The Question of Female “Bishops” and the Unity of the ACNA

I think that a discussion on WO is important but not at this time. When that time comes, I hope it is dealt with properly with discernment, and not forced through like TEC.
I spoke to a female priest in Canada a couple of years ago. There was a position for bishop coming up and though she would have made a great bishop, as she did a priest, she knew she would not be considered because she is a woman. This is Canada! The land of SS blessings!
She and her church are orthodox and the last I heard they were locked out of their church and with the Southern Cone, now the ACNA.
So, my opinion is, we are not ready to have the discussion yet, but we should do so in the future.

“This is going to sound something like church politics, but it really isn’t, it really isn’t.”

Unfortunately, yes, it really is church politics. This kind of stuff does not belong in a sermon. It’s the wrong place, the wrong audience, and the wrong purpose. The laity are there to worship and receive a Christmas message, not to listen to anyone (male or female) talk about the pros and cons of banning or promoting female bishops.

Ms. Payton is indeed politicking and to a crowd who can’t do anything about it except either:

1. Make life miserable for those in charge who can do something about it, or,

2. Secede their parish from ACNA and go back to TEC or form some other group.

Her message is pointless in the context in which it was delivered except to “stir up the troops,” which is oh, so reminiscent of how we got female clerics and gay clerics in the first place.

Finally, I observe that she must have taken a vow to be submissive/obedient to her bishop. Her bishop has signed onto an agreement that bans women as bishops. If she doesn’t like it, she should take the matter to him in private or discuss with other female priests in private. In no event should she be publically subverting the position her bishop has taken.

Shame on her for politicking. Shame on her for her bald face attempts to deny it’s politicking. Shame on her for publically embarrassing her bishop by subverting his decisions.

I know I’ll get a lot of responses to the contrary. You’re welcome to your opinion. I’m welcome to mine, thank you very much

This is the next level of the renewal: an honest debate about the practice of ordaining women to the offices of deacon, priest, and bishop.  This issue holds promise of immolating the current alliance because it is such a serious hot button among some of the constituent members of Common Cause.  In part, APA left Common Cause over this issue.

The leaders must be very careful.  To dogmatically pronounce WO as acceptable practice for all members of the alliance would doom it.  So would forbidding it.  Truth is that Anglicanism does not have consensus on this issue.  The Romans and Easter Orthodox forbid the practice, which should say something to us.

-Jim+

Huge mistake. If disatisfaction on this issue would cause her to go back to TEC, I would rather she do so now.

I agree with Antique’s evaluation in #2.  Further, her bishop should discipline her, quietly.  If she persists in behavior that is schismatic and disobedient, she should be defrocked.  Lord have mercy on captive congregations.  There’s nothing worse than sermonizing which makes the proclamation of the Word into a bully pulpit for agendas.  TEC has made ordination itself and the denomination entire into such a bully pulpit.  TEC should be quietly disciplined and if it persists, defrocked.

#2 I agree. Not the place, not the time, not the audience.

I disagree with the sermon…but I do think perhaps some of the criticism above has been unfair. If she thinks this is a “gospel issue” then by all means she must preach on it…It simply might also mean that the ACNA is not the right place for her. In any case, debates on this are welcome from my perspective and everyone ought to be fully convinced in his or her own mind while at the same time open to correction

Well, she’s right about one thing: if you admit that women can be ordained to the priesthood, there is no logical or scriptural reason why women cannot be ordained to the episcopate.  At that point, it simply become misogyny.

Just one of the many incoherencies involved in supporting WO while remaining “orthodox.”

[2], I certainly can’t speak for the good Bishop of Pittsburgh, but my guess is that Robert Duncan would be the last one to want to silence the Rev. Anne Payton. Ordination vows include obedience, but not a gag order.  If obedience meant not speaking one’s conscience in the theological forums of the day, there’s hardly a priest worth his or her collar who would not be guilty of breaking such a Draconian vow. Now, this is not to say that speaking out would not bring certain consequences. In the secular world, speaking out against one’s boss is generally considered a CLM or “career-limiting move.”  Although not privy to the personal politics in Pittsburgh, I would still wager that the Rev. Anne Payton may not find herself in line for Chairman of the Standing Committee any time before Hell freezes over, but this does not mean that anyone is justified in calling down shame upon her.
http://www.anglikin.blogspot.com

Hi fatherlee,

I’ve recently changed my view on WO. At the same time, I disagree with this:

“Well, she’s right about one thing: if you admit that women can be ordained to the priesthood, there is no logical or scriptural reason why women cannot be ordained to the episcopate.”

Perhaps this is true from an Anglo-Catholic perspective, but not necessarily from an evangelical one.

The primary issue from the evangelical perspective is headship. Some would argue it is possible for women to be ordained for ministry as assisting ministers so long as they never serve as rector or “head” of a parish. Their authority would in that way be delegated…from the rector rather than their own. The rector would be the head of the parish.

Still others would argue that in Anglican ecclesiology, “headship” resides primarily in the bishop not the rector. So female rectors are possible so long as the bishop is male.

So while it is certainly possible that biblically speaking both positions are unwarranted…it is not necessarily true that they are irrational or misogynist.

Either WO is acceptable to God, or it isn’t. 

If it is, then those who reject WO are sinning by rejecting a segment of laity who have in fact been called to be priests and/or bishops. 

If it is not acceptable to God, then no amount of appeal to egalitarianism will change the wrongness of it. 

It can’t be adiaphora, even if bishops declare it to be, and even if we sit down at the table like good boys and girls to discuss these matters, and depart agreeing to disagree. 

Not possible for it to be adiaphora.  Never was.  I do agree though (as an evangelical) with Matt+ that this is not salvific.

Matt,
Just for my own information, are “Dr Anne Payton” and the “Rev. Ann Paton” (who gave the sermon, and is noted in Ascension’s newsletter) one and the same person? http://www.ascensionpittsburgh.org/images/pdf/December 2008.pdf see page 12.  Note that the URL of your link specifies “Paton” and not “Payton”.  I also note that nowhere on the ascension website http://www.ascensionpittsburgh.org/ is there any mention of the ACNA or of +Bob Duncan as their bishop.  I am not in Pittsburgh and have no first hand knowledge of how the transition out of TEC is being handled.  Is Ascension an ACNA parish or TEC parish as things stand now?
I do want to be sure I know more about who is who and what is what before commenting.

Re: #3, Fr. Jim

Others who do not allow ordination of women include Baptists of a “conservative” nature, PCA (Presbyterian Church in America), Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Lutheran Church Wisconsin Synod, and a number of other, conservative Protestant groups.

Sorry,  link above did not work, try this:
newsletter

Moot writes: “Either WO is acceptable to God, or it isn’t.“It surely cannot be that women cannot instruct men, else your instruction that WO is either acceptable or unacceptable must be rejected until a man says it. 
Sorry if that is a moot point. 

Ha, ha, that’s very logical.

Hi tjmcmahon, the person who sent me the sermon wrote “Payton” and I took it for granted. I assume now that I have checked your links that it is Paton…

Ascension is listed by the Diocesan website as a parish of the diocese
http://www.pitanglican.org/parishes?keywords=Ascension

Moot (#11):

Although you make a good point, I do think that in a sense we need to treat women’s ordination as adiaphora because this is an issue on which we cannot reach a firm conclusion from Scripture.  When one approaches the Bible as God’s inerrant word and engages in thoughtful, prayerful, and faithful study, there is a good deal of evidence to support both sides.

I do think that it’s important not to table this discussion until a future date.  Even if it’s tough work, we need to continually search the Scriptures and seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  It’s an important issue to work through, because—as we have seen in TEC—the leadership of the Church is of the utmost importance.  We must be faithful in how we set up our leadership (including setting guidelines for leaders derived from Holy Scripture), and leaders must be faithful in how they shepherd.

I think the ACNA compromise represents a great deal of wisdom and Christian charity.  Remember, a compromise is not intended to satisfy everyone’s point of view; a compromise helps us move past one issue in a loving and grace-filled way to more important ones.  While the issue of women’s ordination will not go away and certainly deserves our attention, the compromise allows us to be faithful to Scripture, not get “stuck” on this one issue (while at the same time noting its importance), and help us be unified in what really matters: Christ’s death and resurrection, and the proclamation thereof.

“this is an issue on which we cannot reach a firm conclusion from Scripture”
I emphatically disagree. Scripture is clearly against WO.
No sarcasm. No kidding.

#19
ditto.  It is only by the most convoluted reasoning and parsing of Scripture that any case for WO can be made.

Hi Alfonso,

I do think that in a sense we need to treat women’s ordination as adiaphora…

Aye, but here’s the rub - The amniotic fluid hasn’t even dried on ACNA, and WOOB can’t even be treated as adiaphora. 

Even if you and I really, really, really, want it to be, it isn’t and can’t be.

Moot
(who also really, really, really wishes it would go away somehow)

(.. as evidenced by the article we’re commenting upon..)

My last post was obviously not intending to advance any argument; just an adamant disagreement with today’s churchy “political correctness” which holds that it is OK to agree to disagree on this issue since there is a supposed “lack of clarity” despite weighty biblical substance.

A good start for those actually looking for reasoning is the AMiA study from a few years ago: http://www.theamia.org/assets/AMiA-Womens-Ordination-Study-Aug-03.pdf

Oops.  My (#21) & (#22) are responses to Colorado Benjamin (#18 - and cool name, btw!), not Alfonso.

fatherlee #8
I agree with you that if you ordain a woman to be a priest then you cannot rightfully with hold her from advancing to the episcopate. Same applies to female deacons….once you have opened the door to women to be ordained into the realm of clergy by the laying on of hands and putting the title Reverend in front of their name how can you halt their desire to go farther up a ladder?
This whole concept is why I do not believe in women being ordained into a title of clergy. It is hypocritical to say, “You may become a deacon but may not become a priest or a bishop.” Or, “You may become a deacon or a priest but not a bishop.”

Women should never have been ordained as clergy of any grade! I pray for a church in APCK to come to Fresno so I might be a member….I have personally had enough of these types of issues being the primary focus of the church….it is not Kingdom building nor edifying to the Body of Christ!

Even supposing I could find solid support for women’s ordination in Scripture or Tradition (and I don’t find it in either place), my question for those pushing it has been:  Why are you pushing an innovation which has the effect of splitting the Church?  We were far, far closer to healing the breach with the Romans and the Orthodox before 1976 than we will be again for a long time.  And we were far, far more unified as Anglicans before this change was made than we are now.  The side effects of the change have been disastrous, even where the individuals involved have been well-intentioned.

Q. “Why are you pushing an innovation…?”
A.  Peace with the world.

My problem with the whole WO issue is one of consensus, that is agreement between not just fellow Anglicans but all of the Catholic Church. I really wish we could build a better tolerance for all sides of this issue. It is not a moral issue for me, but a faith and practice issue. For most of my life the issue used to be the “icon” teaching, that only a male could represent Jesus because he was a male, blah, blah…And also that Jesus did not pick a female, blah, blah, blah…But really, for me, it is mainly the consensus issue. Don’t misunderstand, though, I believe that a woman ordained is the order she is ordained into, and can function fully (which is a big change for me). I am no longer opposed to the ordination of women, but I think the unilateral, and then piecemeal way it has come about in the AC is unfortunate. My only prayer, for women bishops is that they have a different haberdasher than the PB…

Having now come to an non-WO position, I can certainly see why many on the pro-WO side are pushed even further in that direction by the non-WO rhetoric. Not all of it, but this is a good example:

“Q. “Why are you pushing an innovation…?”
A.  Peace with the world.”

Really? Are you sure? Do you really presume to say that those who favor WO do so because they “want peace with the world?”

Is it really beyond your comprehension that some may sincerely think (however wrong) that scripture is open to the possibility?

No wonder people get entrenched on one side or the other. On the one side you have SOME who use feminist arguments cloaked in biblical guise and on the other there are SOME who refuse even to try to attribute sincerity or honesty to the other side.

Fr.Van,
I agree.

While I am no biblical scholar, I cannot find any compelling support for WO in Holy Scripture.  I rather rest my case on the Gamaliel principle.  Admittedly, almost all my first hand experience with women pastors has been in the United Methodist Church, but I have found ordination of women to not be a good thing, based on my observations of the past 30 years.  Not that male pastors are faultless, but the problems caused by women pastors are real, and not just caused by misogyny.  Just because a woman is not a priest/pastor does not devalue her worth to God or to the Church.

I agree with Matt+.  I’ve been on all sides of the issue at one point or another, too.  Right now, I’m more or less settled in on anti, and deeply concerned about what I’d do if faced with my vestry calling a woman to serve as rector.  Take a job 100 miles away, I suppose. 

I do however respect my brothers and sisters of good faith who cite Scripture as being in favor of WO, while at the same time not finding that they’ve made a credible case.  Citing Scripture as their authority makes them light-years beyond others who find Scripture opposed to WO, yet forge ahead with it anyhow. 

We need to debate this, and it needs to be resolved, but I don’t think that this will be resolved by debate. 

Heh.  How’s that for a paradox?

Fr. Van,
Indeed ACNA does need a “no rainbow vestment” canon.

On the sermon itself, the Rev. Paton is clearly an excellent speaker, and one imagines has had a great impact on the parish.  Most of the sermon is quite good. However, it suffers from that same infection that permeates almost all out posts (mine included, perhaps mine especially)- we want to read scripture our own way.  She spends a great deal of time talking about the connotations of the word “amaze” without reflecting on the original Greek and the various translations of the passage in Luke that she is quoting.  Her substantiation of WO seems based on deriving a “whole Gospel” imperative from a couple of verses. 

On the broad question for the ACNA, what it seems to come down to is two things.  Do those who favor WO think it more important than remaining in communion (in the sense of “Anglican Communion” as opposed to “communio sacris”) at the episcopal level, with Anglo Catholics- or not?  And second, and really of greater importance in the long run, is the ACNA going to allow itself to put theology to a vote, ala TEC?

If the answer is “yes” to the second question, then ACNA just becomes TEC with a 20 or 30 year lag.  What Rev. Paton is asking for is a vote on women bishops, which would put ACNA on a time frame for progressive agenda just behind the CoE (sorry, I forget the date of the first woman bishop in TEC- ~20 years ago?).  From an Anglo Catholic viewpoint, why go through that all over again?  Live for another 15 years with an ACNA “code of practice”?  I don’t see it happening.  One imagines that the provisional constitution and canons of ACNA are the work of long and hard negotiation and compromise among everyone from the REC to the Anglo Catholics, and if having women bishops is a first order issue for you, this might not be your best choice in terms of church affiliation.

I’m going to answer that question with another question:  How will we know whether or not God would approve of women’s ordination unless He comes right out and TELLS us, and HOW would He tell us?

The great thing about the constitutional compromise is that it provides space for a debate to take place without the threat of coercive action. This is precisely why Dr. Paton’s call ought not to be taken up. It is necessary to fight this thing out within a context that provides protection for the “losing” or minority view…whatever that turns out to be.

Matt+
Yes, really, “peace with the world” is the predominant reason. It doesn’t mean that it is a conscious choice; rather, it is an insidious and subtle temptation which has gained way too much traction among today’s Christians. I’m guilty of falling for other temptations for the same reason. My post was not meant as an “attack” in the least; that it would be quickly perceived as such is an indication of how counter-cultural orthodoxy has become. Likewise, I suppose to today’s ear, it is near impossible to strongly disagree with WO in one sentence without sounding mean-spirited. With that in mind, I offer more than one sentence from an Eastern priest:

“The fact that the question of women’s ordination would be raised at all points to how secularized our theological orientations have become. The proposal for women’s ordination is entirely based on the secular worldview of function versus sign and sacrament (Mystery.) This has is its roots in all of the bad “—isms” from history: Gnosticism, Manicheanism, Rationalism, Nietzcsheism, Communism, radical feminisim and secularism and artificial dualisms (spirit verse matter, body verse soul.) From these heresies stem a certain anti-incarnational disdain for the physical world and consequently a complete ignorance of the relevatory value of gender. Gender is not arbitrary or a “choice” or socially conditioned. It reveals something very fundamental about the created order which gives sense to everything else.

In contrast the Church (and God’s Revelation) operates from a the standpoint of sacrament and symbol: There is a “theology” of the body—a “language” of the body which points to and in fact allows us to participate in the Great Mystery. This Great Mystery which JPII calls the “fundamental element of human existence” is the DNA of the created order. If we get this right we get everything right. If we get this wrong we get everything else wrong. In fact, where there is confusion about geneder there is necessarily theological confusion (and liturgical confusion.) It is the Spousal Mystery—the way in which God entered into intimate relationship with His own creation, especially the human creature, later to become the Church. It is precisely through gender that we actually love as God loves, that we therefore become most like God. Our gender is an icon of the interior life of the Holy Trinity.

A proposal for women’s priestly ordination actually ends up committing the same offense it purports to be against: ingoring the intrinsic dignity and holiness of womanhood which does not have to be proven via function and usefulness. It ends up objectifying womanhood and reducing its value to function and usefulness (which itself ends up being chauvinistic.)

Secondly this question of women’s place in Liturgy shows an igorance of something very fundamental about Eastern Liturgy—the chanting faithful “make” the Liturgy, not the priest. In fact, much of the prayer of the Church (Divine Office) can be done without a priest. This was actually the norm in the early Church. Women’s place among the faithful is therefore, if you want to speak in these terms, even more “important” than the place of the ordained minister which is most often coveted as a place of power and prominence by the women’s priestly ordination perspective. Far from providing some sort of “equality” for women this “power-prominence” view insults everyone including the faithful,womanhood and the Litugy itself by reducing things to a secular based value system.

This Spousal Mystery is most fully played out in Liturgy as Liturgy is the source and summit of everything and therefore of the DNA of the created order. (“Christ emerges from the tomb like a bridegroom from the bridal chamber”—Matins of Pascha.)Yet, ironically this Spousal dimension of Liturgy and its ramifications for the non-issue of women priests is left completely fallow by Liturgists today. I believe that this more than anything else is the basis for the resistance to the mildly inclusive langauge of the revised Divine Liturgy text of the Ruthenian Metropolia of Pittsburgh. This resistance has nothing to do with “conservative versus liberal” or chauvinist-Patriarchal versus “enlightened” and inclusive. Those who are troubled by inclusive language in the Liturgy are concerned that our approach to Liturgy, which should be informed entirely by the mystical, liturgical sacramental worldview (which sees the revelatory value of gender)is being informed to some extent by the secular, non-sacramental worldview. “

Fr. T. Loya
http://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/249149/2

Matt,

I disagree, and have mentioned this disagreement before.  Just like all categories of ministry as they stand today - including the office of rector or Director of X Ministries, they are truly artificial to the whole question of Holy Orders, which do not concern the specific office.  No one is ordained to be the rector of a parish, no more than anyone is ordained to be a bishop of a specific diocese.  No deacon is ordained for a specific ministry - like that of running a soup kitchen.  No, they are ordained “to the diaconate.”

This is the problem with that line of thinking.  The ordination is conferred irrespective of the potential office.

The evangelical arguments regarding headship are helpful in many ways, but would be more helpful if we Anglicans held that ordination is merely a functional matter.  I would order that the Ordinal presupposes the orders of ministry are not offices, but rather exactly what it says - orders.  Even then, I would ask in what wise a woman may preside at a eucharist and not be in a headship position.

Nevertheless, one has to wonder how long this sort of troublemaking can be sustained.  This lady needs to take the time to realize what a stretch it is for some of us to have WO written into the constitution.

I avoid these WO threads, but the thought has been in my mind for some time that somehow the questions are not framed properly.  Not being trained in theology or church history, I don’t know the evolution of the ordained offices.  However, the designations deacon, priest, and bishop provoke, to some extent, a corporate heirarchy imagery. 
There are three different lists of gifts in the NT:  Romans 12, Ephesians 6, and 1 Corinthians 12.  I’ve thought that if we had more ordained offices, reflecting a full array of gifts, we could sidestep some of corporate connotations.  I know this wouldn’t solve all the issues and would create more issues, but it might shift the paradigm.

#23 I agree with you, Alfonso. There is also an excellent
overview based on the book, “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood -A Response to Evangelical Feminism” by Wayne Grudem & John Piper, where they tackle 50 pertinent questions from a Biblical standpoint concerning WO. http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cbmw/rbmw/chapter2.html

Well said, TJ [33], and I would posit the obverse as well:

if not having women priests and deacons is a first order issue for you, this might not be your best choice in terms of church affiliation.

  The ACNA compromise provides shelter for those willing to guard Scripture-based morality as their most important “first order” issue. It is a given, of course, that the scripture-based morality grows from an understanding of the centrality of Biblical authority.

Hi Jill,

I like how you think.  A few comments:

i)  98% of anti-WO folks agree that the gifts that are required of ordained offices (esp. bishop and priest) are given to women as well as men. 

ii)  The same 98% assert that spiritual gifts are given so that they would be exercised (and therefore, should)... they just don’t see the need to exercise a set of gifts in an ordained office, or see a proof that a set of gifts means that all prerequisites for ordination have been fulfilled. 

iii)  Many denominations (REC, PCA, RPCNA, e.g.,) solve the WO problem by commissioning women for specially created offices, rather than ordaining. 

Personally, I would love to see the creation of many offices, as you suggest - halfway house resident manager, soup kitchen potato peeler, chair and table stacker-upper and taker-downer, woman in crisis counselor, men’s counselor, youth director, lasagne baker.  I’d also be all for renumeration for the critical jobs, regardless of whether or not a ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ occupies them.

GSP98, from “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood -A Response to Evangelical Feminism” by Wayne Grudem & John Piper, the best “chapter” I thought was a scholarly appendix that confronted the pro-WO innovations to the definition of “headship” (Greek: arche).

Matt+ (29): You make a good point surrounding this issue.  If I may expand, one of the problems is that those who both uphold the Bible as inerrant and support women’s ordination because of how they interpret God’s inerrant word often get lumped into (especially among Anglicans) the same category as revisionists who argue for women’s ordination and women bishops using the argument, “People, can’t we just all get into the 21st century and ordain women?”  This is not the case.  Moot (21): this is why we ought (in my opinion) to treat women’s ordination as adiaphora.  Note that I said ought even though I agree with you that it may be very difficult.

Committed Christians in ACNA on both sides of the issue need to recognize that no matter how convinced we are in our own views, it is possible that those on the other side of the issue can hold their views and simultaneously 1) view the Bible as inerrant and 2) not be apostate.

