Since publishing two books recently, I have learned that the only thing that I can be certain of as an author is that the things that I spend the most time worrying about when writing the book will largely be ignored, and the things that I think relatively unimportant, and on which I spend less time, are the things that others will think are the most important, and will devote all of their time to when reviewing the book.

In the book I recently published (with my colleague Joel Scandrett) on the doctrine of the Atonement, the chapter on Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction was, for me, one of the least interesting chapters. I wrote that there are currently two very different (and conflicting) interpretations of Anselm, but concluded that Anselm’s real significance was as a transitional figure. Anselm was more important for what later writers did with his views, and I ended up focusing more on successors like Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Thomas Torrance on the one hand, and John Calvin and Charles Hodge on the other. I was surprised when an otherwise generally positive reviewer complained that our book had not paid sufficient attention to Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction, and that the reviewer really did not seem all that interested in those later writers to whom we had devoted much more attention. Of course, the reviewer’s own understanding of the atonement largely coincided with Anselm’s satisfaction theory.

Similarly, when I wrote my book Icons of Christ on women’s ordination,¹ I included as an illustration in what I regarded as the least significant chapter in the entire book, an informal logical syllogism which I knew at the time was not a formal syllogism, but whose point I assumed was self-evident, and which, regardless, was nothing more than an illustration along the way to making a point that was not directly related to the formal validity of the syllogism (15-16). To my surprise (and frustration), a reviewer focused on that syllogism almost as if it were the most important point in the book, with the consequence that a social media flurry broke out, the point of which seemed to be that my book could be disregarded because I had based my entire argument on an invalid syllogism. To the contrary, that illustration took up a paragraph, could have been entirely removed from the book, and nothing in my argument would have been affected.

If one were to ask me what was the point of giving the title Icons of Christ to a book arguing in favor of ordaining women to church office, what were the key biblical passages that supported my argument, and what were the most important chapters in the book, I would have responded that the key issue of the book has to do with how it is that not only ordained officers of the church, but all Christians, resemble Jesus Christ – thus the title Icons of Christ.

Both Evangelical complementarians and Roman Catholic sacramentalists argue that ordained ministers resemble Christ because of a physical resemblance to Jesus’ male sexuality. For complementarians, there is built into creation order a sexual hierarchy in which men exercise authority over women. Jesus Christ (as head) exercises authority over the church in the same way that males (as head) exercise authority over women, particularly the way that male husbands exercise authority over female wives. Because ordained ministers exercise a position of authority over the church, only males can be ordained because only males can exercise this kind of “headship” authority over others. That is, male clergy resemble a male Christ by exercising authority over other people, not only other males, but especially women and children.

For Roman Catholic opponents of women’s ordination, male priests resemble a male Christ in that, when presiding at the celebration of the Eucharist, a male celebrant literally acts in the place of the male Jesus Christ (in persona Christi) when the priest recites the Words of Institution: “This is my body,” “This is my blood.” In order for the celebrant to represent Jesus Christ in this way, he must literally bear a physical resemblance to the male Jesus.

The two sets of arguments are very different from one another and are, in actuality, incompatible with one another. The Protestant argument is about authority of men in general over women in general, and not about a sacramental resemblance of a male Christ to a male presider at the Eucharist. Indeed, the most vigorous advocates of the complementarian position reject any notion of a male priest exercising sacramental representation because, as Protestants, they reject notions such as eucharistic sacrifice, and indeed entirely reject the Catholic understanding that the priest acts in persona Christi.

For the Catholic sacramentalist, the question of hierarchical authority is not at all the crucial issue. Since Vatican II, Catholic lay women are allowed more and more to do just the kinds of things in the church that Protestant complementarians would disallow. Women can teach theology, they can preach, they can take on almost any task in the church allowed to men with the single exception of performing certain sacramental roles. In particular, women cannot preside at a celebration of the Eucharist, and they cannot ordain clergy or confirm laity, but they can perform almost any other ministerial function in the church. Catholic women can (under certain circumstances) even baptize. And, since Pope John Paul II’s teaching on marriage and sexuality in particular, the Roman Catholic church has endorsed an egalitarian understanding of the relationship between husband and wife in marriage – a rejection of which is almost the entire rationale for the Protestant complementarian position.

