The Inconvenient Truth About the Nature of the Priesthood

Chris Findley goes at it again in his opposition to women in the “priesthood”:

There are few topics in the church today that are bound to stir up more impassioned arguments than that of women and the priesthood. Undoubtedly there are good people on both sides of this debate. Surely, there is a love for Jesus and his church among those who both call for acceptance of this practice and those who call for rejection of the same. Sometimes these debates become heated and insulting and that is to our shame.

What should be at the center of any debate on the matter, particularly based on the Anglican’s own formularies, must be Scripture. Second to this, careful consideration must be given to the saints who have gone before us, that “great cloud of witnesses” who have cared for the church in past generations. Everything else, including our feelings or social convention must give way to the Bible itself and its historical exegetical practice.

I’ve dealt with this topic before. Before we even get to WO, the first thing we need to deal with is the nature of the priesthood itself, which Findley assumes more than he explains. I dealt with both almost five years ago in my post The Problem Overlooked in the McGowin-Nelson-Johnson Debate Over Women’s Ordination, from which the following is taken:

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…at the risk of oversimplification, Nelson and Johnson state that, since Christ was male, it is necessary for a male to represent him at the altar, thus women cannot do this task.  This is familiar to any one who has moved in the Roman Catholic world.  The problem with this is that it presupposes an unbiblical ecclesiology.  It requires that the celebrant, as a priest, represent Christ at the altar, and thus be empowered to effect the transformation of the elements as Our Lord did at the Last Supper and Paul enjoined us to continue in the Eucharist.  That in turn leads to the whole concept of the Mass as a present sacrifice, which I deal with elsewhere.

At the risk of being repetitious and otiose, let me remind my readers of the following:

Again, new Levitical priests are continually being appointed, because death prevents their remaining in office; but Jesus remains for all time, and therefore the priesthood that he holds is never liable to pass to another. And that is why he is able to save perfectly those who come to God through him, living for ever, as he does, to intercede of their behalf. This was the High Priest that we needed–holy, innocent, spotless, withdrawn from sinners, exalted above the highest Heaven, one who has no need to offer sacrifices daily as those High Priests have, first for their own sins, and then for those of the People. For this he did once and for all, when he offered himself as the sacrifice. The Law appoints as High Priests men who are liable to infirmity, but the words of God’s oath, which was later than the Law, name the Son as, for all time, the perfect Priest. (Hebrews 7:23-28 TCNT)

We don’t need a priest representing God any more.  We have one perfect priest, Jesus Christ.  We may appoint someone to represent us before him when we gather together, but Our Lord needs neither representative nor substitute.  I’ve debated this subject in the past and you can read that here and here.

Once that is posited, Nelson’s and Johnson’s case collapses.  That doesn’t entirely solve the issue, and it brings another one to light: the whole nature of the church.  When the ACNA was started I noted that there were two major issues of division that remained unresolved: WO (this one) and the Reformed-Anglo-Catholic divide.  The two are related;  McGowin actually touches on this issue in her response but doesn’t really pursue it.  In American feminism the custom is to superimpose postmodern ideas of equality on existing structures without considering the merits of those structures to start with, and the result is cognitive dissonance.  The same problem applies to same-sex civil marriage: it never occurred to anyone to debate whether civil marriage was working for heterosexuals before extending the franchise to same-sex couples.

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It is ironic that Findley quotes Hebrews, where the true nature of the priesthood under Christ is discussed. But, since we live down the road from each other, we can discuss this issue more thoroughly if he likes.

Another note: my title is taken from another Tennessean, Al Gore. The thing that Al Gore and others have never done is to really solve the problems he set forth, and the thing that should have been done a quarter century ago is to re-initiate the broad-based implementation of carbon-free nuclear power. But these days we are better at lamenting at our sad state or ginning up movements than we are at solving our problems.