This is the first in several essays responding to a review of my book Icons of Christ by the Rev. Mark Perkins.

 

The Problem of Rhetoric

I have noticed in past reviews of my book Icons of Christ a tendency to substitute rhetoric for careful reading and reasoned response. The result is a failure to actually read and fairly represent my argument. Even when one disagrees with a position, one has a responsibility to present the argument in such a way that the opponent would recognize this as his or her position. I have always tried to follow this approach in my writing. My dissertation was on the theology of Jacobus Arminius, and I spent the first several chapters in trying to honestly and fairly summarize the positions of late medieval scholastics, Luther, Calvin, and the Reformed Scholastics with whom Arminius was in disagreement. I have just published a book on the doctrine of the Atonement, in which I summarize the atonement theologies of theologians from Irenaeus and Athanasius to the modern period. In each case, I try to make every effort to accurately represent the positions of even those theologians with whom I am not sympathetic.

In writing my book on women’s ordination, I took the same approach. My book is unique in addressing both Protestant and Catholic objections to women’s ordination, and I intentionally avoided sarcasm or snarkiness or misrepresentation in summarizing positions with which I disagreed. I have not yet come across any criticisms of my book that suggested that I had incorrectly or inaccurately summarized the views of either Protestant complementarians or Catholic sacramentalists. Unfortunately, those who have reviewed the book negatively have not returned the favor.

Mark Perkins’ review of Icons of Christ initially claims to be an exception. Perkins purports at the beginning to “thoughtfully engage” with what I’d written. He speaks of having taking a course under me at Trinity School for Ministry where he appreciated my “deft hand in navigating contentious waters with a theologically diverse set of students,” and he compliments me by saying that he initially believed that Icons of Christ “would offer the best possible argument for women’s ordination.”

Despite the initial compliments, however, Perkins’ review follows the usual pattern. More specifically, when Perkins finds himself in general agreement with something I write, he can summarize my views somewhat fairly. For example, as an Anglo-Catholic, Perkins is not generally in agreement with Wayne Grudem’s Protestant Complementarian approach to the interpretation of Scripture. Accordingly, Perkins summarizes my views in a sympathetic and more or less accurate manner in those cases where he thinks I am correct and Grudem mistaken.

To the contrary, Perkins’s own case against WO is Anglo-Catholic, and in discussing those parts of my book that address Catholic objections to the ordination of women, Perkins regularly presents my arguments in a condensed fashion, reduces this summary to a caricature of my actual position, and then dismisses the caricature. In these parts of his review, Perkins regularly engages in the only-too-frequent pattern I have noticed among complementarian opponents of WO, of substituting snark and sarcasm for actual argument.

So, for example:

“[The book’s] fundamental weaknesses lie not in the skill or erudition with which Witt argues but rather in the impossibility of his task – of reconciling the Church to the late-modern innovation of women’s ordination.”

“Witt’s book could help us develop a compelling vision for human flourishing as embodied, sexual creatures – so long as we reject all of his premises and conclusions.”

“That Witt finds his methods and evidence sufficient to fully explain the practices of the Spirit-bearing Body of Jesus Christ is downright bizarre.”

“Neither the historical implausibility of Witt’s argument nor even his devastatingly naive view of modernism is ultimately as significant as the theological and ecclesiological implications of Witt’s position – specifically his dismissal of Church history and tradition. The significance of the argument about tradition cannot be overstated. Witt, like all advocates of women’s ordination, must brush aside the universal practice of the historic Church, because only from the standing point of a blank slate – only from the God-like vantage of choosing ex nihilo – do his arguments stand any chance of success. If one allows the staggering weight of years of Church practice to influence the debate, Witt’s argument will collapse before it is even made.”

