Women in Ministry and Sacramentalism

I have been reading this book, "Slaves, Women and Homosexuals" by William Webb. It's fun to me because my high school dorm parent was named William Webb. He wrote a book too: a chemistry text book!

This book is really good, I have to say. It was first recommended to me by Kevin Miller when I asked him for an explanation of how he viewed women in ministry and the hermeneutic that remained consistent. I am sad to say that his recommendation came more than a year ago and I am just finishing the book. :)

Webb does use language that the truly conservative evangelical might find a put off. I say that as one who grew up surrounded by very conservative evangelicals. (An interesting aside would be a discussion about the connection between "conservatives" and moral development theory, but that is for another time). Mainly, it is phrases like "move beyond" Scripture and referring to Scripture's statements as being "insufficient."

Now, I don't think he means what it may sound like at first. He does not mean that Scripture is not enough or that we need to move beyond it in the sense of it's out dated and unhelpful. What he means is that we must allow Scripture to carry us through to the end. It is unfortunate that he uses negative language to describe this instead of positive language.

Webb builds an excellent case, however, for the movement of Scripture towards greater and fuller inclusion of women in ministry, leadership, etc. while still maintaining that homosexuality is not consistent with Scripture or the Christian faith.

What this book does not engage in is the sacramental understanding of gender at all. It does not touch on the meaning of male and female. (Obviously, that is outside the boundaries of Webb's topic). So that leaves questions there.

My main question at the moment is: How does one respond to the argument that the symbolism of Eucharist is a wedding feast and since the church is the bride, the priest needs to be male to prevent symbolic confusion? That may not be the best wording of the question ever, but it's the best I've got at the moment.

Or another way of putting it: what would it look like to be truly sacramental but to take Webb's hermeneutics seriously? What symbolism would need to change? How do we stand in coherence with the history of the Church while still making the forward movement?

I think it is definitely possible. I look forward to the continual fleshing out of women in ministry and sacramentalism.