all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Mother Julian of Norwich
You mean, if those women said to have felt being called to be priests?… as we all know nobody hears God directly.. it is VERY possible to “mishear,” or hear something directly antithetical to God’s will which St Paul earnestly warns us about….. so do I trust everyone’s feelings at face value? no, obviously
But do you trust the men who say they have felt being called to be priest? Did they mishear or hear something directly antithetical to God’s will which St Paul earnestly warns us about?
It depends to which "same time period" you refer. surgeons and US presidents are novelties. It's interesting the world's so-called leading democracy hasn't had a female president.
I believe that is the crux of the problem here. Monotheism occupies quite a different status from questioning whether women are "called" to leadership roles.
Surgeons, Presidents and computer programmers (in an earlier post) is just a tongue in cheek statement. It's the general gist of my point I was trying to get across. I could be dull and boring and list artists, carpenters, boat builders, plowmen etc. I tried to private message you with this info but the forum forbade it. I hope this is a general prohibition and not just me.
I do not take them at their word! in fact the traditional approach has been to assume they're wrong, and work on the assumption to weed out all of the pretenders... The idea that we take people's "muh feelings" at face value is ludicrous and completely at odds with how the Church understands holy orders . The church has always understood the difference between priests and prophets -prophets can be men and women, and they exist one in a thousand years (they also do not minister in the church) -priests can only be men, and they have no direct exposure to God; st. Paul- "If you hear from me or even from an angel a teaching opposite of the gospel, then may it be anathema" Are you prepared to reject St. Paul?.. that's what he was teaching us to do, to reject any whisperings even from him himself if they oppose God's established teaching
That nobody can be said to hear God directly (one of the caricatures falsely put on by atheists about us)… If someone “hears” or “feels” something which seems Godly but contradicts established teaching, then we can be confident in saying that they were misled, or mistaken
“Established” is a loaded word, especially when we’re talking about the first century. Paul was saying in Galatians that any gospel that disagreed with his gospel was wrong, not one that disagreed with what was “established” (Where? When? By whom?). He was in fact claiming the right to overturn what apparently had already been established in some local communities. And I’m fairly certain that the gospel he said it was anathema to deny was not that women had only a passive role to play in churches.
I think the scripture was misquoted or got garbled.... Gal 1:6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Gal 1:7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Gal 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Gal 1:9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. Indeed, as @Invictus says, the gospel message being referred to is the truth that salvation comes by grace through faith in Christ and not by works (the overarching theme of Galatians, Chapters 1 through 3). And this scripture did not suggest that people would think they'd heard 'another gospel' from God; it is possible for people to think that way, certainly, but this scripture isn't saying it. I think a much better scripture supporting the concept of Christians hearing God is found in John's Gospel: Joh 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. Joh 16:14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. Jesus said that God the Holy Spirit would speak to us and would also show us things to come. On one occasion, Jesus likened us to sheep who would recognize the voice of the good shepherd and would distinguish it from other voices. I daresay that anyone who has never inwardly heard the quiet, guiding voice of the Holy Spirit is not a Christian, for one of the distinguishing marks of a "son of God" is that he is led by the Spirit of God, according to Romans 8:14. But some Christians have heard the Holy Spirit's guidance and yet remain unaware of that fact due to lack of understanding or lack of discernment.
I'm late to Invictus' original post, but I want to address it here because I've actually been in discussions with senior clergy and laypeople at my church on exactly this topic. If you want to know what global Anglicanism is going to look like in 20 years or so, look to Africa. There's where the bulk of the world's Anglicans already are, and that ratio is only going to grow in the coming years. The African churches are going to make up their own minds on how Anglicanism is conducted in the years ahead. Nigeria is the spiritual heart of the faith, not Lambeth. And Africans have their own notions of the "proper" way to worship Christ. We should be glad of this, because as far as I can tell, the African Anglicans worship with a reverence and joyousness and commitment that many churches in the west lost long ago. The future of Christianity is "evangelical" and "charismatic". It may bother us who prefer to sit quietly in our pews and murmur "amen" every so often, but perhaps a bit of exuberance is called for when worshipping the living God. Yes, I have concerns about the theology of many African churches; yes, the celebratory worship sometimes strikes my western senses as excessive. But I'm not sure the African churches really care all that much what their western counterparts think these days -- to the African and Asian churches, we mostly exist as negative examples and cautionary tales. God will preserve his church, but only arrogance makes us think that the church will always look like it does to us at this moment in time.
I can tell you something about how this works in actuality. The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America worked out a clergy sharing arrangement some years ago. (The ELCA bishops were also supposed to be consecrated conditionally by TEC bishops to restore the apostolic succession to ELCA but there was a fairly tepid response to that particular element of the deal and I believe there are some holdouts who never bothered to comply.) Anyhow, this allowed smaller towns to be served by one pastor. One example is my boyhood hometown. There is a big ELCA congregation, a small ELCA congregation, and a very small TEC parish. How this clergy sharing works on the ground is a Lutheran pastor serves both the small ELCA and the TEC. He does a 9 a.m. service for his Episcopalians, takes a break, and then journeys four blocks down the street to do an 11 a.m. service for his Lutherans. At the festival times of the Church year (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, All Saints) he makes them come together and have joint services. I believe they alternate year by year between the Lutheran rites and the Episcopalian rites. Everyone seems generally satisfied with this arrangement (except perhaps the pastor, but he's following orders). The more 'confessional' Lutherans are loath to accept these arrangements. For clergy sharing, they expect the Anglicans to fully embrace their particular understanding of the Book of Concord, or at least embrace the Augustana. They are also openly opposed to accepting the apostolic succession as Anglicans generally now understand it. For them, the Episcopate is a theoretically acceptable form of government, but not a mark of the true church. I believe the ACNA and NALC worked out a clergy sharing agreement early on but actual implementation has been mostly theoretical. When I lived in TX, the Anglican clergy were mostly unaware of this possibility and those who were aware were generally not interested in knowing their NALC neighbors. When I lived in VA, it was a moot point because there were no NALC congregations anywhere around. Since I've moved to OH, it's the first time I've actually heard of the ACNA and NALC people occasionally cooperating. Of course, the NALC's only seminary is a department within Trinity School for Ministry (near Pittsburg) and that is also a favorite of the ACNA. So a younger group of upcoming clergy are more accustomed to being around the Lutherans, since the core classes like Bible, Biblical languages, and homiletics are combined.