“Priestesses in the Church?” [C.S. Lewis]

“I should like balls infinitely better,” said Caroline Bingley, “if they were carried on in a different manner … It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day.”

“Much more rational, I dare say,” replied her brother, “but it would not be near so much like a Ball.” We are told that the lady was silenced: yet it could be maintained that Jane Austen has not allowed Bingley to put forward the full strength of his position. He ought to have replied with a distinguo. In one sense, conversation is more rational, for conversation may exercise the reason alone, dancing does not. But there is nothing irrational in exercising other powers than our reason. On certain occasions and for certain purposes the real irrationality is with those who will not do so. The man who would try to break a horse or write a poem or beget a child by pure syllogizing would be an irrational man; though at the same time syllogizing is in itself a more rational activity than the activities demanded by these achievements. It is rational not to reason, or not to limit oneself to reason, in the wrong place; and the more rational a man is the better he knows this.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice. They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests’ Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible. That is where my dissent from them resembles Bingley’s dissent from his sister. I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational “but not near so much like a Church”.

For at first sight all the rationality (in Caroline Bingley’s sense) is on the side of the innovators. We are short of priests. We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. What, then, except prejudice begotten by tradition, forbids us to draw on the huge reserves which could pour into the priesthood if women were here, as in so many other professions, put on the same footing as men? And against this flood of common sense, the opposers (many of them women) can produce at first nothing but an inarticulate distaste, a sense of discomfort which they themselves find it hard to analyse.

That this reaction does not spring from any contempt for women is, I think, plain from history. The Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to a point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost “a fourth Person of the Trinity”. But never, so far as I know, in all those ages was anything remotely resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her. All salvation depends on the decision which she made in the words Ecce ancilla; she is united in nine months’ inconceivable intimacy with the eternal Word; she stands at the foot of the cross. But she is absent both from the Last Supper and from the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Such is the record of Scripture. Nor can you daff it aside by saying that local and temporary conditions condemned women to silence and private life. There were female preachers. One man had four daughters who all “prophesied”, i.e. preached. There were prophetesses even in Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.

At this point the common sensible reformer is apt to ask why, if women can preach, they cannot do all the rest of a priest’s work. This question deepens the discomfort of my side. We begin to feel that what really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word “priest”. The more they speak (and speak truly) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for “visiting”, the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as “God-like” as a man; and a given women much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to “Our Mother which art in heaven” as to “Our Father”. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask “Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?”

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters.

As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill, it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complementary organs of a mystical body. Lady Nunburnholme has claimed that the equality of men and women is a Christian principle. I do not remember the text in Scripture nor the Fathers, nor Hooker, nor the Prayer Book which asserts it; but that is not here my point. The point is that unless “equal” means “interchangeable”, equality makes nothing for the priesthood of women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

This is what common sense will call “mystical”. Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-rational. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it - as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, “not near so much like a Ball”.

And this parallel between the Church and the Ball is not so fanciful as some would think. The Church ought to be more like a Ball than it is like a factory or a political party. Or, to speak more strictly, they are at the circumference and the Church at the Centre and the Ball comes in between. The factory and the political party are artificial creations - “a breath can make them as a breath has made”. In them we are not dealing with human beings in their concrete entirety only with “hands” or voters. I am not of course using “artificial” in any derogatory sense. Such artifices are necessary: but because they are our artifices we are free to shuffle, scrap and experiment as we please. But the Ball exists to stylize something which is natural and which concerns human beings in their entirety - namely, courtship. We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

You know, I used to think that way too.

We did have one female priest in the ECUSA parish I used to belong to that was a very good preacher, decent counselor, pretty straight up person. But when push came to shove Count me in too. I'd known one of the very first in the Diocese of El Camino Real (probably not too far from Gman, at St. Jude's Cupertino) and she seemed an excellent choice, better than a few of the male ministers I knew. And later, after I'd moved away, apparently another from our church joined her.

I have no knowledge of what's happened with these two, but it took years for my mind to change on this (and not to please my wife, who is thoroughly against W.O.) and even then not until well after we'd left ECUSA.

Sexual differences, unlike those of race, are real

Even diversity professionals often maintain that differences of race are real as well. Everyone is viewed by them in terms of "group" membership. Notwithstanding this, one might plausibly argue for example that the Inuit are not noted for basketball prowess. Different ethnic groups do often have, on average, different physiological norms. Classical conservatism argues (Locke and Jefferson notwithstanding) that all men are not created equal in terms of ability, but are created equal in terms of their inalienable rights, in their intrinsic value and in God's love.

Already in England, the Roman Catholic organizations and the Church of England have been forced to hire or not fire active homosexuals—and in certain jurisdictions in the USA we are close to that state of law, if not there already.

Pastors have been prosecuted for “hate speech” in Canada, and Scandinavia too, for simply preaching homosexual practice is morally wrong—and these were not wacky hateful types either. A pastor in the western part of Germany was convicted of “holocaust denial” simply for comparing abortion to the holocaust (he never denied the holocaust at all). PC forces in Western democracies are dead set against Christians in the name of equality. All it would take are a couple Hillary appointed justices...and we could have a near-fascist state, in my opinion.

Not optimistic, true, but real. The left in our country are not freedom loving democrats—they are more than happy to force their “enlightened” opinions on the rest of us, all in the name of equality. One of those enlightened opinions is the interchangibility of men and women—first showing itself in radical feminism (which brought us abortion, and kept us the nation with the highest abortion rate in the West) then, on that interchangeability trend, going all the way with homosexual “rights.”