Women’s ordination—or even women bishops—will not lead ACNA down the same path as TEC.  The denial of the Bible as God’s inerrant word and the denial of Jesus as the second person of the Trinity and the only Savior and path to salvation will.  We will never get it all right as theologians, but if we remain committed to doing our best to formulate a leadership structure—including who can and who cannot be ordained or consecrated a bishop—from God’s holy word (and compel one another to do the same), we will be more or less on the right track, with God’s help.

I for one, am encouraged by this conversation, both in ACNA and in this thread, because it shows that we are both committed to God and one another.

Like Matt and Moot, but undoubtedly without their depth of study, I began this journey pro-WO, but as I began to study it in detail, and to read the careful analysis, pro and con, provided here and elsewhere, I moved in the other direction.  I am not saying my mind will not be changed again down the road, but I just can’t find an explicit warrant for WO in Holy Scripture, and the arguments for implied endorsement require me to read too much of my own desire into the Bible. I regret that, because I would much prefer, and it would be much easier, to be on the other side. But if I have learned anything over the last ten years it is to always err on the side of adherence to God’s written Word, even when it becomes socially or culturally uncomfortable.  This seems to be one of those times.

I support the compromise in the Constitution, and I pray that existing ordained female Priests will be accommodated and their ministry and commitment honored. However, I hope that this is viewed as a transitional period to accommodate the mess inherited from TEC, and not, to use a dreaded TEC word, a “period of reception.” I also hope that an agreed upon deaconess role can be recognized.  If the current environment is viewed simply as a transitional mechanism,  I suspect that any woman who feels an irresistible call or need to be a Rector, or Bishop, or to lead the fight for others to do so, will likely determine that they need to find a different church.  I am not a zealot on this issue, but I have learned too much from my separation from TEC to get back on a slippery slope.

Last year when the CCP had its first meeting and articles were approved, I recall +Duncan then “requesting” that dioceses that had WO be respected.  It was a “request”,—- a footnote in the approval of the articles process.  At that point I realized that this women’s ordination was at an an end and the current crop of CCP/ACNA female priests would be the last crop.  No “safe harbor” was provided for Pittsburgh and its practice. And, as soon as ACNA came into existence, none would be.  Did any of you, the one or two who might visit this sight, who believe that WO is scriptually sound, seriously expect a different outcome from ACNA?

Interesting. “Like Matt and Moot, but undoubtedly without their depth of study, I began this journey pro-WO.” That is my story too. I was rather annoyed, actually, by the strength of the non-WO position and having to change my mind. And in retrospect, I don’t doubt that Matt’s pastoral sensitivities may have picked up some over-ardent attitudes in my posts—not unlike a converted alcoholic, etc.

Peace to all, but not without truth!

EmilyH,

What on earth are you talking about? CANA and others practice WO and will continue to. The ACNA can and will do nothing to stop them.

Matt—
So having come to a non-WO position, how’s that going over in your home?  You brought it up, otherwise I wouldn’t ask.

Hi ralinda. No. I did not bring up my home. You did.

I do not think WO church dividing. It is certainly not family dividing.

No “safe harbor” was provided for Pittsburgh and its practice.

You clearly haven’t read the same provisional constitution I have.  The one I read prohibits interference in the practice of dioceses/networks/clusters in regards to WO.  Perhaps you can better explain what you mean.

Why would you expect anything less than what she calls for?  If WO is aceptable why would you think women will be content with just the Diaconate and the Preisthood?  It’s going to happen sooner or later and unfortunatly the “leaders” of this movement are all over the board on the issue and afraid for the sake of unity we cannot have one mind.  There can only be “Two Integrities” if you agree with WO.  If you do not agree with it then there is only one integrity. (hence the meaning of the word integrity)
I am completely disapointed in this whole movement. WO and lay presidency approved and ready to go.  Oh yes…..you may join a group that doesn’t approve such and live together but I think that’s what we just left isn’t it?  All we have done is turn the clock back 15 years and banished a gay Bishop.  History will repeat itself and we will be in the same place 15- 20 years from now without the buildings.  TAC looks real good right now.

EmilyH has managed to get it 100% wrong.  There is a “safe harbor” for WO in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  That is how Bishop Duncan could declare that it would be the special vocation of his diocese to take in female “refugees” who have trouble getting ordained elsewhere.

I have posted this many times but no supporter of WO has taken up the challenge. Just two examples: I believe if you look at the Council of Laodicea, it forbade the appointment of any who woman that corresponded to the role we attribute to a modern deacon. Furthermore, the First Council of Orange in 441, in the 26th Canon forbids the appointment of deaconesses altogether. It is true that the church for a period of time, perhaps in isolated pockets and more so in the eastern churches, did in fact have women practice in the role of deacons (and for the sake of brevity I find that they had a larger role than they are credited with by some uber-orthodox historians). However, in the western churches, the practice ceased in the 10/11th century. So, the challenge is, if you are Anglican and support WO, how to you defend the historical departure of your view given the weight of Scripture and tradition, keeping in mind that both were argued from at the respective councils?

Very astute, Jill [38].  I think this idea of recognizing and utilizing the various GIFTS with which people are blessed, rather than thinking in terms of hierarchy is already being used with great success in parishes—usually rural ones—that have adopted the “Total Ministry” model. In Total Ministry, a TEAM is ordained together, basically dividing all the responsibilities associated with “rector” among the different members of the team. There’s generally an administrator, a teacher, a pastoral care coordinator, a preacher, and a liturgist or sacramentalist.  The liturgist/sacramentalist technically gets ordained under our canons and alone has the right to wear a collar, but that is just so as to mesh with our current canons that a PERSON be ordained, not a team. There are a number of good websites devoted to the concept of Total Ministry, a concept already used in several denominations.

Matt+  Your comments of course mean that you are content to divide orders deacons presbyters and bishops.  Since true authority only rests with bishops, barring women from this role denies them teaching authority and the power to ordain.  Of course, working hard, and, in most cases as deacons, for free, is probably ok.  No Matt+, ACNA removes women from leadership roles. It denies them the opportunity to become bishops.  It denies them the fullness of orders.

Anyone entering orders as a path to “power” probably shouldn’t be ordained regardless of gender.

I think the compromise was a good one as it reflected the reality on the ground (I would have preferred no new Priests but grandfathering in the existing ones and allowing for a female deconate). I think those who are pro-WO who do not see that they got the better end of the bargain are not being very reasonable and are likely not a good fit with the new Province.  Those who are in positions of authority on the Pro-WO end of the spectrum might consider telling the more ardent of the pro-WO that sermons such as these are not helpful.
I for one still do not envision large numbers of TEC female priests coming over to the new Province or large numbers of women entering divinity school clamoring to join the new Province. I also doubt that Pittsburg or CANA would elect a female Bishop if one was even eligible - I am assuming that their polity is too conservative.  Of course I am frequently wrong.

EmilyH in her first post laments the end of “women priests”, a fact in complete accordance with her earlier prediction that no accomodation for WO would exist in ACNA.  Having been shown that she is completely wrong she now pretends that her first post was actually about “women bishops” and how that squares just perfectly with her earlier predictions…  Right now the ACNA holds the same position on women bishops as the COE…

OK, tradition supports a male only priesthood.  But what are the scriptural prohibitions against WO.

Festivus (53): You have asked for a defense of women’s ordination on the grounds of tradition and Scripture.  I think a good place to start for an evangelical argument in favor of women’s ordination can be found here.  As for tradition, I heartily agree that in terms of tradition, the scales tip against women’s ordination.  Most evangelicals in favor of women’s ordination would also note this, but would argue that on this particular issue, many of the saints who have preceded us have been mistaken.

Note that I also do not believe this issue is central to the gospel.  I believe that unity in Christ should take precedence over women’s ordination.  However, this should not keep us from presenting our views on the basis of Scripture.  I must “reassert” that though we disagree on a particular topic, we are built up when we push one another deeper into God’s word.

For Anglo-Catholics (and I hope my Anglo-Catholic friends will correct me if I am misrepresenting their views here) a bishop is not only the overseer of his particular jurisdiction, but he is also a bishop of the Church in general. He is the embodiment of the doctrine and discipline of the Church as a whole. So in addition to the simple invalidity of such an act on a sacramental level, to purport to consecrate a female to the office of bishop would also represent an attempt to alter the essential character of Christ’s body in a way that the ordination of presbyters does not.

This is correct as far as it goes, but there is one additional element of the episcopal role: The bishop is to serve the unity of Christ’s Body. The bishop does this both by remaining in communion with his fellow bishops and by upholding within his own diocese the consensus of the college of bishops regarding doctrine and discipline. If some bishops cannot recognize a woman as a bishop, then she would be serving as a source of division, not a means of unity. Therefore she could not possibly fulfill an essential part of the episcopal role unless/until a consensus arises among the bishops that a woman can be a bishop.

I have to disagree with those who argue that if women can be deacons then they can necessarily be priests and bishops as well. Each office has its own role in the church, and therefore its own qualifications and its own rite of ordination. Specifically, priests and bishops celebrate the Eucharist, while deacons do not. From an Anglo-Catholic (or, for that matter, Orthodox) point of view, therefore, women as deacons might not undermine the sacraments in the way that women as priests or bishops would.

Matt—
I admire both the Revs. Kennedy so I’m glad to hear that WO is not a church dividing issue in your mind.
And IMHO, regardless of any scriptural warrant for or against women bishops, I think it was wise for ACNA to guard the unity of the church by not permitting women bishops. It would be a good idea for those who are so incensed about this issue to take a deep breath and take a cue from the African primates and ACNA bishops who are so gracious towards each other regarding their differences about WO.

If I want a total break with the Church Catholic, heresy and outright abysmal theology, I should just stay in in TEC.

tjmchahon,
The Church of the Ascension is a member of the Diocese of Pittsburgh now realigned with the Southern Cone (ABP Venables) and under the leadership of Bishop Duncan. It is not discerning its future but clearly in line with Bp Duncan.  It is a strong evangelical parish with a fairly high chuch liturgy combined with contemporary praise music after Communion.  It has been influenced by the three streams movement (catholic in imagination, evangelical in theology and alive in the Holy Spirit-Charismatic) It has been a strong supporter of Bishop Duncan and the realignment cause.  Dr. Paton is clearly an evangelical with a deep personal committment to Jesus Christ.  She is not the political type and her sermon had none of the feel of someone proclaiming their own cause.  She was very gentle yet firm and was teaching what she believed to be the Gospel. 
She is a retired professor of literature from Geneva College Beaver Falls Pa. which is a strong Reformed Presbyterian institution with firm requirements for orthodoxy from its faculty. 
I think that it is clear from her sermon that she believes that the ordination of women to the office of Bishop is a Gospel imperative and required by obedience to the Word of God. 
She did not draw her argument to this logical conclusion but I think it is fair to say that the logical implication of her position is thus:
1.  ordination of women to the office of Bishop is necessary for obedience to the whole Gospel. 
2.  Opponents of WO are contradicting the Word of God and a Gospel imperative.
3. Therefore there can not be full fellowship between supporters and opponents of WO.
4.  Pittsburgh should be open to the ordination of a woman to the office of bishop. 
5.  If ACNA will not ordain women to the office of bishop faithful Christians should begin the next realigment.

Emily is consistently a proponent of the theology of TEC.  It is no mystery in her rejection of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy or the new Anglican province being formed. Given her understanding, I am sorry for what certainly appears to be a lessening of the role of women.  I think it is a mistaken view but it is not surprising given that the Church has been notoriously weak on related teaching.Regarding the statement in #43 that ordination of women will not lead the ACNA down the same path as TEC, I wonder what such a statement can possibly be based upon.  The abandonment of discipline not only in illegal ordinations but of fellowship with the historic churches has fostered the contempt for the historic faith and we see the ugly fruit of this contempt and dis-ease of the soul in apostolic failures such as Pike and Spong.#36, Alfonso, I am in essential agreement with this Fr. T with the caveat that I have a pet peeve about confusing sex and gender.  The latter is a grammatical construction.

Nevin referred us to the following:

When it was in the Episcopal Church, he said, the diocese took in “theological refugees,” meaning priests who couldn’t get parishes elsewhere because they were theologically conservative. Now it’ll be called to do the same for women who have trouble receiving calls in the conservative Anglican movement, he said.
“We know how to take in refugees ... that is our vocation. God has taken us to the next level,” he (Duncan)said.

  Nice, ...qualified women ordinands are now “refugees” in Pittsburgh.  Only one possible diocese for orthodox women who feel called to priesthood, and of course, only one venue for a parish appointment. +Duncan must be their choice for bishop and Pittsburgh their “choice” to live. .  When +Duncan is out of the picture, what do you think will happen?  Who do you think there will be to champion their cause?  Do you think it will be the good “orthodox” of Pittsburgh, given, if using this blog is an example, 50% or so of them don’t believe that they are even fit matter for ordination.  Do you think their male colleagues will gladly slide over to let them in?  ...Since these refugees they have no other place to go, proportionately, there is likely to be a large number of them.  Do you think there are enough congregations to absorb them in the one single place where their ministry would be, according to +Duncan, welcome?  So how many parishes will be rolling out the welcome mat to give cures and support to the “refugees”  And CANA’s “local option” for women.  again, can the Anglican District of
Virginia absorb all the “refugees”  Will they be willing to give them their jobs because it is their special mission to support these refugees? 

What amazes me is it took so little time.  Not years, but weeks before the WO wedge issue hit the fan.  If you reason for being together is not because you are called to be and you choose to value that call, you will keep dividing and dividing over interpretation of scripture, theological disputes, epistemological differences etc.

#59, the prohibitions against WO, scripturally speaking, are found in the following places: 1 Tim. 2:8-3:7 (and 8-13 if you want to deal with the qualifications for the office of deacon[ess] - this becomes more involved due to some linguistic issues, but there are no such considerations in regards to episcopos/presbyteros( Bishop, Elder, Priest, Overseer, Pastor).
Titus 1:5-9; and these verses are understood (not unanimously perhaps, but generally) in light of 1 Cor. 14:34-37, and the aforementioned 1 Tim. 2:8-14.

why would you think women will be content with just the Diaconate and the Preisthood?  It’s going to happen sooner or later

Well said Cradle…now where have I seen this movie before???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC5K_0uRNCQ

Come APCK ...come
Intercessor

WO has been “hitting the fan” ever since it began in TEC.

#67 GSP98, I’m afraid that EmilyH will disagree with you.  I don’t.

Perhaps it is time to recall that calling to priesthood, etc… is not simply the calling of one’s own desires nor to one particular parish but for the whole church.  If the Church does not call women, they are not called.  I grant you that this theology of vocation is often absent in Protestantism but while TEC may ignore the wider Christian community in ignoring historical understanding of WO, they apply it often enough when it suits them.  What is the Gospel imperative to provide no safe harbor for orthodox, conservative believers who might feel called to priesthood or bishop-hood in TEC?

monologistos (65):

Regarding the statement in #43 that ordination of women will not lead the ACNA down the same path as TEC, I wonder what such a statement can possibly be based upon.  The abandonment of discipline not only in illegal ordinations but of fellowship with the historic churches has fostered the contempt for the historic faith and we see the ugly fruit of this contempt and dis-ease of the soul in apostolic failures such as Pike and Spong.

I do not believe that breaking with tradition because one believes that Scripture compels him to do so “has fostered the contempt for the historic faith.”  However, when one breaks with tradition with a disregard to Scripture (à la Pike and Spong), that certainly leads down a path of heresy.  My primary purpose on this thread is not defend women’s ordination itself, but to argue that one can reasonable and faithfully defend women’s ordination from Scripture (note that I did not say “can give an airtight case for women’s ordination”), and that much grace and charity can and should be given to one another regarding this issue.  Please let me know if you disagree with me on this point.

Touché’ Intercessor

And it has gotten to be a matter of feelings ... and its all a mess.  I have concern and feel bad for women and gays and everybody that wants to be a priest or a doctor or an astronaut or married to so-and-so and doesn’t get to.  I’m also glad that most people are not given the responsibilities and temptations of being a priest.  We have enough failures as it is.

#71 TEC has nothing to do with this.  Who cares what TEC does or doesn’t do.  It has no authority over the members of ACNA.  The issue presented above is an issue brought up by a Pittsburgh Southern Cone Church pastor for its denomination, ACNA.

CB, I do not know of any recommendations for WO in Scripture although I have previously noted the role of women leaders during the period judges ruled Israel. To begin with, I wonder how so many who refuse to acknowledge much of any theology of ordained orders in the early church can find backing for a theology that calls for ordination of women.  Note that I do not include the Gnostic writings as part of Scripture although they are usually hostile to women by today’s standards anyway.I expect people can be earnest Christians and hold to nearly every notion under the sun ... and I find that they do.  I’m not in a position to separate them into good Christians versus some other category.

Emily, if I should happen to believe in a theology of priesthood that requires that priests represent Christ’s maleness as something essential to ordained priesthood, would you attempt to prevent me from even departing from TEC that I might have the freedom to worship as I choose?  Duncan has made his own set of problems for himself but let us say I’m not in Duncan’s diocese and the women who worship with me do not want to be priests ... is injustice done unless my understanding and desire for a male priesthood is twarted?  I begin to think that is the position of a tyrant and a bully.  I would likely be uninterested in repeated hearings of your opinions once we establish that you do not respect mine.

Of course TEC has something to do with it, #75. The realigning churches carry with them problems set in motion by TEC. TEC hurled itself into the ordination of women the same way it hurled itself into the ordination fo gays and gay marriage. This disruption of the church catholic is inherited by the realigning churches.

In an effort to keep this discussion tidy, I would like to point out that not all Anglo-Catholics are opposed to the ordination of women, just as not all evangelicals are opposed to the ordination of women.  While I’m at it, I would also like to mention, although it is really quite off-topic: not every non-celibate homosexual clergyman supports the ordination of women.

Some may find this rather extensive study on the WO issue (completed by the AMiA a few years back) to be a useful resource.  https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=5acda440-0f41-11dd-a144-31000b7514f5

As an Anglo-Catholic member of the Already/Not Yet Province, I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Paton for three things:

1.  The question needs to be raised now and debated now and settled one way or the other before June, or the Province is doomed.  Women who are ordained are either what they claim to be or they are not.  If they are, then they are in the whole of the Province or we have no koinonia; if they are not; the same rule applies.  (This raises the story of the Roman Catholic cardinal who was at a meeting of ecumenical leaders, and referred to the Episcopal (woman) bishop as “Bishop.”  When asked about it later by a scandalized aide, he said, “Well, why not?  She’s as much a bishop as the Methodist or Pentecostal ones who were at the table.”)

2.  It raises the place of the A/NY Province in the Church Anglican and the Church Catholic.  Bishop Duncan, in an off the cuff comment at the press conference in Wheaton said, “We held off on the issue of ordaining women to the episcopate since the Anglican Communion has not come to a consensus on this issue.”  Clearly Bishop Duncan envisions a future which has women bishops in the ACNA.  His brother (at this point) bishops need to know now that this is his vision of the future as they have named him Archbishop “in pectore”.  The debate on which is more important: women in orders or unity with the Churches Catholic and Orthodox should be a focus of the College of Bishops of the ACNA, and they should have a clear doctrinal basis for whichever decision they reach, since they will lose members whichever they choose.  If they persist in “waffling,” the Province is doomed, as people on both sides will drain away because of the anxiety of an “uncertain trumpet.”

3.  However gently (but firmly) and sincerely, she spoke, Dr. Paton evinced one of the classic TEC political moves:  go over the heads of the bishops to appeal directly to the people.  The bishops will cave eventually.  This is classic TEC dysfunction.  Either the ACNA learns that there are proper ways to settle the issues before it, and that these include letting bishops be bishops, or it will continue the TEC dysfunction others have spoken of before, and result:  it is doomed.

From the first, I have wanted answers to these questions and I am grateful to Dr. Paton for raising them in such a way that they must be dealt with in integrity by the member churches of the A/NY Province:  either they come to real unity in consensus or…..

R. N. Wightman+

I would love to think WO is a great thing, but alas, it has not turned out so well.  I am convinced that TEC pulpits have been exploited by women whose agenda does not really include spreading the Good News.  Perhaps the Church has not been as creative as it could be in expanding the roles for women, but then again we are on vestries, are wardens and Deacons.  Perhaps the concept of “power” is misunderstood?

I have been forwarding a few posts to my son and daughter-in-law on this topic. My very smart daughter-in-law who was thinking about the diaconate had this to say, and yes she knows I am posting her thoughts and response on this thread.

Okay . . . so we really enjoyed hearing this lady speak . . .and I honestly had visions of another priest I know. anywho . . . this is my response. I don’t have the ability to post stuff on Stand Firm, and my thoughts are not quite organized and polished, just random thoughts I came across . . . but here’s what I think.

First of all . . . for her to reference Genesis Chapter 1 as her “proof” that man and woman are on equal playing ground (assuming she is referencing 1:27), it is impossible to separate this from the more detailed account of HOW man and woman were created accounted in Genesis 2. (Genesis is a full account of what God is briefly describing in 1:27). Then if she wants to rant and rave about how it’s about the Gospel . . . then okay . . . men are the only ones being recognized as being ordained in the New Testament . . . yes women played a role . . . but they can still play a role in the church, just not as ordained priesthood (in our diocese) and bishop (obviously). But the Gospel is filled of references to the relationships between a husband and wife (for one example). In those examples, the woman submits to her husband.

But then again, if we reverse those roles . . . we can see those same roles being reversed within our church and world. When the Gospel speak of the church it is that of a bride to God (more specifically Christ). the church is to submit to God in such a way that we are to honor Christ. We are, never were, and NEVER will be above God. EVER! So why should women attempt to elevate themselves above their husbands? It makes no sense. Now take this example, and apply it to women’s ordination. It is the same thing. Women are elevating themself to a position that men should keep.

In regards to the whole “make peace with the world” comment . . . are we really trying to be of the world???? Absolutely NOT. We are trying to be lights in this dark world. We are trying to live as Christ would have us live. We are trying to live out the Gospel (not sacrificing the values and morals) to the world . . . but if that shakes ground . . . so be it. Christ certainly didn’t bring “peace” to earth . . . he shook things up too! Of course the result . . . upon his return in the future will be that of peace and life eternal in his presence!

Great article, Matt—the subject of WO is one area where I think the ACNA/Common Cause has gotten it right.  They’ve enshrined in their C&Cs;complete autonomy regarding WO, from diocese [or affinity group] to diocese.  Opposed to WO are the three Anglo-Catholic dioceses, the REC, and the AMiA.  Just fine with WO are Kenya, Uganda, Southern Cone, CANA, and Pittsburgh.  Further affinity groups may form—and each affinity group may decide one way or the other whether they will allow WO.  In this way, the ACNA mirrors, for instance, the Global South.  Constraint is not an option on either side of the WO issue, and it has been determined that it is not a salvific or primary issue. 

