Introduction: A Hard but Honest Conversation
I realize that writing about this topic is a surefire way to make oneself misunderstood, dismissed, or accused of cruelty. We live in an age where clarity itself is often seen as an aggression, but sometimes faithfulness requires clarity. So here it is: I do not believe women should be ordained to Holy Orders. That conviction is not based on a denial of women’s dignity, intelligence, or spiritual gifts. It is rooted in Scripture, sacramental theology, and the historic witness of the Church.
I’m not writing this as an outsider. I know and love women with profound gifts of leadership, discernment, and faith. And I once believed that such gifts pointed toward ordination. But over time, I’ve come to see that ordination is not about who is gifted—it’s about what Holy Orders signify.
1. The Real Issue Behind 1 Timothy 2:12
I recently asked a trusted friend—a man whose theological depth I admire—what he thinks about the ordination of women to Holy Orders. His response was charitable, reasoned, and deeply rooted in Scripture. I found myself resonating with almost everything he said.
Almost.
My friend interprets this verse as referring specifically to marital order—that is, to the relationship between husband and wife, not to a general prohibition on female leadership in the Church. In his view, St. Paul is not addressing authority in the gathered Church, but the impropriety of a wife exerting spiritual or theological authority over her husband, particularly in a way that would undermine his headship in the home.
This rests on an important distinction: for him, the household and the Church are not the same kind of institution. The household is part of this present world; it is bound by natural roles and temporal order. But the Church, as the Body of Christ, is an institution of the eschaton—the new creation. And in that context, where there is “neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), anyone—male or female, slave or free—may exercise spiritual and sacramental authority because such authority in the Church is not about control but about service. It is not the authority of the world, but the authority of the Cross.
I can appreciate the theological elegance of that position. It takes seriously both the nature of marriage and the radical newness of the Church. And I agree that Christian authority is not about domination—Jesus made that plain when He said, “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… it shall not be so among you” (Matthew 20:25–26).
But I still find myself unconvinced that St. Paul is speaking only about household dynamics here. The context of 1 Timothy 2–3 strongly suggests otherwise. St. Paul moves seamlessly from this prohibition into a list of qualifications for bishops—qualifications which are explicitly male in their grammar and assumptions (“the husband of one wife”). The paired terms teach and exercise authority in 2:12 also suggest more than casual influence—they describe a role that is official and public, likely tied to the teaching office of the Church.
My friend may be right—and I’m still open to it—but at this stage, I think St. Paul is referring more broadly to church leadership, not only to dynamics within a marriage. The surrounding context transitions directly into qualifications for bishops and deacons (1 Tim. 3), again, all described in explicitly male terms.
However, my friend made a further point that sharpened the dilemma: You can’t have it both ways. He says that the passage has only two plausible interpretations. Either St. Paul is speaking about men and women generally, or about husbands and wives specifically. If the first, then St. Paul is not merely limiting women in ecclesial leadership, but also in all authority over men—at work, in society, as well as in the home. If the second, then his instruction is limited to the relationship between husband and wife, and doesn’t directly apply to the question of ordination or church authority.
St. Paul doesn’t help us by giving modern categories like “in church” vs. “in society.” In fact, he doesn’t reference the gathered Church at all in this passage. Instead, he grounds his teaching in creation itself: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (v. 13). This appeal to the order of creation—not the order of worship—suggests that St. Paul is drawing on something more than a situational concern. At the very least, we’re dealing with symbolic realities rooted in the narrative of Genesis, not just temporary problems in Ephesus.
But here’s the challenge: I don’t believe that Scripture teaches women must be subject to men in all spheres of life. That’s not how Christian history has played out, either. Even in historic Christendom, women have exercised civil authority—think of empresses, queens, abbesses, and patrons of churches and monasteries. So, if we say St. Paul is limiting all female authority over men, we’re suddenly undermining centuries of faithful Christian witness.
So, I’m left with a tension. I don’t think St. Paul is saying that women can never exercise authority over men in any context. But I also don’t believe this passage is only about a wife usurping her husband’s leadership in the home. The stronger reading, in my view, is that St. Paul is identifying a principle for the ordering of teaching authority within the household of God—a pattern that continues directly into his instructions for bishops and deacons.
