In Which the Party Happens Elsewhere

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There are a number of reasons for this blog’s sluggishness of late, but among them are the fact that some of my blogging energies have been redirected elsewhere.  I will now be serving as a Contributing Editor at the Political Theology blog, so look out for future contributions there, as well as for invisible traces of my editorial touch on other posts there (you’ll be able to tell that I’ve edited them if you find random intrusions of Hookerian style).  I’ve also just contributed a piece at Mere Orthodoxy, Matthew Anderson’s excellent site where I’ll be contributing occasionally in future, and my initial foray, on the recent kerfluffle over women bishops in the Church of England, has already set off some fireworks.  Matt had the audacity to title it as response to Doug Wilson (which, admittedly, a significant chunk of it was), something I’ve avoided doing for four years, and so Wilson was good enough to offer a rejoinder at Blog and Mablog within a few hours.  

Wilson helpfully clarifies some of his concerns in his response, though my own concerns remain largely unappeased.  The question, ultimately, is not over whether satire and peremptory dismissal is ever appropriate when confronted with scholarly tripe, but over whether it was appropriate in this particular case.  My argument is that such a posture should be the exception, not the rule, and that our normal posture toward those with whom we disagree should be that of “intellectual empathy,” as Matthew Anderson has recently described.  Particularly, there are those who by their Christian faithfulness, evangelical witness, and diligent scholarship have earned a title to our respect, so that our instinctive posture toward them, even when they seem to have seriously misstepped, should be one of “intellectual empathy,” seeking to understand carefully where they’re coming from even as we disagree, rather than merely laughing them out of court.  Wright, I think, certainly qualifies, and so while I have my own serious disagreements not only with his conclusions but with his arguments in his contribution to the women bishops debate, I think Wilson’s is the wrong way to approach this disagreement, and serves to widen the gap between American and British evangelicals, rather than helping to foster greater understanding.   

I hope to post further on the women bishops topic here at the S&P next week, suggesting a better way of arguing than Wright’s, and also hopefully offering a Hookerian perspective on Parliament’s attempted interference in the matter.  

It’s Nice Having Smart Friends…

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The best part is when they put up excellent blog posts so all I need to do is tell you to go read them, instead of having to say something intelligent myself.  

First, then, you might want to check out Jordan Ballor’s fine little post on Acton, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Business” in which he cautions conservatives against rejecting too summarily the solidarist view of society asserted in President Obama’s much-maligned speech last week, when he went so far as to say, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”  Ballor reminds us “We all know at some level that we didn’t get where we are on our own, and that we have an ongoing responsibility and dependence on others for our continuing enjoyment of the goods of human existence.”  Ballor thus points us back toward a more authentic conservatism and away from the modern individualist (and thus thoroughly unconservative) variety.

For a more fleshed-out look at what this older conservatism might look like, you couldn’t do much better than Steven Wedgeworth’s recent post at the Calvinist International on “R.L. Dabney’s Theory of Economics.”  Dabney, a Southern Presbyterian stalwart much beloved by modern-day Reformed conservatives for his trenchant and prescient critiques of the agenda of the rising centralized secular state, may shock many of his admirers for his allegiance to pre-capitalist concepts of the role of business in society, the need for government to restrain inequality, the need to restrain luxury spending and usury, etc.

Finally, on a somewhat different note, Lue-Yee Tsang reflects on the contemporary tempest in a teapot over here as to whether Parliament will intervene to advance the women bishops agenda in the Church of England.  While opposing Parliament’s stance on the particular policy, and pronouncing them unfit to govern church affairs so long as they persist in their current godlessness, Lue-Yee nonetheless offers a unapologetic defence of antidisestablishmentarianism (10 points for using that word!) along the lines of Hookerian two-kingdoms theory.

Go, read, be edified.

Headship and Authority in 1 Cor. 11

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This past Sunday, our senior minister approached with some trepidation 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, the passage which speaks of the subordination of women and their need to wear head coverings.  Also on the agenda was 1 Cor. 14:34-35, which states “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.  And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church”—although in the event, the sermon confined itself to the first passage.  These passages naturally can be quite a source of discomfort to churches committed, as ours basically is, to an “egalitarian” rather than “complementarian” position (though I hate those labels!) and to the legitimacy of women’s ordination.  But really, they will be a source of discomfort for almost any Christian today, however “complementarian.”  After all, Paul seems to go beyond a mere outward subordination to suggest that women are naturally inferior: women come from men, and are made to serve men.  Men stand in the same relation to women as Christ does to the Church.  Ouch.  Paul accordingly commands behaviors that only a few radical fringe groups of conservative Christians would actually observe—head coverings for women, silence of women in church.  

