"Biblical Priesthood and Women in Ministry" (Ch 16) by Stanley J. Grenz

Before offering any form of summary or critique of this chapter, I would first like to express my deepest condolences to the family of Stanley Grenz at the event of his unexpected, untimely death. Our prayer for his family and friends is that the God of all comfort would minister to and fellowship with them as they mourn the loss of a son, a brother, a father, a grandfather, and a friend. May we all learn to number our days as we ponder afresh that our earthly lives are but a vapor and that we will soon meet our Maker.

Summary

The main goal of Grenz's essay- which is adapted from his larger work, Women in the Church, co-authored with Denise Muir Kjesbo¹-is to refute those who argue that the priestly character of the pastoral office entails that only men may exercise pastoral leadership. Some complementarians-mainly from within the liturgical traditions-argue that the pastoral office (or function) is to be seen as the instantiation of a general biblical principle of male priesthood. Their argument is roughly as follows: clergy constitute a priesthood; women could not be priests; therefore women cannot be clergy.

The error, according to Grenz, rests in the first premise. The new covenant counterpart to old covenant priesthood is not found in the pastorate, but rather in the priesthood of all believers. Furthermore, the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers entails that "the status of priest is exactly what forms the basic qualification for all church officers" (276). The pastoral role is to be filled by people gifted for the pastorate serving among the gifted people of God. Since priesthood is the basic qualification for the pastorate and the charismata are distributed without distinction, both men and women are thereby qualified and gifted to serve as elders and pastors.

Response

In some ways it is difficult to know how to respond to Grenz's essay, for I-along with most complementarians²-join Grenz in rejecting the faulty premise that the pastoral office (or function) is an instantiation of the priesthood. The priesthood was a shadow pointing forward to the substance, Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. All believers are united in our Priest, and via union with him we comprise a "royal priesthood" (2 Pet 2:5, 9).

Does this mean that Grenz's egalitarian ecclesiology is thereby established or vindicated? By no means. To see why, it may be helpful to imagine an unlikely, but perhaps illuminating, fictional dispute. Let us imagine that two theologians are having a debate over the qualifications for eldership. Their disagreement is not about gender, but about whether or not one must be a mature believer in order to be an elder. The theologian who believes that only mature believers are qualified to be elders offers the following argument: elders constitute a priesthood; new converts could not be priests; therefore new converts cannot be clergy.

The theologian who believers that all believers are qualified to be elders points out that it is the church, not the pastorate, that fulfills the priesthood. Furthermore, God distributes the gifts indiscriminately, and it is the combination of priesthood and gifting-not maturity in our walk with the Lord-that qualifies one for the office (or function) of elder.

The theologian who believes that new believers may be elders has effectively refuted the peculiar argument of the mature-elders-only theologian, but this does not mean that he has established his own position, nor that he has refuted his opponent's conclusion. The reason is that Scripture specifically weighs in on the contested conclusion: "He [an elder] must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil" (1 Tim 3:6).

I would suggest that an analogous-though by no means identical- situation occurs in the essay by Grenz. The arguments sound fine, until you realize that Paul has addressed this very issue and prohibited the very conclusion that Grenz seeks to draw! Just as 1 Tim 3:6 ("he must not be a recent convert") defeats the idea that recent converts may be elders, so 1 Tim 2:12 ("I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man") defeats the idea that women may be elders. Grenz believes that the combination of indiscriminate gifting by the Spirit combined with the fact that the priesthood of believers is the fulfillment of the old-covenant priesthood yields the conclusion that women may be elders. But Paul explicitly forbids that very conclusion. In order for Grenz's argument to work, it must depend on his revisionist interpretation of 1 Tim 2:12 and other crucial texts that have a more direct bearing upon whether or not women are scripturally permitted to be elders.

But Grenz has a response to this argument. He suggests that complementarians, in their attempt to skirt the ecclesiastic implications of the New Testament teaching on spiritual gifts, have driven a sharp wedge between the charismata and the ordained office. In other words, they erect a false dichotomy between the gifting of the Spirit and the exercise of the pastoral role.

But this does not change my response in the least. How do we decide the relationship between role and gift? By seeing if the New Testament writers drew any distinctions between them. Paul clearly taught that God indiscriminately distributes the gifts within the church, and he also clearly teaches that only qualified males are to be elders. Therefore, he implicitly drew a distinction between the two, and he did not draw the conclusion that Grenz draws, namely, that women may serve as elders.

I would suggest that Grenz's essay is successful only in defeating the method of argumentation employed by those who build their case for complementarianism upon the assumption that the pastorate is an instantiation of an all-male priesthood. Those who reject such an assumption will be unfazed by this essay. It neither defeats complementarianism nor advances egalitarianism, for the issue cannot be decided based upon the priestly-or non-priestly-character of the pastorate. The issue will be decided based upon whether or not Paul specifically forbade women from entering into that office or exercising that function. I join the other contributors to this issue in maintaining that careful, contextual, grammatical-historical exegesis vindicates the complementarian understanding that Paul appeals to the creation order to establish his conviction that only men may serve as elder-pastors in the church.