The technical term for this approach is “poisoning the well,” presenting adverse information about an opponent in order to discredit or ridicule the person before the argument can actually be engaged. That fits the pattern. However, as an Anglo-Catholic, Perkins ventures into some new territory. Previous reviews have largely come from Protestant complementarians, an approach with which Perkins seems unsympathetic. It is this “new territory” that I find interesting, and which I intend to address in this response.

 

First Things First

The first thing I would like to point out however is that Perkins demonstrates a key point that I had made in my book – that there is no single coherent argument against women’s ordination.  The arguments of Protestant complementarians and Catholic sacramentalists are fundamentally at odds with one another.  The Anglican Diocese of the Living Word responded to an essay I had written for the ACNA College of Bishops with an entirely “complementarian” argument, repeatedly appealed to the arguments of Wayne Grudem, and dismissed the Catholic in persona Christi position as “sacredotal.” Contrary to the Diocese of the Living Word, Perkins seems not to be sympathetic to Wayne Grudem, instead strongly affirming a notion of “sacramental representation” that the Diocese of the Living Word rejects. Both the Diocese of the Living Word and Perkins are in agreement that women cannot be ordained, but that is where the agreement ends. If the Diocese of the Living Word is correct in their rejection of “sacerdotalism,” then Perkins’ case collapses. If Perkins is correct that the fundamental arguments against women’s ordination concern sacramental symbolism, then the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word’s rejection of “sacerdotalism” misses the whole point. (Contrary to the Diocese of the Living Word’s response, which insisted that all opponents of WO were uniformly complementarian, Perkins acknowledges the disagreement.)

This raises an additional point that was central to the argument in my book, but which neither the Diocese of the Living Word nor Perkins is willing to acknowledge – that not only are Protestant and Catholic objections to women’s ordination at odds with one another, but they equally represent positions that are novelties, just as “new” in their own positions as the position advocating women’s ordination that they reject. As I argue in my book, there are no historic oppositions to women’s ordination along complementarian lines – that women are equal to men in intelligence and moral capacity, but nonetheless play distinctive “roles” of subordination to male authority. Neither is there historic opposition to women’s ordination based on the sacramental argument that only a male priest can represent a male Christ – Perkins’s own position. Both the Diocese of the Living Word’s complementarianism and Perkins’ exclusively male sacramental representation are theological positions for which there is no historic precedent before the mid-twentieth century.

 

Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

In the second chapter of my book, I begin with a fundamental thesis. Any arguments either for or against women’s ordination must be properly theological arguments. Specifically, I note the connection between opposition to women’s ordination and various logical fallacies: post hoc propter hoc fallacies, slippery slope fallacies, and ad hominem attacks on those who favor women’s ordination. Unfortunately, like Matthew Colvin in a previous review of my book, Perkins doubles down on the fallacies, and specifically the rhetoric that accompanies them.

Fallacy 1: Women’s ordination leads to theological liberalism.

This is a common rhetorical device in theological disagreement: Suggest that the views of one’s opponent will inevitably lead to some undesired theological outcome, particularly one destined to create anxiety and fear among one’s supporters.

Historically, Reformed theologians have argued that any compromise with Calvinist predestinarianism leads inevitably to semi-Pelagianism and outright Pelagianism. Tridentine Roman Catholics claimed that the Protestant sola fide led inevitably to antinomianism and that the Protestant sola Scriptura turned the Bible a “rubber nose,” capable of being twisted in any direction one wished. English Puritans argued against the Anglicanism of the Elizabethan settlement that the use of written liturgies, lectionaries, vestments, and episcopal orders led inevitably to Roman Catholicism. Since the nineteenth century, Evangelical Anglicans have argued that the theology and practices followed by Anglo-Catholics like Perkins again lead inevitably to Roman Catholicism. In this case, they had real life examples like John Henry Newman. No matter how much a Pusey or Keble might argue the case for the via media, the Evangelicals could respond “But Newman!” Since the rise of the historical-critical method in the nineteenth century, Fundamentalists have claimed that any use of the tools of historical-criticism leads inevitably to liberal theology: When you get down to brass tacks, N.T. Wright and Brevard Childs are really just stepping stones on the way to Bishop Spong!

