Show me how the Episcopal Church teaches Heresy (officially)

Since the thread has deviated from this question, clearly they can't find any heretical wording in any of our formularies.

 

Did the immaculate formularies save bishop Lawrence and our entire diocese?

 

Yet I confess I still harbor much affection and tenderness for the Old Lady. I'd much rather see her triumph and overcome the horrors of modernity than dwindle away. At least we don't have to deal with Anca. Here's to hoping that the next Presiding Bishop will set things aright.

 

Would that include firing gay clergy and women priests?

 

Starting with gay clergy in open rebellion of the church and God's law.

 

Well, certainly in the CofE, although priests were allowed to enter into "civil partnerships" (wrongly in my view) they are supposed to be celibate. No comment. For them to openly defy this should lead to them losing their jobs and priestly status, but the CofE is not known for its firm discipline. Unfortunately. The situation is complicated by the fact that (I think) civil partnerships (which were for same sex couples only) have been replaced by "marriages", something to which the CofE is rightly opposed and is not allowed to conduct.

The gay issue is troubling, but at least, unlike the RC Church, we are not "in denial". I can discuss this further if you wish.

As for female priests, you probably know that the Church has done all it can to accommodate the small minority opposed to them and will doubtless (try to) find a way of continuing to do this when we get women bishops.

 

The Bible forbids women from exercising ecclesiastical authority over men (1 Timothy 2:11/12). Either the office of deacon is an authoritative governing office in the church or it isn't. There is no such thing as the legal or civil right of being neutral! Oh, but on the contrary, neutrality is CONTUMELY against the Deity! If it is, well then no wonder that the occupation of deaconess was not quite the same as the office of a deacon. But if it isn't, well then, what hinders the occupation of deaconess from being revived in the Church?

 

Two responses. Firstly, as an aside, can we just unpack how absurd the term deaconess is? The greek word diakonon is gender neutral. In Aristophanes' "Assemblywomen" (a comedy where women take over the government and implement gender equality, funny how little things have moved in 2400 years, I can imagine an awful hollywood comedy with an all female cast with the exact same premise) he uses the term without concern to refer to women. As does Paul, which is my second point.

Phoebe is a deacon. 1 Timothy 2.11-12 cannot possibly be read to exclude women from the diaconate, because Paul - the same actor writing in first Timothy - also writes that Phoebe is a deacon in ~50 AD.

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, ~ Romans 16.1​

Anyone who uses the KJV translation as rebuttal I direct you to the original Koine Greek.

συνἴστημι δε ϋμι φοιβην την αδελφην ημων ουσα διακονον τησ εκκλησιασ τησ εν κεχραιαισ
I commend to you Phoibē, our sister, who is a deacon of the church that is in Cenchrea,
​

An exclusion of women from the diaconate is a post-Apostolic age Church convention that has no basis in scripture. If you want to make an argument for why women ought not to be deacons, it's possible, but not from scripture.

​

 

The real question is whether or not the office of deacon is an authoritative governing office in the church. The ultraconservative branches of the Presbyterian Church have argued that the distinctive definitive occupation of Deacon IS an authoritative office in the church.

Testimony of fredtgreco:

https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/women-deacons.3222/post-40409:

Testimony of VirginiaHuguenot:

https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/women-deacons.3222/post-40436:

So, the case of conscience which I now pose is this: Which one is the true Scriptural position? That the office of deacon is an authoritative church office which entails the exercise of authority over men? Or that the office of deacon is merely an administrative office, and not one that involves ecclesiastical authority?

 

Easy, it's an authoritative church office that entails no exercise of authority over men, but has many ecclesiastical responsibilities to men. That is the literal distinction between a deacon and a bishop. Deacon means helper. Bishop (or Episkopon) means overseer. If a deacon had authority they would be a bishop.

 

Emperor Nero was also called a 'deacon' in Romans 13:4.
"for he is God's deacon for your good"
"θεου γαρ διακονος εστιν σοι εις το αγαθον εαν"

Yes you read that right, the emperor Nero is called God's very own deacon (θεου διακονος), a far stronger descriptor than Phoebe's. Will you then conclude that somebody ordained him into Christian holy orders? These are silly arguments.

As Lancelot Andrews shows in the treatise against the presbyterians,
https://archive.org/details/ofepiscopacythre00andr/

The NT labels of deacon, presbyter, and overseer, did not refer to states, but to functions. They were functional, not substantive descriptors, and applied to the ordained and the lay alike. Nero was a deacon, Phoebe was a deacon, anyone could be a deacon if they helped the Church. Similarly people were called 'overseers' if they helped to oversee some things. They were not considered to be bishops in the modern sense of the word.

The words of deacon/presbyter/bishop only became substantive descriptors after the New Testament. If one wants to help the church, he became ordained as a Helper (deacon).

And it is a 'he'. The Apostolic Constitutions says, 'yes we have both deacons and deaconesses, but the latter are not to be reckoned among the ordained, but among the laity'.

