The Priestess Question and Egalitarianism | The North American Anglican (2024)

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Simmons: Confronting Witt's "Icons of Christ"

Simmons: Confronting Witt's "Icons of Christ"

Confronting William G. Witt’s “Icons of Christ”
The Priestess Question, and other Evils of “Christological Subversion”
The Priestess Question and Egalitarianism

Witt has produced two responses to my two essays and promised more. However, he has not responded to several decisive arguments.

First: I claim that Genesis 3:16 means that it is not a sin to exclude women from the priesthood, just as it is not a sin for women to refuse epidurals, or for men to do hard manual labor.

Second: I claim that the priesthood requires a division of labor, that leisure—upon which every priesthood rests—is the product of the division of labor. The priesthood sanctifies leisure and in so doing sanctifies the division of labor that produces leisure.

Third: I claim that women are honored in Christianity in a unique way not found in other religions, that the Virgin Mary and the women followers of Christ represent a unique religious phenomenon—but that Christianity’s realization of the divinely feminine is antithetical to the modern push to treat women the same as men.

Witt has not responded to these three points. I do not believe he can respond to them. He cannot make a male only priesthood a sin. He cannot claim that a division of labor is sinful. Scripture and nature teach that men and women are different; they are both “human,”^[1] they are both “icons of Christ,” but they are these things in different ways. If Witt ever says he has found “the true argument” or that I haven’t answered his “key position,” I ask that my three points stand on their own.^[2]

What’s at Stake

There is an instructive series on “misogyny in the Bible” available on Medium, where a “feminist Christian woman” pulls out all that is “sexist” in the Bible, to take a clear look at it. She doesn’t like what she sees and is evidently angry about it. In the final two posts, in the 8-part series, she talks about Paul and Peter. After quoting 1 Timothy 2:11–15, 1 Corinthians 14:33–35, Ephesians 5:22–24, 1 Peter 3:1–5, and 1 Peter 3:7, she lets loose:

You may well be shouting at me right now. Telling me that we should not read these verses literally. Telling me that read in their cultural context, we can find liberation rather than oppression in the writing of Paul. I agree with you. But they are still there. In the text. Staring us in the face. And the fact remains that for centuries, the church has taken these writings very literally, and the impact that has had on the lives of women is huge.

…

[In response to her anger, her friend] sent me a whole series of links to Christian blogs and articles, all explaining why, read properly, the Bible is not sexist at all.

As I flicked through the stuff he’d sent me, with quite a bit of head shaking and eye-rolling, I became aware that I was reading the stuff I had been using for years to explain why I believed that it’s wrong to use the Bible as an excuse for gender discrimination. And that my feminist reading of the Bible has actually prevented me from seeing the sexism in the Bible in all its inglorious technicolour.

Interestingly, it’s not the obviously difficult passages that have bothered me the most. It’s the complete lack of significant, authentic female voices. The cultural sexism that runs like a poisonous underground river through the whole library of the Bible, popping up now and again in toxic springs but colouring the whole thing. I am mourning the fact that the voices of women in biblical times have not been preserved for us.

We have lost their stories. We will never get to sing their songs or sit at their feet and hear their wisdom. This has been the lot for women through the centuries. It’s a tragedy that right now is breaking my heart.

This anger has the distinction of being an honest anger. Sophistical recasting of Scripture is never going to really heal the wound opened up—as is evident, this woman cannot trust the Bible. Even if the troubling verses are explained away, where are the women voices? Where is the feminist message? Where is justice, according to her idea of justice? Egalitarians, when they take a step back, have to admit they cannot trust the Bible. Something had to have gone wrong for all this work of re-interpretation to be necessary.

The conflict over priestesses in the church involves our ability as Christians to answer moral questions clearly. If the “problem passages” need to be explained away, and if we need to lament the lack of representation for women in the Bible, all Christians can do is perform an orderly retreat. If egalitarian morality is true, then there is no saving the Bible by finding esoteric egalitarian subversion.

