Women ministers, an exploration

Yeah I know. It is a sweet song, a siren song that beckons us to wreck our ship, our very Church, upon the cliffs if we listen and follow it.

 

I don't support polygamy or same-sex marriage...for the very fact that I focus on Christ...He defined marriage as a lifelong comitment between one man and one woman and eveything that falls outside of that definition is treated as sin. He did not define an apostle--much less a bishop, priest or deacon--as being male. More importantly, nowhere did he say that women could not be in any of these roles. I let the Word of God define my boundaries beyond which I dare not go. Faith in Christ is not a mere aphorism to me, it isn't relegated to one line. It is written into every line, every word of Holy Scripture. It is the purpose and stated goal of Holy Scripture, the purpose of the Gospel. "These things were written so that you might believe".
Only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ can we hope to be saved. Priesthoods, sacraments, liturgies, vestments, all of these, while wonderful and beneficial, are secondary to faith in our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. Absent faith, they are all empty. The Apostles knew that, as did the Fathers, as did the Reformers. My point is only that we keep the the main thing the main thing.

 

Lowly Layman in my opinion your analysis and understanding of Eph 5:21-33 is correct. It is about Paul describing the Christian Household and is in no way saying anything about a womans role in the Church, and Col 3:18-23 covers much the same ground but is more of a summary of Paul is saying in Eph 5:21-33 and Eph 6:1-9.

 

So gents, are we saying the selection of the Archbishop of Canterbury is invalid, coming from the hand of a woman?

jeff

 

I know you don't. My point is that if you want to keep the gospel simple, and remove all ancillary rules and conditions, then why not just accept two men who love each other, if they are strong conservative Christians?

I mean aren't there no longer male and female in Christ? It's two androgynous Christians marrying one another, and also striving to support the Gospel with their devotion. What's wrong with that?

Do you see how dangerous this whole line of logic is?

Why did he have to? He also did not define baptism in the way we would like. He didn't give us the blueprints for how to build the International Space Station either.

He didn't because he didn't have to. He couldn't fill the Bible with answers to all possible problems. He only ordained men, and his Apostle taught the spiritual headship of men over women. That was enough, and the Gospel moved on to other questions. Requiring him to have solved all our problems is like demanding that he appear right now in front of you, else he doesn't exist. He doesn't serve our beck and call, or cowtow to our needs. For thousands of years, from the Apostles to the Church Fathers (especially normative for Anglicans) to today, the Church has left an unequivocal example to us.

 

Jesus teaches us what marriage in the Gospel - you are trying to twist this around in a way it was never meant to be - so your logic just doesn't make sense.

 

The head of the "bishopess" is her husband, if she's not a lesbian herself. She cannot have authority over her husband and yet, as a "bishopess," she must. The whole hierarchical order that Paul commended as godly is inverted.

 

Spiritual headship is the highest there is. Can a woman be a priest or bishop, and in marriage be subjected to her husband's headship in the manner Paul describes? Can she be his spiritual head, while also him being HER spiritual head? It is simply not possible to reconcile female priesthood with the gender roles that God has injected into the Human race, and the Apostle has taught us.

It's not that genders were defined this way in Corinth; but from the Apostle's teaching it is true across all time and space, in the Church Universal -- as Christ is to the Church, so every man (his word) is to the woman.

Again, this was a radical revolution from a pagan world where women were priestesses and did not have necessary male headship. Female goddesses were on par with male gods, etc. There was a kind of androgynous equivalence between the genders. But not so in Christianity, which is rigidly gendered, with the male God Almighty, male covenantal headships of the human race, and male spiritual headship in relations with women. There is no equivalence between the genders. They are both equally loved by God, but they are not equivalent.

 

A woman who has the qualifications can and should be given the opportunity to hold any position in the Church, I don't believe after thorough exegesis and hermeneutics of the scripture you have quoted forbids the ordination of women so we will just have to agree to disagree.

I will leave you guys to this one....

 

I would like to join in if I may. The Jewish religion never allowed women to hold priestly office, and Christianity is an outgrowth (actually the fulfillment) of the Jewish religion. None of the Apostles considered themselves no longer Jews when they followed Christ. Of course the early Church dealt with the issue of gentile converts not having to follow Jewish dietary laws, etc., but that is not relevant to the issue at hand.

The Church never ordained women to the priesthood, and the Church Fathers didn't allow it. No women in the priesthood of any Christian Church (Orthodox/Roman Catholic/Oriental Orthodox/Anglican/Lutheran) for a period of nearly two-thousand years. Now (in recent decades) certain theologians say "they were all wrong".

When we dismiss the universal teachings of the Christian Church for the past two millennia as being "outdated," "wrong," or we claim that we know better now then they did, we are treading on dangerous ground. Such theology has led to gay priests and many other deviations from the historic faith of the Church.

The early Church didn't have all the scientific knowledge of the natural world that we posses today, but these teachings are not based on science or technology, let alone gender studies or psychology.

 

The earliest churches didn't have an ordained "priesthood".

 

They didnt? I may agree with you that the church in the NT didn't have the clearly defined episcopacy that we take for granted today, but they clearly set men apart by the laying on of hands for special ministerial duties. How would you define their offices if not priestly?

 

As much as we disagree sharply on many things, Orthodox brother, this is a beautiful and succinct summary of the facts of the matter. Let all Christians unite and pray to the All-Holy, Ever-Blessed, and Glorious Trinity (Who reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) for an end to this madness.

Isn't it contradictory for someone who wants women to be priests and bishops to believe that it's only a restoration of an early Church Order where there was no such thing as a "priests" and "bishops"? You demand things for categories that you don't believe actually exist. Is it not, then, simply a feminist/equality issue you're concerned with, and not at all an apostolic or ecclesiastical or theological one?

 

Shepherding -- pastors are shepherds. All believers are priests.

 

Certainly not. What is at issue is ordained ministry; what the office is called is of secondary importance in this case.

 

Many of the arguments against ordaining women to the priesthood are equally applicable to ordaining women pastors. I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church and they have no concept of a sacramental priesthood, yet they still don't ordain women.

 

I know that. I was raised Southern Baptist, too. But, btw, there is no "Southern Baptist Church", only Southern Baptist churches with a Southern Baptist Convention which has no authority over local churches; therefore, a local church could ordain women if it chose, and there are those who have done so.

 

Technically that's true, but when the media reports on religious affairs they often use the term "Southern Baptist Church" to describe the denomination.

While you are correct about local churches being able to ordain women, the denomination is openly opposed to the practice:

"Southern Baptists have long valued the priceless contribution of women as they have ministered to advance God's Kingdom. The Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) affirms the vital role of women serving in the church. Yet it recognizes the biblical restriction concerning the office of pastor, saying: "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture." The passages that restrict the office of pastor to men do not negate the essential equality of men and women before God, but rather focus on the assignment of roles.
The Southern Baptist Convention also passed a resolution in the early 1980's recognizing that offices requiring ordination are restricted to men. However the BF&M and resolutions are not binding upon local churches. Each church is responsible to prayerfully search the Scriptures and establish its own policy." ~ SBC

 

See first responses in red within your quoted post, above.

The BF&M 2000 went beyond earlier confessions and moved toward being a creed, something traditional baptists have opposed.

 

We must be able to recognize the difference between teaching in the church, and societal norms in the middle east. Look at all the religions that sprang from that region, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All placed women in a lower social class, and an honest review of scripture shows they weren't even mentioned in civilization counts or mentioned in events such as baptism.

Jeff