You’re dead right on two further things.  First, a real discussion and opportunities to convince one another are available on all sides with zero chance of one diocese or a collection of diocese forcing the other side to yield—unlike, you know, TEC.  ; > )

Second, as you said “It is not good to suppress all discussion and debate of these things for the sake of unity. Unity suffers as a result of such superficiality.”

Unlike TEC, pretending to agree on something or pretending to be “unified” on a single matter is not necessary.  Best for everyone to freely express their views—as this rector of this parish has happily done.  Good for her, though I disagree with her position on WO.

The most delightful thing for me—other than my pleasure over the ACNA getting it right and not dividing over this issue—is to watch revisionists like EmilyH spit and hiss over being deprived of her prey.

All of the eager expectation and hopefulness—foiled.

Instead, she’s reduced to grasping and flailing about to find implosion—like the fact that a blog is discussing the issue or that a priest has objected freely and openly.  How Dreadful!  Division Already!!!!  ; > )

Comment #45 reveals that she hasn’t even bothered to read up on the ACNA’s decisions.

No, women’s ordination is not “at an an end” and no,  “the current crop of CCP/ACNA female priests” will not “be the last crop,” as bitterly depressing as it must be to now realize that. 

Yes, a complete and total “safe harbor” was provided for Pittsburgh and its practice—as well as Kenya, Southern Cone, CANA, and Uganda, and any other affinity group that wishes to form with WO.

And of course the ACNA does not deprive “women from leadership roles” as rectors or senior priest.

EmilyH goes on to demonstrate further buffoonish ignorance in later comments.

No, there is not “only one possible diocese for orthodox women who feel called to priesthood” and no, there is not “only one venue for a parish appointment”—recognizing of course that dioceses in the ACNA are no longer merely geographic but affinity ordered as well. 

In fact, there are probably more dioceses/affinity groups and venues for women to seek the priesthood and parish appointments then there are for men opposed to WO to seek the priesthood and parish appointments.

And no the “WO wedge issue” has not “hit the fan.”  This is called excellent debate and exchanging of views—with all parties recognizing that their stances and positions are protected—a refreshing change from TEC.  EmilyH must be unfamiliar with debate and exchanging of views in a safe environment.  And of course, she was just fine that for years and years, qualified ordinands who opposed women’s ordination were real “refugees” in Fort Worth—that wasn’t a problem at all. 

Finally, beyond the recognition that EmilyH gets almost every single “fact” directly wrong, there is also the becoming progression in her string of comments above.

She starts out chortling over various women’s ordination being “at an end”—only to be brought up short by the fact that it isn’t.  Then she grasps desperately at the Pittsburgh-is-the-only-refugee-diocese line.  That—clearly—fails.  EmilyH isn’t even aware of which provinces and groups support WO in the Anglican Communion much less the ACNA.  But she continues boldly on, invincible in her ignorance, desperately clinging to the fact that a female rector has freely expressed her views in the pulpit.

We go from “women’s ordination was at an end” to WO is “an issue brought up by a Pittsburgh Southern Cone Church pastor.”

Oh the devastation of it all.  The ruin.

For EmilyH’s hopes that is.

Everybody needs to just mark this series of comments down for future reference—noting just how desperately and frantically the likes of EmilyH so desire failure and division on the part of rivals and competitors—they so salivate over it—that they can’t even read the C&Cs;or various diocese/affiliations positions on it.

EmilyH—Another Episcopal Candidate for the Derek Zoolander School For Kids Who Can’t Read Good.

Colorado Benjamin (#60) - the argument in favor of WO you post is like many I read - it argues from an issue of equality in the sight of God of all believers and is, IMHO, a recent invention, not one of traditional acceptance and deference to church fathers and councils. I have a dear friend, a priest that favors WO, and he argues very persuasively in the same stream of thought, but he cannot explain why the modern interpretation is better than the past, other than it seems right to Him. Once again, the challenge is, if you are Anglican, So, the challenge is, if you are Anglican and support WO, how to you defend the historical departure of your view given the weight of Scripture and tradition, keeping in mind that both were argued from at the respective councils? I would assume you believe in Hooker’s perspective that God’s supernatural law, Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience - in that order, frame the weight of correct perspective.

A point about CANA…TWO of the six some-odd bishops of CANA made a very public alliance with Forward in Faith…one of them, my overseeing bishop.  I also have it on good authority that only one of the CANA bishops is WAY enthusiastic about WO…a few can take it or leave it.  In Nigeria I am told the Mother’s Union is the group MOST opposed to WO.  Since women were allowed into the diaconate, FEW women, relatively speaking, have taken The Church of Nigeria up on it.  The CANA church I am moving to is opposed to WO…three other ones I looked at this year are also opposed WO.  CANA isn’t exactly “just fine” with WO.  There are Americans that are ok with it being “grandfathered in”...but even then there is division of opinion.

“I can tell you, that regardless of personal views and positions, there is wide, broad, and deep consensus on the part of ACNA leaders that the consent to the election of female bishops would doom the province.”

YOU bet it would!!!

Just remember, that as long as WO continues as is, there will be NO reunion with the other major branches of the One, Holy , Catholic, and Apostolic Church…that is the biggest immediate roadblock…full-stop…

TXTurifer, I admire your intent, but ACNA would have to drop a great many more things before there was ever a hope of full unity with the Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox on “This Side of the River Jordan”.  Starting with the 39 Articles, the 1662 BCP, the Jerusalem Declaration, Filoque, most of Augustine, all of Calvin and Cramner…

#86 FWIW, didn’t the 1978 Lambeth Conference recommend that it be left to individual Provinces to decide about such matters? The theological implications are that the presbyteral and episcopal ministry of women is not a gospel essential but is an adiaphoron. One can be an Anglican and be in favor (some Provinces are - England seemingly is, Wales isn’t). One can be an Anglican and be against (some Provinces are).

Both in the USA and the COE this understanding was extended within Provinces at the point that women were ordained presbyters.

On this, as I understand it, the ACNA churches stand in precisely the same place as the wider Communion.

Sarah, 84, I’m all for vigorous dissection of someone else’s argument.  And there seems to be grounds to do that with EmilyH’s posts here.  But your post isn’t just responding to the argument—it’s flagrantly insulting and attacks the person, not just the posts.  What’s the point of that?

GSP98, 67, I appreciate the links to the Bible passages.  This is an issue where I have some thoughts and views but haven’t spent a great deal of time studying it.  I’d like to improve my knowledge base on the subject.  Having read the passages, I don’t see where Titus really has much value in the WO debate.  If I’m missing something there, someone please clue me in.  It’s clear that 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14, on the other hand, do support an anti-WO stance.  But they also raise questions.  So, is there someone out there who would be willing to answer these (or point me toward a resource that does):

  1) 1 Tim 2:11 - Is this only religious instruction?  Does it bar women from asking questions and engaging a subject?

  2) 1 Tim 2:12 - Again, is this only in the church?  Does it mean that we should not have women Sunday School teachers or Bible study leaders, and no women heads of committees or parish administrators?  Also, when Paul says what he allows, are we to take that as his view or as Biblical truth (God’s view on the matter)?

  3) 1 Tim 2:13-15 - I’m struggling with how to view these passages.  I don’t want to label them chauvinistic or misogynistic, but they certainly lend themselves to that kind of reading.  Is this something that the AMiA report or another anti-WO resource will address?

  4) 1 Cor 14:34-35 - Seems even more extreme than 1 Tim 2:12 and raises the same difficulty for me as 1 Tim 2:13-15.  In fact, it seems like an approach to warm an Islamist’s heart.

It is sooo tempting to comment in extenso here, but I’ll pass. However, I did want to note three things:

1 - I am impressed with the general intelligence and thoughtfulness of the comments, which do not often appear in discussions of this subject.

2 - Matt+ stated (I think it was in comment 7) that, if Ms. Paton thinks it a “gospel imperative,” she should go ahead and preach on it.  It was precisely this sort of thinking—everyone deciding for themselves just what a “gospel imperative” is, and assuming their right to preach it—that got us into so much trouble in the first place.  If Ms. Paton’s theology is faulty (and I think it is), then her subjective estimation of what constitutes a “gospel imperative” (MDGs, anyone?) is no reason to escape discipline concerning what is and is not appropriate to preach.  That’s one of the reasons bishops exist.

3 -  There persists in many comments here (as usually does in such discussions) some confusion about what “salvific” means in this context.  The problem with the “ordination” of women is not that, if you believe it is right, your personal soul is imperiled.  If absolute theological correctness is the requirement for anyone’s salvation, including mine, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.  Rather, it is because WO profoundly affects what the Church is, and not just what it says, that it is such a threat.

In other words, we do not require simply right belief for salvation.  After all, “even the demons believe, and shudder” (James 2:19).  Rather, what we require is communion with God (John 17:22-23, 2 Peter 1:3-5), and if women cannot be priests, then their “ordination” threatens that communion.

If there is any hope for ACNA, that hope lies in what the “compromise” really represents: the first step back from what appeared to be a never-ending progress of this godless innovation.  If ACNA, over the course of a generation, in its councils and it prayers, continues to step back, it may thrive.  If it does not, it will not prosper.

Enough, we all have thought about this- well some have thoght and some have felt-LET IT BE!

RE: “it’s flagrantly insulting . . . “

Yes.  It is. 

I flagrantly insulted her comments, and the intentions behind her comments.

Occasionally I point out EmilyH’s errors in analysis.  This time, I went much much farther in my opinions about her comments and her intentions.  But then . . . so did she.  And I think we all see that.

RE: “If Ms. Paton’s theology is faulty (and I think it is), then her subjective estimation of what constitutes a “gospel imperative” (MDGs, anyone?) is no reason to escape discipline concerning what is and is not appropriate to preach.”

Thankfully for her, she’s under a bishop who agrees with her about WO. 

RE: “Rather, what we require is communion with God (John 17:22-23, 2 Peter 1:3-5), and if women cannot be priests, then their “ordination” threatens that communion.”

According to Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA, maybe.  But not enough for them not to pursue the development of and membership in the ACNA.

Emily H,

I am certain there are more than one or two of us here who have no problem with recognizing women as priests. I think the compromise is a good one. It places us squarely in the mainstream of Anglicanism and recognizes the validity of both theological positions just as the Lambeth Conference did.

Regarding CANA, there are at least two of the six bishops who favor WO, two who do not, and I have never heard the other two say one way or the other. Again, this is much like a microcosm of the Anglican world. The important thing is that we respect one another in our differences on this.

This is why allowing for women priests but not bishops makes sense. A priest does not ordain others which makes the validity of the ordination questionable for those who do not accept WO. On the other hand, churches who recognize women in priestly orders are free to call them to those parishes that can use their gifts. Nothing will be forced on anyone. I hope someday the whole Communion will come to a true consensus on this but until then we will bear one another’s burdens with love.

Regarding the Scriptural arguments, the real question deals with the interpretation of these passages. Given that they are Epistles, are they contextual or universal in their proscription? Does the use of the word “anthropos” mean “male” or a generic “man”. Does “husband of one wife” require that a bishop be married? There are real questions of interpretation here.

When one speaks of the Tradition of the Church in Anglican thought we usually are referring, as Archbishop Temple did. to the first four Ecumenical Councils of the Church. They said nothing about this issue.

There are good theological arguments on both sides. Perhaps bearing one another’s burdens is an improvement over limitless schism. I left one denomination because of the desire of a vocal group attempting to force their views upon the whole church. I would hope we could avoid that mistake this time around.

Ron Baird+

Thanks for the reply, DavidH; I’ll answer your thoughts and queries the best that I can.

You wrote: “I don’t see where Titus really has much value in the WO debate.” In fact, the Titus passages confirm the gender requirements for overseer (sysnonomous with elder here) as had already been laid down in 1Timothy ch 3. Further, both passages are firm in their insistence that the overseer had a place of authority over the congregation - something forbidden to women in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1Timothy ch. 2. In other words, you cant invest someone with authority over the flock while denying them the authority at the same time -hence, the impossibilty of a woman being a priest or bishop. Woman may certainly share their insights and teach the word and council and serve in a variety of capacities, just not as a priest or bishop. She may not take for herself, or be appointed to, a position of authority over the congregation.

Please click on the link that I provided in my post #39, as it deals rather thoroughly with the questions that you raise; it would be worth the half-hour or so it takes to read it.

“When one speaks of the Tradition of the Church in Anglican thought we usually are referring, as Archbishop Temple did. to the first four Ecumenical Councils of the Church. They said nothing about this issue.”

I can’t say for certain about Temple, but Tradtion in this case refers (as it did for Jewel, Andrewes, et al.) to the doctrine and practice of the church that produced those councils, and not simply to their decrees.

Fr. Matt says:
I do not think WO church dividing.

I’m at a loss. Was I dreaming all that post GC76 stuff?  You know, Affirmation of St. Louis and all that.  Seemed pretty ‘church dividing’ at the time.  Really miss some of those folks still.

Fr. Matt, what did I miss in translation?

As for headship, what about presiding at the Eucharist? To me, that’s enough headship to make one have to decide if they believe WO is permissible.

Honestly curious what you meant,

#99

While I doubt that Andrewes or Jewel ever gave any thought whatsoever to WO when speaking of Tradition, they certainly would have included the doctrine you mentioned. Practice is another matter, though. The practice of the Fathers would have included many culturally conditioned practices. Jewel and Andrewes were solid reformers who believed the Church needed to be relevant to effectively proclaim the Gospel.

EmilyH’s familial concern is very touching.  Just think, should her predictions come true, the poor afflicted expatrioted Episcopalians hob-knobbing with the vile anti-WO Episcopalians will “come home,” crawling as it were over broken glass, to be met with her haughty stares and “I told ya so’s”. 

There’s something very (I just have to say it) covenental about all of it. 

EmilyH thinks she’s part of our family. 

She’s wrong of course… but it’s very sweet.

It seems that The Episcopal Church has accepted Women’s Ordination to mean Lesbian Ordination also, for example: Lesbians Susan Russell and Elizabeth Kaeton are ordained Episcopal Priests and they seem to be very influential politically, in fact there are times when I, as a woman, am offended when they assume that they speak for all women, especially when it comes to church support of the RCRC.
It seems to me that the opposition to Women’s Ordination may be a concern that it would open the door to Lesbian Ordination and its consequences.

#101,

“Culturally conditioned”?  Oh dear.  I should have thought we’d seen where that sort of argument leads.

Anyway, as for Jewel,

From the Challenge Sermon 1559: And 1 said perhaps boldly, as it might then seem so it seem to some; but as I myself, and the learned of our adversaries themselves, do well know, sincerely and truly, that none of all of them that this day stand against us, are able, or ever shall be able, to prove against us any of all these points, either by the Scriptures, or by the example of the primitive Church, or by the old Doctors, or by the ancient General Councils.

From the Apology for the Church of England:  Further, if we do show it plain that God’s Holy Gospel, the ancient bishops, and the primitive church do make on our side, and that we have not without just cause left these men, and rather have returned to the apostles and the old catholic fathers; and if we shall be found to the same not colorably or craftily but in good faith before God, truly, honestly, clearly, and plainly; and if they themselves which fly our doctrine and would be called catholics shall manifestly see how all these titles of antiquity, whereof they boast so much, are quite shaken out of their hands, and that there is more pith in this our cause that they thought for; we then hope and trust that none of them shall be so negligent and careless of his own salvation but he will at length study and bethink himself to whether part he were best to join him.

Jewel got plenty wrong, but on that one he hit the mark.  And I don’t think you’ll get much support from Andrewes, either.

Perhaps I should clarify, by “culturally conditioned” I mean that Paul is writing to address a particular situation that existed in the Church he wrote to. This would not necessarily make the application of what he says universal.

Regarding Jewel, I would agree with what he says in the quote you cite but I do not see how that would invalidate my point listed in #101

Oscewicee # 56:
You have identified the problem, and I pray that He will lead us instead to the “paths of righteousness for His name’s sake”.

miserable sinner,

surely you are not entirely serious but perhaps partly so. It is, I would think, fairly obvious that when I wrote that I do not think WO is “church dividing” , I was not referring to the historical effects WO has had, but to the question of its place among primary or secondary matters. I believe it is secondary.

Why…

because as I have argued consistently, I think there is a level of biblical ambiguity with regard to the role of women in the church that makes a faithful argument for WO within the context of male headship possible.

I no longer agree with these arguments but I think they can be legitimately made.

As for presiding at the Eucharist…when an assistant male presbyter presides, he is not thereby made the “head” of the congregation. He remains subject to the authority placed over him and only presides by permission of the head.

I understand what you mean, I simply do not share your belief that the sacramental act of presiding at the Eucharist necessarily sets someone in the role of head of the body.

GSP98, thanks.  The book of which that chapter is a part does look promising.  I’ll check it out.

I must defend Sarah here.  I don’t see personal attacks at all; I think she is astute and has drilled to the center of an unpleasant and festering issue, one that is more and more evident.  Our worthy opponents are in a state of enraged impotence and the only hope they have, as they watch their beloved church wither, is that this issue will doom the new province.  Mrs. Kaeton’s blog, which I read this evening, is a case in point.  She fairly splutters with rage and the only weapons she has are her tonque and the dreaded “homophobia” and “bigot” labels.  Now and then she posts something along the lines of “Schism over, I’m done, not talking about it anymore” and then two days later she has a five screen melt-down about it all over again.

My next point is veering off topic but I want to include it because I believe it is significant.  I have belonged, in my liftime to five EC’s.  One for many years as a child and young adult and the others in the various areas we have lived.  Every single one of them was or still is drowning in a very toxic soup of factions, clicques, movements to remove the priest, vestry coups, Mary/Martha vicious dust-ups, choir wars, and a general “which side are you on” atmosphere.  (And I don’t mean regarding WO or even inclusion… just general human nastiness and the tendancy to take sides.  In other words, the soft underbelly of Christ’s church.)

In my “new” (going on four years) Anglican parish I have seen absolutely none of that, heard not one whisper of criticism about anyone or anything (including TEC) and sense only a joyful unity.  I believe we are so joyful at having made our escape that the other stuff is just irrelevant.  What a blessed vacation from all that nonsense!

GMM

Ron Baird+ (#97) - you might want to read The 1st Council Of Nicaea (325) and article 19.

#82 Good Miss Murphy
I think you have hit the nail on the head. It is the equation of priesthood with power that is the problem. If we think instead of priesthood as one of the gifts or charisms as described by St. Paul, then it is only one among many and all are equally essential to the Body. That this particular charism might be restricted to males does not demean the charisms that are open to all. If we truly acknowledge Christ as the head of the Body, there can be no “right” to a particular gift. They are all given by Him to whom He wills. Our task is to discern them correctly and then humbly accept them and attempt to carry them out, relying at all times on His grace and mercy.

monika

“As for presiding at the Eucharist…when an assistant male presbyter presides, he is not thereby made the “head” of the congregation. He remains subject to the authority placed over him and only presides by permission of the head.

I understand what you mean, I simply do not share your belief that the sacramental act of presiding at the Eucharist necessarily sets someone in the role of head of the body.”

But Matt+, anyone who presides at the eucharist a) acts as an extension of the bishop, who is indisputably the head of the congregation and who cannot be everywhere at once on a Sunday, and b) represents Christ, who is indisputably the head of the body and who IS everywhere at once on a Sunday—in the person of the priest.  The priest’s authority to perform a eucharistic act is THEIR authority—which is to say, ultimately, Christ’s authority.  That’s why they call it apostolic.

TXTurifer, I admire your intent, but ACNA would have to drop a great many more things before there was ever a hope of full unity with the Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox on “This Side of the River Jordan”.  Starting with the 39 Articles, the 1662 BCP, the Jerusalem Declaration, Filoque, most of Augustine, all of Calvin and Cramner…
[90] Posted by AndrewA on 12-30-2008 at 09:18 PM • top

Um….ACNA accepts the teachings of Saint Augustine of Hippo?  The one who is a doctor of the Catholic Church?

“Starting with the 39 Articles, the 1662 BCP, the Jerusalem Declaration, Filoque, most of Augustine, all of Calvin and Cramner… “

Well, maybe a good bit of Calvin (and no loss there), but otherwise, you might be surprised at how much of the rest could be accommodated.

Hi IRNS, you and I do not share the same ecclesiological or sacramental commitments.

Matt+ (107) - a question and food for thought, from from Charles Bigg’s The Origins of Christianity ( Clarendon Press, 1909, pp.63-71 in case you want to reference it).

Clement uses the name bishop as equivalent to priest, and this is no doubt his regular use. He recognizes, that is to say, an Apostolical Succession of priests and deacons, but not of bishops, and in this is in complete agreement with Jerome. There is, however, another passage:‘They therefore that make their offerings at the appointed season are acceptable and blessed; for while they follow the institutions of the Master they cannot go wrong. For unto the high priest his proper services have been assigned and to the priests their proper office is appointed, and unto the Levites their proper ministration is laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances. Let each of you, brethren, in his own order give thanks unto God, maintaining a good conscience, and not transgressing the appointed rule of His service, but acting with all seemliness.’

Continuing on,

Clement sees in the Christian hierarchy an embodiment of the eternal and all-pervading will of God, which is Law and Order, and governs not the Church only, but the earth, the heavens, and the sea. The grand passage in which he develops this thought may have suggested to Richard Hooker the idea which that great divine so powerfully expounded in the first book of his, Ecclesiastical Polity. It is highly noticeable also that Clement is the first Christian writer to draw an analogy between the Christian priest and deacon and the Jewish cohen and Levite. He labours to show that there is a direct line of succession between the hierarchy of the Old and that of’ the New Testament.

If this is accurate, then how can a female priest serve in the way of a male priest, and how can she receive the same orders of office? If anything, charity would seem to indicate that she be considered a deacon of sorts, and of no way a priest in the manner the Episcopal Church has set forth.

Matt+ - my post at #116 also goes to the question that has been raised about what happens at the Eucharist. (And it’s not a bash to anyone, just honest exchange.)

“Perhaps I should clarify, by “culturally conditioned” I mean that Paul is writing to address a particular situation that existed in the Church he wrote to. This would not necessarily make the application of what he says universal.”

And just what authority do we bring to the text in order to determine what is and is not universal (i.e., catholic)? 

Tradition, perhaps?

