Essay
The humanity Christ assumed
Women, priesthood, and sacramental representation
At the Eucharistic altar, the priest takes bread, gives thanks, and speaks the Church’s liturgical words: “This is my Body, which is given for you”. Christ acts through a minister publicly called and ordained in his Church. The words are Christ’s, the meal is Christ’s, and the grace is Christ’s gift.
For Christians who understand priesthood in this way, the ordination of women raises a question more difficult than whether women can lead, teach, or perform clerical duties. What kind of likeness allows a priest to represent Christ? Jesus is a man. Scripture names him as the Bridegroom of the Church. If the priest acts in persona Christi — in the person of Christ — a male priest can appear intrinsic to the sacramental sign.
That objection cannot be answered by declaring the minister’s body irrelevant. The Word became flesh; Baptism joins water to Christ’s promise; the Eucharist gives us bread and wine as communion in his Body and Blood. I will argue that a woman can represent Christ within this embodied order: the priest’s likeness to him is given through participation in his humanity and a particular ecclesial commission, whose scriptural and sacramental character does not require male sex.
Receiving a difficult question
Women’s ordination tests what it means to receive the faith. As I argued in “The faith once received”, the Church begins in gratitude for an inheritance she did not create, yet remains under Scripture, through which the Spirit may correct her. She receives ordered ministry so that the Gospel may be guarded, the sacraments celebrated, and the whole Body equipped for service.
For most of Christian history, across both East and West, the ordinary ministry of presbyters and bishops was male. This places a serious burden upon reform, especially when Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and many Anglican Christians understand the practice as fidelity to Christ’s institution. A convincing case must show why admitting women can preserve the ministry the Church has received.
Baptism gives no Christian a right to ordination, and giftedness does not authorize itself. The question is whether sex should exclude a person from the Church’s discernment before her doctrine, character, and vocation can be tested.
Created, disordered, and restored together
The scriptural account begins with a shared vocation. “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (NRSV, Genesis 1:27[1]). The blessing and commission that follow are given to woman and man together. The woman receives neither the divine image nor the work of dominion derivatively through the man.
In the second creation narrative, the woman is a helper corresponding to the man (Genesis 2:18-25[2]). Adam is formed first, and St Paul later appeals to that sequence. Nevertheless, the narratives give the pair a common commission, mutual belonging, and one flesh. The declaration that the man will rule over the woman appears amid the fractured relations of the fall (Genesis 3:16[3]). Distinction is created; domination is disorder. Even if one finds an asymmetry within marriage here, extending it to a permanent male teaching and sacramental office requires a further argument.
At Pentecost, sons and daughters receive the Spirit and prophesy (Acts 2:16-21[4]). Baptism clothes women and men with Christ and makes them heirs of the promise (Galatians 3:27-29[5]). These passages do not distribute ecclesial offices. They do, however, establish a shared participation in Christ whose consequences include public witness. The question of office arises within that common vocation.
The Twelve and the women sent to speak
Jesus’ choice of twelve men was deliberate. The Gospels do not present him as unable to act against convention, and the apostolic community replaced Judas from among male companions who could witness to the resurrection (Acts 1:15-26[6]). Mary’s holiness and place in the incarnation did not make her one of the Twelve. Women’s dignity alone cannot settle the shape of Holy Orders.
The Twelve signify restored Israel: Jesus promises that they will judge the twelve tribes (Matthew 19:28[7]). Their number, Jewish identity, and companionship with Jesus belong to that sign, while later ordained ministry continues their mission without reproducing every characteristic. This distinction does not prove that maleness is dispensable. It identifies the judgment that must be made about continuity.
The Gospels also show women receiving and communicating the truth about Christ. Mary of Bethany sits at Jesus’ feet as a disciple (Luke 10:38-42[8]); the Samaritan woman bears public witness to what he has told her (John 4:27-42[9]); and the risen Christ sends Mary Magdalene to announce his resurrection to his brothers (John 20:11-18[10]). In the apostolic Church, Prisca, with Aquila, instructs Apollos more accurately in the Way of God (Acts 18:24-28[11]). None of these passages describes presbyteral ordination. Together they give women responsibility for receiving, declaring, and explaining the faith, including to men. The New Testament therefore requires us to distinguish the male Twelve from a universal reservation of doctrinal speech to men; it does not allow us simply to identify the two.
The distinction has limits. The apostles explicitly received Gentiles without requiring circumcision, whereas the New Testament records no equivalent decision about women presbyters. The analogy with Jewish identity therefore identifies a question about continuity; it cannot answer that question by itself. The answer must come from the wider account of ministry and the Church’s responsibility to interpret it.