In the church, the approach to scripture (reading around it...) which brought women to the pulpit, also quickly allowed the reading around of the relevant passages on homosexual (and other forms of sexual) sin. The same method of scripture interpretation is used for both. Yes, the women’s issue isn’t grossly sinful, or even inherently sinful, like homosexual sin is, but still, its the same horse (of poor or absent Bible interpretation) that brought both the issues in.

I can envision a time too, where if Churches don’t have the requisite number of women in leadership, they will be deemed sexist “hate” groups too, and lose their tax exempt status, going right along with homosexual hiring quotas... So that’s the kind of persecution I can see. Especially in a time when “everyone” will think it unbelievable that a church would still not allow women clergy.

Don’t think it can’t happen either. Ted Kennedy has proposed such “anti-discrimination” laws as would make the above scenarios inevitable—having no exemptions for religious institutions. These kinds of laws are already in effect in the UK—and already institutions are cowing and bowing to the powerful forces behind the law. You can bet for every prosecution that makes the news, 20 other cases never make the news as they are settled (caved) privately. Legally enforced “equality” for things like behavior (”orientation”) and yes, sex (gender), is quickly doing in liberty in our lands.

I took a seminary level course in the life of C. S. Lewis. He’s so popular, everyone from Baptists to Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic tries to claim him. So much for “mere Christianity!”

Lewis’ brother, “Warney” a bachelor who lived with C.S. (”Jack” as C.S. Lewis was known to his friends) was a horrendous binge alcoholic. He would literally disappear for weeks at a time, on a bender, and not remember what happened. Very very bad. He was even drunk when Jack died, and that state may have contributed to his ignoring C.S. Lewis’s rapid decline....(and he blamed himself for it...dying not too long afterward, staying drunk most of the time). Anyway, one time after a bender on a vacation Warney was picked up out of the gutter (literally) by some kind nuns at a local Roman Catholic hospital. They nursed him back to health and were so loving and kind, Warney was ready to convert. Jack though warned him in a letter in the most stern terms not to do it, and Warney didn’t.

We must remember, C. S. Lewis was actually Northern Irish in his upbringing, and Welsh in his ancestry—his grandfather a preacher...no background that makes one sympathetic to Roman Catholicism. He was a high Anglican, even fairly Anglo-Catholic (I’m sure they will claim him... believing in a form of purgatory for example—but not as dogma), but that didn’t make him, if you’ll excuse the expression (which Lewis used), a papist.

Well, of COURSE Lewis rejected the idea. He was a Belfast Church-of-Ireland man, with ALL that implied. He says somewhere in his autobiography that he was told never to trust a philologist or a Catholic - but became friends with J.R.R. Tolkien nevertheless.

His views on the Sacraments, Purgatory, and other issues are decided Catholic. Given the direction the C of E has taken since his death, I think it's a toss-up as to which direction he would have gone (and he certainly wouldn't have been very happy with some of the goings-on in the Catholic Church either!)

It's entirely speculation of course, sort of along the lines of trying to decide what Henry VIII really died of.

What you said re Northern Ireland! Unless you know a Protestant from Belfast, you can't IMAGINE how deeply the anti-papistical worldview is engrained in their being.

And poor Warnie! He was a scholar in his own right, he did try to beat the bottle, but it eventually beat him. There wasn't the support and treatment available in those days that could have saved him.

I think it's actually Lewis's adherence on most occasions to the idea of "mere Christianity" that makes it possible for so many folks to claim him! (and that's not necessarily a bad thing). He says in the foreword to Mere Christianity that the concept is like an entryway or hall to the various Christian denominations, and that you can't stay in the hall. But of course that's where the book is -- basic tenets that almost all Christians can agree with. In the words of a salesman, "Get 'em in the door!"

Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as “God-like” as a man; and a given women much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Thank you for posting this. This analogy explains why the "churches" that have feminized their churches justify women priests and preachers. Many of them are also feminizing their worship and hymnals.

A woman cannot represent God because of her gender.

You consider his generation (that of my grandfather, WWI veteran) and how he was raised (an Northern Irish Protestant) and Lewis was remarkably free of religious bigotry, specifically anti-Roman Catholic bigotry. He was good friends with J.R.R. Tolkien after all, among other Catholics, and like good Anglicans, even (or especially) theological conservative ones, had a big-tent idea of “mere Christianity” as you said.

He, like most Anglican and Protestant types today, even evangelicals, freely admit its very possible to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and yet remain a Roman Catholic. While this may not sound like something big, just a generation ago this could not be said, evangelical types admitting RC’s can be born-again....and at that time neither would many RC’s reciprocate the idea of non-Catholics going to Heaven.... Times have definitely changed.

I hope this is a true ecumenicism, and not just a product of post-modern relativism...”if it’s good for you...”

Lewis's relationship with Tolkien was a little fraught, and I think the religious differences were at the bottom of it.

For his generation, though, you are absolutely right that he was far more perceptive and tolerant than most. He certainly recognized and rejected the extremes of Orange bigotry. Since you studied Lewis in depth, you probably read Pilgrim's Regress, and the prejudices of the church of his childhood don't come off very well there.

My maternal grandfather, also a WWI veteran, was a rock-ribbed Scotch Presbyterian of the old school, and anti-Catholicism ran pretty deep. If he were still alive, he would be shocked and revolted by our "poping". Even my mother was viscerally horrified -- she got over it when we finally got her to Mass and she realized that we weren't sacrificing babies or anything. "It's just like our service!" she exclaimed in some surprise (she became a Piskie when she married my dad). Well duh, mom.

And there's no question that things have changed a great deal from the time of our grandparents -- or even from my childhood when people told the most outrageous stories about Catholics. I think creeping secularism has a lot to do with it -- Christians stick together when they're persecuted. When almost everybody was at least nominally Christian, it was easier to quarrel over distinctions between groups, because the core beliefs were never challenged.

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