No one is going to believe that the Christians, who were willing to announce a new God; who told the pagans that their gods were not gods; who loudly proclaimed what is and isn’t a sin and just as loudly proclaimed the forgiveness of sins for the children of God; I say, no one is going to believe that these people, so fiercely offensive in their devotion to God, were somehow unwilling to denounce patriarchy. Christ denounced the Rabbinate and flipped tables; Paul loudly denounced all manner of evils; but we are to believe these men and their friends, many of whom died rather than submit to evil, were reduced to timid subversives against the “evil of patriarchy.” No one is going to believe this. Christ, his disciples, and Christians generally did not share Witt’s egalitarian concerns. They didn’t think a group of Jewish men was offensive. They didn’t take offense at the natural differences between men and women. They weren’t secretly trying to subvert these kinds of things. If they were, they would have said so. I repeat: no one brave enough to denounce old gods and suffer martyrdom is going to be squeamish about upsetting social norms.

Witt is like the friend of the “Christian feminist,” the guy who sends her all the reasons that the Bible isn’t “sexist.” However, most young people, once they contract egalitarian convictions, will leave the faith. I claim: Witt’s solution won’t work because it isn’t persuasive. Let’s now turn to his attempts to persuade.

Witt’s “Key Point”

In chapters 7, 8, and 9 Witt goes through the passages that make egalitarians uncomfortable. In this essay, I’ll mostly discuss chapter 7 because Witt singles it out in his blog post and book as a key chapter. It’s a key chapter because Ephesians 5 is its focus. Witt considers Ephesians 5 to be the “key passage,” though he also considers Philippians 2 the “master story.”

This chapter [7] will examine Paul’s discussion of the relationship between husbands and wives in Ephesians 5 because it is the key New Testament passage laying out Paul’s understanding of the relationship between men and women. Other passages need to be understood in the light of this passage (100).

The “master story” for Paul’s cruciform spirituality is Philippians 2:6-11 (101).

I point out this discrepancy because I am going to focus on Ephesians, and I don’t want anyone to be able to claim I didn’t realize Philippians 2 contains the “master story.” I don’t know how to decide between Witt’s “key passage” and his “master story” except to focus on what he himself focuses on in what he calls his “key chapter.”

Witt’s “key point” goes by several names. At the end of the previous chapter, chapter 6, it was introduced as “Type II Submission.”

The idea here is that there are two types of submission: unjust submission and “mutual submission.” This key point is then discussed in chapter 7 under several headings, namely “cruciform discipleship” and “kenotic self-abasem*nt.” Witt finally groups all these impressive names together in chapter 13:

[T]his makes sense in terms of the principle of “Christological subversion,” what New Testament scholar Michael Gorman has called “cruciformity,” or what Alan Padgett has called “Type II submission” (voluntary mutual submission). As Gorman has argued, the kenotic self-emptying of Philippians 2 is the key to understanding Christ’s salvific mission (262).

Permit me a brief recursion into chapter 6 before discussing Ephesians 5, to be thorough and attack this “key point” at its root. When discussing his key point there, Witt admits (as all reasonable people do) that leadership is unavoidable. Leadership is unavoidable in a way “carrying weapons” isn’t. The disciples thought it was a good idea to carry swords, but carrying a sword is an avoidable thing. On the other hand, preeminence within a group, of some or one, is not something that can be picked up or put down; it’s “baked in” to the very existence of the concept “group.” Witt admits this:

There are indeed leaders within the Christian community, as there must be leaders in all communities, but leadership in the Christian community is interpreted in terms of self-denial and service to those whom they lead, not in terms of authority over or control of others (94).

Witt’s “key point” is that preeminence will exist, but the preeminent are so precisely insofar as they debase themselves. The leaders are the best at serving.

Does Witt realize that even this produces a hierarchy? Those who are best at serving will, in a society that honors service, be praised and honored above others who are not as able or not as willing. If a poor widow needs a carpenter, a man who can and will fix her stairs will be more honored than a man who can’t or won’t fix her stairs. She’s not going to ask the man who can’t or won’t; she’s not going to say nice things about the man who can’t or won’t. The Christian town will raise up the man who can and will serve; the parents will teach their kids to emulate the men who can and will serve.

For example: Witt believes Philippians 2 is egalitarian. However, Paul praises Timothy and Epaphroditus in this letter to the Philippians. He tells the Philippians to “honor such men.” There is your hierarchy. Timothy and Epaphroditus are going to be treated differently because they are “such men,” i.e., because they are models of Christ-like service (Philippians 2:29). Of Christ we are told: “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9). The point? Christ is the exemplar; humans are to imitate him. Those who excel will be treated differently than those who could not or will not try to imitate Christ. A Christian community will benefit all of its members by honoring men like Timothy and Epaphroditus. That is a sanctified hierarchal relation.

