The Write Place

The question of the openness to women in ordained ministry in pastoral roles is a recent question in the Church’s history, but not one scripture fails to anticipate. It is also not one so simply relegated to the surface level issue of who fills a job. The question of ordained ministry is tied deeply to the order of creation itself, in the deepest meaning of the word.

The appeal Paul makes to a male exclusive leadership in the church is to the natural order of creation, not pragmatism or momentary culture as revisionists reimagine it.

¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve;

1 Timothy 2:12-13

Paul continues to apply this to the requirements for church officers.

 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. ² Therefore an overseer^[a] must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,^[b] sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, ³ not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ⁴ He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, ⁵ for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? ⁶ He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. ⁷ Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

Notice the description here follows Paul’s other words, the Elders are to be male. They are to be heads in the church like they are in their own household, also a male position. The created order carries over, and is first seen in Genesis as Paul references, where Adam is made first.

⁸ The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

¹⁹ Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam^[f] no suitable helper was found. ²¹ So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs^[g] and then closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib^[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

²³ The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
    for she was taken out of man.”

²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Genesis 2:18-24

Adam was made first, shown the animals he would have dominion over (and named to take and exercise dominion). Adam was taught that he like most of them, was sexed. He could then see he was a male without female counterpart. God then put him to sleep, made Eve, presented her to Adam who took her in the first wedding (presided over by God himself). Adam became her head in their new family. Together they fulfill what alone they cannot. As you can see the relationship is creational and will have significance as we go on.

Why is this the ordering? Male and female model a cosmology, a modelling of the created order (detailed well by Alastair Roberts). If you’ve noticed when speaking of God, the bible usually uses masculine imagery and always uses male pronouns. Mirroring this is how the spiritual is usually described in scripture in the masculine. God’s covenant people, and the creation itself, is often described in the feminine including the earth. The union of the two is therefore an image of the union of Heaven and Earth, or God and his people. You can see in this imagery of God and his people in the Gospel, and the incredible significance in the relations of maleness and femaleness to each other. You can see this most evidently in the picture of the Gospel found in the relationship of husbands and wives.

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.^[a] 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Ephesians 5:22-33

The husband models Christ, as pastors are to model Christ to the congregation.

This typology of God to the creation also explains why the religions and churches that have rejected this model have almost all caved to nature worship. If women represent the creation or the earth, the leader of worship representing the divine being a woman must naturally lead to worship of the earth. Her body bears fruit and sustains and models the earth’s doing so. The Mainline churches have initiated or adopted the sexual confusion and pagan flow of the world that rejects the God of the bible (Romans 1:18-32), who is not part of nature. In so doing, they have turned to worship in the form of environmentalism. Such churches have only naturally embraced, and will embrace, the sexual chaos of a culture that does not understand male and female. The two are not interchangeable, but having female pastors teaches this and even that there is only one, and that the natural world is divine. There is no union between God and his creation, the creation is God so it has union with itself. Compare that to the world of scripture.

Scripture establishes the requirements along the lines of male ordination because of male headship. The imagery and narrative of scripture behind all of this is attested to in the practice of ordained ministers. Let us examine one such instance, the importance of the cosmology, and the communion meal.

A woman presiding over a communion meal is in scripture, in fact it is the first meal in scripture. It is the fall of Genesis 3. The Serpent came into the Garden, the meeting place of God and man on the sabbath, the day after Adam and Eve were created. At the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he told the lie that eating of it would make them God’s equal (Genesis 3:1-5). Eve believed the lie and led Adam in a fellowship meal with the Devil.

The communion meal with the male minister models the meal with Christ, the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:21-22, Romans 5:12-14, Revelation 21:1-3,9-14, Revelation 22:2,12-14,19). The end of scripture starts where the beginning failed, this time with success. The tree of life is now open, the high priest reigns married to his bride. Where Adam failed to lead and protect his bride, Christ has succeeded and opened the way to the Tree of Life.

Every Sunday (which is when we should have communion) the pastor is modelling Christ our great high priest. Every time we have communion we enter into this heavenly place with this heavenly imagery before us. 

A woman doesn’t have to be in ordained ministry to use her gifts. There is nothing inferior in Eve’s ministry as wife and mother, in fact it is sexist to say so. I am not here exhaustive, but the typology and scripture is plain. When we deviate from this creational norm in scripture, we fellowship with the serpent by playing God. 

The relationship between man and woman is woven in scripture because God has placed it in the laws of nature. It is for our good and blessing that we participate as God in his wisdom has sought to bless us.