Since the rise of Liberal Protestantism in the nineteenth century, the threefold division between Roman Catholics, Protestants and Liberals has regularly led to the accusation that the views of one’s opponents will lead to results that one’s opponents also finds objectionable. Roman Catholics converts like John Henry Newman claimed that Protestant theology rests on “private judgment” and inevitably leads to theological liberalism. Protestant opponents of Roman Catholicism have argued conversely that introducing tradition as a separate authority alongside Scripture leads to the loss of Scripture’s authority, and eventually to theological liberalism.

At the opposite extreme, liberal theologians like Bishop Spong have argued that commitment to any creedal variation of Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, leads inevitably to Fundamentalism. Although neither Perkins nor Colvin acknowledges it, I pointed out in my book that if conservatives tie women’s ordination to an inevitable liberalism, liberals tie opposition to women’s ordination to a fundamentalist takeover of the church. The argument goes both ways.

When I point in my book to a connection between women’s ordination and the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, and the civil rights movement in the twentieth, Perkins claims that I do not acknowledge that progressives innovators make the same rhetorical move, nor do I provide any explanation for the correlation between heresy and women’s ordination. This would seem to be a simple case of careless reading. In the initial paragraph of the chapter under discussion, I point to connections between disagreements about sexuality, conservative and liberal theology, and the political categories of “left-wing,” “right-wing,” “progressive” and “reactionary” and the current political “culture wars.” I specifically mention that many of those who advocated for women’s ordination were theological liberals who also advocated for civil rights for racial minorities in the 1960s. However, I also point out that some of those who argued against racial equality were presumably orthodox Christians, as were the eight white Christians (including two Episcopal bishops) who opposed Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama.

I provide an alternative to the “left-wing” vs. “right-wing” political dichotomy by tracing a different history from the secular one, beginning with Martin Luther’s notion of Christian liberty, moving to the Christian abolition movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, to Vatican II’s call for liberty and equality among all people, including women, and only then make the argument for a specifically Christian case for liberty and equality. Perkins dismisses this as “an impressively brazen exercise in changing the subject,” but it is no such thing. Liberally “progressive” advocates of women’s ordination, and orthodox Christian advocates are entirely different groups, opposed to each other concerning fundamental issues. To not recognize or acknowledge this is to engage in a fallacy of false equivalence.

Perkins is simply mistaken when he claims that “progressive innovators” make the “same rhetorical move” as do Christian egalitarians. They do not. Politically liberal progressives view both women’s liberation and same-sex unions as part of a general move toward individualist autonomy that flows from a secular Western tradition that originated in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The orthodox Christian argument is entirely different. As I make clear in the concluding paragraph of the chapter, the orthodox Christian argument for women’s ordination is rooted in a theology of Christian vocation, and is not a demand for “equal rights,” but a request to serve the church. As I make clear in the rest of the book, this case is rooted in a Trinitarian, and incarnational soteriology and ecclesiology that liberals would reject. Moreover, in chapter Thirteen, I provide a summary of the radical theological differences between a liberal feminist theology of immanentism, and a biblical and catholic egalitarian orthodoxy based on a “hermeneutics of trust,” which understands the Bible to be “an inspired witness ot the grace of God in Jesus Christ.” While both groups favor women’s ordination, the theological positions and therefore reasons for women’s ordination are diametrically opposed to one another.

Perkins’ pointing to a number of liberal or heretical women in the nineteenth century who endorsed women’s ordination is therefore irrelevant. Shakers, antinomonians, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and Unitarians are by definition not interested in Christian orthodoxy. The place to look would be, again, the history of those within orthodox Christian creedal or confessional churches who have endorsed women’s ordination. Groups like the Wesleyan Methodists endorsed women’s ordination just after the American Civil War. The first Anglican woman to be ordained a priest was ordained in Hong Kong in 1944. The Church of South India, the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, and the Anglican Church of Kenya all ordain women. None of these are bastions of “post-modernism.”