So I was genuinely interested in hearing what an egalitarian interpretation of these verses would look like. (The easiest route might to say that Paul was a product of his culture, and thus felt obliged to argue for something that was simply inconsistent with his teaching elsewhere; but I doubted our minister was going to take that route.)  The key argument hinged on the meaning of the word “head” (Gk. kephale) in v. 3, and suggested that of its three main meanings—”physical head,” “authority,” and “source”—it was the third, and not the second, which Paul was using here (in addition to the first, which is of course used in the following verses).  Man is not the boss of the woman, we were told, he is the source.   

However, this didn’t seem to me to be the anti-complementarian trump card that was desired.  What might it really imply to say that man is the “source” of woman?  I offer the following reflections with two major caveats: (1) I have not read any of what is no doubt the copious exegetical literature on this passage, so there will no doubt be a lot of re-inventing (and mis-inventing) the wheel here; (2) I am not trying to argue here for or against women’s ordination, or to provide a decisive solution to the dispute between “egalitarians” and “complementarians”—I am simply trying to trace out the logic of these concepts and of this passage, and see whether it might lead us to conclusions that could be attractive to both sides in certain respects.

 

So first, it’s worth noting that these three meanings of the word “head” are, after all, not three completely unrelated meanings, like the “bark” of a tree and the “bark” of a dog.  Clearly, they are closely related.  The physical head is the source and guide of all intelligible action in the body.  The head of an organization is the source and guide of all intelligible action in the organization.  The head of a river is the source of that river, that which sustains its existence, sends it on its way, establishes its direction.  Clearly, we have three closely interrelated and mutually-interpreting concepts here.  The concept of authority is deeply rooted in the concept of origin.  “It is the authority which has called the form of action into being.  The term ‘authority’ in this sense recalls the Greek word arche, which means at once both ‘beginning’ and ‘rule.'” (O’Donovan, RMO 122)  Obviously, kephale has a somewhat different field of meaning than arche, but I think the analogy with arche is significant.  It was not a coincidence that the Greeks associated rule with beginning.  

While the concept of authority is not exhausted by the concept of origin or initiation (for instance, the concept of “judgment” is generally a central part of what we understand by authority), this is clearly a central part of it.  If we want to know whether an action is authorized in any organization or entity, we will ask where it came from.  If we find out that some order just came from a coworker, then we can scoff at it.  It needs to be traceable back to the “head”—perhaps indirectly, by coming from someone authorized by the head to act in certain matters.  Of course, an individual within the organization may take action on her own accord as circumstances seem to dictate, but if the action is to be meaningful or constructive, it must fit into a shape conferred by the head.  One way or another, all intelligible action in an organization is traceable back to the “head” of the organization, who initiates and orients the actions that are to be taken.  For this reason, of course, the head is also the endpoint, the point where buck stops—the person finally responsible for actions that are taken.

So authority initiates, authority serves as an origin, rule implies beginning.  Is it the other way around though—does an origin always serve as an authority?  Does the “source” of something necessarily have an ongoing claim over it?  Does “beginning” imply rule?  Most societies seem to have thought so.  In early modern political debates, the question of origin was always paramount.  Did the society predate the king as a political entity, did it call the king into being?  Or did the king predate the society, and call the society into being as a political entity.  Who came first?  Who was the source of the other?  The answer to these questions largely determined one’s political theory, one’s judgment as to which was the highest authority, king or parliament.  Theologically, we root God’s authority over the world in the fact that he is the source of it.  He created it, therefore he is king over it.  Likewise, Christ’s headship, in the sense of authority, over the Church, seems inextricable from the fact that he is the source of the Church, that which has brought her into being and sustained her. 

Perhaps there is no reason that we should draw the inference that origination implies authority.  After all, in what sense does the source, the head, of a river have “authority” over that river?  Well, in the sense that it initiates it and directs it.  It gives shape to it.  The source determines which way the river will start flowing, and if the source dries up, the river will not continue flowing.  The river depends on its source, just as a subordinate depends on an authority.