I’m still open to the Spirit’s leading here. But I cannot ignore how closely the logic of 1 Timothy 2 leads into St. Paul’s qualifications for ordained office in 1 Timothy 3. The pairing of teaching and authority, the appeal to creation, and the explicit male language in chapter 3 all seem to form a single thread. And that thread, in the life of the Church, has always led to a male priesthood.
2. Christ the Bridegroom and the Priest as Icon
In Ephesians 5, St. Paul describes marriage as a “great mystery,” a sacramental sign that points to Christ and His Church. Just as the husband is called to love, lead, and lay down his life for his wife, so Christ is the Head of the Church, the Bridegroom who gives everything for His Bride. Marriage, in this way, is not merely a private relationship—it is an icon of redemption.
Now, consider how the Church is described elsewhere in Scripture: not merely as an organization or institution, but as a household (1 Tim. 3:15). And in this household, Christ is the Head—the divine Bridegroom. If, as St. Paul teaches, husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, then the family becomes a living icon of the greater mystery: Christ the Bridegroom laying down His life for His Bride, the Church.
Those who serve in Holy Orders stand in persona Christi1—not merely as functionaries, but as sacramental icons of the Bridegroom Himself. Just as a husband is called to lead his wife not by domination but by sacrificial love, so too the priest is called to lead the Church not “as the Gentiles do” (i.e., with worldly authority or control; Matthew 20:25), but with the humility, sacrifice, and spiritual fatherhood that flow from Christ.
Those who are called to Holy Orders serve not as CEOs or elected officials, but as icons of the Bridegroom, standing in persona Christi at the altar, presiding over the mysteries, and shepherding the flock in sacrificial love. This is not about denying women’s gifts. It’s not about ability, intelligence, or value. It’s about sign and sacrament. The priest stands at the altar, not in his own name, but in the name of Christ—and Christ is the eternal Son, the Bridegroom of the Church.
To preserve the nuptial mystery at the heart of the Gospel, the priesthood must remain male—not as a matter of power, but as a matter of fidelity to the icon. This doesn’t mean priests “lord it over” the Church—far from it. Jesus explicitly warns against that kind of authority (Matthew 20:25–28). The priest’s authority is cruciform. He is called to love, to serve, to offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and to stand at the altar, again, not in his own name but in the name of the One who gave Himself up for His Bride.
3. What About History?
Some point to women like Deborah, Huldah, or Phoebe as biblical precedents for women in leadership. And we absolutely should honor these women. They were prophets, teachers, deacons, and leaders in their own right. But none of them served as priests of the temple or as presbyters or bishops called to preside at the Lord’s Table. The early Church—while deeply affirming of women—never ordained them to the presbyterate or episcopacy.
Even in Christian societies where women held great influence (such as Empress Theodora or various abbesses in monastic communities), ecclesial authority and sacramental ministry remained male—not because women were devalued, but because the Church understood the priesthood as a specific representational role—not just a job, but an icon.
To put it simply: it wasn’t ability that limited the priesthood to men. It was theology.
And that theology isn’t arbitrary—it is rooted in deep biblical anthropology and covenantal symbolism. Alice C. Linsley,2 an Anglican scholar of biblical anthropology, argues that the male priesthood stands in continuity with the Hebrew priesthood known to Abraham and his ancestors, and ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ (cf. Hebrews 7:17). She writes:
“A female at the altar blurs the biblical distinction between life and death… Anthropological research indicates that the priesthood originated among people who observed the binary distinction of male and female blood work. The priesthood is about blood sacrifice and blood covering.”
In traditional societies, men engage in the blood work associated with death—combat, hunting, and sacrificial rites. Women engage in the blood work of life—menstruation, childbirth, nurturing the next generation. In this biblical and anthropological framework, the priest is the one who stands in the place of blood work that involves death. He offers sacrifice. He represents the people in the place of atonement. He is a living sign of the life-giving death of the Son of God.