Another example: Witt believes Jesus’ admonition to the Disciples in Matthew 20 is egalitarian. But there is no way of making it so if it is read “straightforwardly.” After the mother of James and John asks Jesus to honor her sons above others, Jesus does not tell them “No, you will all be equal.” Instead, He says the following: “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father” (Matthew 20:23). That is, there is going to be a right and a left “for those for whom it has been prepared.” When the other disciples get angry at the presumption of these two disciples and their mother, i.e., when they act like egalitarians who get mad at the idea of others being raised above them, Jesus explains to them that there will be no evil attached to being below the exalted, that the hierarchy to come will be sanctified. Those who are exalted will be a boon to those who are lowly.

Witt must realize that even the virtue of Service can produce hierarchical relations, because some men serve better than others, which could explain his heavy reliance on the phrase “mutual submission.” His idea of a Christian society is one where no one is better at serving than anyone else, because all are perfect at serving. If everyone is mutually serving everyone else, then no one will be preeminent. If this is not his ideal, then on what grounds could he object to hierarchical relations?

In any event, even if this perfection were reached, it doesn’t serve Witt’s purposes. Let’s pretend a group of disciples reached perfection, such that they all served as well as humans might, and none were better at serving than any other. Still: perfect men and women would not perform the same services. There is every reason to believe the more perfect men and women became in their service to others, the more manly and womanly they would become.

We are permitted, by reason, to wish for the members of our society to be as excellent as they can become. We are likewise permitted by Scripture to follow our reason in this area, as Christ did in his choice of disciples. Even if women are admitted to be disciples of Christ, we are permitted, in following Christ’s example, to distinguish some disciples from other disciples.

So much for Witt’s “key point.”

A society will have leaders. Since there will always be leaders, there will be hierarchy. Even when this hierarchy is one of service to others, there will be different roles for men and women—different “areas of service.” Egalitarianism is incoherent because it is at odds with nature and nature’s God.

An Intellectual Ghetto

This “key point,” aside from being internally inconsistent, has the added bad effect of cutting Witt and other Christian egalitarians off from the Western philosophic tradition.

Witt and other egalitarians evidently believe that “mutual submission” and “leadership as service” are uniquely Christian. As I quoted from chapter 6 above, Witt believes that leadership outside of Christian communities includes nasty things like “authority.” He believes that Christ changed leadership, such that Christians practice a form of leadership unique in the history of the world. This claim from chapter 6 is repeated and expanded in chapter 7.

Christians are not expected to take up Christ’s self-emptying and exaltation in its fullest sense. After all, only Jesus is the unique Son of God; only the preincarnate Christ existed “in the form of God,” only the incarnate Christ died for the sins of the world, and only the risen Christ is exalted to God’s right hand to “receive a name that is above every name.” But Paul does expect Christians to imitate the pattern of Christ’s self-abasem*nt (101).

Here we see that “Type II Submission” could only be perfected in Christ; it seems like it might require supernatural abilities, which Christ alone has in perfection. While humanity will never be perfect, Paul tells Christians how they can imitate Christ, by laying down the “household code” in Ephesians 5. The Christian household code is, according to Witt, also uniquely Christian.

Such codes occur in Aristotle, among other pagan writers, and also among Jewish writers. … Aristotle believed that the rule of the master over slaves, the husbands over wives, and fathers over children is rooted in inherent qualitative differences (103-104).

Ephesians 5

Witt says that Egalitarians have trouble with Paul. They “read these passages with a kind of discomfort, perhaps wishing that Paul had not written them, or, in some cases, relieved that he did not” (100). It’s easy to see why this is the case. Paul does not promote egalitarianism. That at least is the “straightforward” reading.

Witt wants to show that, actually, Paul teaches egalitarianism—that Paul is a “subversive” who teaches a “servant as leader” form of discipleship called by the various names: “Type II Submission,” “cruciform discipleship,” and “kenotic self-abasem*nt.”

To accomplish this re-reading of Paul, Witt does four things. First, he compares Paul to Aristotle; second, he deploys the reductio ad Slaverum; third, he simply re-translates Ephesians 5; lastly, he develops an egalitarian theory of “headship” whereby the head is no nobler than other parts of the body.

