How to defend the belief only men should be ordained?

There was only one priest in the early Christian church and he was a Great High Priest. Heb.4:14. There is nothing in New Testament scripture which indicates the church has need of any other, male or female.
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So is it your position, then, that the office of priest is unbiblical, and should be done away with? Or that it is a misreading of the office of Presbyteros in 1 Timothy?

 

All the arguments either way ultimately run into a brick wall, as far as I am able to discern. It’s a matter of conscience that can only be defended on principle, not precedent.

Obviously, a defender of WO cannot appeal to NT precedents, for the simple reason that they do not exist. But absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence (as to its admissibility in principle). The charge itself (of a lack of NT evidence) is worth very little, since the very same thing is true of slavery, which no serious Christian defends today, despite the fact that there is no NT precedent for abolitionism. Where appeal to precedent failed, appeal to principle took over and ultimately won the day.

If the Risen Christ is indeed “the last Adam”, it’s important that we keep in mind what that would likely have meant to a first century Jewish audience. 1st century Jewish interpreters often understood Adam to have been androgynous, containing within himself all that it meant to be male or female. Indeed, Eve was not created separately but was fashioned out of Adam’s side. Josephus in his Antiquities stated that this was no mere history, but was also meant to be understood “philosophically.” Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus and Paul, in his De Opificio Mundi, had this to say:

“And very beautifully after he had called the whole race "man," did he distinguish between the sexes, saying, that "they were created male and female;" although all the individuals of the race had not yet assumed their distinctive form; since the extreme species are contained in the genus, and are beheld, as in a mirror, by those who are able to discern acutely...

After this, Moses says that "God made man, having taken clay from the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life." And by this expression he shows most clearly that there is a vast difference between man as generated now, and the first man who was made according to the image of God. For man as formed now is perceptible to the external senses, partaking of qualities, consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal. But man, made according to the image of God, was an idea, or a genus, or a seal, perceptible only by the intellect, incorporeal, neither male nor female, imperishable by nature.”
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The medieval commentator Rashi in his commentary on Genesis also references an early midrash that points toward an androgynous interpretation of Gen. 1:26-27.

So if we’re thinking about how a first century Jewish audience (or how a first century Jewish author) might have understood 1 Cor. 15, it seems unlikely that they (or he) would have given such ascriptions a gendered interpretation. With that, as it currently stands, the whole argument that priests must be male because Christ the Great High Priest is also male, simply collapses. Incidentally, the anticipation of his becoming the “last Adam” at his resurrection may very well be the theological justification for the fact that Jesus never married.

In sum, we can cite examples of early church discipline that forbade women from teaching publicly, but I am not aware of any properly theological arguments that I would consider to be decisive either way, nor is there any defined dogma on the subject. Where there is a decision to be made, that decision is and must be the bishop’s.

 

This is only my view, not putting words in Tiffy's mouth, but it seems a reasonable position that even if the "office of priest is unbibilical" it need not be done away with. In the same way, if there's no evidence of women's ordination, that also need not be done away with (on that basis).

Christ was a carpenter and not a plumber. If one makes an oath to devote their life to becoming more Christlike in everything they do, can they be allowed to repair a wall made of wood, but are now forbidden by oath from fixing the pipe burst inside it? Of course not. If scripture is silent on something that doesn't make it sinful, immoral, forbidden or something to be avoided. We can use reason to make determinations on things scripture was not explicit about, and resolve if something is good or bad, and the same goes for holy orders.

Scripture need not contain an explicit instruction manual on the structure of an episcopal polity, we can use reason to work out what makes sense, guided by Scripture. That means we don't need to squeeze evidence of modern priests from the Bible like blood from a rock to justify our actions, we can accept the precise answer is not plainly written there, but through study and thought and prayer we can work out the answer with the gift of rational thought God gave to all of us. The same arguments can be used for women's ordination.

On your attempt to squeeze blood from a rock through the word Presbyteros, there are some church positions discussed in 1 Timothy, and none of them are priests (that is an ordained minister above a deacon and below a bishop). Priests imply something specific - a πρεσβυτερος (presbuteros, 1 Tim 4:14) is just an elder/teacher. They could be a lay minister, a deacon, a bishop, a pope -- or a priest. But they are not only priests.

