Does the Spiritual Equality of the Sexes Mean That Women Can Be Priests?

1. Does the Spiritual Equality of the Sexes Mean That Women Can Be Priests? By Dr. Catherine Brown Tkacz

2. Introduction • Jesus gave strong emphasis to the teaching that men and women are spiritually equal. A wealth of evidence shows that he advanced the doctrine of the spiritual equality of the sexes. Full consideration of this will allow then looking at what implication, if any, exists for the popular modern interest in ordaining women as Catholic priests.

3. Jesus and Spiritual Equality • Genesis had already taught that men and women are both made in the image of God. • Jesus gave this doctrine of the spiritual equality of the sexes new emphasis by his actions and by his words. • He healed and forgave and loved both men and women. • He responded to the intercession of both men and women. • His parables and prophecies cite both men and women. • He elicited professions of faith from both men and women.

4. The Parables • In his parables Jesus highlights the spiritual equality of the sexes in two ways. • First, he expects everyone to see the personal application in a parable that involves only one sex: • Everyone is to see himself in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, for instance, or in the parable of the talents. • Second, he often gives pairs of parables, one about a woman, the other about a man.

5. Pairs of Parables • The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man plants, like leaven that a woman mixes in the dough (Matt. 13:31-33, Luke 13:18-21). • Rejoicing over one repentant sinner is like the joy a man leads his friends in when he finds his one lost sheep, or the joy a woman leads her friends in when she has found her one lost coin (Luke 15:4-10).

6. Innovative • It was innovative of Jesus to use pairs of sexually balanced examples as often as he did. • This is not to say that he always gave a pair of examples; but he did so much more than was usual. • Such pairs are “really quite rare” in the Jewish haggadah, according to Jewish scholar Tal Ilan (Mine and Yours are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature [1997], p. 269).

7. Defense of Jesus’ Purpose • However, Ilan also doubts the value and historicity of Jesus’ use of paired examples, because some other instances of it can be found in antiquity (p. 272). • Her reasoning is not sound, though: Simply because a few other examples can be found does not mean that Jesus must have mindlessly used sexually balanced examples. • Moreover, for Christians who believe Jesus was and is God incarnate, it is proper to recognize his words as deliberate.

8. Pairs of OT Saints • Jesus also gives sexually balanced examples of faith from the Old Testament. • Speaking of faith outside the Jews, he cites the widow of Zarephath, to whom Elijah was sent, and then Naaman, whom Eli healed (Luke 4:24-27). • Moral authority can reside in both men and women: Jesus prophesies that the Ninevites and the Queen of the South will rise up and condemn those who do not acknowledge Christ (Matt. 12:41-42, Luke 11:29-32).

9. Balance of Sexes in Art • Briefly looking ahead from the NT, one sees that the Church imitated the Lord in representing both men and women in art. • For instance, here is a famous image, the Anastasis (“The Resurrection), showing both Adam and Eve being delivered from Hell. • The icon of the “Holy Ancestors” of Christ can be named the “Holy Fathers and Mothers.” • Other artworks show both men and women entering heaven, etc. • In some churches, half the decoration depicts men and the other half, women.

12. Focus on Women • Other artworks focus on women. • Consider a recent icon, written by Diane Plaskon Koory, which you may have seen on the poster for this talk: the Handmaiden Icon, showing several holy women. • The icon was used with the kind permission of Conciliar Press (www.conciliarpress.com). It was commissioned for the Chapel of SS. Peter and Paul, of the Midwest Chancery of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, in Toledo.

13. Basis for this: Jesus • The basis for artists depicting both the balance of the sexes and also the focus on women is the emphasis Our Lord gave to the spiritual equality of the sexes.

14. Pairs in Prophecy • Jesus’ description of the coming of the Son of Man is rich in male and female examples: • The man on the housetop and the man in the field are not to turn back but to remember Lot’s wife. Of two men in bed, only one will be taken; of two women grinding, only one will be taken. Woe to those who give suck in those days (Matt. 24:17-19, 40-41; Luke 17:30-35).