To invert this distinction, Linsley warns, is to blur the moral and symbolic boundary that Scripture urges us to uphold: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…” (Deuteronomy 30:15–20). A woman at the altar, then, is not merely a theological misstep—it’s a confusion of categories. It undermines the sacramental symbolism of priestly blood work. And because the priest stands at the altar in persona Christi, offering the sacrifice of the New Covenant, his role must mirror the Son—not only in essence, but in embodiment.
Linsley concludes:
“The faithful priest is a man whose life is a testimony to the reality of the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”
This doesn’t deny the deep and holy callings that women receive within the Church. But it does locate priesthood in the male pattern of blood sacrifice, not the female pattern of blood-bearing life. And that distinction is not cultural, but covenantal. It belongs not to the old world we’re leaving behind, but to the divine pattern we’re called to remember.
4. Gifts Alone Are Not Enough
We’ve all seen it—men and women who possess tremendous gifts of leadership, insight, and spiritual power. And often, those gifts are cited as “proof” of a call to ordination. But gifts alone are not sufficient. As my friend put it, if that were the case, the discernment process would be meaningless. We could just ordain by lottery and “pray for the best.”
But the pastoral office is not merely about gifting. It’s about sacramental identity. The Church does not call someone to ministry because they are eloquent or organized. The Church calls those whom God has marked out to be sacramental representatives of Christ—Prophet, Priest, and King. And that call is confirmed not just internally but externally, through the Church’s discernment.
If ordination were simply a matter of giftedness, then the most gifted preacher in your parish might not even be a man—or even someone you’d normally consider for leadership. It might be an eleven-year-old child with a brilliant mind. Or a blind man with a photographic memory who knows the Scriptures better than anyone. He might be a walking concordance, with a voice like thunder and the rhetorical skill of Chrysostom. But that doesn’t mean he should be ordained.
Why? Because ordination isn’t just about function—it’s about sacramental representation. A blind man might possess astonishing gifts of insight and memorization, but the ability to guide the people of God with vision (literal and metaphorical) is part of what pastoral leadership entails. Yes, Jesus healed the blind and spoke of spiritual sight. But there are also Old Testament laws and Church canons that, at various times, restricted ordination based on physical impairments—not as a judgment of worth, but because of the representative nature of the priesthood.
Could God call such a man? Of course. But could the Church discern such a call under normal circumstances, in a way that would faithfully represent the mystery of Christ and His Church? That’s far less clear.
In the same way, a woman may be brilliant, godly, discerning, and eloquent—possessing many gifts often found in pastors. But if the priesthood is not merely functional, if it is also representational—an icon of Christ the Bridegroom—then gifting alone does not determine calling.
5. Why I Can’t Support Women’s Ordination Today
Even if you could make a biblical case for the ordination of women (and that’s a big “if”), you cannot make that case within the culture we live in today. The modern world does not approach this question with theological integrity. It approaches it with ideology, virtue signaling, and progressive dogma.
We live in a time of chronological snobbery, to borrow C.S. Lewis’s term—where anything older than yesterday is considered suspect. We reject historical patriarchy not because we’ve proven it untrue, but because we’ve been trained to see it as oppressive by default. The result? A Church that’s eager to align with the spirit of the age rather than the mind of Christ.
My friend put it bluntly: if you encourage a young woman today to pursue ordination, you may not be affirming her calling—you may be inviting her to embody a modernist rejection of the very Church she seeks to serve. That’s not fair to her, and it’s not faithful to the Gospel.
So, if someone could construct a narrowly biblical argument for women’s ordination—if, hypothetically, all the texts aligned or at least left the door open—there’s still a deeper issue at play in our current cultural context. The question is not just can we ordain women; it’s why now, and under what influences?
Our society is not neutral ground. The modern push for women’s ordination is not emerging from a renewed sense of biblical fidelity or sacramental coherence. It is almost entirely born from cultural pressure, ideological feminism, and a desire to be seen as morally progressive. And that matters.
Linsley puts it bluntly: “The ordination of women is rooted in feminist thought and linked historically to homosexual activism.” That may sound harsh—but the historical record is what it is.
In 1974, the same year the homosexual activist group Integrity was founded, the first eleven “irregular” ordinations of women took place in the Episcopal Church—some of whom were known lesbians. A year later, more lesbian women were ordained in Washington, D.C. By 1976, the Episcopal General Convention passed a resolution affirming homosexual behavior. In 1977, Bishop Paul Moore ordained Ellen Marie Barrett, a partnered lesbian who had served as co-president of Integrity.