#112

You raise another point I have been thinking about: our failure to distinguish power from authority. The word authority comes from the Latin auctor for creator and suggests that those with authority are repositories of the Truth. “With authority” is the phrased used in the RSV to describe the amazing way Jesus explained the scriptures in the synagogue. The way of ensuring that the Truth was preserved intact and passed on in the ancient church was Apostolic succession, which the Anglican branch of the church nominally accepts. Certainly, having authority implies power over those who acknowledge the authority, but it is not the personal power of the priest, it is the power of the God the Father who has spoken the Word. In terms of the secular (meaning non-sacred) acts of the church in the world, clearly one can have power without having authority. But that power ought always to be subject to the Word.

monika

“Hi IRNS, you and I do not share the same ecclesiological or sacramental commitments.”

Hi Matt+, and thereby hangs another argument, and possibly the future of ACNA.

For the folks who assert that WO is completely contrary to scripture, how do you account for this?
From the TNIV
Romans 16;1-3:

1 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae.

In Greek:

Συνίστημι δὲ ὑμῖν Φοίβην τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἡμῶν, οὖσαν διάκονον τῆς ἐκκλησίας τῆς ἐν Κενχρεαῖς,

διάκονον = diakonon = deacon (of)

διάκονον = diakonon = deacon (of)

To all, for FYI,
1. The Rev Dr Ann Paton (note this correct spelling, pronounced “pay-tun”).  She is retired faculty from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA.
2. (I don’t think she’d mind you all knowing that) she is an octoganarian!  A firecracker nevertheless.
3. One of the best preachers in the Diocese, hands down.
4. She’s at Ascension, Oakland (Pittsburgh’s university district).  Ascension is “rock-solid” evangelical, supportive of re-alignment and Bp Duncan.  One of our cardinal parishes.  The Rector, the Rev Jonathan Millard, was recently elected to the Standing Committee, and he served as Spokesman for the Coalition for Re-alignment.
5. Ascension has a history of supporting and employing women in Holy Orders.

I don’t know how that link made it into my comment - it links to the NIV, which translates diakanon as servant - which is accurate, of course, but it also means deacon.  Odd - I try to insert links and they don’t work, and then I inadvertently add one.  Anybody remember the comic strip Shoe, with the computer repairman who was dressed as a wizard????

IRNS,

Maybe so, maybe not.  We’ll see

Mrs. Falstaff,

There was no feminine form for diakonos in classical Greek, hence the insistence (by some) of translating this as “deacon” as opposed to “deaconess.”  Similarly nauta (“sailor”) in Latin is feminine in form, but masculine in meaning.  And the earliest mention (of which I a aware) of this matter is Pliny’s famous letter (10.96) which mentions (c. 116 AD) “ministrae” (deaconesses).  Eventually (by the fourth c. AD if memory serves), the form of diakonissa was invented for this purpose, but none such existed in St. Paul’s day.

There is an extensive literature on Phoebe, but briefly, the best work demonstrates that a distinction must be made between a “deaconess” and a “female deacon.”  The former certainly existed in the early church, but was never, insofar as we have evidence, thought to be the equivalent of the latter.  See A. G. Martimort, Deaconesses: An Historical Study.  (A handy summary of Martimort was made by an AMIA priest a while ago, but I don’t have the link. Google a bit and you’ll either find it or other discussions of it.

Mrs. Falstaff,

To follow up: one such summary (by a couple of Presbyterians, no less), can be found here:

http://www.baylyblog.com/2008/07/martomort-on-wo.html

This has been a fascinating thread, and I’d like to add one more thought to the mix before I leave it for good.

Regarding the possibility of deaconesses - even if it can be established that such may be allowed for, a deacon is a servant. Overseer, Bishop and Elder are positions of authority over the church. I am not Anglican, and there are certainly those who are better qualified than I to elucidate the office of deacon vis a vis the higher ecclesiastical offices in the AC; that’s not my intent here. My point rather is that a servant is not a ruler, and women, while full and equal members in Christs mystical body, simply are not permitted to hold a position of authority over men in the church, according to Paul, thus precluding them from such offices.

RE: 125

The study was by Father J.Patterson, and was a well-done (imho) response to the AMiA position papers on WO.  (For the record, the AMiA holds a “middle view”, which ordains women to the diaconate, but not the priesthood or episcopate, which differs from the REC which sees the female diaconate as lay order).  Fr. Patterson argues for the REC (and also the historic) position of not ordaining women, and keeping the female diaconate as a lay order.

The link to Fr. Patterson’s analysis is here:
http://pbsusa.org/articles/OrdainingWomenAsDeacons.pdf

Point of Clarification:  Although I think Fr. Patterson raises good points and argues well, I support the current AMiA policy regarding women in the diaconate.

Great thread. I am also grateful for the increasing use of references to prior publications and threads, rather than everyone feeling they need to set out their theological arguments in a comment!

Thanks, Episcopaul [122] for the facts.  This information is very useful to know , and reflects even more highly on Bob Duncan and his extensive band.

There is an extensive literature on Phoebe, but briefly, the best work demonstrates that a distinction must be made between a “deaconess” and a “female deacon.” The former certainly existed in the early church, but was never, insofar as we have evidence, thought to be the equivalent of the latter.

Why?  I just don’t think that the issue is as cut and dry as many seem to think.  It seems pretty clear to me that Paul refers to many women who had leadership responsibilities in the early church. I have read biblically based, reasoned arguments on both sides of the question. I am not certain about women bishops, and I think it would be wise for the new province to hold off on deciding on that issue for the time being.  On the issue of female presbyters and deacons, for now, “agree to disaree” seems to me to be the best stand to take.

If you see presbyters as equivalents of levitical (no I can’t spell well in English, sorry..) priests, then yes, I can see why women could not fill that office.  I don’t think that is what Anglican priests are, based on the 39 Articles, anyway.

On the issue of female presbyters and deacons, for now, “agree to disaree” seems to me to be the best stand to take.

Every time i read or hear someone say this “agree to disagree” on an important issue such as WO it frustrates me! It’s like a cop out! Please someone point me to the passage in the Bible where Jesus told those who held different beliefs than what He was teaching that they would just have to agree to disagree! Some how I just don’t see our Lord and savior telling someone that!

Regarding the possibility of deaconesses - even if it can be established that such may be allowed for, a deacon is a servant. Overseer, Bishop and Elder are positions of authority over the church.

...But all church leaders are called to be servant leaders.  That was the point of the footwashing, was it not?

Mrs. Falstaff,

It is not a question of being “equivalent” to Levitical priests.  In the strictest sense, there has only ever been on true priest. All priesthood before Christ, from Melchizedek to Caiaphas, is a precursor to or foreshadowing of the one Great High Priest.  All priesthood after Christ is an extension of His one priesthood, just as all eucharistic sacrifice after Christ is but an extension of His one sacrifice on the cross.  (See e.g. the last verse of William Chatterton Dix’s great Anglican hymn here: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/a/a213.html)

And check out the summary Fr. Hackendorf so helpfully linked.

The Greek term simply means servant or even minister.  There was no theology of seperate and equal orders, no theology of “The Diaconate” at the time of this writing.  Stephen was appointed to serve the widows that the apostles might be about their business ... he certainly is the prototype of diaconal (servant) ministry but not all servants are deacons.  If I wash the dishes after a meal to which I am invited at the house of some friends it doesn’t make me a deacon.  That the proponents of WO have so desperately latched onto this minor reference shows the desperation of their case.  If anything, the passage demonstrates that among at least some of these early Christians, women were valued highly for their service.  What a shame it is and what an insult to the laos that unless the Church might reward service to the Church with authority over others, institutionalizing the Church’s authority by ordaining some man or woman, that person is supposedly not valued.  Is the laos not valued by the Church?  Must good service be rewarded to be efficacious?  In fact, it is much harder for us to receive a good reward from God for service when we are given “credit”.  This entire demand for rights to ordination is the very opposite of what Jesus attempts to demonstrate to us when he washes the feet of his disciples.  This worldly “CEO” style of leadership we see amongst the institutionalists of TEC (and in the clericalism that crops up throughout history) is contrary to the spirit of Christ.  How tiring it is to hear people of either sex insisting that they are called to have authority over others!  Since they have no respect for the ministry and servanthood of the laos of God, demonstrated by their usual refusal to belong to the historical Church which does not so reward the will to power, at least in its theology, they have no starting point nor helpful reference for serving and building up that Body.I recognize that earnest, God-loving people can reach different conclusions about this.  I find the matter of headship to be awkward to my own sensibilities ... recognizing that in practice, individual women often have leadership abilities, and even priestly character development, far superior to certain individual men.  Where the issue really divides is not over this recognition but over the Church’s theology of orders.  We ought to realize that all of us Christians are called to develop priestly character and that some of us have various gifts of leadership ... and that the sacramental priesthood is something different although not to the exclusion of these things.  That we have forgotten or disregarded the Church’s theology of orders ... or depend entirely upon what has been said in one particular denomination within the last couple years ... that we do not honor the longer tradition of our Faith does not release or relieve us of the consequences of the same.  We may very well not know why something is done ... our ignorance of that is not a justification.  People today do not often understand why Scripture speaks of the necessity of fasting ... we find it awkward to our ears to hear John Climacus (Ladder of Divine Ascent) speak of gluttony as the door to lust.  We don’t get it ... partly because gluttony isn’t a sin we find so reprehensible as the sins of others.  Anyway, that was tangential but important.  There is a kind of gluttony for the praise of men and for glory and for power that has not served us well.  God does not bless sin; rather, He prunes it.  As the faithful attempt to reassert the Christian faith in the new province, many will find a certain liberation from the comfortable quarrels with which we are accustomed in our parishes and lives.  Right now, we are distracted from them in order to get work done.  Don’t imagine that grace periods where temptation decreases last forever.  It is a special blessing to tear up all the old spiderwebs that have held us and start fresh.  As we clean house outwardly, let’s remember to follow our Christian tradition with regards to allowing God, with our obedient discipleship, to clean house within our hearts.  Lent is coming soon enough.  Let us for today rejoice in Christmas and the approaching showing forth of the Trinity at Epiphany/Theophany ... but wisely tonight ... how many are truly benefitted on New Year’s eve or any other time by drunkenness or risking our family and lives by driving when intoxicated?  Probably not one person ever.  We wish to be a new people ... let’s begin with today.

On agreeing to disagree, Clement of Alexandria suggests that all our training and experience is somewhat useful in leading up to Christian conversion.  Perhaps the Province won’t get everything “right” in the beginning but they are making a start.  Since there is no overweaning consensus within the groups forming the Anglican province, I’m afraid you will have to either proceed or not proceed without such a consensus.  The province has already, as I understand it, constitutionally restricted the ability of one diocese to mandate on this issue to another.  I wonder how helpful it is, given this reality, to draw one’s line in the sand in saying, “Upon this issue, the province stands or falls.”  That certainly is an opinion.  It may express for that person whether he is called to be a member of that province.  There are certainly other choices.  One can join TEC and have as many woman priests as desired ... I imagine that soon there will be entire congregations of nothing but woman bishops, all vested and concelebrating.  Or one may join some other enterprise where WO is forbidden absolutely.Anglicanism has always been muddled ... those who wish for doctrinal purity have been breaking off from it since it formed ... and they continue to divide ad infinitum in that pursuit. Being anxious and distracted and concerned about many things is not a mark of calling to the Diaconate ... but even so, we may serve our Lord.  That service is marred by the attempted insistance that others join us in our anxiety.

For those who then say to me, but what of the catholic (small c) theology of orders?  If you want to push the matter, we ought all to remain in communion with the bishops who are in communion with the apostles.  Since there is no undivided church in this day, we are spared from the spectacle of unilaterally forcing a single understanding of everything upon everyone everywhere.  It isn’t that God’s Truth is democratically embodied or derived but that there is something about being catholic and apostolic that requires the conciliar leadership of bishops.  It isn’t that the Gospel of St. John is more true than the Gospel of Matthew.  We have received as Christ’s Gospel the four gospels and so also the leadership of the twelve apostles and those bishops appointed by them to our oversight.  Within the Trinity, we see both headship in the Father but also a Community of Persons in Love, one God.  Our being is in Communion.For myself, and the reasonging that follows I do not attempt to force upon you here, I am in communion with the bishops who received Peter and Paul and others at Antioch.  No, I doubt that there was a worked out theology of apostolic succession then, even before Peter left Antioch for Rome and crucifixion.  But perhaps there was some understanding of that.  I don’t know.  I do know that I am obedient (if poorly) to the unbroken apostolic succession of bishops that extend through time from that time until today.  It isn’t as if these individuals have never erred but they represent the Church and there is a sense in which the Church, qua Church, is the Body of Christ and without error…in the same sense (or at least a similar one) that Holy Scripture is without error…for each exist by the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  The authorizing of Holy Scripture is done by the authority of that same Church and it is from and through the Church that canonization comes.  The act of canonization of Scripture is itself a teaching and thus part of the kerygma of the Gospel.  As the Church has canonized Holy Scripture, it also has canonized the conciliar teaching authority of bishops and the threefold orders ... although there is a certain circularity to this.

#139 Amen to that.

If I wash the dishes after a meal to which I am invited at the house of some friends it doesn’t make me a deacon.  That the proponents of WO have so desperately latched onto this minor reference shows the desperation of their case.  If anything, the passage demonstrates that among at least some of these early Christians, women were valued highly for their service.  What a shame it is and what an insult to the laos that unless the Church might reward service to the Church with authority over others, institutionalizing the Church’s authority by ordaining some man or woman, that person is supposedly not valued.

I think you are reading more into my comment than I intended.  Of course lay service is valued - that doesn’t have much bearing on whether or not women can be deacons and presbyters.  The reference is there, along with other female leaders who are referenced in scripture - they must be dealt with, not ignored.

#139 - the discussion was thrust upon us by the woman’s calls for the ACNA to remove any restrictions to the consecration of female bishops. There are issues that distract us and must be dealt with. Leaving this unresolved, IMHO, will get ACNA where TEC has been - divided. This is an internal matter that should have been left internal; but as it is now public, the debate must be engaged.

#141, ordination has everything to do with the Laos for it is the Church that candidates are ordained to serve.  It is a narrowing of ministry to be of a particular service to the Body. Without reference to that Body, what sense does it make to speak of servanthood?  We are all uniformly servants of God.  Now, of course, I do not mean to put words in your mouth with my comments on dishonoring the laity and of course I know that was not your intent.  I lay the blame for this phenomenon on todays churchs for their lack of solid teaching as well as that ambitious person who finagles his/her way into orders in order to serve his own agendas.  It seems to me we need to reclaim a theology of orders here.  For a good (Protestant) treatment of this, I recommend Thomas Oden’s book, Pastoral Theology:  Essentials of Ministry.

Furthermore, it is the building up of the Body that ordained are for.  Deacons, for instance, are not simply ordained to serve ... they are to be icons of the servanthood of Christ and show us our servanthood.  In other words, the Church has added new words to describe that intent first expressed by the apostles in the choice of Stephen. Or perhaps, some would say, it’s understanding has deepened and in order to maintain the original depth inherent in the apostles’ action, it was necessary to develop a language of sacrament to preserve and protect it.  Has the understanding of sacrament been lost in evangelical Protestantism?  It makes sense, to my lights, to speak of Stephen as the Ur-deacon, the prototype of the order but not necessarily to say he was simply a deacon, just like Deacon Judy over at St. Smithers is a deacon.  Similarly, Jesus is a priest but not exactly like Fr. Brevity at St. Barts.  So also bishops are modeled after the apostles but are not quite the same as the twelve.If we are going to have an ordained order for everyone who has a role in scripture, we ought to have an ordained order of sewing ladies like Dorcus, who are icons of the Resurrection, since she is restored from death.  I suggest the male members, not to be exclusive, should be called “Dorcs”.  This example could be called the Parable of the Sewer.

Why not restore the order of Lay Deaconess….a truly servant order?

In other words, the Church has added new words to describe that intent first expressed by the apostles in the choice of Stephen. Or perhaps, some would say, it’s understanding has deepened and in order to maintain the original depth inherent in the apostles’ action, it was necessary to develop a language of sacrament to preserve and protect it.

Or, has the church added things to our biblical understanding that just aren’t there, and shouldn’t have been added?  I am reminded of Jesus berating the Pharisees because they added rules and regulations to the biblical rules that were of man, and not of God.

Cennydd,

My cynical self has risen to the occasion.

  Priesthood is too often seen as a career, not a service.  It pays well, has great benefits, community status and upward career path and you do not need to be single and poor.  As a plus you get to help people, if you are so inclined, or go live in an ivory tower if you prefer.

  For a woman looking for a second, or even first, career it is a great option and being a low-paid parish deaconess is just not the same.

Mrs. Falstaff,
You are very good at playing Devils Advocate, but please when you state things like
“Or, has the church added things to our biblical understanding that just aren’t there, and shouldn’t have been added?”
Would be please so kind as to give an i.e., example of what you are talking about? What have we added?

147, I agree:“Priesthood is too often seen as a career, not a service.” It is also a calling and a profession (as in professing the faith), and, in my opinion a sacrament.

#146, one could also simply become a Presbyterian and be done with the pretense to belonging to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

#145, I think it might be confusing to re-establish the lay order of deaconnesses.  You already have the Altar Guild.  I wouldn’t advise messing with them if you know what’s good for you! 

monologistos,

I am on the Altar Guild and I would never mess with the deaconnesses I have known.

I wouldn’t DREAM of messing with those ladies!  I know better than that!  Still, the order of Lay Deaconess does have merit, and was….and is, in some parts of the Communion….a way for women to serve Christ and His Church without ordination.

I’ve never met a deaconness of any flavor that could hold a candle to the Altar Guild for commitment, reverence and service.  And no, there is not one here holding a gun to my head.  We’ve had lesser orders around of course.  Vatican I got rid of most of them in the Catholic Church.  Subdeacons, vergers (verga)and doorkeepers (ostiarii)spring to mind.  In my Orthodox church we have ordained readers and subdeacons ...usually referred to as “tonsured” rather than ordained.  But the big change happens with the diaconate.  Once ordained a deacon, you are not allowed to marry, if you have not already.  Since one is required to be a deacon before made a priest, similarly, priests must be married prior to ordination to the diaconate if he wishes to marry at all.  Divorced men as a rule are not allowed to serve in an ordained capacity.  The one child molester I knew of in this diocese was required to make a full confession to the police as the beginning of his penance and it remains to be seen if he will be allowed to take communion again ... ever.  He will never serve again as priest.  Bishops are required to be unmarried and traditionally come from the monastic ranks.  I think it is increasingly more common today to take monastic vows when made a bishop.  But there are no married bishops, for better or worse.  I harken back to the arguments presented at the Council of Nicea on that ... if Peter could be married, why not bishops?  But my opinion was not heeded at later councils, amazingly. 

#150 Or, if being Catholic is so important, one could cross the Tyber. The 39 Articles are a very Protestant document, and as Anglicans, we are to subscribe to them.  ( Are you implying that Presbyterians aren’t genuine Christians?  )

#148 We have to be very careful when we “add language” to what is already in the bible.  That is all that I was getting at.

Mrs. Falstaff, why do you assume that the Articles are a “very Protestant document”?  Plenty of very “catholic” Anglicans have subscribed to them without any great difficulty.

Articles 19 through 25, on the authority of the church and the sacraments, strike me as being very Protestant - two sacraments, the sufficiency of scripture, that sort of thing.  Also article 28, on the Lord’s Supper.  This is getting a bit off topic though -  doesn’t bother me, might bother others though….

#155, I do not expect that you are implying that Catholics are not Christians because they are not Sola Scriptura.  As you see it, do Christians “come from the Bible?”  I wonder how that could be since there was no New Testament in Jesus’ day.  Come to think of it, I bet they were all Jews or something!  Thank God for the King James bible or we would all still be worshipping Moses!Annoyingly Yours,  M

“Abandoning all pretence of being part of the one holy catholic and appolostic church” seemed to me to be saying that Presbyterians aren’t Christians - I merely asked you to clarify yourself.  To answer your question, no, I wouldn’t say that Catholics aren’t Christians because they aren’t Sola Scriptura.  There are things that the RC church teaches that I think are wrong, that isn’t the same thing.  As for the rest of your comment, well, I try to make a habit of ignoring sarcasm.

#148 That would depend upon who “we” is, I suppose.

#159: My dear woman, I was responding to your remark that if being Catholic is so important, one could cross the Tiber.  Between my sarcasm and your impertinence, we seem fit only for the Colonies ... I suggest we cross the Mississippi and become Baptists together.  After tea, of course.

First I would like to point out that Presbyterians do consider themselves members of Christ’s One, Holy, and Apostolic Church. To join their ranks would not be giving up any pretense,

The issue confronting women’s ordination is centered on the person of priest as the presider at the Eucharist. Is this person meant to be the Incarnate Lord for the Church gathered or is the entire Church the Body of Christ with the priest serving as the president of the assembly and thus a representative person of the Church as the Body of Christ. If the priest as an individual is a new sacramental incarnation of Christ at the altar, then a male would be the outward and visible sign of the inward grace that is Christ. If the priest is representative of the Body of Christ gathered, then the Body includes men and women and the presider could be either. There is support for both of these theological positions on who the priest truly is in the Church although they do not address the issue of women as priests in conjunction with this. Scripture, on the other hand says nothing about who presided at the Eucharist. It only tells us that is has been handed on.

Ron Baird+

#158, your comment here truly baffles me:

I do not expect that you are implying that Catholics are not Christians because they are not Sola Scriptura.  As you see it, do Christians “come from the Bible?” I wonder how that could be since there was no New Testament in Jesus’ day.  Come to think of it, I bet they were all Jews or something!  Thank God for the King James bible or we would all still be worshipping Moses!

Annoyingly Yours, M

This comment “do Christians come from the Bible” is strange. Just what do you mean by this statement? ALL Christians today have to know the Bible, or they have no idea what God’s Word truly says; no idea what a Christian is. So, in a way, all Christians do come from the Bible. I just wouldn’t put it that way. Christians come from accepting God’s Word to be truth. They come from accepting the good news God sent Jesus, his messenger, to deliver to the world. And most importantly, they come from obedience to God’s Word; his commandments, and repentance of past sins.

Which leads me to your next comment, “I wonder how that could be since there was no New Testament in Jesus’ day.  Come to think of it, I bet they were all Jews or something! Thank God for the King James bible or we would all still be worshipping Moses!” NO, there was no New Testament in Jesus’ day. However, the Scriptures were brought forward generation after generation since God delivered them to the Israelite nations. Jesus lived His life by those Scriptures, and he expects us to do the same. Just what do you mean “all Jews or something”. The Jews were then (and are now) only the descendants of the tribe of Judah. The rest of the House of Israel were not Jews, but were also God’s chosen people. They were the ones the disciples were commissioned to seek out (the lost sheep of Israel).

