Women ministers, an exploration

Those low-church puritans were not among the "free churches". They were in favor of religious freedom only for themselves, as was demonstrated by their New England state church which hanged four Quakers on Boston Common.

I value the Fathers also, but not over scripture and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

I favor whomever follows the teachings of Jesus most closely -- you know, the founder of our faith -- whether that be the Fathers or the anti-hierarchy charismatics that you seem to deride.

 

There never was an "apostolic" three-fold order; as I have repeatedly shown, the NT knows of only two orders.
Certainly since the Reformation and probably before the C. in E, have taught that there was, claiming the Seventy, in Luke is a reference to the would be priests and their training!

 

The only way to maintain that is to read later history back into the NT. It is quite beyond dispute, as I have stated before, that the words "bishop", "elder", "presbyter", "overseer", and "pastor" were synonymous in the NT for one and the same office. But let's not let that issue sidetrack the subject of the thread.

 

As I am not able to go back to the original, as far as language is concerned, I can't argue, but the Catholic Church in England has always maintained that there were three levels of orders in the Catholic Church. Bishops Priest and deacon, Can't remember the chap's name, but he was the author of the Explanation of the Creed, (was it Pearson?) and certainly the Non Juring Bishop & Primate, Brett, claimed that the Seventy in Luke were the trainee priests. (Church Government! GOOGLE BOOKS.) The Orthodox claim more or less the same thing!
Saint Aristarchus was one of the Seventy Apostles, whom the Lord Jesus Christ sent to proclaim the good news of the Gospel (Luke. 10:1-24).

 

They were also heretics, and called as such by Anglicans.

First we need to establish whether genders are important to God at all, before we can proceed to interpret that passage.

The Bible seems to quite clearly teach us that they are. He set Adam (and not Eve) as the leader of the human race, replaceable only by Jesus (not Mary or anyone else). When He was let down by Adam, he could have thrown in the towel and incarnated as a woman, especially if he saw that his male incarnation would be misintepreted by 'misogynist' men to 'silence' women. He quite strongly incarnated as a man, and he could only be a man. Because to God, Adam, the Levite Priests, the NT Bishops, these men spiritually leading the world were all gendered, and so the Second Adam, Jesus, could only be a man if he were to lead the human race.

He ordered the Hebrews to have an all-male priesthood, and when Incarnate, he only ordained men. His Apostle teaches that women must not teach in the Church.

Now then, how are we to to understand the point of being 'one' in Christ? One thing it can't mean is that we lose our Gender, when we become Christians. That is false empirically, and goes contrary to the above analysis of whether gender is irrelevant to God.

Being 'one' in Christ can mean many things, and I submit that it were the feminists who tried to read into it a new meaning that was never there; a meaning which goes contrary to the Bible as a whole, which is an impossibility.

To be 'one' in Christ can equally well mean:

-having the same dignity,​

-having the same justified status,​

-the same promises and riches in heaven,​

-etc.​

 

See my answer to you in red, within your quoted post.

 

Nope, this is what the Anglicans called them. Do you want me to pull out the historical quotes?

 

I don't care what you do, and I don't care what the Anglicans or anyone else called them. The real heretics, and apostates, were those state churches which murdered other Christians in the name of Christ.

 

This is a very difficult topic to address. However, my personal view is that I'm opposed to women being ordained as a priest/preacher. When the scriptures talk about that there is "neither male nor female," I believe that it means God does not deny you into the Body because you are one gender( or race, ethnicity, ect.). However, even in the Body, there are roles that God instituted. Each person has a role to be fulfilled: the eyes are meant to see, the ears to hear, and the mouth to speak. In the same way, the Christian Body has roles to fulfill. Yet, even with different roles, we all are loved by God and equal in His sight.

 

I found this article purportedly by C.S. Lewis, entitled "Priestesses in the Church?", I thought is was salient and appropriate to add to this discussion. The link is here: http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/12The/SxTh/WmOTheo/WmOLewis.htm
Any thoughts?

 

A hotly debated subject to say the least. To be honest, I have changed my view of women in leadership/teaching roles since leaving the Independent Christian Church, but during that time I saw several women I thought would be powerful, godly leaders. On the other hand, I saw quite a few men who had no business being ordained!

Jeff+

 

I quite like that.

In the end, the feminists will probably just win by attrition. Most people either don't care about this, or are in favour of it. Conservatives are forced to either doubt the staying-power of orthodox Christianity (and thus become atheists), or to just accept the women-clergy. Many of us are not sure what will happen next.

 

Trust me, I do understand the angst, and I didn't reach my decision over night or without quite a bit of prayer, but I remember hearing the same rumblings back in the 60's when the first black male was ordained in our Diocese.

Jeff

 

You will find that such a comparison only incites anger and contempt. Men are men; black, white, asian, or whatever else - but men are not women. Any problem anyone had with ordaining blacks was an American problem; having theological problems with ordaining women exists across all countries. Many African Anglicans do not ordain women, yet they obviously ordain men of other races.

This is not about equality. To compare the conservative defense of the sexes to an upholding of slavery or racial prejudice is quite shocking and horrendous to us.

 

Is that a fair thing to say? The Church of England ordained black ministers in the 1700s. The Church fathers ordained presbyters of all nations and colors. Christ ordained men without ANY interest whatsoever to their point of origin.

A momentary racism (a modern phenomenon that only appeared post 1800s in Europe) does not equal to the cataclysmic reorientation that liberal anarchists wish to inflict upon our church.

We forget that the Anglican church is not local to America. Local crises of the TEC do not redound on the worldwide church.

 

Allow me to apologize and clarify my comment. I was in no way making a comparison of black males and females in clergy positions, I was simply stating that the reactions and verbage to them in the 60's was very similar to what I'm hearing today about women.

Jeff

 

Exactly. How are the two struggles similar? Black people have no difference from white people, they're exactly identical, and no distinction based on missing differences can survive. Women have a qualitative difference from men. They're not interchangeable, they're a whole other type of human being.

And denying episcopacy to them does not involve violating them in any way. It's just a matter of vanity where the question asked is: 'I want what you have', rather than 'am I being hurt by not having it?' A totally alien and atheistic motivation, that is destroying the beautiful American Province of the Communion.

Sorry, I get a big agitated about this whole thing ...

 

If a woman is called to ordained ministry and has gifts for it, she is being hurt by not being allowed to follow her gifting and calling. And your repeated libelous statements are what is agitating and insulting.

 

The side which I - and others, apparently like Stalwart here - adhere to is simply that there are no women being called to the ordained ministry by God's Holy Spirit. Another spirit is at work, either of their own flesh, of the world, or of the devil. As Godly as we can pretend they are, the fact is that God has nixed the idea before it was even a possibility. They may seem holy, but it's unholy to smack God in the face by demanding that He change the essential nature of what He has made in love.

No female human persons have ever been called by God to the ordained clerical ministry. That is a strong conviction.

 

And of course I completely disagree, and that is my strong conviction. I don't mind strong convictions, and I especially respect them when they are backed up by scripture, even though I might disagree. What I object to are statements from your side that my convictions are of the devil. That, sir, deserves a smack in the face -- and not to God.