This is not a coincidence. It was a coordinated movement to dismantle catholic order and open the priesthood to expressions of identity that are antithetical to Christian anthropology. Feminism and sexual revisionism marched hand in hand. And once you break the sacramental sign of Christ the Bridegroom at the altar, everything downstream becomes negotiable: male and female, priest and laity, Creator and creature.
Linsley also argues that ideological feminism is not about justice—it is about power. It reframes the biblical narrative of headship, service, and complementarity into a Marxist class struggle between oppressor and oppressed—between male and female. This worldview is not born of love, reconciliation, or sacramental mystery. It is born of resentment. Feminism, in this radicalized form, must oppose biblical headship because it sees God the Father and God the Son as obstacles to autonomy. Thus, it must also revise the language of God.
This is exactly what many feminist theologians are doing. Canon Emma Percy of the Church of England once said, “We need to have a language about God that shows God can be expressed in lots of diverse terms.”3 She proposes calling God “Mother” as well as “Father.” But the problem with this move is not just semantic—it’s theological. To blur the language of God the Father and God the Son is to dismantle the very grammar of the Gospel.
As Fr. Thomas Hopko once wrote, “In his actions in and toward the world of his creation, the one God and Father reveals himself primarily and essentially in a ‘masculine’ way.”4 Not because God is biologically male, but because He initiates, gives, speaks, begets, sends, and saves—while creation, the Church, and the soul receive, conceive, bear fruit, and return praise. This isn’t arbitrary—it’s theological. It’s covenantal. It’s doxological.
And here’s the plain truth: Scripture never dissolves the distinction between male and female into a fluid spectrum. Even where gender reversals or ambiguities arise—especially in prophetic or poetic texts—they always occur between two fixed poles: male and female. There are no non-binary categories in the biblical imagination. The biblical view of humanity is not transgender, not homosexual, and not a spectrum—it is binary. “Male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). The mystery is deep, but the structure is clear.
So, when someone says, “Well, having women at the altar doesn’t change doctrine,” they’re wrong. It changes everything. It changes the way we imagine God. As Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, put it: “When the people who are representing God, making God present, have female bodies, that inevitably changes the way you think about how God is.”5 Precisely.
A woman presiding at the altar changes the symbolism. And in sacramental theology, symbolism is not secondary—it is reality presented under signs. If the priest is to be a visible icon of Christ the Bridegroom offering His Body to the Bride, then this sign cannot be fulfilled by a woman. The sacramental integrity collapses. And once the sacramental sign is compromised, so too is our ability to speak clearly of God, of the Church, and of salvation itself.
What we are left with is not tradition, not catholic order, not spiritual authority—but a collage of revisionist liturgies, self-styled identities, and rogue celebrants who create God in their own image.
So, even if I were personally open to discerning women’s ordination under a different set of historical or cultural conditions, there is no way to support it now—not without signaling agreement with the very ideologies that are dismantling the Faith from within.
Conclusion: The Only Way Forward
The Church is not our invention. It is the Bride of Christ, called to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. We do not reshape it to match our values. We conform ourselves to its life.
I remain open to continued study on 1 Timothy 2. But I am no longer open to the idea that the Church can set aside the nuptial mystery, the iconic priesthood, and the theology of the household to keep up with the world. We are not called to be modern. We are called to be faithful.
And that’s the only way forward.
- “In persona Christi” means “in the person of Christ” in Latin. In the context of catholic sacraments, it refers to the belief that priests act as representatives of Christ when administering the sacraments, such as during the celebration of the Eucharist or the sacrament of reconciliation. ↩︎
- For all the Linsley quotes, see https://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2019/11/ten-objections-to-women-priests.html ↩︎
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/church-of-england-womens-group-bishops ↩︎
- Hopko, Thomas (ed.). Women and the Priesthood. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1983. Thomas Hopko, in his chapter “On the Male Character of Christian Priesthood,” p. 240. ↩︎
- https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-feminization-and-decline-of-religion/ ↩︎