15. Spiritual Equality in Art • Early Christian art often shows a balanced representation of the sexes. • This visually shows forth the spiritual equality of the sexes. • For instance, on the Brescia Casket (4th c.) both a man and a woman are shown being healed and a different man and woman are shown being resuscitated. • Furthermore, the resuscitations occurred at the intercession of a man and a woman.

16. The Brescia Casket, 4th c.

17. The woman with the flux of blood

18. Left side

19. Jairus’ daughter resuscitated

20. Right side

21. The blind man healed

22. Lazarus resuscitated

23. Equal agency • Consider the events depicted on the Brescia Casket in terms of male and female agency. • Both a woman and a man approached Jesus for personal healing, and he gave it. • Both a man, Jairus, and two women, Martha and Mary of Bethany, approached Jesus to ask him to heal loved ones who died before Jesus arrived, and Jesus resuscitated them. • Clearly both sexes are able 1) to approach the Lord on their own behalf and 2) to intercede for others.

24. Forgiveness, Love • Jesus forgives the woman taken in adultery (John 8:2-11) and he forgives the paralytic before he heals him (Matt. 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:17-26), although in neither case was Jesus asked for forgiveness. • He is reported by John to love all three siblings of Bethany, Lazarus, Mary and Martha (John 11:5). • This is further evidence of the spiritual equality of the sexes.

25. Bibliography • Patricia Ranft, Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian Tradition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). • Tkacz, “The Doctrinal Context for Interpreting Women as Types of Christ,” Studia Patristica 40 (2006) 253-57. • Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket: Typology and the Early Christian Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, Notre Dame, 2001), see index. • Tkacz, “Jesus and the Spiritual Equality of Women,” Fellowship of Catholic Scholars 24.4 (Fall, 2001) 24-29.

26. Peter and Martha • Critical for tonight’s topic are two professions of faith, one made by Peter after the Bread of Life sermon (John 6:35-60) and the other by Martha of Bethany at the threshold of her brother’s tomb (John 11). • Both Peter and Martha affirm their faith at moments of excruciating difficulty. • In each case, the Lord elicits a statement of faith. • In each case, the Lord responds with an historically important act. • These two, quite different acts manifest the iconic complementarity of the sexes.

27. Christian Innovation:Women as Types of Christ • A striking way of showing that women, equally with men, are called to be holy was introduced in the first century, in the Gospels: interpreting women, alongside men, as types of Christ. • Previously only Jewish men, such as Moses and David and Jonah, had been interpreted by the Jews as prefigurations of the Messiah. • Then Jesus made himself a model for his followers to imitate, saying that the one who would follow the Lord must take up his cross daily and follow him.

28. Gentile and Female Types • At once, Gentile and also female types of Christ became appropriate, even necessary. The gentile Melchisedek and the woman Susanna were interpreted as types of Christ in the New Testament. • Soon other women gained this role: Jephthah’s daughter, Jairus’ daughter, Judith, the widow of Zarephath, Ruth, and the woman in the parable who finds the lost coin.

29. Balanced Pairs of Types • Sometimes the early Church presented a male and a female type of Christ together, giving a sexually balanced pair of models for the faithful to imitate. • For instance, at Mount Sinai and at the Red Sea one finds a pair of depictions in the sanctuary: Isaac and Jephthah’s daughter. • On the Brescia Casket, both Daniel and Susanna are depicted prominently, as types of Christ.

30. Bibliography by Tkacz • “Typology Today,” New Blackfriars (in press). • “’Here Am I, Lord’: Preaching Jephthah’s Daughter as a Type of Christ,” The Downside Review 434 (2006): 21-32. • “Aneboesen phonei megalei: Susanna and the Synoptic Passion Narratives,” Gregorianum 87.3 (2006): 449-86. • “The Doctrinal Context for Interpreting Women as Types of Christ,” Studia Patristica 40 (2006): 253-57.