Witt claims Paul and Aristotle disagreed, that Paul, following the principle of “Christological subversion,” undermined “the paterfamilias in ancient Mediterranean culture” (105). Witt provides 3 pieces of evidence to support his claim.

First: “Paul addresses the subordinates in the household first, treating them as responsible moral agents. In contrast, typical household codes addressed the master of the house, instructing him in his duties to order the behavior of his subordinates” (105).

In plain English: Paul told slaves to obey their masters, and in so doing showed respect for the slaves. Paul saw the slaves as capable moral agents, while the ancients denied them moral agency.

If telling subordinates they can and should obey authority is now to be considered “egalitarian,” then I guess there is nothing more to debate. Even the least egalitarian people imaginable become egalitarian by this standard. When an exasperated and cruel slave master tells his slave “You need to stop acting out and do what you’re told,” he’s an egalitarian! In fact, every time an authority figure gets angry, he is recognizing the “moral agency” of the subordinate—“they should know better!” By this argument, every Monarch in the history of the World has, at one time or another, been an egalitarian.

Second piece of evidence: “when Paul addresses the male of the household (the husband, father, and slave owner), he challenges the male figure who is more powerful in the relationship to act with gentleness and kindness toward the traditional subordinates in the household. While Paul in Ephesians addresses each one of the traditional subordinates only once, he addresses the traditional patriarch or paterfamilias three times, each time exhorting the more powerful figure in the family to act with love and consideration toward traditional subordinates.”

As I said above, this is nothing new. All of the ancient philosophers taught that the art of rule was exercised for the benefit of the ruled. If Witt were to read Book 1 of Plato’s Republic, he would see the sophist Thrasymachus claim that justice is the advantage of the stronger, followed by Socrates refuting him. Ancient philosophers taught that rulers must benefit their subjects, not exploit them; ancient philosophers taught this without being at all egalitarian. It is the same with Paul. When he requires masters, fathers, and husbands to be gentle and just he requires what every reasonable person has always believed to be necessary and good.

Third piece of evidence: “in each case, the commandments of the code are given a theological warrant that, in effect, transforms them in the light of the gospel. In comparing what Paul writes in Ephesians to the pagan household codes, Ben Witherington III uses the language of ‘social engineering,’ and suggests ‘a significant equalizing of relationships within Christian marriage, altering the usual character and direction of a patriarchal marriage situation.’

Since the egalitarians cannot say Paul established an egalitarian marriage, i.e., since they are ashamed of the fact that he openly condones patriarchal marriage, they multiply distractions while trying to claim that he “altered the direction of a patriarchal marriage situation.” The fact is: Paul condoned patriarchal marriage. Even if somewhere in his heart, his esoteric and unspoken heart, Paul longed for an end to patriarchy, slavery, and parental authority, he clearly didn’t think them as big a deal as all of the other sins and evil ways he denounced quite openly and forthrightly. How can something like patriarchy be a sin if it is never clearly condemned as such? Why were the truth of these things hidden for so long by Biblical insouciance? These questions must plague the consciences of egalitarian Christians.

For the sake of argument let’s assume Witt is correct: that advanced theologians are able to determine that Paul was actually anti-patriarchal. If that is true, can anyone be blamed for being patriarchal when God and his Messengers kept the evil so well hidden, while making plain whole lists of evils like theft and idolatry?

Paul does not directly overthrow the paterfamilias patriarchal structure of the first-century Mediterranean family. He does not explicitly tell Christians to free their slaves. He does not explicitly advocate egalitarianism between men and women. But he modifies the ancient “household codes” (Haustafeln) in such a way that the implications are subversive (104).

If Paul or the Bible do “not directly overthrow” patriarchy, patriarchy cannot be considered a sin. Does that mean Paul condoned all patriarchy, all slavery institutions, all parental dominion? Of course not. Neither Paul, nor any of the ancient philosophers, condoned these things unqualifiedly. Aristotle qualified slavery so heavily that modern scholars argue he thought people with severe mental handicaps, who needed someone to choose for them, were “natural slaves.” Paul clearly believes there is a difference between just and unjust slavery (Colossians 4:1).

