Overview of course

Draft course for Catherine of Siena Virtual College, 2007

No Church Leadership for Women according to Sacred Scripture?
by John Wijngaards

Course Description

With ‘Church Leadership’ we mean the religious and spiritual leadership that, according to accepted Christian theology, includes the powers of ‘ruling, teaching and making holy’.

In many major Christian Churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, women are still excluded from church leadership. This means that women:

cannot be deacons, priests, bishops or popes
cannot run a diocese, preside at the eucharist, forgive sins through confession or the anointing of the sick, impart authoritative teaching on faith or morals, etc.

Traditionalists maintain that women may, of course, exercise leadership functions in areas that are not strictly religious, such as running a school or hospital, being in charge of a diocesan office, etc. What is excluded, they say, are the strictly religious powers in the Church by which a person can ‘rule, teach or make holy’ in the name of Christ.

Since such leadership functions are passed on through the rite of ordination, the same truth is often expressed in religious terms, by saying:

‘women cannot receive the sacrament of ordination’;
‘women cannot exercise any of the ordained ministries (diaconate, priesthood, episcopacy)’;
‘women cannot be priests’.

The traditionalists claim that the exclusion of women from church leadership can be proved from the inspired scriptures. This course aims to show that they are wrong. Sacred Scripture does not ban women from Church Leadership.

Objectives of the course

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be familiar with the main topics of discussion concerning church leadership of women and Sacred Scripture.
They will be able to respond to the traditional arguments drawn from Scripture to exclude women from the ordained ministries, and will be able to outline positive indications that favour the inclusion of women in the ministries.
They will also have gained a professional grasp of the correct rules of scriptural interpretation.

Main handbook for this course:
Did Christ Rule out Women Priests? by John Wijngaards,
McCrimmon's 1986, ISBN 0-85597-204-1.

Syllabus

	1. Taking stock of the ‘for-men-only’ interpretation Survey of the arguments against women’s religious leadership in the church based on sacred scripture.
	2. Rules of the correct interpretation of Sacred Scripture Literal sense, literary form, intended scope, rationalizations.
	3. What to make of Old Testament passages? Male domination in Old Testament times.
	4. What may we read into Jesus’ omitting women from the apostolic twelve? Did the absence of women from the original twelve apostles establish a permanent norm for the future church?
	5. Jesus liberated women Jesus gave women an equal status in his spiritual Kingdom which implies openness to all leadership functions.
	6. Paul’s attitude to women Though Paul occasionally lapsed into tolerating the ancient cultural prejudices against women, he reaffirmed the basic equality of women and men in Christ.
	7. What about the role ascribed to Mary, the mother of Jesus? In tradition Mary has been given the paradoxical position of being almost divinised on the one hand while being made the model of female submissiveness on the other.
	8. Have women been forbidden for all time to ‘teach in Church’? Women are forbidden to teach in two late passages of the New Testament. These texts can be shown to concern temporary and time-bound instructions for local communities.
	9. Nuptial imagery of the Bride and Bridegroom Christ’s symbolic role as the Bridegroom in some scriptural passages does not imply that women cannot represent him in leadership roles.
	10. Putting it all together Reflection on the course’s bearing on: (a) scriptural rules of interpretation (b) traditional scriptural arguments against women’s leadership (c) positive scriptural arguments affirming women’s leadership.