31. Bibliography, cont’d • “Susanna victrix, Christus victor: Lenten Sermons, Typology and the Lectionary,” in Speculum Sermonis, ed. Donavin et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 55-79. • “Women as Types of Christ: Susanna and Jephthah’s Daughter,” Gregorianum 85.2 (2004): 281-314. • “Susanna as a Type of Christ,” Studies in Iconography 21 (1999): 101-53.

32. Peter • Peter: “We have believed and have known that you are the Christ, the Son of God” (John 6:70). • Following Peter’s affirmation of faith, the Lord declared him the Rock on which Jesus will build his church. • Peter had already been one of the twelve disciples; now his special responsibilities and authority were indicated.

33. Martha • Martha: “Yes, Lord, I know (pisteuo) that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world” (John 11:27). • This affirmation is more complete than Peter’s, yet Martha was not one of the twelve, and the Lord did not respond to her profession by making her one. • After all the Lord had done to make clear that he emphasizes the spiritual equality of the sexes, it is reasonable to see the difference here as deliberate and purposeful on the part of Jesus.

34. Profound Response to Martha Following Martha’s affirmation of faith, the Lord performed the greatest miracle of his entire ministry: He resuscitated Lazarus. • Jairus’ daughter had been dead only a matter of minutes; the son of the widow of Nain had been dead long enough that his body was being taken for burial, but Lazarus had been in the tomb for three days. • This miracle was the strongest evidence that Jesus had ever given that he had the power of God, and Jesus performed this miracle in response to a woman’s demonstration of faith.

35. Further implications • Moreover, this miracle foreshadowed the Lord’s own resurrection, which occurred one week later. • Finally, this raising also remains a type of the resurrection of the faithful at the end of time. • In light of this, what meaning is in the fact that a woman’s faith prompted the miracle?

36. Iconic Complementarity • The iconic complementarity of the sexes (to use the words of the late Pope John Paul II) is seen in Peter and Martha here. • Peter is a priest, and the Rock of the Church. • Martha is pre-eminently one of the faithful: She is a type of the individual soul, and she is also a type of the Church Herself. • Spiritually equal, and sharing equally in the universal vocation to holiness, this man and woman also demonstrate dynamically the spiritual mystery of sexual difference.

37. The Mystery of the Priesthood • In mystery, God reserves the priesthood to those men whom he calls. • The original Levitical priesthood was established at the foundation of community worship at Sinai and involved only men descended from Levi. • The new priesthood established by Jesus is no longer genetically limited, and it involves God’s calling the priest, but, in mystery, it remains all male. • This is shown by Jesus’ deliberate choice of men for the twelve.

38. Contrary views • Since the Enlightenment, however, and especially in the past fifty years, some have asserted that there are limits to how authoritative Jesus and the Gospels are. • If these limits exist, they undercut the basis for believing that the priesthood is all male. • Thus, we will look in some detail at this.

39. The views • Some hold that Jesus was socially limited, that he pragmatically accommodated his actions to what the prevailing culture would accept. • Others hold that he was limited in his understanding. • Some hold that he was limited in his ability to determine the Gospel record. • Some explicitly hold that he was not God and was too unenlightened to value women. • Others hold that Jesus had no active influence after his death and that the male disciples misrepresented his ministry and purpose, wrongfully excluding women.

40. 1. Socially Limited • The mildest of these views is that Jesus was limited by the social norms of Jerusalem in the first century. • That is, he chose only male disciples because he knew that no one would follow him if he had women among the twelve. With this view, one can still think him God. • The assumption is that he always intended that eventually women would be priests and that the time for this has come. • However, given all that the Lord did that shocked Jewish sensibilities, and given the prominence he gave to women, it appears that he would have called women to be among the twelve if he had wanted women to be priests.