What do you mean, “thank God for the King James Bible or we would all still be worshipping Moses!” Moses was given the 10 commandments (God’s spiritual laws) to pass on to the Israelite nation in the wildnerness. Those commandments came directly from God, Himself. WE are also to still obey ALL of those commandments. What the heck does the “King James Bible” have to do with it? No one has ever “worshipped” Moses. If so, they were sorely confused. Moses was a “messenger” as Jesus was. Moses was given information from God to deliver to the people. He was a “priest”. He was not to be worshipped.

The purity laws given through Moses were to help the Israelite nations set an example for all other peoples on earth. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross took away the penalty of death for us (which the Old Testament people were faced with if they sinned). His sacrifice on the cross fulfilled the sacrificial requirements for all mankind. We no longer need to do regular ceremonial sacrifices on the alter, but we DO need to obey God’s “spiritual” laws (10 commandments) and we DO need to REPENT of our past sins and turn back to a way of life which God teaches us about in Scripture.

Your statements in this comment are sorely confused, and unfortunately, may lead others down the wrong path. I just could not overlook this without attempting to straighten it out for those less sure of their path.

We have to be very careful when we “add language” to what is already in the bible. That is all that I was getting at.

Well….what about omitting and changing it as TEC has done? Removing certain verses from the Bible within the Lectionary…..or changing its meaning to allow men & women that are living in same sex relationships to be come priests and bishops and blessings lay homosexuals who are living together and sharing one bed…...or let’s go one farther…..the new bible that TEC will be writing in the very new future?

#146, Mrs. Falstaff, I’m in line with you here. I suspect a lot more has been added to the protestant AND Roman Catholic understanding of Scripture than we would ever suspect. Going back beyond the original birth of the protestant church denominations is very revealing. A LOT of things were done by the Roman church that weren’t supported by Scripture and are directly contrary to Scripture. There’s no room to delve into it all sufficiently here, but I urge any who have doubts about the teachings of the church to do their own research. There’s plenty of evidence out there. A good place to begin is the RCC’s own encyclopedia. They’ve admitted to many things they took authority on themselves to change.

Mrs. Falstaff, I differ profoundly with your understanding of the Articles, but that is hardly surprising, and this is probably not the place to pursue it.  I’ll only say that Pusey and Keble (to name but two) had no difficulty subscribing to the Articles and would probably read them very differently that you.  But that is a matter for another thread.

Dear Mugsie1, thank you for fisking my remarks.  I hope you will not take it amiss that I laughed myself to tears reading your reply.  I agree with you and Mrs. Falstaff entirely and we are of one mind on pretty much all things.  There’s no telling what wickedness those Catholics have been up to with those foxhunting popes.  Many of these do not even subscribe to the 39 Articles, can be seen drinking from finger bowls and serve Pink Chablis with beef.  Good grief, if the gosh get a free ticket, heaven is going to be pure hell.

1. monologistos, “...serve Pink Chablis with beef…” that was funny.

2. IRNS, thanks for hanging in here, your comments have been appreciated.

3. A blessed Anno Domini 2009 to all!

It is only by the most convoluted reasoning and parsing of Scripture that any case for WO can be made.

It is only by the most convoluted reasoning and parsing of Scripture that any case for MO can be made. The fundamental reason why there is honest disagreement about the interpretation of the New Testament on this subject is that it is not a New Testament subject at all. And that’s because NOBODY’s ordination is a New Testament subject. Our historic three-fold orders are “agreeable” to Holy Scripture; there is no claim that they are modelled on it. If this sometimes escapes us, it is because we are not asking the really fundamental questions. Priesthood, ministry, ordination, headship, subjection, equality, status, authority, service, obedience, gifts, human rights, the divine image, eucharistic celebration. What is the fundamental Christian, and therefore Anglican view of these?

Here are some terms of central importance:–

DIAKONOS etc.
EPISKOPOS etc.
PRESBUTEROS etc.
HUMANITY OF CHRIST
NT SALUTATIONS

And some technical discussion with translation of the main texts:–

NTWOTEXTS

For the record, I am 70 years old, and that I should seek ordination is of all things the most improbable. I have been reading ancient languages for sixty years, and texts of all kinds for more like sixty-six.

I add only half-humorously that after all this experience I do not take kindly to the suggestion that the opposite of a monogamous man is a polyandrous or otherwise sex-ethically aberrant female. But to know that one needn’t read anything but English.

#164 - Well,that’s wrong too.  Your point is?

The NT warrent for women and men priest is I Peter 2:9.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;

And Dr. Turner is absolutely correct.  I would ordain her in a minute as a “bishop” of the NASCAR Provence.  Also, my limited reading of Cramner seems to be in agreement with her and me.  Cheers and Happy New Year!

Sarah, in response.  Here is my point: The signatories to the communique to the GS steering committee in Va., last year, presumably, Ft. Worth, Springfield, Quincy and San Joaquin and Pittsburgh, as well as those, (presumably the same +CANA,) writing to +Cantuar, argued that they could not be subject to TEC discipline, period.  Evidently, the “safe harbors” provided for them by the recently proposed scheme for an updated panel of reference was not enough either.  For them TEC’s “safe harbor” really wasn’t all that safe.  To me, its is profoundly ironic that they who have left for greener pastures are now offering the same measure of safety to their minority. 
.
The corral, refugee camp, what have you is the same tactic that SFiF members who left TEC, (and many who remain) complained about and complain about in TEC.  If there is a minority involved and the issue is debatable, (I believe WO is), how will you treat it?  Will you opt for inclusion or exclusion?  If you opt for isolating the problem how will you deal with it and where will you put it?  Will you act in such a way that it makes the minority camp conditions so miserable that its members then leave voluntarily, e.g.:. how those who departed TEC either by overt act or attrition might have felt?  Or will you act to insure that the minority is “protected”?

TEC of course made “provision” for its minority…adequate and proper provision…or so it seemed to TEC.  TEC decided what was appropriate. ACNA has now made provision for its minority.  ACNA has decided what is appropriate.  As TEC was criticised by those for whom the decision was made for a failure to properly include them in the decision making, ACNA has now made decisions for its women.  The sermon that prompted this thread seems to indicate, in the case of at least one in the Pittsburgh corral, it isn’t.

When push came to shove, when the articles were created, +Duncan, lion of support of WO, bartered away the office of bishop.  Now he offers women priests “refugee” status in Pittsburgh.  The amazing part to me is that any on SF who have been unhappy with TEC’s corral for the “orthodox” would be surprised by the response of this woman pastor.

EmilyH, you might just as well call the MO enclaves “refugee camps” or “minority camps” or “corrals” and it is frankly ridiculous [but unsurprising at this point] that you are doing likewise with the WO enclaves.

Truth is, only one thing would have satisfied you regarding WO in the new ACNA [other than, of course, no ACNA and no happiness either for the leavers.]  And that would have been for Bishop Duncan and all the WO supporters to force the non-WO supporters to accept WO in their dioceses/affinity territories—you know, like TEC tried to do and would have done had not the anti-WO people left.  That’s your kind of “compromise” in TEC—and it’s obviously just such people as your sort that came up with the “protective” “compromises” and “provisions” for the traditional clergy and laity trapped behind enemy lines in TEC.

The rights of the minority have been protected in the ACNA—they have been given anti-WO enclaves.  And they are happy, EmilyH, in their “refugee,” “minority camps,”  and “corrals.”

The NT warrent for women and men priest is I Peter 2:9.

Well, no.  The warrant is for ‘average’ NT men and women to collectively grow from being newborn babes through the word (1 Pet 2:2) to bear witness to the Rock of Offense (2:8) to the world.  And the indicatives in 2:9 come with imperatives that apply to all Christians (including the general office). 

Also, you’ll find similar language in the OT:
Duet 7:6,  Duet 14:2,  Duet 27:9,  1 Kings 3:8,  Ps 33:12,  Is 43:20

The context of 1 Peter 2 is -all- of the Church, not special offices within the Church.  Its cash-value to laity is encouraging us to “preach” the Gospel to the world, with our lives.  To dust off the overused quote of St. Francis, “Preach the Gospel.  If necessary, use words.”

Dr. Turner (#169)

My Greek is still a bit stunted.  I would be grateful if you could flesh out your thesis a bit more for people like me. 

It sounds like you are either making an argument against the existence of a sacrament of ordination, or against the existence of ordination, in (or from) the NT.  Is this correct?

Dr. Turner—we like it when you talk like that!  ; > )

Seriously, I have appreciated your comments over the years at T19 and here as well.

Dr. Turner is correct.  One of the mistakes made at the time of the Reformation was to attempt to find the basis for various church polities (papal, episcopal, presbyterian, congregational) based on the minimal material in the NT, particularly the pastoral epistles.  It just isn’t there.  As Hooker realized, the correct principle to draw from this is polity is a matter where the church has a certain freedom.

RE: “As Hooker realized, the correct principle to draw from this is polity is a matter where the church has a certain freedom.”

That’s why I’ve never argued for the Anglican church polity based on scripture alone, but on tradition.  It’s a mistake, I think, to debate scripture points on polity, when scripture merely demonstrates, to me, that any denomination may run itself in that matter as it pleases as long as it is not in violation of scripture.

On the other hand, once someone joins a Presbyterian polity, I think it wrong for one presbytery to suddenly announce that it is going to “consecrate bishops” since that is not the traditional Presbyterian polity.

Sarah @ 173

RE “EmilyH, you might just as well call the MO enclaves “refugee camps” or “minority camps” or “corrals” and it is frankly ridiculous [but unsurprising at this point] that you are doing likewise with the WO enclaves.” 
  Actually, the language “refugee” is +Duncan’s

RE:  “Truth is, only one thing would have satisfied you regarding WO in the new ACNA [other than, of course, no ACNA and no happiness either for the leavers.] And that would have been for Bishop Duncan and all the WO supporters to force the non-WO supporters to accept WO in their dioceses/affinity territories—you know, like TEC tried to do and would have done had not the anti-WO people left.  That’s your kind of “compromise” in TEC—and it’s obviously just such people as your sort that came up with the “protective” “compromises” and “provisions” for the traditional clergy and laity trapped behind enemy lines in TEC.”

  Actually, Sarah, you do not know “the one thing” that would have satisfied me.  And, in fact, I think there is much potential for discussion.  It is not true that only WO imposed on the “orthodox” would have satisfied me.  In truth, the fact that the anti-wo dioceses have existed for 30 years without such imposition proves that TEC has been willing to look at other models for those who, in conscience, cannot accept WO.  San Joaquin, Ft. Worth and Quincy have not left because of TEC’s imposition of WO on them.  Springfield is still in and no one has imposed WO on it.

Re:  “The rights of the minority have been protected in the ACNA—they have been given anti-WO enclaves.  And they are happy, EmilyH, in their “refugee” status.”  That depends upon the “minority” you are talking about.  If TEC’s minority was those unhappy with TEC, then the safe haven of ACNA may work for them.  But ACNA’s “minority” is women clergy above deacons in orders.  From the sermon preached, it would seem that at least one member of ACNA’s minority isn’t all that happy.

RE: “Actually, the language “refugee” is +Duncan’s . . .”

Yep—he said he’d be glad to receive any refugee female clergy from other entities that don’t receive them.  A far cry from EmilyH’s vision of WO “minority camps.” 

Tell you what.  I’ll wait until Bishop Iker says that he’s willing to receive refugee MO clergy and then post this statement:

“When push came to shove, when the articles were created, +Iker, lion of support of MO, bartered away the MO province.  Now he offers MO priests “refugee” status in Fort Worth.  The amazing part to me is that any on SF who have been unhappy with TEC’s corral for the “orthodox” would be surprised by the response of this MO priest.”

; > )

RE: “In truth, the fact that the anti-wo dioceses have existed for 30 years without such imposition proves that TEC has been willing to look at other models for those who, in conscience, cannot accept WO.”

Heh.  We all saw what happened to that woman-hating priest, Mark Lawrence.  You know, and I know, and Sherrod knows, and Schori knows, and Beers knows, and everybody else in TEC knows that no MO priest would ever have been consented to in TEC.

Not ever.  And all on the basis of whatever faux canon Schori would have made up to suit whatever she wanted.

Those Anglo-Catholic dioceses knew they were finished if they stayed.

RE: “But ACNA’s “minority” is women clergy above deacons in orders.”

Nope.

That’s what you want.  But it isn’t so.  And EmilyH saying it’s so, doesn’t make it so.

Your comments throughout this thread are revealing—if any more revelation was needed—of your hopes and dreams and desperate needs regarding the Dearly Departed.  I’m glad they were made for us to refer back to them.

My difficulty with Dr. Turner is not that she is for or against WO—it is that she is, as far as I can tell, against O.  She is, however, correct in asserting that you cannot draw a straight line from a series of proof texts to whatever form of ministry you desire.

All questions of ordination and apostolic ministry ultimately resolve themselves into questions of ecclesiology, and all questions of ecclesiology ultimately resolves themselves into questions of soteriology.  In both cases, one can detect patterns in Scripture, but not proofs, and in both cases resolution requires bringing in an authority larger than the “plain meaning” of the text.  Philology will get you far (it had better—it’s part of how I make my living), but only so far.

...we are not asking the really fundamental questions. Priesthood, ministry, ordination, headship, subjection, equality, status, authority, service, obedience, gifts, human rights, the divine image, eucharistic celebration. What is the fundamental Christian, and therefore Anglican view of these?

Since early marriage is an analogy of the marriage of Christ and His Church, why not ask these questions with early marriage in mind? 

My wife and I (e.g.,) disagree on how our daughter ought to be educated.  She believes that public school is acceptable, would tolerate private schooling, but would not tolerate her having to home-school.  I believe that home-schooling would be ideal, would compromise with private schooling, and would never agree to public schooling. 

I believe that I do have the authority to force the issue with home-schooling.  However, being married for 3+ years, I also realize that sometimes it’s better to hold the trump-card, rather than play it all of the time. 

So, in the strictest complimentarian sense, I have laid down the law that our daughter will not be going to public school.  And, in the strictest egalitarian sense, my wife and I have “compromised” on the “middle ground” of private school. 

How we approach debt works out pretty much the same way.  I’ve made it our goal to rid ourselves of all credit cards but one, holding a zero-balance.  She manages the money and tells me when its time to stop being frivolous for a few days. 

We’re both servants, with me being the chief-servant.  Sometimes that means me decreeing a rule or goal of the household.  Sometimes it means me leaning across the plate for my household.  Sometimes (as is the case with me being the breadwinner) it means me chiefly serving.  Sometimes it means delegating an authority (managing the money e.g.,) and then turning around and submitting to it in order that my own authority be upheld. 

The authority that I hold in my home has Christ written all over it.  Frankly, there are times when it scares me for that very reason.  Christ certainly paid a heavy price that accompanied that authority.  At times, I find that there is a heavy price that accompanies my own authority. 

I don’t believe in strict complimentarianism, if I understand the position correctly.  Neither do I believe in egalitarianism (my father and uncle are identical twins, were raised as ‘equals’ and aren’t equals).  Nor do I believe that strict egalitarianism is the opposite of strict complimentarianism.  What I believe is that there is a dance between ‘equals’ and ‘compliments’, when it comes to roles of men and women, or for that matter, any roles (even employer and employee!). 

But I don’t think a case for a woman having that weighty, awful, sort of authority over a man, can be made from Scripture. 

I add only half-humorously that after all this experience I do not take kindly to the suggestion that the opposite of a monogamous man is a polyandrous or otherwise sex-ethically aberrant female. But to know that one needn’t read anything but English.

I’m not sure where anyone is making such a suggestion.  Man is the opposite of woman?  A virtue has an opposite vice?

Er, “early marriage” ??

..earthly marriage. 

Sarah @ 180.  And yes, Mark Lawrence IS a bishop in TEC.  Ye, he had problems.  Allegedly, it was a technical problem.  Sarah, your saying what I think or TEC thinks about WO does not make it so.  What is of consequence is the evidence.  Mark Lawrence, is a bishop in TEC and was confirmed as such.  Dio Springfield exists.  Dio San Joaquin, Ft. Worth did and Quincy did not leave because of WO.  Those are facts.  How many cures do you seriously believe will be open to women in Pittsburgh or the ADV?

The issues are the same for the right or the left, how do you deal with the minority?  On WO, TECD opted for inclusion on an issue most of us would agree is debatable.  ACNA opted for exclusion.  At its first opportunity in its “provisional canons” it removed women from any hope of the episcopacy.  Second, deal with the contagion…isolate and vitiate the opposition.  If, as you suggest, TEC’s minority was those who did not accept WO (and would not share a diocese with those who would, TEC provided a corral of 5 dioceses and multiple possibilities for episcopal oversight barring the one they demanded, freedom from TEC discipline.  ACNA has provided its minority, women in orders above the diaconate, with one refuge,  Pittsburgh, and the ADV

Both organizations have chosen paths to “handle the problem”.  First exclusion vs. inclusion.  Second, isolate and create living situations that the minority will not tolerate.  They will either rebel (viz. what conservatives have done with TEC to form their own denomination), or the will simply leave one by one, decimation of the minority by a simple process of attrition. 

Sarah, since you do not support WO, this “issue” may be back burner or unimportant.  But, for me,  it is not the specific issue raised (in this case WO) that is of major concern, it is how any group reflects of any issue and engages in its decision making.  I believe a huge indicator of the integrity of any organization’s processes is how it treats its minorities.  In this first “test case” so to speak, ACNA has opted for exclusion vs. inclusion.  In addition, it has not shown any desire to do better than TEC with regard to the involvement of the people for whom it is making decisions in the process. In fact, it may be worse, much worse, given the quickness of its decision on female episcopacy.

RE: “In this first “test case” so to speak, ACNA has opted for exclusion vs. inclusion.”

Yes—those poor MO guys.  It warms my heart that you care so much.

RE: “In addition, it has not shown any desire to do better than TEC with regard to the involvement of the people for whom it is making decisions in the process.”

Oh, I think the people of Fort Worth will gladly support their MO corral.  ; > )

And I expect the people of CANA gladly support their WO corral.  Remember, EmilyH—unlike TEC—parishes that don’t support their affiliation in CANA, the AMiA, REC, Pittsburgh, Uganda, Kenya, and the Southern Cone may depart to another affiliation.  I do not include Fort Worth or San Joaquin or Quincy because I’m not certain how their most regrettable property canons [in my opinion] work out with the ease of departure.  But regardless, the vast vast vast majority of parishes may easily transfer to various ACNA entities.

No, I think the people support for the most part the decisions of their various entities—for at minimum the parishes have freedom to depart.

RE: “ACNA has provided its minority, women in orders above the diaconate, with one refuge, Pittsburgh, and the ADV”

And the Ugandan cluster, the Kenyan cluster, and the Southern Cone cluster—all of which have diocesan voting status in the ACNA—five “corrals” as I pointed out in comment #84. Why can’t you read these things, EmilyH?  Seriously, why?

Do you think that Anne Kennedy is even now residing in Pittsburgh or the ADV?

If you were . . . er . . . a Wholly Orthodox and Completely Traditional revisionist priest commenting on this thread at this point I’d just call you a rank liar and be done with it.

But it’s got to be the reading.

Here, I’ll list them for you, yet again:

Kenya
Uganda
Southern Cone
CANA
Pittsburgh

One could just as easily say that before 2008, supporters of Women’s Ordination in TEC were confined to the “corral” of non-FiFNA parishes and dioceses.  Eitherway, I’m not sure what the problem is.  It would seem to me that “inclusion” on this topic would require making room for MO and WO proponents, which is exactly what ACNA has done.

BTW, I do think we can get something productive from EmilyH’s input.  In addition to the current collection of networks/diocese/clusters, I propose that ACNA should also have “corrals” as administrative subunits.  It is at least as graceful a word “cluster” and might prove popular in cattle country.

I am going to weigh in on this issue yet again, but not reacting to anyone only discussing the issue at hand.  I have become very weary of the nasty arguing on SF of late, so I will just drop this hot rock and run. 

1. I agree with you, Matt Kennedy, this is a secondary issue and as such should not divide us.  We all need to keep some perspective. 

2. I have studied the Scripture in depth on this issue and have concluded to my own personal satisfaction that WO is no prohibited, nor is it explicitly endorsed in Scripture either theologically or ecclesiastically.  This is partly because, as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, ordination is not mentioned at all only people ministering.  There is, however, an abundance of precedent for women ministering in positions of authority in the Church and a few in Israel.  Then, there is the archaeological evidence!  Argue what you want about whether those were ideal conditions among God’s people, but without any theological or ecclesiastical prohibition, there is no prohibition. 

3. Headship:  I read Ephesians 5 as saying that my husband is my head.  I have no problem whatsoever with this mandate because my husband is a godly man.  I see nowhere in the Scripture where I am to submit to every man on the planet in the same way that I do my husband.  That would be entirely inappropriate!  To do so would be a violation of my marriage vows.  As far as accountability goes, we all need that.  Deacons have priests.  Priests have bishops.  Bishops have archbishops.  Archbishops have each other in Church Council.  We all need accountability.  Period!

4. Unity.  If this question of women bishops or even WO finally comes down to the unity of ACNA, I will decline to request the honor of orders.  First of all, I personally have no desire to become a bishop.  That is simply not my calling.  Too much administration for my giftset I think.  And, my husband, my head, would be uncomfortable with it.  But, regardless of my personal situation, every Christian (male or female) ought to be ready to make personal sacrifices for the good of the Body.  If now is not the right time to be ordaining women bishops in ACNA, then so be it.  If this is not the right time to be ordaining women priests or deacons in ACNA, then we have a lot more work ahead of us.  But, as a secondary issue (just like homosexuality—I think we can all agree that Scripture and soteriology is a lot more important that what people do in their bedrooms), it can wait. 

5.  If WO to any rank of the clergy is allowable by Scripture, as I and many people who have studied do believe, then the issue should be able to stand on its own Scriptural merits and not be sneaked in the back door as if by shame as it apparently was done in TEC.  If we are to discuss it anew, then let us discuss it without prejudice and entirely on Scriptural merit. 

That is my 2 cents worth on the subject.  I hope that both cents make sense and are helpful to the discussion.  If more flaming ensues, I will not be visiting this thread anymore.  We ought to be setting the example for Christian love by first showing it to one another.  Enjoy the rest of the Christmas season.  I look forward to Epiphany.

Sarah, on the the “cluster thing”, I forgot about them and for that I apologize.  And as you correctly point out:

Remember, EmilyH—unlike TEC—parishes that don’t support their affiliation in CANA, the AMiA, REC, Pittsburgh, Uganda, Kenya, and the Southern Cone may depart to another affiliation.