Paul’s coworkers and Paul’s restrictions
St Paul’s letters contain no unambiguous account of a woman presiding at the Eucharist. They also contain restrictions long understood to reserve the teaching and governing work of presbyters to men. Yet Paul commends Phoebe as a diakonos of a particular church and a benefactor of many (Romans 16:1-2[12]); he names Junia in relation to the apostles, whether as prominent among them or well known to them (Romans 16:7[13]); and he assumes that women pray and prophesy in worship (1 Corinthians 11:2-16[14]).[15] These ministries must inform our reading of the restrictions.
The command that women be silent in the churches follows instructions for tongue-speakers and prophets to yield the floor under particular conditions (1 Corinthians 14:26-35[16]). Its direction to ask their husbands at home makes questioning that disrupts the gathering the most persuasive explanation to me. The stronger traditional reading permits prophecy but reserves its authoritative evaluation to men. That distinction deserves attention, but the passage does not expressly assign evaluation to a male office; its stated concern is learning through questions. Read alongside women’s acknowledged prophecy, the restriction is better understood as governing a particular kind of speech than as defining eligibility for ministry.[17]
The sharper restriction comes in 1 Timothy 2:8-15[18]. Paul commands that a woman learn, then prohibits her teaching or exercising authority over a man. He appeals to Adam’s prior formation and Eve’s deception. This gives the traditional reading real force: the reason offered reaches back to creation, beyond the circumstances of a single congregation.
I nevertheless read the prohibition as restraining teaching by women who need instruction in a church troubled by false teaching. Timothy’s charge begins with stopping people who teach without understanding what they confidently assert (1 Timothy 1:3-7[19]). The command that a woman learn belongs within that concern. On this reading, she must receive the teaching faithfully before undertaking to direct others. The letter does not expressly say “until she has learned”; that qualification is inferred from its corrective purpose.[20]
Adam and Eve make the warning concrete. In Genesis, Adam receives God’s command before the woman is formed (Genesis 2:15-18[21]). His priority can therefore be read in relation to prior reception of the command, while Eve’s deception shows the danger of acting upon a distorted account of it. This does not require us to suppose that Eve had no instruction. It connects Paul’s appeal to the command that women learn. Elsewhere he uses Eve’s deception to warn the whole Corinthian congregation, men as well as women (2 Corinthians 11:3[22]). Her failure can exemplify a danger common to Christians without establishing a permanent female incapacity.
This reading leaves a genuine difficulty: Paul formulates the restriction in terms of woman and man rather than simply of uninstructed people. The passage does not reconstruct the circumstances sufficiently to remove every uncertainty. I prefer the contextual reading because it joins the command to learn, the letter’s corrective purpose, and women’s attested doctrinal ministry without making one kind of female speech inherently disqualified by sex.
Creation still governs that reading. Receiving God’s word faithfully precedes the responsibility to speak it, and deception threatens the whole community when that order is broken. The Church must therefore test those who teach. The proposed distinction is between the enduring demand for faithful reception and the particular restriction through which Paul enforces it here.
The overseer described next is likewise male, using the Greek expression often rendered “husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:1-7[23]). Reading this as marital fidelity rather than a requirement to be married does not make its masculine language disappear. It is evidence of the male pattern. Whether that pattern excludes women must be judged alongside the letter’s purpose and the wider apostolic witness. Taken together, these texts warrant tested learning and accountable authority; I do not find that they establish male sex as a necessary qualification for every bearer of that authority.
The weight of long practice
The historical presumption remains. Evidence for women called presbyters is sparse and disputed; it cannot responsibly be turned into a lost, widespread female priesthood. The ancient female diaconate is better documented. The Apostolic Constitutions, for example, directs a bishop to lay hands upon a deaconess and pray for the Holy Spirit, while distinguishing her responsibilities from those of other ministers.
The reasons for exclusion have also varied. Thomas Aquinas connected women’s inability to receive orders with their supposed state of subjection and consequent inability to signify eminence. Rejecting that rationale does not disprove male priesthood, but it does require another account of its necessity.
The Church may preserve apostolic truth in worship and practice before giving a satisfactory explanation of it. Continuity is therefore more than the repetition of an argument, and a flawed rationale need not invalidate what it seeks to defend. Nevertheless, continuity does not remove the responsibility to distinguish what Christ instituted from the historical judgments through which the Church has received it.
For Anglicans, the Church’s judgment remains answerable to Scripture. Article XX[24] names her as its witness and keeper while limiting her authority by it; Article XXI[25] acknowledges that councils may err. These principles establish the possibility of correction, not the correctness of this particular reform. The affirmative case must explain how admitting women preserves the substance of ordained ministry.
The humanity Christ assumed
The Roman Catholic declaration Inter Insigniores grounds its conclusion in Christ’s example and the Church’s continuing practice. It then offers sacramental and nuptial symbolism as an explanation of their fittingness. Challenging the symbolism alone would therefore leave its claim about apostolic institution unanswered. C. S. Lewis and Alexander Schmemann likewise locate priesthood within a received order that the Church cannot remake at will.