The most prominent contemporary advocates of women’s ordination and equality are the theologians and biblical scholars with whom I interact throughout my book: Ben Witherington III, N.T. Wright, Alan Padgett, Philip B. Payne, Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Michael Gorman, Linda Belleville, Richard Hays, Anthony Thilselton, Thomas F. Torrance, Roman Catholic Edward Kilmartin, S.J., Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware, Orthodox theologian Elisabeth-Behr Segal, the evangelical group Christians for Biblical Equality. Far from my needing to explain why nineteenth-century Shakers, Mormons, and Christian Scientists were not orthodox, it is incumbent on Perkins to explain why, if women’s ordination leads inevitably to liberal theology, the folks listed above have not figured that out.

Fallacy 2: Women’s ordination leads inevitably to endorsing same-sex unions.

Perkins writes: “[T]he question is not whether Witt actually opposes same-sex marriage (he does) but whether he can coherently do so – and whether we can expect that those who come to share his views will generally do so themselves.”

In the writing of any book, one has to be selective about which battles one can engage. Any remotely adequate discussion of same-sex unions would have made my long book of of over 400 pages even longer. Perkins does not mention a footnote on page 354 where I had written “This is not a book about homosexuality or whether the church should bless same-sex unions or gay marriage. . . . My own views coincide with the argument of New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays . . . and those of my colleague Wesley Hill.” So at the least, one would need to look at the writings of Hays and Hill to assess whether their own arguments in favor of exclusively heterosexual marriage were conclusive.

As I mentioned above that the best authors supporting women’s ordination these days are orthodox Christians, I would also add that the most thoughtful writing concerning issues of sexuality and sexual ethics in recent decades has been by orthodox scholars who not only affirm the church’s historic position on Christian marriage, but also support women’s ordination: Oliver O’Donovan, Richard Hays, my friend and former colleague Wes Hill, Mark Yarhouse, Christopher Seitz. Although I do not agree with his embrace of the culture wars, probably the best exegetical study of the issue is still by Robert Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. Gagnon supports women’s ordination.

I teach a required introductory course in Christian Ethics and I do discuss issues of sexuality and same-sex unions in that course. Required readings on the subject include the relevant chapters in Richard Hays’s Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperCollins, 1996), but also excellent essays by Christopher Seitz, Marcus Bockmuhel, and Robert W. Jenson in Christopher Seitz and Carl Braaten, eds. I am the Lord Your God: Reflections on the Ten Commandments (Eerdmans, 2005).

My own position can be found here: “The Hermeneutics of Same-Sex Practice: A Summary and Evaluation.”

However, even a cursory reading of Icons of Christ would indicate the direction my argument would take.

First, any discussion of Christian sexual ethics must begin with (1) the account of the creation of humanity (ha’adam) as male and female in God’s image, and the creation mandate given equally to both sexes in Gen. 1:27-28, and (2) the second creation account in Genesis 2-3, in which woman (issa) is created as the proper corresponding and complementary partner to man (is), woman who is both equal to and yet distinctively different from the man.

Traditional Christian sexual ethics points to two necessary components for sexual activity based in the actual teleology of sexual union: (1) physical sexual complementarity and (2) possibility of reproduction. Both of these are found in the two Genesis accounts of creation. In addition, further OT and NT developments of these two themes build on the two Genesis accounts to add that marriage is both exclusive and life-long. Christians have differed on some of the implications of the above, for example, concerning the permissibility of contraceptive use, and conditions under which divorce or re-marriage might be permissible. (Also, the church has never prohibited the marriages of heterosexual people who for reasons such as age are not capable of reproduction.) But Christians have not disagreed on these fundamental principles –because they are clearly taught in Scripture.