So, if “head” in 1 Cor. 11:3 is not to imply authority in any sense, but only “source,” then what content are we to give to this attribution of source?  What does “source” mean?  The answer that our minister wished to give, it seemed in our conversation afterward, was “mere temporal priority.”  The man is the source of the woman in the sense that January 1st is the source of the new year.  The year does not depend on January 1st, January 1st exercises no directive power over the following year, but January 1st does happen to come first.  Now, the problem is that I am not at all sure, then, that we could meaningfully speak of January 1st as the “source of the year.”  I certainly don’t know anyone who has done so (though I was told that the ancient Hebrews did so).  As a concept, “source” simply has to imply more than mere temporal priority.  Perhaps more problematically, it is unclear how this line of argument could make any sense from the theistic evolutionist standpoint, which is of course the operative standpoint here.  For the theistic evolutionist, there can simply be no literal meaning in the assertion that man is the source of woman, unless perhaps we mean to say that the first hominid that God chose to designate a human being was in fact male, although there were of course a multitude of roughly equivalent female hominids, including his mother.  For the theistic evolutionist, it is hard to see how the narrative in Gen. 2:18-24 could be anything more than metaphorical.  And what then would the point of this metaphor be?  Well, probably something like what Paul seems to say about it—that woman is the glory of man, and woman was created for the man.  

 

Now, the point of all this is to say that it’s not immediately clear that substituting the meaning “source” really gets us away from the concept of “authority.”  But what it does do is to help suggest a new context for the concept of authority; no doubt part of the hostility to the use of that term stems from a misguided paradigm of what “authority” involves—an authority, we think, is someone who can command you to do something without good reasons, who can oblige you to obey whether or not you want to.  Authority, we think, is the opposite of freedom.  But O’Donovan, in his remarkable discussion of authority in Resurrection and Moral Order, invites us to see authority as “the objective correlate of freedom.”  What the heck does that mean?  Well, the concept of authority as initiator, which we have gestured at here, might help us out somewhat.  

At this point, we can finally turn to look again more closely at the passage itself.  We have a good clue that in fact the concept of “source” is central here, in v. 8, “For man is not from woman, but woman from man.”  Does this work with v. 2? “the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”  Well, let’s work back from the last.  The Father is certainly not “the boss” of the Son, to use the contrastive term our pastor used.  But the Father clearly can be legitimately said to be the “source” of the Son.  He is the fons divinitatis—the Son is eternally begotten from Him.  But although the Son therefore has dependence on the Father, the Father does not for this reason stand over against the Son then as the one who commands him, for the two are perfectly united.  The Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father.  If we look at the relationship of Christ and the Church, we have the same thing.  The point being made here is not that Christ has authority to command the Church, although that may be true in its own context.  The point is that Church has come out of Christ, it is the creature of the water and blood flowing from his side.  The Church has come out of the side of Christ, and therefore it depends on him, and he has defined its identity and its calling.  It exists in relation to Him. However, again, it is not separate from Him.  He is our King, but that is not the point here.  We are in him, and he in us.  Now clearly, these same points are being made about man and woman.  Woman was taken out of the side of man, just as the Church out of the side of Christ.  For this reason, woman depends on man, exists in relation to man, is oriented toward man.  However, likewise, as with the other two relations, the key point here is indwelling.  Eve was taken out of Adam in order then to be made one flesh with him.  

And this perhaps provides us with a helpful way forward.  For thus far, I expect, few egalitarians are going to be very satisfied with the implications of this concept of source and origin, with its inescapable connotations of dependency.  Woman is dependent on man?  Yuck.  Of course, one might reply, “Sorry, that’s what Paul says.  Deal with it.”  But I’d like to brainstorm some ways in which the egalitarian might take comfort from this passage.

 

First, one might point out that the language of priority is frequently subverted throughout Scripture.  The last shall be first, the elder shall serve the younger.  Throughout the Old Testament, the one who, by virtue of priority, has a claim to be “head,” turns out to be dependent on the one who comes after—Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, David and Saul.  And of course, this repeated plot line turns out to be prophetic of the greatest reversal at all.  The Church comes out of Israel; Israel is the source, the head, of the Church, and yet the Church is greater than Israel.  The feminist could perhaps have a lot of fun with this plotline of reversal—sure, man may have come first, but now woman is in charge.  Naturally, this would be taking it a bit too far.  Indeed, if we look at the illustration of the Church and Israel, Paul cautions the Romans against just this sort of thinking (Rom. 11:16-18).  Yes, there has been something of a reversal, but neither should boast against the other.  Both have need of one another.  The reversal is one in which a relationship of dependency is transformed into one of interdependency.  If we look back at our 1 Cor. 11 passage, we see something very like this being expressed. “Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman; but all things are from God” (vs. 11-12).  In the beginning, woman came from man, but then, God made it so that every man has to come out of woman.  The initial dependency is transformed into interdependency.  Or, to put it in other terms, man does not command, and woman obey; man initiates, and woman responds, as an equal, in perfect mutuality.