Well yes, so what is to keep them from jurisdiction hopping every time they disagree with their bishop (elected in the case of the TEC departing bishops and appointed for them in the clusters.) in each case or each issue where congregations, clergy etc. decide they don’t like their bishop or standing committee?  I think that was the point in the first place of why dioceses were geographical.

Moot, this will be a long posting of the first half of a piece written some years ago, to be followed by the second half in a second posting, then thirdly by an excerpt from the article NTWOTEXTS with Greek posted above. Forgive the length: this is not a small or trivial discussion in which we are engaged.

The ordained ministry, the ordained ministry of women and I Tim. 2 are subjects on which many fathoms of ink have been spilled.

This means in my book that discussion of any or all of these, like matrimony, “is not to be enterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in fear of God”. Our reading, thinking and writing need to be characterized by an appropriate tone and level.

I therefore feel bound to say that I am surprised to read so many remarks which draw a parallel between the ordination of members of my own sex and that of practising same-sex-attracted people. Sometimes the language used is intemperate to the point of offensiveness. I have been known to tease some of my ‘spikier’ friends for thinking about sex all the time; but seriously, isn’t the attempted parallel pretty insulting to exemplary Christian women? There is a parallel only politically; and none of us should be getting ordained as a political act. If the parallel is conceded, it leads straight to the familiar, sickening male homosexual ‘Me Too’ campaign (so deeply ironical in view of the essentially sexist nature of homosexual attraction).

Some of the opposition to female ordination is and always has been frankly misogynist, provoking an equally pathological reaction. Some of it thinks of Our Lord’s sex as more significant than His full humanity. Some of it represents the attitudes of a ‘closed shop’ sacerdotalism, often bolstered with half-baked psychology. Some of it reflects a mistaken reliance on Old Testament ideas of priesthood, and expresses itself in horror at the idea of a female in the “sanctuary”, at the ”altar” or getting her paws on the Elements to consecrate them. Some of it is founded on an extremely weak pneumatology, reckoning neither with the deafening silence in the New Testament from Pentecost on as to whether a female can be a Christian (and so receive the Bread and Cup), nor the distribution of spiritual gifts ‘to each one’ (m. for c. gender), nor Paul’s rejection of circumcision as the badge of Church membership. Some of it extrapolates from New Testament teaching about marriage, or worse still from one particular marriage, usually that of the thinker. Some of it says that all that is not permitted is forbidden. And some of it confuses what may have been apostolic assumption with apostolic conviction. We simply do not know, for instance, who presided over the Eucharist in the early years; though we may suppose that it was normally an elder, and normally the host of “the church in thy house”. Might Lydia have done so in her own house, sometimes when she was not on the road? Perhaps not; but if not perhaps for reasons of convention, not doctrine.

I am not at all doctrinaire about female ordination, but on the contrary desire disciplined theological thinking to be applied to the question, even thus late in the day. There was far too little thought applied to ECUSA’s decision, and what there was represented a failure to grow out of an immature ‘Silly old St. Paul’ attitude characteristic of new converts. That that won’t do has been clear to me since the late 1950s. (By the time I was married in 1962 I was determined for instance to try to obey the word about subjection, however little I understood it.) Some extraordinarily stupid things go on being said about it. Typology, for instance, rules out a feminine Redeemer and a feminine Twelve. We desperately need to disentangle ideas of equality (to my mind ontological and eternal) from ideas of headship and subjection (relational and temporary, like sex-difference itself). I am bound, however, to say that after long study, and an even longer period of several decades when I believed firmly that women cannot be presbyters because we make presbyters teach with authority, I am sure now that the character and gifting are all, the sex immaterial. As a Hellenist I believe that where, as in I Tim. 2, the man/husband and woman/wife words are found close together in a context, the presumption should be that the stress is on the marriage-relation and its central importance as an acted parable before the unbelieving world. The love of God and our response are the point, and that we should not, by our marriages, mar the image of that covenant-relation. Above all the Gospel must be commended. I cannot find it taught in the New Testament that either the world or the Church are supposed to be organised in terms of a layer of men on top of a layer of women; rather all sheep are called to turn into shepherds with all deliberate speed.

TO BE CONTINUED

Since I believe the Church has acted authoritatively and appropriately in authorizing the threefold order of ministry even as it authorizes Holy Scripture, this is what seems good to me and my teachers:
Jesus saw fit to make Mary Magdalene the apostle to the apostles.  I would be very hesitant to assume that this is incidental ... that if you or I had been there, He would have rather spoken to us.  I would methodologically assume that Jesus did not mess up.  So when He commissions Mary by command and by making her first witness to the Resurrection, I assume he is correct in doing so.  Likewise, when neither He nor the Churc include women in oversight (bishops) or elders (presbyterate), I assume methodologically this is neither random nor error.
I think we need to distinguish some sort of theology of the body together with a theology of priesthood that is more enlightening than arguing that women are incapable of doing what Jesus instructs Mary Magdalene to do.  Women share in the priesthood of all believers, develop priestly character, prophecy and are often called to perform the priestly function of introducing men to their Lord.
We must distinguish between the specific priesthood of Christ and the royal priesthood of all believers.  We must not emphasize the pulpit to the expense of the altar.  If Hebrews describes Christ as the new Adam, the eternal priest after the order of Melchezedek, our Lord Himself cites that normative relationship that is from the beginning, that man is head in priority (while not superior) and woman is his helpmeet without which neither can exist and together they have the priestly task of mediating and blessing -  *together* -  for as St. Paul says, they are one in Christ, and as one they sin and betray the priestly vocation of man.  In the unpriestly and fallen state of sin, man and women abuse one another, dominate and undermine, deconsecrate and pervert.  Again, it is not accidental that Jesus becomes incarnate as a man: the Fall is not a surprise to God although He does not intend it, does not make us for death.
In the risen Lord, the Church is a royal priesthood and Jesus’s body and bride.  Jesus is man.  Church is people.  Jesus is new Adam.  Church is new Eve.  Moreover, Christ is one.  Jesus is one with His Body, the Church.  Without Jesus as head, there is no Church, no Body of Christ.  Also, Jesus alone, without His Body, is not Christ, according to St. Augustine.  We have our being in community and there is no headship without helpmeet.  We Christians continue to live lives marred by sin because the realized headship of Christ in the Church is an eschatological reality.  We still struggle to accept God’s grace as we are commended, to live and still to die in the body, as we already spiritually live and die in Christ.  The image of Christ in the Church as the new Adam, bridegroom, head and husband is male. 
It is a teaching and a sacrament.  And of course, in the Kingdom of Heaven where God’s sovereignty is manifest,  there is no priesthood nor marriage nor eucharist for these are sacramental realities which along with the institution of the Church shall pass away when we see God face to face.  In this world, which is not yet our eternal home, Christian men and women together are joint-heirs of grace,  together in communion performing prophetic, priestly and pastoral ministries.  Women are consecrated as mothers, as wives, as virgins and enable the very possibility of the headship of the bishop.  But it is some men, not all, and no women, that are capable of embodying the iconic, sacramental ministry of Christ as new Adam, as husband, as King, and as father.
This is the teaching of my church.  We don’t use Chicken ala King for Eucharist (though God covers us with his pinions and delivers us from the snare of the fowler) for He is not a chicken nor our Mother and we don’t ordain mothers to be fathers or husbands to be wives because we believe God has made things the way they are on purpose and that purpose is valuable.

CONTD.

What MUST be avoided is a married woman’s being more prominent in church than her husband; the right relation, with his being obviously the senior partner, must be preserved; but there is nothing at all the matter, indeed it is in practice, where it comes about, both admirable and fruitful, when the two form a presbyteral team, or a part of one. That Stott was prepared to admit women to ordained team ministry under male direction surprised me very much years ago, but so to speak softened me up for the idea that female ordination might be right. I did reflect at the time that if priesting of women came about, sooner or later a female, single, widowed, or otherwise not answerable to a man, would necessarily rise to be a senior presbyter or bishop. That is a difficult thing only if you think that the famous authentein andros has something to do with men in general, and that didaskein means all authoritative churchly instruction. I am pretty certain now that Paul, with marriage never far from his mind, means that he is opposed to a MARRIED woman’s trying to function as an itinerant teacher (a use of didaskein which is I think implied in connection with the Lord a couple of times in the Synoptics), and ‘ganging up on’ her husband (i.e. with other women as in the cult of Diana). That fits well with one of the documented senses of the (extremely rare and difficult) authentein, i.e. “conspire to murder”. That he wanted women, or more probably wives, to be instructed represents a dignifying of women in the Faith, for nobody else would have thought that women should enjoy instruction beyond the domestic sphere. His exhortation that they are to live a peaceful and quiet life (the Greek has nothing to do with not speaking in public) is as much a concession to the extremely strenuous nature of the childbearing years as any kind of limitation. That the gynaecological burden was almost insupportable everybody knew. In other words he wants them to live creatively, not kill themselves or their husbands in any sense, and to avoid discrediting the Gospel with behaviour which is outré.

It cannot be irrelevant that there appear to be only two New Testament contexts where limitations are placed on the activities of Christian women, and that is where, in Corinth and Ephesus, the pagan culture was dominated by the cults of two powerful female deities enjoining respectively sexual enmeshment and sexual detachment. The women had been freed in Christ, and some had taken the bit of their new-found freedom between their teeth and had to be reined in. But nobody was starting with the assumption that a main task of Christian leadership was to keep the women down. It was rather to see that all glorified the Lord. If there was an assumption about the relations between the sexes, it was that outside marriage those must be completely asexual at all times.

I have myself passed through many stages in my Christian thinking, in this as in other matters. I have come a very long way since my first year at Cambridge (1957-8), when a certain well-known ‘liberal’ English bishop and I were officers together in the SCM. I had to grow up plenty as an ambitious, combative, fluent new convert. Unchecked I might have turned into something really poisonous, an ecclesiastical animal with all the skills and none of what I really needed. I argued hotly with my father, who was from 1937 until the early 70s a parochial clergyman, about ordination and why I couldn’t have it. I was reading, first the Classical Tripos, then two parts of the Theological Tripos, with much more success than the average ordinand. I was becoming much more like my father, as I am to my spouse, than to most of my own sex. The ache to follow in his footsteps professionally as I had reproduced the pattern of his studies was only assuaged by marriage to an already distinguished layman. Since then there has almost never been a time when my not being in orders has stopped me from doing anything for God that I really felt obliged to do. Ordination for me has not mattered at all for well over half my life now: the only impulse towards it has come from wholly unspiritual reactions on my part to certain instances of clerical pride and encroachment quite as insulting to my spouse’s lay priesthood, and to his priesthood in our home, as to me. His priesthood as a Christian husband is a wholly positive thing for me, protecting me like a firewall from the sometimes inordinate demands of other women’s husbands, not to mention other women. Without it a zealous Christian woman like me would frequently feel herself to be torn into as many pieces as there were (older) males in her church circle. I say “older” advisedly, having reached that age when the clergy like the policemen get younger all the time. It is liberating to understand that while I must of course practise normal mutual respect, and respect for respectable leaders, according to the New Testament I have to please only one man. I recognise however that for numbers of women, married or single, their ordination is or has been a central concern. I cannot dismiss all these women as unspiritual, unscriptural, ambitious or perverted. Incidentally in the Canadian diocese which I know best, as in many dioceses, parishes greatly prefer at least certain ordained females to many of the men keen to draw church salaries. In June at the Essentials Conference in Toronto, such women received a public pledge that there would be a role as well as a place for them in a renewed Anglicanism.

My father was an old-style ‘one-man-band’ kind of clergyman in the Church of England; yet I think that given time and experience, for instance an encounter with someone like our Bishop Victoria Matthews, an old-fashioned Anglo-Catholic of whom many of her clergy say that she’s the best bishop they’ve ever had, he would have moved to accept and rejoice in female colleagues in orders. Certainly my mother (for they were, together, much more than the sum of their parts) worked as a presbyter in practice alongside him all their joint life. It seems to me now an anomaly that she was not at least deaconed after their marriage; although in the 1930s it never crossed either of their minds, she could well have gone to Ridley Hall and been priested too.

Moot, this will be a long posting of the first half of a piece written some years ago, to be followed by the second half in a second posting,

Thank you, Dr. Turner.  I look forward to your comments. 

Forgive the length: this is not a small or trivial discussion in which we are engaged.

I know. 

I therefore feel bound to say that I am surprised to read so many remarks which draw a parallel between the ordination of members of my own sex and that of practising same-sex-attracted people.

I would place the parallel between toleration of same-sex “sex” and WO.  Indeed, I have read “Christian” defenses of homosexuality that cite WO as a basis for their arguement (in for a penny, etc). 

isn’t the attempted parallel pretty insulting to exemplary Christian women?

WO / HO.. yes, definitely insulting.

Some of the opposition to female ordination is and always has been frankly misogynist,

Can you give examples?  I agree that anti-WO arguments can be misogynist in character, but my experience is that the misogyny is often a perception.  And of course, debates like this sometimes get hot, having the unfortunate effect of encouraging these perceptions.

Typology, for instance, rules out a feminine Redeemer and a feminine Twelve.

Paradoxically (and perhaps, to my disadvantage), I actually disagree slightly with you here on typology.  Proverbs 8, for example, is “Lady Wisdom” encouraging us to follow her teachings;  while v 22-31 give us a clue to the identity of the speaker.  1 Cor 1:24 confirms to my mind that Christ is in fact this selfsame “wisdom of God.” 

Abigail in 1 Sam 25 may also be a type of Christ (v 24).  This has Double Imputation written all over it, imho. 

Then too, there is Matt 23:37, using the hen (feminine) imagery to illustrate Christ’s feelings towards Jerusalem.

Dr. Turner,

Thank you again.  I’ve read your comments (including the last link in your initial post) and will re-read them to make sure I haven’t missed anything. 

Anyhow.. What is your take on 1 Tim 2, in light of 1 Tim 3?  I’ve suspected for some time that the husband / priest ‘firewall’ for marriage is also a basis for the special offices in the Church, given the proximity of chapters 2 and 3.  Is there an “in light of” relationship, in your professional opinion?.

Here is the promised passage (on I Tim. 3:1, Tit. 1:5), shorn of footnotes, from another article of mine. I had another of my increasingly frequent senior moments, and forgot where exactly I wrote this. The source is actually my MOORE ARTICLE CRITIQUE. It starts with a quotation from Dr. Moore.

“Paul’s teaching in the Pastoral Epistles that deacons and presbyters (or episcopoi, bishops) should be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:5) is cited as implying an exclusively male ministry. But this passage more likely implies that no unmarried (or polygamous) men should be advanced to leadership within the Church. Or it could mean that divorced (and remarried) men should not be raised up as leaders to the flock. Which of these possibilities is the correct one remains open to debate, but Paul’s concern here is not about women’s roles. Rather, his (strikingly contemporary) concern is to hold up as leaders men whose sexual moral standards reflect well on the Church.”

Yes, this is sound. Here are the texts:–

I Tim. 3:1 πιστὸς ὁ λόγος. 
  Εἴ τις ἐπισκοπῆς ὀρέγεται, καλοῦ ἔργου ἐπιθυμεῖ.  2 δεῖ οὖν τὸν ἐπίσκοπον ἀνεπίλημπτον εἴναι, μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, νηφάλιον σώφρονα κόσμιον φιλόξενον  διδακτικόν, 3 μὴ πάροινον μὴ πλήκτην, ἀλλὰ ἐπιεικῆ ἄμαχον ἀφιλάργυρον, 4 τοῦ ἰδίου οἴκου καλῶς προϊστάμενον, τέκνα ἔχοντα ἐν ὑποταγῇ, μετὰ πάσης σεμνότητος (5 εἰ δέ τις τοῦ ἰδίου οἴκου προστῆναι οὐκ οἶδεν, πῶς ἐκκλησίας θεοῦ ἐπιμελήσεται), 6 μὴ νεόφυτον, ἵνα μὴ τυφωθεὶς εἰς κρίμα ἐμπέσῃ τοῦ διαβόλου.  7 δεῖ δὲ καὶ μαρτυρίαν καλὴν ἔχειν ἀπὸ τῶν ἔξωθεν, ἵνα μὴ εἰς ὀνειδισμὸν ἐμπέσῃ καὶ παγίδα τοῦ διαβόλου. 
  8 Διακόνους ὡσαύτως σεμνούς, μὴ διλόγους, μὴ οἴνῳ πολλῷ προσέχοντας, μὴ αἰσχροκερδεῖς, 9 ἔχοντας τὸ μυστήριον τῆς πίστεως ἐν καθαρᾷ συνειδήσει.  10 καὶ οὗτοι δὲ δοκιμαζέσθωσαν πρῶτον, εἴτα διακονείτωσαν
ἀνέγκλητοι ὄντες.  11 γυναῖκας ὡσαύτως σεμνάς, μὴ διαβόλους, νηφαλίους, πιστὰς ἐν πᾶσιν.  12 διάκονοι ἔστωσαν μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρες, τέκνων καλῶς προϊστάμενοι καὶ τῶν ἰδίων οἴκων.  13 οἱ γὰρ καλῶς διακονήσαντες βαθμὸν ἑαυτοῖς καλὸν περιποιοῦνται καὶ πολλὴν παρρησίαν ἐν πίστει τῇ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. 

3:1 The saying is true: if anyone aspires to the office of bishop he desires a noble task.
2 Now a bishop must (necessarily) be beyond reproach, a one-woman man, sober, sensible, respectable, hospitable, a sound teacher,
3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not combative, (and) not a lover of money.
4 He must manage his own family well, keeping his children under control and respectful in every way:
5 if someone does not know how to manage his own family, how is he going to take care of God’s church?
6 He must not be a new convert, or he may get puffed up and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
7 Moreover, he must enjoy a good reputation with outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace and one of the devil’s traps.
8 Deacons similarly must be serious, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not greedy for money;
9 they must hold fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
10 And let them too first be tested; then, if they have been found blameless, let them serve as deacons.
11 Women similarly must be serious, not slanderers, but sober, reliable in all things.
12 Let deacons be one-woman men, and let them manage their children and their families well;
13 for those who serve well as deacons acquire good standing for themselves and great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

Titus 1:5 Τούτου χάριν ἀπέλιπόν σε ἐν Κρήτῃ, ἵνα τὰ λείποντα ἐπιδιορθώσῃ καὶ καταστήσῃς κατὰ πόλιν πρεσβυτέρους, ὡς ἐγώ σοι διεταξάμην, 6 εἴ τίς ἐστιν ἀνέγκλητος, μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἀνήρ, τέκνα ἔχων πιστά, μὴ ἐν κατηγορίᾳ ἀσωτίας ἢ ἀνυπότακτα.  7 δεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἐπίσκοπον ἀνέγκλητον εἴναι ὡς θεοῦ οἰκονόμον, μὴ αὐθάδη, μὴ ὀργίλον, μὴ πάροινον, μὴ πλήκτην, μὴ αἰσχροκερδῆ, 8 ἀλλὰ φιλόξενον φιλάγαθον σώφρονα δίκαιον ὅσιον ἐγκρατῆ, 9 ἀντεχόμενον τοῦ κατὰ τὴν διδαχὴν πιστοῦ λόγου, ἵνα δυνατὸς ᾖ καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἐν τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ καὶ τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας ἐλέγχειν. 
1:5 I left you behind in Crete for this purpose, so that you should organise what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you:
6 Assuming that (you appoint) someone who is beyond reproach, a one-woman man, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery nor out of control.
7 For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be beyond reproach; he must not be wilful or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for money;
8 but he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, sensible, upright, devout, and self-controlled.
9 He must have a firm grasp of the Word that is trustworthy in accordance with the Teaching, so that he may be capable both of preaching with sound doctrine and of confuting those who contradict it.

There is no mention of physical ordination here, whether or not specifically signalled by the laying-on of hands. Certainly we cannot exclude it: we see from I Tim. 4:14 that Timothy had received a particular charism by the laying-on of hands of the eldership, and from II Cor. 8:19 that Titus was ordained in this sense by the churches for a particular task. Nor can we exclude the possibility that physical ordination was conferred by Timothy and Titus upon those who met the Apostolic criteria. At I Tim. 5:22 Timothy is exhorted Χεῖρας ταχέως μηδενὶ  ἐπιτίθει μηδὲ κοινώνει ἁμαρτίαις ἀλλοτρίαις, as though he were free to lay hands on individuals, just needed to do it with discrimination. I incline to think that ordination in the technical sense of χειροτονία  was probably routine even thus early (cf. Acts 14:23), not as conferring ex opere operato the gifts and graces which were required for church leadership, but as recognition of their presence in an individual. We cannot conclude that ordination was a once-only procedure, like baptism. I believe too that there was much flexibility about the work which an individual might be led to do. That said, though the lists of personal qualities in I Tim. and Titus are not identical, they do not signal flexibility where character and spirituality are concerned.

I do not conceal my conviction that if more of the explicit Apostolic criteria for church office were applied currently au pied de la letter, we with our three orders should be infinitely better off. No callow youths, for instance, would even get deaconed. I should greatly prefer an all-male ordained ministry which met these standards to a partly female which ignored them. However, we should have to eschew for consistency’s sake all young single men, all celibates, all widowers, all the childless, and very many of those with children, whether they were too young to profess the faith, or unbelieving, or otherwise out of hand. Or can we tease out the essential principles, and leave aside certain of the details? I have very great difficulty with any church polity which presses only some of what is explicit, while insisting on the matter of maleness, which is implicit only. The Apostle does not state in so many words that the suitable individual must be an ἀνήρ.  Polyandry was not an option for a woman in that society. For good or ill, her options were distinctly limited: there was much mischief which she could not get up to. Serial polygamy is an evil, with others, which cannot be tolerated in deacons/elders/bishops, if we are to be true to the core of this teaching. Can chaste and godly femininity?

