Choose, Francis: Incarnation or Imago Dei?

In the last few days, two friends and colleagues have asked what I think of the many reports that Pope Francis called for ‘the creation of a commission‘ to study ‘reinstating’ female deacons. Thanks to the Crusty Old Dean I do not need to point out (though I will remind) that declaring the usefulness of a study is hardly a commitment to anything; that recollecting a conversation with some unnamed former professor is hardly a particularly articulate reflection of the extensive historical work already done on the female diaconate¹ ; and that on this, the Orthodox actually beat the Catholics to the punch.²

The truth is, though, that a well written call to expand the diaconate by a Catholic bishop, the continued practice of female deacons among the Armenians, or a call for its restoration among the Copts or both a call for and rumored actual restoration among the Greeks all fail to address the fundamental theological failures which underlie any discussion of the participation of women in the ministries of the church, no matter which priestly ministry³ is at issue: can a woman stand in persona Christi?⁴

In Persona Christi

As Pope Francis noted to the women religious before him:

there is “no problem” for women to give reflections or homilies at prayer services, but that during the Mass the priest is serving “in persona Christi” and is therefore the person to give the homily.

Here Francis reflects long-standing Catholic arguments (borrowed by Orthodox and still repeated among some in the Anglican communion) against female priests and bishops: to represent Christ, one must be a male as Christ was male. It does not matter if the focus of Christ’s liturgical work is Word (which is, frankly, a bit of a surprising emphasis for the Catholic Francis) or Sacrament (the far more typical emphasis among Catholics and Orthodox): to stand as Christ before the people of God one must be male.⁵

However, this raises a significant theological problem: for whom is the Incarnation of God in Christ? Men, women, or all created in the image of God?

For us and for our salvation….

The theology of the Nicene Creed rests on a particular understanding of creation, incarnation, and salvation which permeated the theology of the early church (by which I mean the first few hundred years not the first few decades). 1 Peter 1:4 states that he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may … become participants in the divine nature.” Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (c. 130–202) reminds us that God “became what we are in order to make us what he is himself” (Against Heresies, Bk 5., preface). Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) says that “the Word of God became a human so that you might learn from a human how to become a god’ (Exortation to the Greeks, 1); Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria (c. 296–373) echoes Clement: “For the Son of God became human so that we might become God [gods].” (On the Incarnation, 54, 3). Perhaps most famous of all, Gregory of Nazianzus, explicitly arguing for the trinitarian and incarnational theology which produced the Nicene Creed, gives us the oft-repeated (at least among Orthodox) phrase: “That which He has not assumed, He has not healed” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101).

The very possibility of salvation, of being healed of the sickness that is our fear-filled denial of love, of being fully restored into the image of God given to us at creation, rests in what God has done in Christ: become fully human. If God did not become fully human in Christ, enabling us to become like God, then we are not able to be healed, to stands as co-workers with God in Christ as lovers of God, neighbor and creation. To declare that any person cannot stand in persona Christi, whether in liturgy or life, is to declare one of two things: either that Christ did not actually take on full humanity, but only that humanity which can actually bear him, which is, in the situation discussed here, only male humanity; or, that some human beings cannot bear in their particular bodies the life and healing which is God’s gift to us in the incarnation.

A Creedal Faith:

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed rejects, explicitly, the claim that Jesus Christ only ‘seemed’ human. It declares emphatically the full humanity of Christ. The church, in its wisdom, stands by the full humanity (and divinity, but that is not at issue here) of Christ. This means that Christ took on all that is human. Period. We do not understand how it is that a Palestinian Jewish male took on the humanity of all nations, races, sexes, genders or abilities. We see in Jesus all that it is to be fully human (as an ethicist, I would argue that  this is because we see in Jesus all that it is to treat one another with virtue as beloved neighbors, but that is another discussion), and we know that in Christ, God bears all our humanity.

However, if some beings cannot bear Christ the fully human because the fully human Christ did not actually bear them, then all that is left is the belief that these beings are not fully human. The church, in its foolishness, has been quite ready to deny the full humanity of bodies that are not fully formed, fully able men. Women, the disabled, the ambiguously sexed and gendered, have all been denied, in one way or another, the fullness of their humanity. Their ‘natures’ are incomplete and need to be rejected, repented, or grieved.

The theological problem however, is this: if one believes that only men can symbolize or iconographically represent Christ, one either undermines the full divinity and humanity of Christ, thereby denying women the possibility of salvation, or one undermines the fullness of the image of God borne by women.

In other words, to believe that any person cannot stand in persona Christi by virtue of their body is to deny either the full embodiment of God in the incarnation, or the full humanity of the body in question. No amount of denial, caveats, exemptions, or “yes buts” changes the fundamental problem created by this theology.

If you believe that only men can stand in persona Christi, then you must make a choice, incarnation or the imago dei: one must go.