41. 2. Intellectually Limited • Some modern academics hold that Jesus was personally limited in his understanding. • Conveniently, that view allows the critic to improve or correct Jesus, on the assumption that the critic is more enlightened than the Lord. • That view is beautifully skewered by C.S. Lewis in the character of the “Episcopal Ghost” in Lewis’ The Great Divorce (1946):

42. The “Episcopal Ghost” • “People always forget that Jesus (here the Ghost bowed) was a comparatively young man when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he had lived. … Consider what his mature views would have been. …What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature.” • (Lewis, The Great Divorce [1946], ch. 5, end)

43. “The Son of Man” • The “Episcopal Ghost” is not alone. Jesus is seen as barely average by many scholars: He lacked the intellectual ability and imagination to correlate his actions and thoughts with the Scriptures. For instance, the Gospels record numerous statements attributed to Jesus using the phrase “Son of Man.” Maurice Casey doubts that Jesus actually said any of these sayings because in order to do so he would have had to understand them. – Son of Man, p. 167.

44. “The Son of Man,” cont. • In a bit of circular reasoning, after Casey discounts the scriptural evidence that Jesus often used the phrase "Son of Man“ (Dan. 7), then Casey asserts that Dan. 7 "was not an important formative influence on the thought of Jesus"; ibid., p. 202.

45. Defense of Jesus’ Words • Only a minority hold that Jesus was deliberately quoting Daniel and calling himself “the Son of Man.” • Raymond E. Brown, S.S., soundly argues that if one holds that “later Christians ‘retrojected’ the phrase onto Jesus, then "one faces two major difficulties: Why was this title so massively retrojected, being placed on Jesus’ lips on a scale far outdistancing the retrojection of ‘the Messiah,’ ‘the Son of God,’ and ‘the Lord’? And if this title was first fashioned by the early church, [not Jesus,] why has it left almost no traces in nonGospel NT literature, something not true of the other titles?” –Death of the Messiah (1994), 507.

46. Reason suggests that Jesus’ followers were influenced by him and uses his ideas and words. • Yet, a "radical principle" used by many biblical scholars is to assume that if "the vocabulary of a saying" in the Gospels is also found in the NT Epistles, then "it cannot safely be attributed to Jesus." • Brown notes that "such a principle guarantees deformity in understanding Jesus" (2:1481).

47. Bibliography: Son of Man • Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Death of the Messiah (1994). • Chrys Caragounis, The Son of Man: Vision and Interpretation (1986) • Extreme case of limiting Jesus: Maurice Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation of Daniel 7 (1979)

48. Correcting Jesus, revising the priesthood • Those who arrogate to themselves the presumed power to correct and edit Jesus can easily make the step to revising what the priesthood should be. • It is popular today to attempt to remake the Church on a socially egalitarian model, without regard to grace and the sacraments. • However, while the Church is social, it is not merely social, and priesthood is a vocation, not merely a job.

49. 3. Jesus unable to guide Church • Some hold that Jesus was unable to prevent his patriarchal disciples from misrepresenting him and his teaching. • For instance, it has been claimed that women were present at the Last Supper, but that the bigoted evangelists suppressed this information. • Ultimately, however, this view has to mean that Christianity is invalid. Instead of meaning that women should be priests, it would mean that there is no real priesthood.

50. 4. Jesus as social product • Whereas Lewis’ “Episcopal Ghost” thought Jesus would have discarded his juvenile views, many modern critics simply suggest that he was a social product of late antiquity, and incapable of their enlightened views. • Implicit in their thought is that Jesus was just a man. Often implied in their argument is that the Incarnation is a fiction invented by manipulative men like Peter and Paul. • Many who claim to seek “the historical Jesus” in fact assume, as an unquestioned article of faith, that Jesus was not God. The “Jesus Seminar” advances and popularizes this unChristian view.