1 Timothy only discusses 2 types of classes in the church (1 Timothy 3:1-13):

• επισκοπος (episkopos), Bishops (3:1-7)
• διακονος (diakonos), Deacons (3:8-13)

Naturally, that Paul or whoever actually wrote 1 Timothy decided to exclude priests from their shopping list of qualifications doesn't mean that the church cannot have any. It makes sense to have someone in a position that is not quite "an overseer, above reproach and well thought of by outsiders", that has less administrative responsibility and more flexibility to be controversial than a Bishop, whilst also occupying a higher responsibility than that afforded by the deaconate. Likewise an absence of female deacons/bishops in scripture (depending on how you read it, but lets not start squeezing blood from the other sides rocks) doesn't mean the church cannot have any, and in some ways I think its uncharitable to assume an answer from scripture is so clear, because the logical assumption then is that the learned people arguing in support of WO must be behaving dishonestly toward you to be ignoring something so obvious.

 

I don't go in for knee jerk reactions of "It's Biblical or it's unbiblical" merely on the presence or absense of mentions either for or against in scripture. If we were to make judgments concerning Church Praxis on such criteria then women would not even be allowed to receive communion, there being not a single mention of them specifically so doing in the scriptures we regard as canonical and as has been already mentioned there is tacit approval or at least acceptance of slavery within the pages of even the New Testament, let alone explicit approval and regulation of it in the Old.

My position on the notion that some men, (and even women), have, that only men are permitted by scripture to enter the priesthood of a Christian assembly, is that there is nothing specifically in scripture irrevocably supporting that contention. A male only pristhood in a Christian community is a product of post Apostolic Church development by entire virtue of only the fact, that the devevolpment of any kind of priesthood in a Christian context, was and is, a post Apostolic development.

Post Apostolic Church developments are not by nature Apostolic and have no certain Apostolic support. Though that neither renders them according to the will of God or necessarily against the will of God, it does render them debatable within the Christian Church.

However, I see no good and acceptable reason to call the office of priest in the Church of England into question, though there are many believers in other denominations who have already decided it is an historical anachronism, which they are better off without.

The office of priest, (in my opinion), is not forbidden in the New Testament scriptures, (or in the Old Testament, for that matter, though that priesthood is Aaronic and exclusively male and an entirely different priesthood, not in any way related to the office of priest in any New Testament Church of Christ).

The election of women into the New Testament version of priesthood is not specifically forbidden in New Testament scripture either, so there is no overriding scriptural reason that men, (or women), should be citing scripture as their reason for disclaiming even the possibility of women being ordained into it.
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I think that the early Christians when thinking of Christ as the new Adam would have thought of him as male well since he was male and he walked among the earliest believers as a man. They did not have to do deep thinking about the questions because they had eyes and they saw Christ as a man.

 

He’s just trolling you, he doesn’t have Anglican beliefs and his wife is a female CofE priest on board with LMNOP agenda, so there’s a bunch of levels of cognitive dissonance there.

The argument is pretty simple as I outlined above. Men and women are fundamentally different, which is why the OT church only had male priests in contrast to the heathens around them, and why Christ ordained a male priesthood in contrast with the countless pagan women priestesses around them.

From scripture verses above it can in no way be admitted for a woman to preach or minister sacred things. I won’t go into many other passages, such as criteria for a bishop, who can only be male, Christ’s choice of his specific apostles, priests, etc.

The fact is, a husband is the priest/prophet/king of his household, the clergy are the priests/prophets/kings (spiritually) for the community, and Christ is priest/prophet/king of Creation. This is the constitution God set up From The Beginning (long before the NT).

 

Two 1st century sources and a medieval source quoting a 1st cent. source ranks higher on the relevant evidence scale than bare intuition. Paul’s statement that “in Christ there is neither male nor female” lends support to this. The pre-Nicene Greek Fathers picked up on this as well. These are heavyweight sources and it’s hardly an idiosyncratic reading.