Despite their fundamental disagreements concerning the purposes of ordination, the authority of men over women in the church and in the family, and whether women can do such things as teach theology or exercise organizational authority over men in the church, both Protestant complementarians and Roman Catholic sacramentalists agree that the question “how do ordained ministers resemble Christ” has to do with a question of a physical resemblance – even though they fundamentally disagree about what it means for ordained male clergy to represent a male Jesus Christ. That is, only a male pastor or priest can resemble (physically) the male Jesus Christ.

The point of my title Icons of Christ was precisely to challenge this understanding of what it means for not only the ordained but for all Christians to resemble Jesus Christ. Works in biblical exegesis key to my argument included Jewish writer Tikva Frymer Kensky’s In the Wake of the Goddesses,² Alan Padgett’s As Christ Submits to the Church,³ Michael Gorman’s Cruciformity,⁴ Philip B. Payne’s Man and Woman, One in Christ,⁵ and numerous works by New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, III. Key systematic theologians included Protestants Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance, Roman Catholic liturgical theologian Edward J. Kilmartin, and Orthodox theologians Kallistos Ware and Elisabeth Behr-Segel. These are scholars and theologians who do not appear at all in the writings of either Protestant complementarians or Catholic sacramental traditionalists.

If you had asked me to point to the key biblical passages for my argument, I would have pointed first to Phil. 2:1-11, which Gorman designates as the “master story” of Paul’s “cruciform spirituality,”⁶ as well as 2 Corinthians 2:14-4:18, where Paul describes the ministry of apostles as that of “treasure in jars of clay,” and that the way in which apostles (and by implication all ministers) resemble Jesus Christ is through pointing to and preaching Christ (not themselves), and through cruciform discipleship, including suffering. The original title for the book was to to have been “Treasure in Earthen Vessels,” echoing the KJV translation of 2 Corinthians 4:7.

In addition, other biblical passages that make this point include the references to leadership as service in Mark 10:44-45, to the imitation of Christ in marriage and the family in Ephesians 5:2, to mutual submission in marriage in Ephesians 5:21-22, and to mutual submission between presbyters/elders and congregants in 1 Peter 5. I would point out that the New Testament consistently teaches that Christians resemble Jesus Christ through cruciform mutual submission, not through hierarchical leadership and the exercise of authority. Nowhere does the NT suggest that Christians resemble Jesus Christ through some sort of physical resemblance to Jesus’ male sexuality.

If you had asked me to point to the specific book chapters that were key to my argument, I would have pointed to the chapter “Beginning with Genesis,” where I discuss male/female equality in creation, to the discussion of “Christological subversion” as challenging first-century Mediterranean “honor culture” in the chapter “Disciples of Jesus,” to the chapter discussing marriage as “mutual submission” in Ephesians 5, and for the key chapters addressing the Catholic position: the chapter on “Biblical and Patristic Background” on the priesthood of Christ and clergy, the chapter on “Women’s Ordination and the Priesthood of Christ: In persona Christ,” and the two chapters on “The Argument from Symbolism.”

The single argument that appears repeatedly in these several chapters is that Christians resemble (are “Icons” of) Jesus Christ not through physical likeness or through exercising hierarchical authority over one another, but in the same way that Paul makes clear in both Phillippians 2 and 2 Corinthians 2-4, first, by pointing away from ourselves and our own authority and accomplishments to the saving work of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, and, second, by imitating Jesus Christ’s own kenotic cruciformity in service to one another.

I did discuss other issues in the book as well: the biblical interpretation of key controversial passages, the equality of men and women in creation and in marriage, the role of women in the ministry of Jesus and the New Testament church, the history of the opposition to women’s equality in the church, the historical development of sacramental theology and the theology of ordination. But the heart of the book centers on this notion of how all Christians (not just men) resemble Jesus Christ – not through physical resemblance or through male authority, but through cruciform discipleship and mutual service to one another.