If we look back at Paul’s analogies, we see this picture confirmed.  The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and yet (without wanting to peer too far into the mystery of inter-Trinitarian relations), their relation is one of perfect mutuality.  The Father initiates, the Son freely responds.  The Son is the equal of the Father.  The Church comes from Christ, and depends on him, and yet Christ is the firstborn of many brothers.  We are co-heirs with him.  By grace, he treats us as equals.  Christ initiates, and his Church freely responds, in a relationship characterized by mutuality.

Of course, these analogies are imperfect—they are not even strictly equivalent to one another, much less to the man/woman relationship.  And yet, perhaps they provide a clue that the concept of headship, although implying a certain kind of authority, does not imply the kind of authority that egalitarians hate.  We still have a certain kind of “complementarianism” here, but the kind that seems unavoidable.  Any river has to have a starting point.  Any organization has to have someone who’s responsible for getting things moving.  Any conversation has to be initiated by someone, or else everyone’s just going to stand there awkwardly looking at their feet.  Every dance has to have a partner who’s ready to take the first steps.  But for the Christian, this initiation serves the purpose of initiating a relationship of genuine mutuality and complementarity, in which both partners are equal participants, responding to one another.  

 

Of course, this does not begin to address the particulars of Paul’s commands to women, and how much they might still apply today.  Most of us are quite happy to say that the head-covering command was a culturally specific one, though “keeping silent in the churches” (14:34-35) is a bit more contentious.  The prohibition on women teaching (1 Tim. 2:12) has seemed to many to have a permanence that the earlier commands do not.  There are important arguments to be had here, to be sure, and I will not attempt to enter in to them.  It is simply worth noting that the answer to these questions is, I think, underdetermined by 1 Cor. 11:3.  It is not clear that the concept of man as kephale in the sense of “initiator,” as I have spelled it out, constitutes a blanket argument against women in the ministry.  Indeed, if we lay our emphasis on vs. 11-12, where the initial relationship of dependence is revealed to be one of of interdependence, one might say that v. 3 constitutes no bar to women’s ordination.  This, I think, would be overly hasty, but so would the conclusion that it constitutes a decisive bar.

A Prayer for Insight

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Composed for St. Paul’s and St. George’s Church, March 4, 2012
Sermon Passage: 1 Cor. 11:2-16, 14:34-35 (“Women in the Church”)

Lord, we thank you for this difficult passage that we have studied this morning, and for the call it presents to us to wrestle anew with your Word, the much-needed reminder that we cannot take Scripture for granted, but must be prepared to be confused, surprised, and even alarmed by it at times.  We pray that we would embrace such opportunities; instead of accepting the temptation to shut the Bible and shove it away when it says something unpleasant, or to retreat immediately to the stronghold of our preconceived paradigms and interpretations, help us to study its words with faith and love, opening our hearts to the guidance of your Spirit.  We pray this not only for us today, but for your whole Church, especially in Britain and throughout the West, where passages such as this have bitterly divided churches and congregations over the question of the role of women in the church. Lord, we repent for this division, for the stubbornness and the impatience that have provoked rifts, the unwillingness to listen to others and the pride that makes us imagine that we speak with the voice of God when we utter our opinion or interpretation.  Lord, bless the churches with fresh light from your Word that may help resolve this and other issues of debate, and grant us the grace and charity, even in the midst of ongoing disagreement, to unite in the common work of the gospel.

We thank you for the immense blessings and gifts that Christian women have brought to your Church throughout the centuries, and which, in today’s world, they are more able than ever to contribute.  We thank you for the many ways in which this church, Ps & Gs, is sustained and enriched by their enormous contributions to its life and work.  Lord, the fields of Britain today are white unto harvest, and we pray that you would raise up a multitude of laborers, both men and women, to serve the Church in their different gifts and callings.

During this time of Lent, we come to you, Lord, especially mindful, as the Prayer Book says, of our “manifold sins and wickednesses.”  We pray that you would enable us to, with holy grief, lament the great burden of our sins, and with holy joy, to rejoice in your gracious forgiveness of them.  Remind us that penitence is no time for gloom, for the greater our sins, the more overwhelming is the realization that you have removed them as far as the East is from the West.  As the days lengthen and the air beguiles us with the hints of spring, let us press forward with hope toward Easter, yearning for the Resurrection of all things when sin shall darken our hearts no more.  We thank you for the gift, this past week, of the 24/7 Prayer, for the hundreds of half-formed but heartfelt appeals whispered in that basement room of 40 York Place.  Thank you that your Spirit helps us in our weakness when we do not know how to pray, thank you that you hear our prayers; and we ask that you would hear all those brought before you this week.  Make us people of 24/7 prayer every week, eagerly coming before you in joyful thanksgiving every time we have cause to rejoice, beseeching you for aid whenever temptation assails us, sharing with joy our needs and desires and receiving the comfort of your presence in return.  