#189, we also need to seperate headship from subjugation.  The former is God’s intent in Creation.  Misogyny is, of course, a manifestation of spiritual illness.  The restoration of man (anthropos) to our true nature is not a making same of differences.  We need to be careful that, in our right rejection of domination and subjugation, we do not make a misogynist claim of Paul, nor Jesus, nor the Gospel.  Humility on all our parts is a necessary part of the healing of that which is torn between us.  Who cannot grieve and in fact suffer with women?  And, yes, also with men.  We who are drawn to the Light draw apart from the shadows where men systematically, diabolically labor to harm women and themselves.  The sexual slavery trade sadly prevalent throughout the world today, “honor killings”, more common rape and the feeding on fear and pain that comes with possession, and dehumanizing of all sorts reminds us of the reality of hell and the possibility of our own damnation.  I personally think it is usually unhelpful to emphasize fear of punishment in order to draw us to God - but it should not be forgotten.  Too much attention and none at all are both to our detriment.  Discernment is necessary.  I know a woman that was given, without proper discernment, a burden to pray for such victims for a time, and depression overwhelmed her mind.  In the end it was only the rather barbaric practice of electroshock which throws everything of the personality up in the air to land as it might that restored her to herself.  We are not all called to carry such burdens though we share with Christ in His redemptive suffering.  Perhaps she bore something of Mary’s suffering at the Crucifixion and it is I who bear that confessed burden for asking her to be so harrowed.  God forgives but harm done is harm done.  I find intention is not quite as important as I would make it.  It broke my heart to see her.  “Behold, your mother.”  Little consolation in that but I do understand better now all the tragic imagery of Mary I find so uncomfortable in Roman Catholic convents I have visited.  I can’t quite pass it off as bad art and over-focus on the Crucifixion to the expense of the Resurrection these days.

However, we should have to eschew for consistency’s sake all young single men, all celibates, all widowers, all the childless, and very many of those with children, whether they were too young to profess the faith, or unbelieving, or otherwise out of hand. Or can we tease out the essential principles, and leave aside certain of the details?

I’ve participated in small-group leadership training, led by a fairly open-minded (i.e., towards WO) yet orthodox Reformed / charismatic pastor.  He had us study this text for one of the sessions, and he applied it to the tendency of some clergy to sacrifice their families for their ministries.  We all know of the tendency (e.g.,) for “PK’s” (pastor’s kids) to be either very good, or very bad.  I, as an anti- and he, as a pro-, agree on the application.

RE: “No callow youths, for instance, would even get deaconed. I should greatly prefer an all-male ordained ministry which met these standards to a partly female which ignored them. However, we should have to eschew for consistency’s sake all young single men, all celibates, all widowers, all the childless, and very many of those with children, whether they were too young to profess the faith, or unbelieving, or otherwise out of hand.”

Dr. Turner, how do we know that consistency was precisely what the author intended, and that furthermore he really meant a husband—male being assumed as women were to keep silence in the service anyway.

monologistos (#196)

#189, we also need to seperate headship from subjugation.

She does.  C.f., #191, third pp:

His priesthood as a Christian husband is a wholly positive thing for me, protecting me like a firewall from the sometimes inordinate demands of other women’s husbands, not to mention other women.

Moot, the basic reason why the “attempted parallel” is insulting is that chastity, embodied in celibacy and faithful monogamous marriage, is a central, non-negotiable biblical and Christian value. Let someone ‘do a Gagnon’ on MO, ‘male headship’ etc., and I shall withdraw my remarks.

It’s a mark of the success of the whole immoralist offensive that women have been used cynically as a stalking-horse and so few have noticed the manoeuvre.

Will post about I Tim. 2 ASAP. This will be a quotation from my first article, that on NTWOTEXTS.

Sarah, I was talking about the consistency of our obedience, not of the Apostolic intention.

Can you read my NTWOTEXTS article, or enough of it to make out the argument about the I Cor. 14 passage? In the I Cor. 11 passage the Apostle is concerned about right attire when the females, or perhaps the married women, “pray and prophesy”. It fits both the whole large context as well as the natural meaning of the Greek that he wants the women, in the later passage, to pipe down, not shut up completely.

Dr Turner writes:

However, we should have to eschew for consistency’s sake all young single men, all celibates, all widowers, all the childless, and very many of those with children, whether they were too young to profess the faith, or unbelieving, or otherwise out of hand.

Earlier in #195, you speculated that one possible meaning of Paul’s reference to “husband of one wife” might mean a requirement of marriage.  Here, you proceed as if all possibilities for the phrase are established and thus celibates ruled out.  It is pretty simple to look at the actual practice of the Church and see what is meant is monogamy in marriage, chastity in celibacy.  Your difficulties arize because you do not seem in this analysis to examine what the Church says and does.  At the Council of Nicea, it was argued that bishops should be unmarried and one fellow countered that if Peter was married, so could bishops be.  Now, if you have some insisting that ALL bishops should be unmarried, how can it be that Holy Scripture should say that NO bishop can marry.  These men were certainly aware of the letters of Paul at this time.  Deafening silence regarding ordination of women to headship roles could simply be that there was none or next to none and certainly isn’t evidence for it’s acceptance.  Nor does exception to the rule necessarily constitute the overthrow or absence of the rule.  I don’t myself understand the apostles to be the first diocesan bishops ... I think the earlier interesting remarks by Bluenarrative to be a bit overly stated in that the existence of geographical “dioceses” based on Roman administrative zoning does not require a developed or received understanding of sacramental orders by all Christians everywhere at that time.  Perhaps he doesn’t make that claim.  Anyway, my point is that there is an important sense in which the Church treats the apostles and the bishops who inherit the apostolic authority and vision differently.  The first are not technically sacramental.  The later are.  But then perhaps this distinction requires acknowledgment that the Church has authorized a theology of sacrament, even as Holy Scripture and the threefold orders.  I accept the seven Ecumenical Councils as authoritative and I expect that the later decisions on the rightness of making and venerating icons would have a significant part in understanding of sacrament.  FWIW, I also see the Levitical priesthood as a type for Christ’s priesthood.  (By type I mean like Uriah the Hittite or Adam’s son, Able, are primative types for Jesus ... without implying all the Jungian or Platonic baggage that goes along with archetypes).  Eastern Orthodox vestments are in part modeled on the Levitical robe.  I would also mention in this context that the apostles in Jerusalem continued to worship in the Temple until its destruction.  The Temple, now understood as the Body of Christ and bound to no one geographical place or time, was very important to early Christians and the image of the priest standing at the altar of holocaust within the temple offering intercession for the people is mentioned, off the top of my head, in Origin’s Homily on Leviticus.  We should not think that the early Christians have no religion or customs and that ideas about consecration must be invented out of whole cloth.  In fact, the sacramental rites are Christian adaptations of Jewish rituals.  It may be that the footwashing was not understood by Christians as ordination or sacrament precisely because there was no (honorable) Jewish ritual to match.  Feet are considered dirty and low and so it goes.

I Tim. 2:1 First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men,
2 for kings and all who are in high places, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.
3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour,
4 who desires that all men be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
5 For there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus,
6 who gave himself a ransom for all
(this was attested at the right time).
7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
8 What I want, then, is that in every place the men should be praying, lifting up hands that are holy, without anger or argument;
9 [and] similarly that the women should be dressing themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes,
10 but with good works, as is appropriate to women who profess a reverence for God.
11 Let a (married) woman be learning in peace and quiet with complete submission.
12 To be teaching is something which I permit to no (married) woman, nor do I permit her to be domineering over her husband; what I do permit is for her to enjoy peace and quiet.
13 For Adam was formed first, and afterwards Eve;
14 and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they (women) continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

Again I quote the larger context, which is one of concern for Christian life and witness leading to the unhindered spread of the Gospel. That the Apostle was greatly exercised about truth, and that error should not be spread in its place, is clear from both Letters to Timothy, as well as from that to Titus. Ideas of all sorts, we know, were constantly spread by itinerant teachers, who represented among other things the eclectic and syncretistic ‘pop’ culture of the day. There are clear traces throughout the Pauline letters, as in the Acts, of a pattern whereby Christian converts were made in a place, a community was established, and more or less immediately some proceeded to intrude false teaching and distortion, whether from the Jewish or the pagan side. Paul always taught that the Gospel must be commended by the lives, including the family lives and the communal church lives, of believers. All the evidence is that after a church was founded this kind of witness, much more certainly than the verbal kind, was the normal means by which the Gospel spread.

Some have held that vv. 8-10 are about the conduct of worship. I see no evidence for that view. Paul wants the men and the women to eschew their characteristic vices, dishonesty in business, bad temper and quarrelsomeness on the one hand, and a light-minded concentration on physical appearance, expensive in time and money, on the other. Each aberration involved a split between ethics and faith, religiosity rather than religion. I think it quite unlikely that Paul would have wanted converts to behave better in church than out of it; and there is no other particular indication that the context is worship.

Most commentators read these commands as being for all men and all women. It is possible, but not probable, that the call is to married men and married women. We cannot assume that there was no distinction, or a distinction without a difference, in the case of either sex. In Corinth the distinction was plain. However, in v. 11 ff. a probable switch to married people, signalled by the change of number to the singular, the close juxtaposition of the words for man and woman, and the promise of salvation (by which I believe one must understand sanctification) through one’s fulfilling of the female biological rôle, appear to narrow down the reference to married women.

If we read the prohibition in v. 12 of a wife/woman’s teaching as absolute, then we must conclude that the instruction at this point is of local or temporary application only. The weight of the New Testament evidence is that women, married or single, were exhorted to teach, at least in some sense or senses, and did teach. Worship was by no means the only, or the chief, context, for such work. See these articles:–

Teach
Teacher

Furthermore, there is no sign that the Apostle thought of the teaching gift, or indeed any of the gifts, as confined to one sex. We cannot assume that what he means here is the teaching of men, as opposed to women and children: no object, either of the person or the thing taught, is expressed. If the instruction is more than local and temporary, we need to find some sense which all believers could, perhaps still can, understand and obey. I am wholly committed to the view that what the Apostle wrote was both sensible and consistent with what he wrote elsewhere. I have suggested ‘be teaching with authority’ as one such sense. Possibly, if this is right, we have not had anybody who has taught in exactly that sense since the death of all the Apostles. It has certainly not been apparent to me that ordination or consecration in itself confers on either sex either the ability or the authority to teach like that.

For a long time I asked myself whether Paul was addressing the very well-known fact that a man must be quite advanced spiritually before he is ready to learn from a woman, whether his wife or another. Wise and spiritually fruitful women will I think consider that possibility before they agree to preach publicly in certain settings, that the Word be not hindered.

I suggested in my initial posting that some such sense as ‘be gadding about teaching’ is the meaning. I still think that plausible in the social context, but it is only an educated guess.

αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός is very difficult, and much disputed. The difficulty about the verb is essentially that while we have some documentation, Classical and post-Classical, there is not enough to make the semantic range and development clear. There are no other biblical cases. There is a quite positive sense ‘create, originate’, a neutral to negative sense ‘be in authority over, boss about’ and the negative ‘conspire to commit murder’. The genitive, with which not all commentators come to terms, is not super-helpful in context. It cannot be made to mean any old thing; but there are still several possibilities. The second, neutral-to-negative, sense of αὐθεντεῖν may be right; but in the particular social context I have thought it plausible to try to combine the wholly positive and the wholly negative senses, arriving at a blended sense, a prohibition of the sort of behaviour which would have been enjoined on married women in the cult of Diana/Artemis. That is how I arrived at my initial suggestion. Again it is tentative, and may never be taken up in reputable translations. What is however plain from the context is that there is no reference here to a wrong relation between all women and all men, in or out of church.

It is a well-known difficulty when we read Apostolic injunctions addressed to particular situations that we are hearing only one side of the conversation. Paul’s very emphatic statement here about the order of creation and who first went wrong is not made in a cultural vacuum. It has been plausibly suggested that the context is extreme Gnostic teaching, to the effect that woman was created first and was essentially the spiritual and enlightened one. The priority of the male in creation is not the only lesson by any means that the Lord Jesus and St. Paul draw from Gen. 2. The account of woman’s creation ‘out of’ man, the pregnant ‘… and brought her to the man’, and the man’s response in what has been called the first love-song, have other if not dissonant meanings. In the current context, however, Paul is on this view using Gen. 2-3 polemically, and saying in effect, “But Scripture teaches…”.  His method is as so often Rabbinic: more than one meaning may be drawn from one passage of Scripture.

In v. 15, sanctification is closely tied to obedience in the way most obvious for a (married) woman, i.e. an acceptance that there are priorities for a married woman which may not be set aside in favour of some idea of spirituality quite detached from biological reality. Then as now it was evidently possible to cultivate a ‘Christian’ spirituality which was both unrealistic and immoral. Motherhood is normal, husbands and children may not be neglected by women who hope to be saved at the last. The text emphatically does NOT mean that all Christian women must marry. Nor does it mean that the only possible place for a young woman is to be “pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen”. ‘Careers for women’ are not ruled out.

Dr. Turner,

Moot, the basic reason why the “attempted parallel” is insulting is that chastity, embodied in celibacy and faithful monogamous marriage, is a central, non-negotiable biblical and Christian value. Let someone ‘do a Gagnon’ on MO, ‘male headship’ etc., and I shall withdraw my remarks.

Agree (again), regarding the supposed parallel between HO and WO.  Couldn’t agree more, actually.

That said, I do find a parallel between the dispensing of the principal of male clergy exclusvely possessing authority over male laity, and the toleration of same-sex “sex.”  Both the male headship ‘firewall’ and our hetero- sexuality are creational distinctives.  Toss one out, and we’re guilty of “teas(ing) out the essential principles, and leav(ing) aside certain of the details..”

This is in no way a parallel between womanhood found at Creation with an aberrant sexuality found after the Fall.

#199, Moot, my point is that mentioning headship and subjugation side by side as if a natural pair can be just as problematic as mentioning WO and GO together as if a natural pair.  It seems to me to trade on wounded feelings which are not good arguments for or against WO.

#205 monologistos ,

I see your point now.

Among all the other reasons VGR’s consecration bothered me is that he thought his desire/right/need to be a bishop was more important than the unity of the Episcopal/Anglican church.  Not becoming a Bishop seems a small price to pay for a united Church.

Ordination is a privilege.  Is it more important to ordain those who feel called, if there is a question if they should be?  Or is it more important to ordain all those who feel called even if there is a question if they should be?  It seems that giving up the privilege of WO is a small price to pay for a unified province. 

In recognition of this possible sacrifice (if WO is wrong, there is no sacrifice), I think another formal way of recognizing and making use of women’s Gifts should be established as has been discussed earlier.

Dr. Turner,

Your arguments are well founded and clearly involve scholarly research and much time and thought. Thank you for such a detailed exposition of the Scriptures which hopefully will help to clarify why there is no clear prohibition or affirmation of Women’s ordination in Scripture!

Ron Baird+

Monologistos, I am trying to stick to my brief within the context of this (Anglican) thread.

I have not mentioned any deafening silence with regard to leadership in the early Church. I could say that we haven’t the names or any other details of any presbyters to speak of, and that Rom. 16 shows us a happy fruitful co-operation and collaboration in which neither sex nor orders are of any importance at all. But my reference was to the fact that whereas the young Church came near to foundering on the question, “Can a gentile be a Christian? Can a gentile POSSIBLY be a Christian?”, the full membership of the largest group of people who could never be full Jews is never discussed at all. Instead two texts are invoked by Peter, both stating God’s intention in this matter and assuming its fulfilment.

The Gentile question is the Great Row which echoes through the pages of the NT. The ab initio absence of the woman question is what should astonish us.

Dr. Turner, I’d like to chime in and thank you as well.  It always makes my day when I see you posting here.

#209 IMO the debate is clearly not over whether Gentiles can be followers of Jesus - indeed it’s extraordinary that is not debated at all within the NT -  but over whether and how Gentile followers of Jesus (male and female) should keep the Law.

I don’t understand your comment about women. Do we see a debate within first century Judaism about whether women can inherit the blessings of the covenant or be obedient to the law as it applies to them?

Monologistos, I am trying to stick to my brief within the context of this(Anglican) thread.

If only Anglican theology is your concern here, that’s a rather different topic from speculating on the intentions of early Christians who were not Anglican at all.  I don’t mean to be rude or snippy but to speak plainly.  I’m not a scholar but only one who prays.  I guess one of the things that strikes me about quite a few of your points is that you seem to view them through an unfamiliar lens from the Episcopalian tradition with which I am accustomed or the Eastern Orthodox tradition.  I find your thinking interesting and I am glad rather than envious for your ability to work directly with the languages at hand.  For my small part, thank you for your contributions here and your work elsewhere.

Some silences simply pertain to family business.  Ignatius of Antioch believed in being silent about the Theotokos before non-Christians.p>
God bless and good night.

Let someone ‘do a Gagnon’ on MO, ‘male headship’ etc., and I shall withdraw my remarks.

Could someone please explain this reference to me?  Thanks —Kate

I’ve stopped using Mrs. Falstaff as a pen name, but I can’t get into my account to change it, as I have forgotten my original password. Could a moderator help me please?  Thanks!

Dr. Turner,

Allow me to express my appreciation as well, for your many years of excellence in interpretation of ancient languages, and the thought you have put into these issues.  While not (yet?..) convinced on this particular issue, I do feel priveleged to be on the same side as you on other very important issues, and on the critically important ones as well. 

Blessings, and good night
- Moot

monologistos, it was certainly not my intention to be at all discourteous to you or anyone. I had however thought that the main direction of this thread was to discern what is scriptural in this matter in regard to ACNA. It is not Anglican to flout Scripture; rather we are bound to work as hard as anyone to understand what it means and apply it. That is the tradition that I come out of.

Dr Turner,
Would you please elaborate on the idea that women are being used as a “stalking-horse”. Or if you have already explained that, please direct me to that prior writing.

driver8, if by “followers of Jesus” you mean members of the people of God, the new Israel, the Gentile question permeates virtually every NT document, and appears to have supplied the main impulse for the writing of Romans and Galatians. NT references to “the nations” and “all the nations” are to the Gentiles in virtually every case. Once you see it, you can’t miss it!

Were women full members of Israel in any branch of Judaism?

1928 PB Loyalist, “Persistently the baptising of what is essentially the vice of a powerful group of men has been represented as a justice issue, the ordination of members of my own sex, however exemplary, being used, most offensively, as a stalking-horse.”

From my first letter to our Canadian HoB.

Emily H, post 188:

“so what is to keep them from jurisdiction hopping every time they disagree with their bishop”

It seems to me that the thing that has kept them from “jurisdiction hopping” in the past (even if they didn’t like their bishop) is that (in the past) most bishops have attempted to defend or at least honor the Christian faith that we have received through Scripture.

Once you start to revise the Word of God, as proclaimed in Scripture, you loosen the glue that holds us together.

#218 Yes - the question of whether and how they keep the Law. Perhaps we are misunderstanding each other. I take the debates around Gentiles not to be about whether they could become part of God’s covenant people - which isn’t debated at all - but whether they needed to cease being Gentiles in order to do so (ie whether God demanded the nations to keep the Law as ioudaioi). So the discussion in Acts 10 & 15, Galatians & Romans focuses on the extent to which Gentiles should keep the Law.

What do you mean by full member? Could women keep the Law. Yes. Could they inherit the blessings of the Covenant with Israel. Yes. Could they be righteous. Yes. Could they be models of faith (as in Maccabees). Yes. Is it something other than those sorts of things, that you want to define as <i>full<> membership.

Discernment is necessary.  I know a woman that was given, without proper discernment, a burden to pray for such victims for a time, and depression overwhelmed her mind.  In the end it was only the rather barbaric practice of electroshock which throws everything of the personality up in the air to land as it might that restored her to herself.  We are not all called to carry such burdens though we share with Christ in His redemptive suffering.  Perhaps she bore something of Mary’s suffering at the Crucifixion and it is I who bear that confessed burden for asking her to be so harrowed.

As someone who has suffered from clinical depression all my adult life (thankfully, treated for the last ten years or so), I really don’t think that you should blame yourself.  Your request may have been a trigger, it may not have been - I would be surprised if it was the only trigger, in any event.  In my experience the illness doesn’t work that way, she may well have gotten ill in any event. Please don’t blame yourself.

Mrs. Falstaff (#214),

Rob Gagnon is a polemicist who is the bane of the LGBT crowd.  You’ll find him cited here on SF by many a commenter.  http://www.robgagnon.net/

I believe Dr. Turner is arguing that there were someone who validly argued against male headship or male-only ordination from the texts she is talking about, she would withdraw her pro-WO arguments. 

To me, it sounds like a submarine captain offering to withdraw if the enemy ship captain would scuttle his own ship.  I’ll have to double-check to make certain, though. 

Having now read Dr. Turner’s letter to the Canadian HofB,  and hopefully not misunderstanding, she seems to be speaking out of the “political” context I noted above.  A convention, a resolution rammed through when promises of both safe haven and solid education and reflection went missing.  This time, the left majority running rough-shod over the right.  “Democracies” do this all the time.

Good to know that the status of women vis-a-vis leadership positions in the ACNA is a “second-order” theological issue. 

How unfortunate for any members of this church.

I am sad for the women priests and bishops who sincerely believe themselves called to God’s work in this way and who are faithful servants and wish only to be allowed to serve.

For those who entered the ministry concerned about “leadership positions” and “access to power,” I have no sympathy. (Nor do I have any appreciation or sympathy for men who had the same motivation.) I am also sad for those who seem to think that the roles of priest and bishop are all about power and who believe that the only way a woman can significantly serve the church is through the priesthood. Any parish I have ever been in would immediately give the lie to this notion, and I doubt it’s much different at the diocesan level. Did Mother Teresa have no impact? Did her work not matter? Was it less important than that of a parish priest or a bishop?

I don’t think anyone here would argue that women are fully capable of inheriting the promise, of receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit and contributing in just as meaningful a way to the Church as men.  The argument seems to be that unless the Church also ordains women, that it denies them full membership in whatever sense.  Dr. Turner in one place uses the term “full membership” with regards to women in Israel.  Unfortunately, this same argument is advanced by the homosexual movement and it is this latter effort by homosexuals and their supporters that women have to thank for this comparison, from where I stand.  That’s not to say that militants on the right who resist both might not be motivated to trade upon this or to abuse one group in hopes of defending another.  Such is polemic.For myself, I am unpersuaded by the full membership argument if that is all there is to it.  If so, I should be made a bishop (God forbid!) that I might have full membership.  Why divide it according to sex?  And I would mention a non-theological observation I have made of men and women seeking and obtaining ordination.  So many of us seek to escape our isolation in some way yet by obtaining our desires we find ourselves all the more isolated.  We seek acceptance to the magic circle and find that vocational discernment never ends ... furthermore, having a dozen woman priests for every job opening argues against such a practice of answering calls.Acceptance to the circle of love is not a priviledge but a gift of love.  If we believe we can only serve and be full members of the “laity” by leaving it, I wonder what sense is in that.From time to time, some local church will become enamoured with some tradition that is less than genuine and to some theology that is less that helpful.  I’m thinking of the Russian True Believers who wished to cross themselves with two fingers rather than three.  It was an error of course to use the power of the state to kill them all but equally it was an error to cling to some transitory thing as if it was Scripture itself.  I think that WO is like this ... that it is not helpful or necessary, and that it should be allowed to come to an end gently, with respect and even honor for those whom your church as indeed put in these positions.  If we are hearing and answering to the workings of the Holy Spirit in our community, calling will be taken care of.  However, it is time that Anglicanism walk the talk.  If they will insist on a theology of priesthood that excludes women, it darned better be ready to articulate exactly why that is.  If that means listening to the voices of the Fathers of the Church as well as Holy Scripture, it is past time to start listening.  There are allies yet in the world who would remind you of what the Church has always known.