My book received quite a few positive reviews, and the positive reviews consistently have recognized this key argument about what it means for Christians to resemble Christ. My book has received a fair amount of criticism as well, but almost none of this has acknowledged or addressed the central argument. Rather, the negative reviews have focused on defending the traditional arguments against women’s ordination – whether complementarian Protestant or Catholic sacramentalist. Not surprisingly, my Protestant complementarian and Catholic sacramentalist opponents have had little in common with one another apart from their mutual rejection of women’s ordination. From the Protestant side, the arguments have repeated traditional complementarian hierarchical interpretations of the handful of controversial biblical passages that have become familiar from countless debate – passages that play no role in the Catholic discussion. From the Catholic side, the argument has been that clergy really do resemble Jesus Christ through sacramental representation – that a male priest physically represents a male Christ when presiding at the Eucharist – a position rejected by Evangelical complementarians.

At this point, I need to inject another aside. I teach not only Systematic Theology, but Christian Ethics, and since the publication of Icons of Christ, it has become increasingly clear to me that there are not only biblical and theological disagreements in this discussion, but also a fundamental disagreement about the nature of Christian Ethics. I refer readers to the writings of philosophical ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre, particularly his three books, After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality, and especially Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.⁷ In addition, I would point readers to Anglican ethicist Oliver O’Donovan’s Resurrection and Moral Order, as well as his magnum opus trilogy on Ethics as Theology: Self, World, and Time; Finding and Seeking; Entering into Rest.⁸

Beginning with After Virtue, MacIntyre documented a breakdown in modern ethics with the loss of virtue as the most fundamental ethical problem. Contemporary ethics finds itself in incommensurable disagreement insofar as two competing ways of looking at ethics divide over either right actions or right consequences. Deontology understands ethics as a matter of right actions and right intentions: following the basic rule or principle regardless of consequences. The focus is on duty, on always “doing the right thing.” Immanuel Kant would be the primary modern example. And, of course, deontology is often hierarchial as well. If ethics is about doing the right thing, following the correct moral duty, then one of the key ways in which one knows one’s duty is through obedience to authorities.

Consequentialism focuses rather on the outcomes of human actions. Right and wrong are determined not by duty, but by those actions that result in the greatest amount of well-being or most happiness for the greatest number of people as a consequence of one’s choices. “Following the rules” or “sticking to one’s principles” can never be right if the results are catastrophic. The classic modern examples would be John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism or Joseph Fletcher’s “situation ethics.”

MacIntyre proposes a return to “virtue ethics” as an alternative to either deontology or consequentialism. Rather than being either duty-oriented or consequence-oriented, virtue ethics is teleological and eudaemonistic. Virtue ethics focuses on the goals of actions as oriented toward the Good, and the Good is that which produces happiness, not in the sense of pleasure, but in the sense of well-being – that is, the “good” is about fulfilling the purpose or teleological goal that one is meant to be as a human being. Virtue ethics is also character-driven. It is about becoming a certain kind of person – a person who consistently acts in a manner that is in accord with the cardinal virtues consistent with a good character: justice, courage, prudence, temperance, and with the theological virtues consistent with a good Christian character: faith, hope, and love.

Since the publication of After Virtue, post-modern western culture has continued to be divided between advocates of deontology and advocates of consequentialism, and this is particularly seen in the area of politics – with so-called “traditionalists” advocating duty-oriented deontology, while “progressives” embrace consequentalist diversity and inclusion. Because there is no possible way within the conceptual limits of deontology and consequentalism to adjudicate between whether ethics is fundamentally about right actions or about right consequences, debates between “conservatives” and “liberals” are irresolvable, and the more either side sticks to its own moral principles, the more it offends and even horrifies its ethical opposites. Deontologists regard consequentalists as “moral relativists” and “libertines,” while consequentalists regard deontologists as power-obsessed, intolerant, “moral hypocrites,” and “oppressors.”

Especially among Protestants, divisions between theological conservatives and theological progressives tend to echo the same ethical divides between deontologists and consequentalists. Deontological versions of Christian ethics are designated as “Divine Command” ethics because they focus on ethics in terms of ethical actions in themselves and on obedience to both divine [and human] authority. while liberal theological ethics are concerned with the consequences of moral actions such as “liberation,” “deconstucting oppressive authority structures,” and “identity” affirmation.

