The recent controversy over CPH’s new essays on the Large Catechism has caused some to ask whether it is appropriate for women to publicly teach official doctrine to the church. Some may argue directly from divine revelation to answer this question. Others might argue, from a sort of natural-law perspective informed by Scripture, that there is an ontological difference between men and women which makes it appropriate for men, but not women, to write the kind of essays newly attached to the catechism. Mark Preus’ recent article has jump-started the conversation on the first kind of argument; I would like to do the same thing for the second kind. A recent Twitter thread by Jordan Cooper questions whether the expression “ontological difference” is helpful here. He argues that it is not, holding that the question of ontological difference between men and women is, by and large, “only asked by people who are not philosophers.” While he concedes that there is an essential difference (not merely a societal or cultural one) between men and women, he says that the term “ontological difference” in particular, at least without clarification, implies that men and women “are not two parts of the same category that is ‘human being’.”
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