The Trinitarian Theologies of Bonaventure and Balthasar and the Ontological Objection to the Ordination of Women

Abstract

The article aims to show that the ontological objection to women’s ordination fails to convince when examined in light of the trinitarian theologies of Bonaventure and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The former argued for the Incarnate Son of God as the coincidence of opposites of the Father and the Holy Spirit, and of Creator and creature; the latter expressed the difference between the immanent and economic Trinity by means of ‘trinitarian inversion,’ where the roles of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the immanent Trinity are reversed in the economic Trinity. Trinitarian inversion becomes central to the full configuration of men and women to Christ the High Priest. Restricting the ministerial priesthood to men is theologically unsound. Since both women and men, who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ (the ‘coincidence of opposites’), both are the face of Christ to and for the world.