 

Yes but you quoted two Jewish sources not Christian sources. Obviously we disagree on things. Also you have to look at the consensus of the fathers not just a couple of them.

 

You didn't ask me, but it's a good question.

1Ti 4:14 Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.

The Greek word only appears in the NT three times, and in two of those three instances it's translated "elders." This verse in 1 Timothy seems to indicate that a group or gathering of such elders laid hands on Timothy and prayed for him, a deacon, and that God (in His sovereignty) chose to impart a spiritual gift to Timothy. It is not made clear from this passage whether Timothy was already considered a deacon, or whether this was the point in time when he became a deacon. This is a far cry from the current doctrine that the laying of hands on a ministry candidate by a bishop (singular) is the necessary element by which the office of ministry is bestowed by God to a person whom He has chosen.

If we look to Scripture by itself, the only things ascribed to the office of Christian presbyter is (1) to lay hands on someone and pray, and (2) to write letters (Acts 22:5). The church is therefore compelled to vigorously promote and defend its members' own writings and Councils as necessary proof of the validity of the priesthood pattern that we are familiar with today. Those writings and Councils thus are treated as self-validating (in terms of logic, via circular reasoning) proofs of whatever the church wishes to prove, even though the writings and Councils are the products of fallible men and do not provide us with the 'God-breathed' assurance of correctness that we have with Scripture.

Today when we think of the office of priest, we see a man in fine, special robes (each portion of which has been given a fancy name, making them even more special) processing down the aisle, undeviatingly conducting a service with exact words that have been set to paper and approved, going through certain ritualistic motions (such as a symbolic washing of his hands, etc.) in the prescribed ways, distributing the Eucharist to the faithful, processing out, and greeting the people as they leave. This is what most people are conscious of and think of when they contemplate the "office" of a priest.

The question is, how much of that is consistent with what was practiced in the days of the Apostles? Well, we don't know that any of it was done in those days; in fact we suspect that little or none of it was happening. What we do have is some descriptions from the following couple of centuries, in which the writers described, not some universal church practice, but merely how they were conducting services on a local basis. And if one were to read all of these descriptions from the various locales, one would (or should) notice that no great uniformity existed among the local churches: no standardized liturgical text, no set sequence of conducting liturgy, no word of anyone processing down an aisle, no word of whether the building even had an aisle, and (as Stalwart has shown us pictorially) no special liturgical robes.

Don't get me wrong. I value the work my rector does. And I think our liturgy is a good way to worship God. I look forward to participating in the liturgy every Sunday. The robes add a sense of solemnity and splendor. But I recognize that it's not the only proper way or the exclusive way to worship God. I don't worship the liturgy; I worship God. (Thus, I respect the worship styles of congregational Protestants and their choice to worship God in the way they think is best, because the Bible doesn't specify how to do it. Only man tries to specify exactly how men must worship God.)

In short, the role of priest exists today, not because God left detailed instructions on how He wanted it done (in the manner which He specified to the Israelites, which suggests that if He really cared about priests in the NT era He would have told us so), but because we've cobbled it together over the centuries and ascribed a certain sacredness to it as a way of defending our decisions.

 

The RC church has long been mindbendingly manipulative over it's presentation of women connected with anything remotely divine.

The options offered are any woman can be holy, like: (1) Queen of Heaven, as for instance Mary the mother of Jesus or (2) can be prostitutes, either reformed from prostitution, like the other Mary was for generations, falsely accused of, by the RC church, or otherwise unrepentant.

The option of any woman being a priest, along with all other believers, (presumably, according to the RC church's reasoning, exclusively male) believers, is definitely, indefinitely - counted out altogether by the RC church.
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If the Christian church as a whole has practiced the faith a certain way for more than eighteen centuries, doesn't this tend to show us the appropriate way to practice the faith? When modern culture tries to impose its new standards upon the church, isn't that an excellent example of "mindbendingly manipulative" behavior?

But not to the purveyors of the modern standards, apparently.

 

Do you really think that right practice is infallibly indicated by longevity of tradition and habit then?

