THE ABSOLUTE MALE PRIESTHOOD AND THE INFINITE FEMALE PRIESTHOOD
“The spiritual human being bears within him the perfection of the Spirit and strength, and the perfection of beauty and innocence; thus within himself he closes the ring of masculine and feminine and is like the first human being, before woman was taken out of him and created.”
Frithjof Schuon
The Christian religion has historically preferred an all-male priesthood. This is a problem for us modern persons because the arguments for a male priesthood mostly fall into these types of arguments:
The Male represents God (or Christ) and God is symbolically Male (Christ is also male).
There were no women at the last supper.
Adam was made before Eve
The problem with these arguments is that they are pitilessly one dimensional, and their implications are disturbing. All of them lead to the conclusion that the female is inferior to the male, on all levels of reality. Now, there is a sense in which this is true. Actuality is traditionally considered masculine in relation to potentiality, which is feminine. But, that is not the whole story. This understanding must penetrate into the human individuals themselves. For any human, male or female, your soul is masculine in relation to your body, and yet, your soul is feminine in relation to your spirit. This alone should dispel the idea that a female priesthood is impossible, because even a male priest is in a sense, feminine. But even then, there’s a deeper truth here.
In God, masculine and feminine unite in a way that can only called “equal”. But, because of this, you can see two different but complimentary ways of seeing reality. Philosophically, we can view the emanation of the chain of being in these two ways:
The priority of the masculine. This is the basis for the understood “masculinity” of actuality in relation to “feminine” potentiality. It undergirds the sexual symbolism of the combination of form (masculine) and matter (feminine). It is the focus on reality as the “absolute” which spawns the “relative”. God here is “Divine Father”.
The priority of the feminine. This is found in the priority of “cause” to “effect”; for example, in the understanding that the cause “contains” or has everything that is essential to the effect without being the effect, and that the effect is not greater than the cause. We could say that a cause is “pregnant” with its effects. This perspective focuses on reality as the “infinite” that spawns the “finite”. It is the perspective of emanation and emanational panentheism. God here is “Divine Mother”.
The dominant Christian perspective is the former. The two perspectives are valid, but no one is better than the other. To say one has priority over the other is an error; it is a useful error, but an error nonetheless. God can be considered feminine [1], and if a priest can be called a stand in for God, an intercessor, as – most notably – the Virgin Mother is, then a female Priesthood is possible within Christianity [2,3].
If this is so, why has the church focused almost solely on the former masculine perspective? An answer would be the society the church was born in, but that just pushes the question back. From whence does the focus on the masculine nature of reality come from? One can give all sorts of historical and sociological answers, but it is clear that God allowed this to happen. Since God’s ultimate telos is Himself, which would mean theosis or salvation of his creatures, then this means he providentially allowed the dominance of this perspective for this purpose. This doesn’t mean God himself “thinks” the masculine priority is greater than the feminine priority, it is simply a case of an actual possibility. It is possible for this emphasis to occur, therefore it is possible for it to manifest and therefore be used providentially. There is a world where the opposite happens, by implication of that argument, and this is an argument for the existence of all possible worlds, but that is for another paper or post. The main point is that Christian society is patriarchal.
This is what Schuon would call the “form” of the religion as opposed to its essence [4]. The form of the Christian religion has as its features the doctrine of the incarnation, the trinity, the resurrection, etc. These are its deepest parts. A good question would be that is an all-male priesthood an indispensable part of the Christian religion? The good part of Schuon’s understanding of religions as “forms” is that one can see why removing certain elements destroys the religion entirely. Removing the Trinity from our creeds would all but destroy the church. It isn’t that a new religion cannot come about or that salvation is impossible without the institutional church, it is that salvation will no longer come through the church, but in some other form, because the Christian church has effectively ceased to exist. The “essence” is immutable. The invisible perennial tradition is present in several traditions [5,6], be it Judaism or Islam. But, the forms change, even in a particular religion. They grow and shrink and wither and revive, and ultimately die. Would the removal of the all-male priesthood do such a thing to Christianity?
The answer is up in the air. We await to see, though the proxy of – for example – the incredibly brave American Episcopal Church and perhaps the Church of England – even if they have inevitable faults – what Christianity would look like with a female inclusive priesthood would look like. I do think, however, that it is very likely that the likes of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Church, will change dramatically. It will possibly be unrecognizable to the more “trad” types, and may actually cause another schism.
The truth is that, ideally, what is most needed for the church is a motherly stance to temper its ossified “masculine” institutions. It needs an emphasis on the “infinite feminine” that embraces all without being a mere endorsement for uniformity, in order to prevent its emphasis on absolute masculine “institutionality” from shrinking it to death. The trend of creative reinterpretation of tradition is a good one, and there are ways to interpret scripture in accordance with tradition that does allow for a female priesthood. But because of the (perhaps understandable) excessive conservatism, it is more like the fresh theological waters are leaking out of a faulty institutional pipe, rather than flowing from the open gates of a loving church. In other words, this is an institutional scale war between flesh and spirit that has been going on for millennia, as seen in any religion. Spirit will definitely win, but we await the cost of such a victory. For now, all we can say in our actions and in our contributions to this fight is “Kyrie Eleison”.
[1] Milbank J and Pickstock C Radical Ortodoxy
[2] Coakley S Has the Church of England finally lost its reason? Women bishops and the collapse of Anglican theology - ABC Religion & Ethics
[3] Milbank J Unrepresentative laity: The women bishops debacle demonstrates why bishops need more authority - ABC Religion & Ethics
[4] Schuon F and Nasr S H 2005 The Essential Frithjof Schuon
[5] Hart D B 2020 Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest (University of Notre Dame Press)
[6] Schuon F 1984 The Transcendent Unity of Religions (Quest Books)