein Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford University Press Inc, 2008), 21–63.
[9] Shannon McAlister, “Christ as the Woman Seeking Her Lost Coin: Luke 15:8-10 and Divine Sophia in the Latin West,” Theological Studies 79, no. 1 (2018): 7–35, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040563917745830.
[10] Johannes Van Oort, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine: Early Christian Testimonies and Their Interpretation,” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 72, no. 1 (2016): 6 pages, https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i1.3225.
[11] And here I include the Bishop as a distinction within the presbytery—the “high priest” and supreme head, per Book V of Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble, vol. 2 (Clarendon Press, 1888) and Thomas Bilson, The Perpetual Governance of Christ’s Church (Oxford University Press, 1842). See also ST Supplement.q40.a5.
[12] John Bainbridge Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason, T & T Clark Theology (T&T Clark, 2012).