In addition, I would add the following. Influenced by Karl Barth’s and Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of relational personhood and the doctrine of the Trinity, I would argue that the creation narratives of Genesis 1 and 2 are the foundations for a Christian personalism rooted in a correlation between the doctrine of the Trinity as relations of origin and male and female as created in the image of God. That we are male and female means that human beings are inherently relationally oriented toward one another, and this is grounded in our very embodiment. Our sexuality as male and female is an essential reflection of our having been created in the image of the triune God, and is the foundation of personalist anthropology: it is because sexual complementarity makes clear that human persons are inherently oriented to relation with one another that we can say as a consequence that even those who are not married to one another are nonetheless relationally oriented toward one another.

In additional, this inherent relationality rooted in our very physical embodiment means that all human beings relate to one another as sexual beings; even if we are not husbands or wives, all human beings are either fathers or mothers, sons or daughters, brothers or sisters of someone. In our relations with other human persons, we always relate as male to female, female to male, male to male, or female to female. There are no generic human beings, but only men and women.

I do not explicitly tie this creational and trinitarian anthropology to issues of same-sex unions in Icons of Christ, but my discussion of the Genesis creation narratives on pages 53-60, of Christian marriage and mutual submission in Ephesians 5 (chapter 7), of the mutuality of male and female in 1 Corinthians 11 (chapter 8) and of male and female symbolism and Trinitarian personalism in chapter 14, as well as my final positive discussion of male and female sexuality in the Conclusion points in the direction the argument would necessarily take. From beginning to end, my entire argument for women’s ordination is based on an understanding of male and female sexuality grounded in mutual relationship, complementarity and equality that ultimately is based on a trinitarian personalism. Far from leading to or implying same-sex unions, the argument necessarily points in the opposite direction. Same-sex unions would violate the inherent teleological orientation of the sexes toward one another grounded in Genesis 1 and 2. 

Drawing on this trinitarian personalism, the most fundamental characteristics of all human beings are that they are created in the image of God. In terms of a Christian anthropology:

(1) The in-itself dimension: In contrast to animals, all human beings are essentially rational. Human beings posses the faculties of knowledge and will, and exercise their distinctive humanity through knowing and loving. This points toward equality.

(2) The toward-other or relational dimension: Knowing and loving are inherently oriented toward the other, and the most fundamental indication of this among humans is physical. The very embodiment of human beings indicates that humans exist in two fundamental types. All human beings are either male or female, and this very embodiment points to an inherent relationality.

Rationality and sexuality are thus the two fundamental characteristics of human beings as created in the image of God. To deny rationality or to imply any essential inequality between man and woman is to deny common humanity. A theology of marriage that finds its starting point in Genesis 1 and 2 thus points in the direction of equality and mutuality, and thus towards women’s ordination, not against it, a key point of my discussion in chapter 5.

At the same time, male-female relationality is fundamental to every other human institution. Heterosexual marriage is the single fundamental social unit on which every other social unit is based. The first social unit is the immediate and extended family.  Other social units — the state, employment, the church, educational institutions, the arts, etc. — are ultimately extensions of heterosexual marriage. Sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage are thus fundamentally incoherent. They deny either the fundamental complementary of the distinctive other-relationality of creation as male and female (same-sex relations, transgenderism), they disrupt the unity of the immediate or extended family (incest, adultery), or they deny the necessary permanence of the family that makes raising children possible (adultery, promiscuity, fornication). 

However, it needs to be emphasized that if the sexuality of autonomous liberalism is at odds with the second dimension of what it means to be created in the image of God, theologies that fundamentally deny the equal rationality of male and female — whether explicitly or implicitly — are at odds with the first.

I would add to this that Perkins’ rhetoric here misses a fundamental distinction between sexual morality and ministry of Word and Sacrament. Scripture is clear on issues of sexuality. Even theological liberals admit this. They just reject the plain teaching of Scripture. It is plainly obvious that sexual relations between men and women are inherently related to issues of gender, intimacy, and reproduction. That is, these are issues of what Aquinas and Richard Hooker would call “natural law.”