That principle should be affirmed. The question is what belongs to the gift. Jesus is and remains a male human being; his sex belongs to the concrete truth of the incarnation. Yet Hebrews explains his high priesthood through his sharing our flesh and blood, suffering, obedience, divine appointment, and indestructible life (Hebrews 2:10-18[26]; Hebrews 5:1-10[27]; Hebrews 7:11-28[28]). His solidarity with those he saves is integral to his priestly work.
The Son received his human flesh from Mary, without a human father. Amy Peeler’s attention to Mary helps recover the significance of this confession: the incarnation cannot be narrated as primary male humanity arriving to save a derivative female humanity (Women and the Gender of God, chapter 5). Jesus shares the human nature of women and men. Gregory Nazianzen’s principle that what Christ has not assumed he has not healed defends the completeness of that humanity, including a human mind. Its application here is limited but important: Christ’s saving representation rests upon the humanity he shares with us, not upon women’s relation to a supposedly more representative male nature.
An opponent may accept all this while maintaining that ministerial representation requires a male body. Salvation and ordination are distinct. The incarnation establishes the common humanity within which the Church discerns ministers; it does not by itself determine who may be ordained. We must also ask how the ordained person participates in Christ’s action.
The priest is more than a delegate quoting an absent master. Christ uses an embodied minister as an ecclesial sign and instrument. Through episcopal prayer and laying on of hands, the Church receives a person into a public ministry of apostolic teaching, sacramental service, and pastoral care. Ordination gives a particular relation to Christ and his Body. William Witt’s account of priestly representation emphasizes its cruciform character: the minister bears witness to Christ through a service whose pattern and power come from him (Icons of Christ, 240–241).
This is not merely ethical resemblance, as though holiness or giftedness conferred the office. The commission matters. Article XXIII[29] requires lawful calling and sending; the Ordinal gives this public form through presentation, examination, prayer, and episcopal laying on of hands. Article XXV[30] distinguishes Orders from Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the two Sacraments ordained by Christ in the Gospel. Nevertheless, ordination is sacramental in its embodied reception of a minister through prayer for the Spirit’s grace.
These considerations form a cumulative case for a woman’s reception of this commission. Women already share the humanity Christ represents and receive gifts for declaring his truth. On the reading argued above, apostolic restrictions require ordered, faithful ministry without making maleness its permanent condition. Ordination entrusts that ministry to a particular person under the Word, within the Church’s received order. Admitting a woman can therefore preserve the ministry’s source, purpose, and accountability. The remaining objection is that its bodily sign itself requires a man. That claim must be assessed through the nuptial image on which it principally depends.
Bridegroom, Bride, and minister
Scripture pictures Christ as Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride who receives his self-giving love (Ephesians 5:21-33[31]; Revelation 19:6-9[32]). The Eucharist belongs within that mystery. Christ gives himself to his people, and his people receive him in thanksgiving.
Inter Insigniores acknowledges that the priest represents the Church as well as Christ. It argues that the priest can represent her because he first represents Christ as Head and Shepherd. On this account, his maleness makes the Bridegroom’s relation to the Bride sacramentally perceptible. This is a theological inference from Scripture and tradition, not simply a demand for physical similarity in every respect.
Sex is also a more substantial difference than appearance or age. It belongs to embodied relationship and generation, and Scripture employs it to disclose the covenant between Christ and his people. The question is therefore whether fidelity to that covenant requires its minister to be male, rather than whether sexual difference has any theological meaning.
I agree that Christ’s action has priority: the Church can offer only what she has received from him. But the priority of his action does not establish which bodily likeness authorizes the minister to serve it. In Ephesians, Christ’s headship is disclosed through his giving himself for the Church, cleansing and nourishing her. The minister serves that self-giving through a commission to proclaim his Word and administer his gifts. Identifying this authority with male sex requires a further transfer from the sexual differentiation of the nuptial image to the qualifications of the office.
The liturgy gives reason to resist that transfer. In the same Eucharistic prayer, the priest proclaims Christ’s words over the bread and then leads the congregation in offering themselves to the Father. The celebrant is visibly among those who receive and respond, even while serving Christ’s action toward them. The male priest represents the Church in this prayer as well as belonging to her. His embodiment does not prevent his bearing her corporately feminine identity before God.
This does not make the two representations identical. Christ remains the source of grace, and the Church remains its recipient. It does show that sacramental representation can bear a gendered relation without reproducing the sex named by its imagery. Drawing on Sarah Coakley’s account of this double representation, I understand the celebrant’s body as serving a relation whose meaning is given by Christ and enacted in the whole liturgy. The minister’s sex cannot alone determine what that body signifies.