I'm surprised Jesus even bothered with: Matthew 5:21-43. They'd been doing it all that way for so long apparently that it would, to them, presumably have to be the appropriate way to practice their faith, according perhaps to them, from what you have just suggested, if of course, they were not listening to what Jesus said, and of course many of them didn't, as we now know.

Should the church not listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us in our age, but rather just go on doing whatever it does, just because it always has, 'for more than eighteen centuries', and for no other discernible logical or spiritual reason than, some of it, thinks it should?
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Who said "infallibly"? Only you. But the long practice is a very strong indicator, especially when combined with the precedents of OT practice. And please don't pretend there is "no discernible logical or spiritual reason" for the lack of female priests, because several reasons have been called to mind in a number of previous threads; just because you didn't like those reasons is not good grounds to say they lack logical or spiritual support. The pattern of male leadership and headship was instituted by God as far back as the Garden, He continued building the pattern throughout OT times, and Jesus never said anything to change it. The support for female priests is far more shaky by comparison, since it is supported only by new, modernist ideas concerning the relationship between man and woman. Nowadays most men in the world prefer a life that is liberated from God's call to submit their will to His headship, so it should not surprise us that most women also prefer a life of liberation from the headship they were called to. "If it feels good, do it!" has become the new mantra, but this attitude has no place in the Church.

If you can show us where Jesus said in the Matthew 5 discourse, "You have heard it said that only men can be priests, but I say to you that women can be priests as well," we would be obliged. Actually, if you can produce any evidence of God calling females to be priests from anywhere in the Bible, we'll strongly consider it.

Should the church listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying? Yes, of course. The true voice of the Holy Spirit will always be in perfect agreement with the written word of God, you know. You seem to be suggesting either that for 1800+ years none of the church leaders heard from the Holy Spirit on this issue, or else that God has recently changed His mind.

 

Oh, great. Yet another complementarian vs. egalitarian debate… One cannot appeal to prior tradition to illuminate questions which that tradition did not raise or have the need to respond to. The social emancipation of women only really began within the last 150 years; their political emancipation has been even more recent. To the extent that either complementarians or egalitarians think that texts produced by, in, and for premodern societies could should light on the new situation on their own, both sides are wrong. The most important question here should regard the coherence of various viewpoints with the most basic facts of Christian identity as such. Absent a presupposed sacerdotalist (i.e., non-Protestant) understanding of the Christian Ministry, there is no cogent theological or anthropological reason to conclude that women are excluded in any way from the gifts which men have always assumed were (at least) available to themselves.

 

You forgot to say, in your opinion. Others do see theological reasons, but closed minds will always be in denial.

 

It is not simply opinion. The practice of ignoring the substance of the argument and dismissing it in this way is not worthy.

The approach of Jesus to women was in marked contrast to the standard of the age. Read the Gospel of Luke with an eye to this issue and you maybe surprised.for me, though, one of the most significant passages is the discourse with the woman of Samaria in John chapter 4.

In my opinion, if you like!

 

Well said!

Behind all this are hidden two different traditional views of what 'Priesthood' is.

Some think it embodies 'Authority', (An Old Testament concept), others think it demonstrates 'Service', (A New Testament perspective). Depending upon which option is plumped for, if one's an either/or sort of person, will often decide how one views women's 'ministry' as priests. Christ came to us as a Servant. To be a servant to others is to be Christ-like. To be Christ-like is to be Priestly. Christ's church on earth is at long last beginning to recognise that theological fact.

Our priesthood is paterned on Christ, not on Aaron.
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It’s not my “opinion” that the social and political emancipation of women has been an exclusively modern phenomenon, which itself would not have been possible without the prior common acceptance of ideas like toleration and individualism. These ideas and developments had no more analogue to anything we know of from the ancient world than did modern scientific ideas like gravitation, inertia, and relativity. Because the ancient world did not deal with these ideas and developments, it is in fact mere opinion to assume that we can know how they would have responded to them, if they knew what we know today. It is therefore up to us to decide these things. There would be no need for the Spirit “to guide us into all truth” if there’s some mechanical tradition out there that cranks out ready-made answers to every new problem. That’s why there are three legs to our beloved stool and not just two. Tradition is important but it doesn’t eliminate the role of reason.