To the contrary, it is not immediately obvious that Word and Sacrament have anything to do with sexuality at all. The relationship between ordination and sexuality is simply not addressed anywhere in the Bible. Word and Sacrament are matters of what Richard Hooker designates as “positive law,” and, as Hooker argues, positive laws concerning worship can be changed – a point which I make more than once in my book.

I would conclude this discussion of by pointing out that in light of recent developments concerning sexual abuse in conservative evangelical churches, Perkins makes a dangerous move to point to undesirable consequences of women’s ordination: “Inductively speaking, the argument from consequences is powerful: virtually all denominations which embraced women’s ordination in the mid-twentieth-century soon followed that with a wide array of novel and unbiblical positions on sexuality and other issues.” (Note here that Perkins labels the positions as “unbiblical.” The Christian egalitarianism that I defend in my book is precisely that of a “hermeneutic of trust” that receives the Bible as an “inspired witness to the grace of God in Jesus Christ.” It is not interested in “unbiblical positions on sexuality and other issues.”)

Recent revelations concerning churches that oppose women’s ordination leave us with an uncomfortable dilemma. Kristen Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne (Liveright, 2021) documents a history of hyper-masculinity in those evangelical denominations that have endorsed complementarianism. Kevin Giles’ The Headship of Men and the Abuse of Women: Are They Related In Any Way? (Cascade, 2020) documents the pattern of sexual abuse in complementarian churches, focusing specifically on recent revelations concerning the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and the Southern Baptist Convention. I would not want to embrace a “wide array of novel and unbiblical positions on sexuality,” but neither would I want to make light of what seems to be an inherent correlation between refusal to ordain women and sexual abuse. The argument from consequences may be “powerful,” but it cuts both ways.

Granted, Perkins is not himself an evangelical complementarian, and he speaks out several times in his essay against opposition to WO that tends to degrade women, but neither am I a theological liberal, and throughout my book I distinguished my position from the theological liberalism that Perkins finds so offensive. 

One might conclude after having read this part of my response that pointing out the fallacies of repeatedly tendentious rhetoric does not really get to the essential issue of theological disagreement. Can women be ordained to the presbyterate? But that precisely is the point. So much of what Perkins presents in his review is not actually a theological discussion of women’s ordination at all, but rather a distraction from the real issues by associating a position with which he disagrees with things he does not like.

Addendum

I would add that the church needs to exercise great caution in its pastoral dealings not only with women, but also with those in its midst who experience same-sex attraction. I address the latter here and here.

I would also add that the embracing of slippery slope arguments and “maximally orthodox” positions can have the opposite of the desired effect. I experienced this when I did my doctoral studies among Roman Catholics at the University of Notre Dame. There was a common chain of reasoning along the lines of “If the pope is wrong about birth control, who knows what else he might be wrong about?” It is well known that many modern liberal theologians began as Fundamentalist, evangelical, or conservative Roman Catholic Christians who then embraced liberalism in reaction: Bishop John Spong, Barth Ehrman, several members of the Jesus Seminar, Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx.

There is a recent movement of so-called “deconstruction” among many young evangelicals who are now questioning aspects of the overly rigid Christianity in which they were raised. In particular, conservative Christianity is perceived to be hostile to women and detrimental to their flourishing. To the extent that orthodox Christianity is perceived to be inherently sexist, the escape from sexism is all-too-easily assumed to necessarily demand escape from orthodox Christianity as well. Again, if opposition to women’s ordination is perceived as essentially sexist and not well supported logically or theologically, and it is also claimed that rejection of women’s ordination leads inevitably to liberalism and other feared aberrations, it might not seem at all unreasonable to draw the conclusion: “if I want to support women, I not only have to abandon opposition to women’s ordination, I have to abandon orthodox Christianity as well.”