Friday, April 4, 2008

Priestesses in the Church?

(In response to "Priestesses in the Church?" by C.S. Lewis")

For some reason this topic always seems to be a touchy subject with everyone dancing around what they really want to say. In the end nothing really gets said. We talked about the difference between priests and pastors within the church and that because we don't believe that pastors are God's inspired representatives/ direct image bearers that the argument looses its hold. We stated that in the Christian Reformed Church Lewis's argument loses it's weight and falls short. Lewis never makes claim that women are not capable of becoming priestesses. He does say that because priests are image bearers of God that men must fulfill this role. "But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him."

In class we discussed why we believe women should be able to preach because we are all made in God's image and that women are not less gifted then men, and should be able to express their spiritual gift accordingly. Lewis doesn't dispute this. "No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office." He says that women can be prophets. I think when we argued this in class we argued whether women could be preachers based on their abilities. Preachers... Everyone can be a preacher, much like Lewis says everyone can be a prophet or prophetess. The question Lewis posed was do you think women should be Reverends. Should women be at the head of the church? Should women be the leader and shepherd of a flock? I'm not sure if we answered this in class.

Lewis poses the question this way: "To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us... We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second."

Lewis then goes on to talk about being sexually neuter. "But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complementary organs of a mystical body." This is how Lewis describes the difference between men and women. And some may say that it is a cop out. Maybe women should be leaders of the church. But, maybe there are some things we simply cannot explain. Maybe women should not be leaders of the church.

Personally, on the surface I cannot think of any reasons of why a women should not be a leader of the church. However, strong conditioning against it leads me into some sort of apprehension. I'm not sure whether I would want to answer definitively either way. The truth is simply to wonderful for me to know.

1 comment:

Paulo F Ribeiro, PhD, PE, FIEEE, FIET - Adriana Schalkwijk Ribeiro, MPH, MD said...

Very well said, Eric. I appreciated the way you tried to deal with the issue.