A woman at the altar thus need not portray Christ as female. She serves the male Christ’s action toward his Church through the office entrusted to her. The nuptial image continues to name his faithful, self-giving love and the Church’s answering love; it does not require the ordained person to embody only the Bridegroom’s side of that relation. On this account, a woman can be an embodied sign of Christ because the commission joins her particular humanity to his public ministry, without making her a substitute for his person.
This judgment, joined to the scriptural case, is why I believe the historical presumption can be overcome. It preserves the priest’s dependence upon Christ, the public commission, and the bodily character of the sacramental act, while receiving women’s ministry within them. Its assurance rests upon Christ’s faithfulness to the ministry so received. The outward ceremony does not establish its own validity; confidence follows from the theological judgment that this person may receive the commission.
A female priest brings her female body to this ministry, just as a man brings his male body. Motherhood and fatherhood remain real creaturely vocations, and shared office need not make women and men identical in their relationships or pastoral service. What is restored is the freedom to offer their differentiated lives within the Church’s common calling, without making sex itself the measure of sacramental capacity.
Receiving whom Christ gives
A woman may therefore be called, tested, and ordained as deacon, priest, or bishop. These orders remain distinct. Deacons proclaim the Gospel, serve those in need, and assist at the Eucharist; they do not consecrate it. Priests serve congregations through Word and sacrament. Bishops bear a distinctive responsibility for apostolic succession, ordination, oversight, and communion. If women can share the ministerial priesthood, the objection from sex acquires no additional sacramental force at the episcopate. Questions about episcopal authority and catholic reception nevertheless remain.
Theological eligibility must also be distinguished from canonical permission. The ACNA’s Constitution and Canons protect diocesan or jurisdictional discretion concerning women in the diaconate and presbyterate, while requiring an episcopal candidate to be a male presbyter. Our College of Bishops acknowledged divergent Anglican conclusions in its 2017 statement, but judged the scriptural warrant insufficient for women’s priestly ordination to become the provincial norm. The argument here supports changing the episcopal restriction; it does not authorize anyone to disregard it.
Such judgments belong to bishops and synods acting under Scripture and received doctrine through the Church’s constitutional processes. They require public reasons, examination of the relevant teaching and practice, and accountability beyond a candidate or congregation. Neither a private conviction nor a favourable vote can make a practice faithful. The Church must give an account of why it serves the apostolic faith.
Roman Catholic, Orthodox, continuing Anglican, and many ACNA Christians reject this account of women’s priestly ordination. The disagreement wounds communion because it touches recognition of the Eucharist and the Church herself. Fruitful ministry cannot alone settle sacramental validity, and Anglican confidence does not make the disagreement unreal.
Yet where the Church judges women eligible and faithfully discerns a particular vocation, sex alone should not overturn that discernment: to do so would refuse a gift for a reason the Church has judged no impediment. The duty arises from the ministry’s purpose. Christ gives ministers for the building up of his people, and the Church is responsible for receiving those gifts for their good. This is a reason to receive such vocations and to pursue the reform needed to do so. It does not settle every question of timing, jurisdiction, or pastoral provision. Those responsibilities require patience with Christians whose judgment remains different.
Such patience need not make the theological conclusion indefinite. It asks those who hold it to remain in conversation, to examine its consequences in doctrine and worship, and to attend seriously to the objections of the wider Church. A reform offered as faithful reception must continue to submit itself to that discipline.
Candidates are presented, examined, prayed over, and received through episcopal laying on of hands. The words they are ordained to speak do not belong to them. Neither does the ministry. Both belong to Christ, who gives himself to his Church and gives ministers for her service. The Church’s responsibility is to test, receive, and order the gifts of the whole Body in faithfulness to him.
“Prominent among the apostles” in Romans 16:7[33] has substantial support; “well known to the apostles” remains a defended alternative. Neither rendering identifies Junia as a presbyter or bishop. Similarly, Phoebe’s title does not settle every question about the institutional form of her ministry. ↩︎
Some Western manuscripts place these verses after 1 Corinthians 14:40[34]. The reading offered here does not depend upon treating them as a later addition. ↩︎
This reading draws on N. T. Wright’s emphasis on women’s learning, without relying on his reconstruction involving Artemis. Adam’s priority as prior reception of the command remains an interpretive proposal. The argument also does not require the disputed verb authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12[35] to mean only abusive authority. ↩︎
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Article XX. Of the Authority of the Church
The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Article XXI. Of the Authority of General Councils
General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Article XXIII. Of Ministering in the Congregation
It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of publick preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same.
And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have publick authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Article XXV. Of the Sacraments
Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him.
There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.
Those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.
The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them. And in such only as worthily receive the same they have a wholesome effect or operation: but they that receive them unworthily purchase to themselves damnation, as Saint Paul saith.