 

Firstly, Romans 13 is about the entire Roman Government, not specifically Nero. In fact it's not even really only about the Roman Government, that's just the specific example Paul is addressing, he's actually talking about all secular authority everywhere. All secular authority is a servant of God, and that authority only exists because God permits it. Secondly, there is a crystal clear distinction between Paul's use of the term in Romans 13 when he personifies the state, and the use of the term when referring to Phoebe. We're allowed to read different definitions of the same word in their context. Reading all of Romans 13 it's clear Paul doesn't mean the Roman Government is literally a deacon, it's a figure of speech. When referring to the Government it's blatantly obvious he's using it in the common Greek usage to mean 'helper' or 'assistant'. However, in Romans 16, when referring to Phoebe, it seems most likely he's using the Biblical Greek definition to refer to the official role in the Church. He's describing a fellow Christian, their job title, and what church they're from. There's no literary benefit to using the word deacon here like there is in Romans 13, he's must be detailing her regular task in the church.

Deacon and bishop were already used as substantive descriptors in the Apostolic Age, that's why Paul goes to the effort of addressing them in 1 Timothy 3. I agree they probably were not always ordained, and so Romans 16 cannot be used to prove women were historically ordained. Regardless of ordination there was a clear role in the church that Apostolic Christians called a deacon. Phoebe was one of those people. So 1 Timothy 2 cannot be read in such a way to say women cannot perform the task of a deacon. I wasn't disputing anything to do with holy orders, I was simply rejecting that scripture says they cannot be deacons.

You can make a separate argument that women cannot be admitted to holy orders, and therefore women cannot be made deacons anymore. That's fine. That has nothing to do with 1 Timothy 2 - holy orders are not described in that detail in the Bible, it's a (good) tradition we invented and maintain post New Testament.

 

Nope. In many parts of scripture people for example are called both a presbyter and a bishop. The NT labels are incomprehensible, if we consider the ecclesiastical offices as later developed. That’s why Lancelot Andrews teaches that they are functional adverbs, and not labels of ecclesiastical offices.

Similarly when St Paul says, “some are called to be apostles, some teachers, etc”, this verse sometimes gets taken as simply a list of offices, by unthinking Christians (like the Presbyterians).

Lancelot Andrews goes through all these labels and explains, they are not offices. The Church Fathers never saw them as such. Thus Nero was a deacon, and so Phoebe, but that word did not refer (then) to an ecclesiastical office. Junia is also called an apostle, a “big” prooftext for modern silly WO advocates.

But Andrews dispels these myths back in the 1620s. There are no ecclesiastical offices at all, in the NT. What later became bishops were “The Twelve”. What later became priests were “The Seventy Two”. Etc. I invite you to peruse his work.

 

If that’s so, then how can the NT be read as legislating for offices it never mentions?

 

It doesn’t. The offices of the church do not derive from some specific verse or a positive legislation.

 

Then it would seem there can be no scriptural argument against gender equality in ordination, if those orders aren’t even addressed.

 

The emphasis of 'diakonos' is on the person who willingly performs works of service for the benefit of others. It's a 'ministry of helps.' It is not a position of leadership authority, but is a position of assisting a rector/vicar in service to the congregation. That is why I don't mind seeing females serving as deacons.

If some Presbyterians mistakenly treat their diaconate as authority-bearing leaders, then that is their problem, not ours.

I sometimes wonder whether the apostles ever intended that deacons be formally 'ordained.' But that's beside the point, I guess.

 

The orders are present, I only said they aren’t labeled with modern labels. The Twelve, The Seventy Two, this is what they’re called in the Scriptures. A very clunky adjective for our modern usage. After the NT, the church just assigns easier labels of bishop and presbyter to them.

Sometimes we call The Twelve, “the apostles”. Also extremely inaccurate. Modern WO advocates seize on Junia being called an Apostle, and suddenly Junia thus becomes similar to John or Matthew. John and Matthew were not “The Apostles”, an apostle was anyone who went out to proclaim the gospel. It did not require ordination. But The Twelve did require specific ordination and they were all men.

 

But you said:

 

Yes and that’s clearly true: there is no verse where Christ says, I call to me The Twelve, and from henceforth they shall have the following attributes. Except, he was meticulous in only choosing men for his Twelve. And when one of them fell out, the Twelve then stepped in, and themselves elected another man in his place. And their successors ever and only chose Men to succeed them. Down to their present-day successors in office.

So we have an implicit establishment of orders; not an explicit one. But even that follows clear rules, being of the male sex being one of the foremost. It is exactly the same as the establishment of the OT offices. There is no positive legislation that from henceforth there shall be high priests, priests, and levites, and they shall be only men. And yet there were precisely only high priests, priests, levites. And they were somehow all men.

Similarly the Seventy Two: only the men are chosen, despite the fact of overwhelming predominance of female priestesses in the ancient world. The Church was shockingly specific in the criteria it had for its officers. (Without an official positive legislation.)

So the one argument is the implicit argument, starting from Christ himself. He didn’t speak on this, but he acted plenty. And we just want to continue to act like him.

The second argument is from the male spiritual headship, which is present in every Christian community; from the smallest in the Christian family, up to the local Christian parish, up to the wider Christian diocese, all the way up to the Christian province. From the creation of the world, the fallen man, up to the redeeming man.