Lord, many of us this past week no doubt laid before you the sufferings of our world, asking for your healing power to be poured out on places like Syria and neighboring countries.  For the innocent who suffer in that nation, we beg your protection; for the guilty, your forgiveness but also that you would act to overturn their plots and thwart their violent agendas; for those who stand by on the sidelines, unsure how to act, your wisdom.  We pray also for the thousands of lives and livelihoods shattered this week by a different kind of violence—the violence of storms and tornadoes.  Lord, we ask for your mercy upon those communities in the Midwest and Southeastern US torn apart on Friday by these terrifying forces of nature: for the injured, healing; for those left destitute, sustenance; for the bereaved, that comfort which only you can provide; for rescue teams, skill and perseverance.  Remind us at times like this that, in a world where we might seem to have gained power over the earth itself and all its secrets, we remain very much at the mercy of forces outside our control.  Teach us humility, but remind us also of the need to do what we can to maintain the equilibrium of our climate.  Give wisdom to scientists and politicians who must make projections and plans, and then fight the long battle of persuading their opponents on this contentious issue.  

Finally, we pray more broadly for our political leaders and our political process in a time when democracy seems increasingly to be an idle word, replaced in reality by demagoguery and deception.  For many of us, we are now too cynical expect any honesty or constructive action from our political leaders, and yet so many of the problems that face us—economic inequality and instability, environmental degradation, wars and rumors of wars, social breakdown—demand meaningful political action.  Give us leaders who will speak the truth and act on it, and in the absence of such leaders, give us the courage to do what we can in our own communities, and through churches here and around the world, to tackle these problems and transform lives.  Above all, give us revival, that hearts long grown cold may turn to you and hear the word of your Gospel, and live new lives in the power of your Spirit.   

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

 

Note: This prayer posed a particular challenge inasmuch as I had no idea in advance what the sermon was going to say about the passage, except that it was sure to, in some form or other, argue in defence of women’s ordination.

More thoughts about the sermon and this passage to follow later this week.

Luther on Women in the Ministry

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In his fine book The Church in the Theology of the Reformers, P.D.L. Avis includes an interesting discussion of Luther’s view on women’s ordination. For Luther, this is based on the cornerstone Protestant doctrine of the universal priesthood, or the “priesthood of all believers.”  Says Avis,

“There is no need to point out that women share equally with men in the universal priesthood; they too partake of the royal priesthood that Christ imparts to his people.  Luther supports this from the common practice of women administering baptism: ‘When women baptise, they exercise the function of priesthood legitimately and do it not as a private act but as a part of the public ministry of the Church which belongs only to the universal priesthood.’  ‘A woman can baptise and administer the word of life by which sin is taken away, eternal death abolished, the prince of this world cast out, heaven bestowed; in short, by which the divine majesty pours itself forth through all the soul.’  When Luther grants women the power to administer baptism, he recognises that this carries with it all other priestly functions for, according to Luther, the sacrament of baptism includes the ministry of the word and is, moreover, superior to other priestly offices….There is then no suggestion in Luther’s thought that women are somehow incapable of bearing the priestly ‘character.'”

Luther did, however, still exclude women from the regular ministry, but this apparent inconsistency would seem to make sense in light of his “two regiments” doctrine–for the regular ordained ministry of the Church was understood as a matter of good order and expedience for the Church, an outward and, one could say, a “political” matter.  Still important, but not of the essence of the Church, in which all were equally priests to one another.  

Naturally, Luther thought that good order would not be served by “unqualified persons” such as women filling such a role in the Church.  But Avis observes that this means that women’s ordination is ruled out not on theological grounds, but pragmatic grounds.  “The logic of Luther’s overall position in fact dictates that the question of whether women should be ordained to the ministry should be answered purely in terms of social expediency.  They could not be denied the essential priesthood, but in the light of the sixteenth-century social structure they would inevitably have been regarded as ‘unqualified persons’ to exercise any public office, not only in the Church but in society at large.”

 

Of course, it is worth noting that few of the other Reformers followed Luther in his particularly radical version of the priesthood of all believers, and sought to articulate a more conservative position on the spiritual significance of ordained ministry, meaning a stronger stance on the issue of women’s ordination.  Calvin and the Puritans, for example, were to forcefully deny the right of women to baptize–one of the many hot-button issues in the protracted prayer book wars in the young Church of England.  (How this passing remark by Avis fits with this odd statement by Calvin that I blogged a couple months ago, I’m not yet sure.)