If I may be frank, Witt’s enemy is Nietzsche, not the ancients. Unfortunately for him, his Christian Egalitarianism requires him to denigrate the ancients. While traditional Christians believe Christ delivered us from sin, something thought impossible by the ancients, Egalitarian Christians have to believe Christ brought a new social theory into being by making equality possible. But the ancients were perfectly aware of this social theory. A good way of phrasing the difference between egalitarians and traditional Christians: Christ did not die to make men equal; He died to save men from sin.

Witt’s Private Translation

Witt provides his own translation of Ephesians 5:18-33. If you are an egalitarian, you are cut off from the standard translations of the Bible.

Matthew Colvin has already critiqued Witt’s philological failings here, and he is a genuine philologist. Here is Colvin’s verdict:

Witt is not a competent arbiter of [philological] disputes; he commits numerous errors of Latin and Greek in the course of the book that show him to lack an adequate command of the languages (Colvin, Review #3).

What Witt tries to claim is that Paul’s admonition to Christians, to submit to each other in Ephesians 5:21, is a radical new doctrine of egalitarian relationality, i.e., those in authority should “submit” to those not in authority, such that,

The subordination is mutual—not simply of wives to husbands, children to fathers, and slaves to masters, but of husbands to wives, of fathers to children, of masters to slaves (109).

Witt’s own private translation does not even achieve this kind of egalitarian eradication of distinction. Consider the last sentence of his translation, which is pretty close to the standard translations:

Each of you [husbands] must love (ἀγαπάτω, agapatō) his wife even as he loves himself, and the wife should respect (φοβῆται, phobētai) her husband.

If this is “mutual submission,” it’s easy to see it’s not “identical submission.” Paul gives different instructions to man and woman, parent and child, master and slave. Even if all are submitting to all, they will do so differently. The different virtues and vices of men and women would make “identical submission” ridiculous.

Witt is even forced to admit that identical mutual submission is absurd. He admits that “mutual submission” cannot actually mean “submit to each other in the same way.”

Wives, in particular, are encouraged to imitate Christ’s servanthood in relation to their husbands (112).

There is a world of angst packed into that phrase “in particular.” It gives away everything Witt is fighting for.

Even though Witt’s private translation fails to justify his egalitarian view, it is worth noting that he has to try to retranslate to get even close to what he wants. Can anyone blame young people who, having Witt’s own egalitarian convictions, would rather seek out religions and political ideologies where those convictions didn’t have to be tortured into the authoritative text?

Conclusion

I have now gone through the three “key chapters” of Witt’s attack on the Protestant tradition. Within these chapters was the “key point” of the whole book.

My hope is that the strength of my arguments will speak for my goodwill. But in order to make that goodwill plain, I want to point out that not all is lost for the egalitarian.

The egalitarian who is disgusted with put-on machismo, and fake manliness, is right to be disgusted with these things. I tried to make this absolutely clear in my first essay. A man who cannot provide as good a household or place in society as his grandfather could, has no inherent right to be treated the way his grandfather expected to be treated. There is a reason women complain of some men and not of others.

The egalitarian who sees nobility in an independent single woman does not need to let go of that opinion. There are single Christian women who choose singleness rather than marry the pitiable men on offer. There should be ways that Christians honor these women more than currently exist. But if honoring independent single women requires a denigration of the family, if it requires the church to obscure the superiority of family life for women, then it becomes an error. Christian efforts around the youth need to redouble: young men and women need to be made fit for family life, morally, financially, and spiritually. Family life cannot be a shackle to young men; they will not be hectored into it. If family life is a bad deal for young men, they tend to become either lotharios or incels. Our society’s war on Christianity and family life, waged under the banner of equality, whereby social and financial advantages are affirmative actioned away from Christians, as well as from men and women with families, has produced the lothario and incel and robbed average women of the chance at having a husband that matches their worth.

Egalitarians tend to have good noses for charlatanry. If I am right, the egalitarian’s assessments and values tend to be anchored in justified aversions to contemporary vices. The problem is that they proceed to interpret these aversions wrongly.

“Let us then continue to do the work God has given us to do.” Man’s penchant for error is renewed in every generation, and there is a work of education and cultivation that must likewise be renewed in every generation. This great need ennobles our lives. We should be thankful that the name Christian includes within it men and women of many varieties and talents, each able to perform some function of the body of Christ, and all able to be improved by its priesthood.

Witt says things like “Jesus treated women like humans.” ↑
My in depth replies to Witt’s blog posts are being posted here: https://localteacher.substack.com/ ↑

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