Not enough academic work has been done comparing the implicit ethical systems that undergird different stances concerning the ordination of women, but I have become more and more convinced that fundamental disagreements in this area largely reflect the fundamental divisions between “deontological,” “conseuquentalist,” and “virtue ethics.” Evangelical complemtarianism is basically deontological in its approach to Christian ethics, and this, among other things, can be discerned in its concerns for hierarchy and authority: “Who is in charge?” seems to be the fundamental ethical concern, with the often-stated objection to the ordination of women that to abandon male hierarchy would lead inevitably to moral chaos.

This deontological approach can be seen in the Table of Contents to complementarian Wayne Grudem’s Christian Ethics: An Introduction to Biblical Moral Reasoning,⁹ which lists such topics as “ethical principles,” “ethical standards,” “obedience to God,” “Protecting God’s Honor,” and “Protecting Human Authority.” Sections covering the Second Table of the Ten Commandments list concerns in deontological categories: “Is it ever right . . . ?” “Is it wrong to . . . ?” “Is [a particular action] morally acceptable?” “Is [a particular action] wrong?” Chapter Two edges toward Virtue Ethics in that the “Ultimate Basis for Ethics” is the “Moral Character of God,” but even here, God’s moral character is described in deontological caterogies — as the “Bible’s ethical standards.”

At the opposite extreme, liberal Protestant feminist theology, with its “hermeneutic of suspicion,” correlated with the assumption that many biblical texts and much of the history of the church are detrimental to the flourishing of women (and now other sexual minorities) seems to assume a fundamentally consequentalist understanding of morality.

To the contrary of both deontology and consequentialism, the at least implicit ethic assumed by advocates of Christian egalitarianism (whether Protestant or Catholic) would seem to be some variation of Christian virtue ethics. This is seen above all in the understanding of Christian discipleship as a cruciform imitation of Christ, of Christian community consisting of mutual service, and of relations between Christian women and men as relationships of equality and partnership. Michael J. Gorman’s Cruciformity as well as his Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission¹⁰ show how this looks in the New Testament as does Richard Hays’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament.¹¹ Alan Padgett’s As Christ Submits to the Church shows what mutual submission means in the life of the church. Kathryn Greene-McCreight’s Feminist Reconstructions of Christian Doctrine: Narrative Analysis and Appraisal¹² makes the case for a fundamental difference between “biblical feminism” (what I am calling egaliterianism), and liberal Protestant feminist theology.

This distinction between a hierarchical deontological ethic and a communitarian virtue ethics is perhaps an even more radical distinction between Evangelical complementarianism and Christian egalitarianism than disagreements about biblical interpretation and symbolism concerning masculinity and femininity, and this has become increasingly clear to me in the time since writing my book.

This fundamental divide also becomes apparent in the “role” theology of Evangelical complementarianism. Dorothy L. Sayers points out in her essay “Are Women Human?,”¹³ that in the traditionalist divide between men and women, men are portrayed as primarily human. Men can do anything that human beings in general can do, but they can also do things that are specific to male sexuality. Men can be fathers or husbands, but they can also be single bachelors. Men can do any work of which they are capable simply as human, and no connection is necessarily made between the work that they do, and whether they are fathers or husbands. Women however are defined in terms not of their humanity, but specifically of their sexuality, and in terms of their (hierarchical) relationships to men. Women exist to be the wives of men and to be the mothers of children. Women exist to be subordinate to men, and that subordination can never be reciprocal. So Sayers points out correctly that the basic question needs to be asked: Are women human?

Some of the most vigorous opposition to my book has come from those who seem to be objecting that my affirmation that women (like men) are primarily human, and can do things that human beings in general can do, destroys the differences between men and women, and leads eventually to moral chaos. Here again, I suspect that the disagreement may boil down to a divide between deontology and virtue ethics. For deontology, a breakdown of hierarchy of authorities can only lead to the perceived moral chaos of consequentalism. For virtue ethics, to the contrary, all human beings have fundamentally the same ontological and eudaemonist teleological goal – although this goal can be pursued and achieved in different ways – thus the fundamental significance of a theology of vocation. At the same time, while men and women are equally human, there are fundamentally teleological differences between male and female sexuality, and these differences are basic to the complementary but equal relationships between men and women in marriage and the family. As I said repeatedly in my book – and which irked some – only men can be husbands and fathers, only women can be wives and mothers, and it takes both men and women to do so. At the same time, neither men nor women are defined primarily by these sexually determined capacities, but by their common humanity.