#222, yes, there are other circumstances.  Also, I do not imagine that I am so important that I am capable of bearing the sins of the world!  I take it as medicine and look to our good Lord.  I seek to honor this woman as I would my own mother, remembering her in my prayers and seeking table fellowship of the common sort from time to time.  She is a teacher in the church, a holy woman, and now quite elderly.  I would that God would so order things that our loved ones might not suffer so but who is to say what we should become without such burdens?  Humility is not an easy thing for me.  If I were God-like as I might imagine it, I might wipe out mosquitoes and so collapse the entire ecology of earth.  It might be that mosquitoes are the true “spotted owl” indicator and lynchpin of a healthy environment!

Humility is not an easy thing for me.  If I were God-like as I might imagine it, I might wipe out mosquitoes and so collapse the entire ecology of earth.  It might be that mosquitoes are the true “spotted owl” indicator and lynchpin of a healthy environment!

I picked up a fridge magnet last summer that says “God didn’t create anything useless - but mosquitoes come close!”  Just be thankful that you don’t live in Winnipeg!

In v. 15, sanctification is closely tied to obedience in the way most obvious for a (married) woman, i.e. an acceptance that there are priorities for a married woman which may not be set aside in favour of some idea of spirituality quite detached from biological reality. Then as now it was evidently possible to cultivate a ‘Christian’ spirituality which was both unrealistic and immoral. Motherhood is normal, husbands and children may not be neglected by women who hope to be saved at the last. The text emphatically does NOT mean that all Christian women must marry. Nor does it mean that the only possible place for a young woman is to be “pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen”. ‘Careers for women’ are not ruled out.

“For Adam was first formed, then Eve;
And Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression:
But she shall be saved through her child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.”  1 Tim 2:13-15 (NAS)

I guess I don’t find the sanctification in v15, in light of the historical arguments put forth in v 13 & 14.  I remember one time I was speaking to a new grandmother, and she was talking excitedly about this text.  “Women are saved through childbearing!”  (She had the ordo salutis in mind).

But that’s unlikely too.  What’s more likely is that Paul is still speaking about the same woman, Eve.  And indeed, I strongly suspect that Eve had taken the protoevangelium to heart when she named Cain (Gen 4:1).  It seems more plausible to me that Paul has this ‘seed of the woman’ in mind in v 15. 

So, what do we do with 1 Tim 3, then?  Having inserted an odd polemic about how marriages ought to work, has he shifted gears so to speak to talk about the special offices?  Maybe he’s having a senior moment. 

The thing I can’t get past though, is that he comes back to the household, in discussing the requirements for the offices:

”..one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (but if a man knoweth not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)”  1 Tim 3:4,5

The ‘senior moment’ seems unlikely… he’s gone back to the home again.  I believe that Paul writes this text based on the injunctions at the end of 1 Tim 2.  The ‘template’ then for Christian marriage (based on Creational distinctives) very much applies to both the office of husband, and presbyter.

It cannot be irrelevant that there appear to be only two New Testament contexts where limitations are placed on the activities of Christian women, and that is where, in Corinth and Ephesus, the pagan culture was dominated by the cults of two powerful female deities enjoining respectively sexual enmeshment and sexual detachment. The women had been freed in Christ, and some had taken the bit of their new-found freedom between their teeth and had to be reined in.

A buttress to an argument from silence. 

This is one pet peeve I have with homosexualists arguing from the New Testament.  They’ve effectively neutered the marriage covenant, in order to apply it to supposed same-sex covenants.  Only, such covenants are never mentioned in Scripture.  Worse, Scripture never mentions a generalized form of the covenant, that would work in their favor.  The hedges around the marriage covenant are always mentioned in terms of a heterosexual relationship, where there are exactly two people within it.

Where are God’s boundaries for women ordained to clerical offices?  If they are absent, may we infer from the absence of such boundaries that women are “alike enough” to men such that what is said to men equally applies to women?  Or, may we infer that women clergy are far less apt to fall into trouble, than their male counterparts?

Or, is the possibility of women clergy not explored in 1 Tim 3, for another reason?

I believe Dr. Turner is arguing that (there) were (there) someone who validly argued against male headship or male-only ordination from the texts she is talking about, she would withdraw her pro-WO arguments.

What I actually mean is that Rob Gagnon’s magisterial and very thick book, on homosexuality in the Bible, whose positive message is in favour of chastity, needs to be matched by one of equal weight in favour of male headship in the broad sense or male-only ordination. I look forward to this latter production: if WO is an evil analogous to the practice of same-sex vice, it definitely cries out to be written!!!

The harder one looks at homosexuality in the Bible, the weaker the arguments in favour of it. The harder one looks at WO in the Bible, the weaker the arguments against it. Let someone refute that claim with a magisterial thick book interpreting the texts and citing secondary literature on a comprehensive scale.

But she shall be saved through her child-bearing

“Women are saved through childbearing!” (She had the ordo salutis in mind).

But that’s unlikely too.  What’s more likely is that Paul is still speaking about the same woman, Eve.

Moot, please point us to even ONE commentary according to which a Greek Future tense may be read as an Aorist.

As I said, many fathoms of ink have been spilled on this passage. I know of no suggestion that the conventions of Greek grammar should be radically re-written.

The argument seems to be that unless the Church also ordains women, (that) it denies them full membership in whatever sense.

And a thoroughly dishonest argument it is, to which I do not subscribe at all. If you will look at my discussion of the famous Galatians passage so often cited in this connection, you will see that I deny that it is about equality, and state firmly that it is about full membership. It is about our acceptance with God through Christ. Equality is a socio-political concept secondary to our status as children of God. When it comes to choosing leaders, not all are equally qualified: some for instance are too young, or too old, or too young in the Faith.

Women became full members at Pentecost, and Peter at once in his evangelistic sermon cited the texts promising their full membership. Repent, believe and be baptised, then you’re in, circumcised or not. Uncircumcised male proselytes were in on the same terms. By contrast, the young Church was given pause by the Samaritan question, and even more pause by the Gentile question. Having understood that God wanted the Gentile believers in as well, the question then arose for the authorities in Jerusalem, “On what terms, and how much of the Law must be taken on board?”

Having now read Dr. Turner’s letter to the Canadian HoB, and hopefully not misunderstanding, she seems to be speaking out of the “political” context I noted above.

Not exactly. I may have been speaking partly in a political context, but I speak in principle out of a context far broader and deeper.

The spurious “If WO, then acceptance of homosex” argument is met in detail by Gagnon in his big book.

Perhaps if we refocused on the distinctions I put forth in #161 above we could get away from the “silence” argument and the “rights” argument?

Ron Baird+

Ron Baird+, I think you mean #162. Unless I looked at the number wrong, which could easily be.

If the priest as an individual is a new sacramental incarnation of Christ at the altar, then a male would be the outward and visible sign of the inward grace that is Christ.

If I understand you, you are saying that on this view the Lord’s maleness is of the essence in the Incarnation. I do believe that it is of the essence when it comes to typology (which involves looking backwards in time); but is it of the essence in any other way? Apart of course from the fact that to be fully human one must be of one sex or the other. I cited my HUMANITY OF CHRIST search so that people could look at the NT in this regard. Romans seems to emphasise the humanity not the sex of Adam, Abraham and Christ. The Fathers were emphatic that the Incarnation took up the humanity of both sexes equally. The Nicene Creed has ἐνανθρωπήσαντα, in English “and was made man” i.e. was made human but not explicitly male.

I don’t for one moment believe this theory of priesthood: it is not taught in our Ordinal, and in reformed theology the Elements are the outward and visible sign, so far as I can see. And, personally, when I communicate the last thing that I need to be thinking about is biological difference.

I appreciate Dr.Turner’s commentary on scripture and the appropriateness of WO and HO. This is the type of discussion that SHOULD have been going on in ECUSA/TEC over the last 35 or so years instead of the thoughtless PC rush to “correctness”. Dam* the Scriptures and full speed ahead.
Tom in Pueblo.

Thankyou, tomcornelius.

The Lord’s timing is not ours. 35 years ago I had recently finished my dissertation and had our second baby. I had recorded the linguistic phenomena, Hebrew and Greek, at Ez. 16:28 with never an inkling of how significant they would prove to be for sex-ethics decades later. I had no thought of applying my own work to the meaning of such passages as I Cor. 11:2-16. He has permitted us to face certain challenges, I think, so that we should look yet more carefully and reverently at Scripture. Without those challenges much work would never have been done at all.

It does seem to me that when it comes to WO in the ECUSA and the ACoC the verdict ought to be “... the greatest treason,
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

I don’t think that respecting that Jesus is a man and that this is both inseperable and important to knowing who He is requires any claim that it is the essential point of who He is. The essential point is that Jesus is Lord.  There is certainly an important sense that He is fully human.  There is also an important sense that he is a male and not androgenous.  Where our chief difference seems to fall regarding ordained bishops/presybters is in the importance of typology, sacrament, symbol and icon.

Well done Dr. Turner, and much, much appreciated. I feel like those times in the past when I sat of a night with my fellows who were (the whole lot of them) off to seminary, and returned fresh with “new” knowledge to impart. We thus spent long hours into the night, as I a “lay” pragmatist wrestled their concepts and their revelations. I feel like a brandy now! Pax!

Dr. Turner

“you are saying that on this view the Lord’s maleness is of the essence in the Incarnation.”

As I understand it, in a more sacerdotal understanding of the sacrament of ordination conferred at priesthood the priest becomes Christ embodied again for the Church gathered (the “altar Christus”). I agree with you that this is a a “backwards” look in time rather than a forward look into the eschaton.

“in reformed theology the Elements are the outward and visible sign”

While I agree with your overall assessment, given my grounding in a catholicity that is reformed and evangelical; I also can see how others would say that the historical Jesus as revealed in Scripture is always male. This would include both pre-resurrection and post-resurrection appearances.

It should be noted that the Revelation to John would include other imagery such as the Lamb that was slain and now lives. While this is not often cited in a discussion of priesthood, it seems to me to reasonably point toward the eschaton and Christ as both “priest and victim”.  If one were to include the typology of Revelation then one would see that in the eschaton the Heavenly Banquet which Christ shares with us is not limited to our historically bound appearances of Christ as male, but includes the Christ whom Paul speaks of when he says that that “in Christ there is neither male nor female”. It also serves to remind us of God;s words to Moses when Moses asked his name. He said “I am who I am” or I will be who I will be”. I believe this is also a foretaste of the Kairos existence of God “who was, and is, and is to come”.

As you can see I agree with your thinking on this. On the other hand, we look at the wine in the Chalice that is consecrated and know it to be the Blood of Christ made manifest for us. If God were to command a priest to put coca cola into the chalice and consecrate it; would it be the Blood of Christ? In my mind God can do with it what he will. However, it would be very difficult for most of us to see it. Herein lies the problem of changing outward signs without genuine consensus. It is quite possible to create chaos rather than edification.

Thus I am convinced of the theological correctness of WO but am dismayed at the lack of consensus that has been built as we have moved into it. We are very much like those who have the horse pushing the cart!

This is why I believe the compromise that teh ACNA has arrived at is an excellent one. It preserves “both integrities” as Bishop Minns is fond of saying.

Ron Baird+

Yes, the compromise is good in my view too. Restraint, restraint and more restraint. Personally I think that women may be bishops as well as deacons and presbyters; but I deeply desire that everything be done for the good of the whole Church and the Christian testimony. Women who preach well, and whose teaching gift is recognised (this has been my case for about 25 years now) should think in these terms:—

“For a long time I asked myself whether Paul [in I Tim. 3] was addressing the very well-known fact that a man must be quite advanced spiritually before he is ready to learn from a woman, whether his wife or another. Wise and spiritually fruitful women will I think consider that possibility before they agree to preach publicly in certain settings, that the Word be not hindered.”

As for actual church office, or ordained ministry, “though the lists of personal qualities in I Tim. and Titus are not identical, they do not signal flexibility where character and spirituality are concerned. I do not conceal my conviction that if more of the explicit Apostolic criteria for church office were applied currently au pied de la lettre, we with our three orders should be infinitely better off.” St. Paul required monogamous marriage of all three ‘orders’, and that was just for starters. He thereby excluded both same-sex relations and serial polygamy. I realise that this is not MY sacrifice, but for women to give up their own orders of one kind or another in return for more literalism about chastity and other essentials seems to me worthwhile in the current crisis.

Bill Gates is really an old interferer! I see that in an earlier posting he has permitted himself to corrupt my French to “au pied de la letter”!!!

I’m opposed to WO. I do ,however, wrestle with the arguments. How would a supporter of WO respond to the following questions: What is the theological significance of Jesus’ maleness?  If no significance? Then was God simply capitulating to ancient world patriarchies (prejudices) through the incarnation(embracing the male aspect of humanity to redeem all of humanity)? Why did Jesus through the Lord’s prayer(our Father) use a male image for the God of Israel? Any theological significance? Or was Jesus’ simply accomodating the patriachical culture of his audience? Is there another Christ(in which there is no male or female) alluded to in Galatian? One who has trancended the maleness of the incarnation? And finally, do we know something about human sexuality and gender today that nullifies the traditional (through history) readings of scripture concerning the Church(the bride of Christ) and her ministry(those that will sacrifice all for her)? If so what is it?

Fides quaerens intellectum,
Edward +

What is the theological significance of Jesus’ maleness?  If no significance? Then was God simply capitulating to ancient world patriarchies (prejudices) through the incarnation(embracing the male aspect of humanity to redeem all of humanity)?

Why does the fact that Jesus was a man have to have theological significance - that wouldn’t necessarily mean that God was capitulating to prejudices (as if He could).

Fr. Baird, while deeply respecting you and your flock for leaving TEC, your stance—“gentle” pro-WO with “restraint,” still contradicts Holy Scripture.

Just because with God “all things are possible,” especially in heaven, does not mean the Church can discount the signified maleness of the Father and the Son, any more than it can institue Coca-cola as the sacramental Blood. It is not just a matter of discipline or avoiding chaos, it is a matter of deferring to God’s revelation. It doesn’t matter if I don’t understand well why the OT priesthood was male-only and the Incarnation was male-only (c.f. the Father and the Son); it doesn’t matter if I don’t understand why Paul chose to argue from Creation and God’s revelation instead of from culture, regarding male headship in the Church. It doesn’t matter if I don’t understand why Christ only chose men as Apostles, despite more faithful women disciples all around and His pattern of upsetting human convention; and why the Apostle wouldn’t consider a woman to replace Judas-despite the Marys and other women excelling in the stated criteria. There it is. In Scripture. In Tradition. No ordination for women. No sacrament for Coca-cola.

#248 Have you read Dr. Turner’s comments?  Maybe you could produce a counter argument to them?

I’m assuming the answer to my questions above is no. Ask yourself the same question: Why wouldn’t Jesus’ maleness have theological significance? Are gender and human sexuality irrelevant (secondary) for the creative and redemptive acts of God? <consider the fact that human males are the most violent creatures on this planet.(empirically verifiable)>  Or put it another way, God could have redeemed humanity by embracing it through femaleness. But he did not. Jesus could have addressed the God of Israel as Our Mother. But he did not.  Paul could have described the Church as the bridegroom of Christ. But, he did not.  Again, I support the traditional prohibition against WO. That however does not mean, I’m not listening to the theological arguments for those that support WO. In other words, I’m looking for theological understanding.
Pax
Edward+

I’ve excerpted from Fr. T. Loya in comment #36 above, that has been unrefuted by anyone here. I do agree with Dr. Turner’s comment, though, that, “In the current context, however, Paul is on this view using Gen. 2-3 polemically, and saying in effect, “But Scripture teaches…”.  Yes, exactly, Paul takes pains to say that his instruction regarding women, teaching, etc. is most emphatically not culturally relative, but rather, “what Scripture teaches.”

I repeat this question of frcraig2009:

Do we know something about human sexuality and gender today that nullifies the traditional (through history) readings of scripture concerning the Church (the bride of Christ) and her ministry (those that will sacrifice all for her)? If so what is it?

I think an excellent case can be made for the existence of ordination in the Pastoral Epistles, at least in 1 Timothy and Titus.  Since I think these come from the generation after Paul, I don’t have a problem with the authentic Pauline letters’ using diakonos more generally as a term for a person who ministers, as in 1 Corinthians.  After Paul died, there was less emphasis on apostles as persons sent by Christ to do missionary work (these include Andronicus and Junia in Romans 16:7), and more importance attached to episkopoi who were in charge of the church in a particular city.

I have been following this thread intermittently, so pardon me if I either repeat something someone has already said, or if I have failed to note relevant comments.  However, this is the last cat I will throw among the pigeons.

Like Dr. Turner, I could provide links to things I have written on this subject (e.g. on Adam and Christ, or Tradition, or the maleness of Christ), but I thought StandFirm had a policy against commenters linking to their own blogs.  I too could haul out the ol’ LSJ or check usage in the papyri or hunt for parallels in classical or patristic literature. It’s one of the things I do.  That sort of thing is very useful and important, and it is obvious that Dr. Turner is very good at it.  But we would still be arguing over a chasm of prior assumptions that would not be resolved by a single one of the texts she so ably discusses.

Let us remember that this is a discussion about the Church, and Dr. Turner’s ideal church, as best as I can tell from comments she has made elsewhere, would be a sort of Diocese of Sydney that ordains women.  If that is correct (and if not, I apologize in advance), well, she’s welcome to it, but I don’t think that is the sort of church envisioned by the New Testament, it is not any sort of church that could be called catholic, and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal. 

No one is ever going to “do a Gagnon” on the texts on which she focuses, at least not to her satisfaction, because that sets a bar that cannot be reached.  Texts such as Titus or 1 Timothy will never yield the sort of clarity that commenters here are seeking to achieve, because relations between the sexes will always involve an ambiguity that homosex does not, an ambiguity that will not be resolved purely by a resort to philology, and because the nature of the church itself, and therefore its ministry, will never be clarified only by resorting to specific texts about qualifications for bishops, etc.  That is why I gave up on arguments over whether or not the “ordination” of women can be “biblically based.”  They are essentially arguments over arguing, and they go nowhere.

When it comes to WO and GO, we are, after all, talking about two different things, even if they are related.  In the case of relations between men and women, we are discussing something that is part of God’s plan but which has been, or can be, disordered.  In the case of homosexuality, we are talking about something that is disordered from the get go.  That is why there are times when the parallel between WO and GO holds, and others when it does not.  In the case of GO, you are talking about someone who commits a grievous sin BEFORE he comes to the altar.  In the case of WO, you are talking about someone who commits a sin BY coming to the altar.  Arguments about the two are therefore necessarily related and overlap, but cannot be strictly parallel.

When it comes to ordination, either you find in the New Testament a pattern of soteriology and ecclesiology that points naturally to the unfolding of the church’s ministry in the second and third centuries, or you don’t;  either you see a line from the New Testament to St Ignatius to St Cyprian, etc., or you don’t.

It is tempting to go on and challenge Dr. Turner on her reading of Romans 5, the significance of anthropos and of enanthroposenta in the creed, but I’ll save that for another day.  Suffice it for now to say that, of course anthropos means “human”.  But that is asking the wrong question.  Adam and Christ are representative humans.  The proper question is, can a woman represent all of humanity in the same way that a man can?  Could Christ have been incarnate as a woman and represented all of humanity on the cross as the Bible understands humanity?  Now go back to Genesis 2, Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 11 and ask that question.

Enough for now.  There will be plenty of chances to go over Greek in another thread, I’m sure.

Fr. Craig and Alfonso,

I agree with both of you in your posts.

I think that God has become incarnate as a male has great theological significance especially when looking at Lordship. I think that God as Abba Father has theological significance in understanding that God is the progenitor of all of Creation.

I agree with Alfonso’s references to Scripture and do not believe that these should be in any way discounted.

However, there is no mention of “priesthood in any of the things you mention in either of these arguments. There is no Scripture that shows us that the Apostles were the celebrants of the Eucharist. In fact, it is always Christ, the great High Priest who offers us his Body and Blood in the sacraments and is always the Head of the Church. The priest does not replace him in the Eucharist. It is the Church, the Body gathered, with Christ the One, True, Priest and its Head; who celebrates the salvific sacrifice that is offered freely to us. Ergo, the human “celebrant” is one called upon to preside for the Body gathered in this act of Communion with our Head. You have yet to show why this human presider must be male. What about about maleness would be the prerequisite? Can Christ not be present in the heart of the female believer as well as the male?

Ron Baird+

#254

No man or woman can represent the fullness of Humanity. Only Jesus the Christ the God-Man can truly do that. Should the eternal Word of God have chosen to become incarnate as a woman then it would certainly have been more than possible. The Word is God, after all. However, he chose to prophesy to us a son to be born and he came to us as the male, Jesus. I see no reason to argue hypotheticals that are beyond reality. The issue before us is not how God chose to become incarnate. It is who can preside at the the Lord’s Supper.

Ron Baird+

“The issue before us is not how God chose to become incarnate. It is who can preside at the the Lord’s Supper.”

Ah, but are the two linked?

RB+, “no Scripture that shows us that the Apostles were the celebrants of the Eucharist” I certainly agree that it is not explicit, and that is why “down under” they still are progressing toward lay presidency at the Eucharist. I yield to Tradition for interpretation.

IRNS, “Are the two linked (Incarnation/Eucharistic headship)?” The two are linked, and while there are Scriptural foreshadowings and systematic theology to support it, it is in the Tradition that more explicit teaching emerges.

Jesus’ maleness was very important so that He could fulfill the role of Sacrifice, to be the male lamb without spot or blemish offered for our sins.  He is both Priest and Sacrifice, but He also took on the third role: Sin - He became Sin for us.

#255 and #256

The question of linkage is the crux of the matter. If you say that they are then what authority do you cite that claims this?

Alfonso- What Tradition are you referring to?

Ron Baird+

#259

Is God bound by the male lamb image or did he choose the male lamb as the prophetic foreshadowing of what was to be fulfilled in Christ?

I would say the latter.

Ron Baird+

Various responses to various different comments:

it is in the Tradition that more explicit teaching emerges.

Tradition isn’t inspired.  It is of human origin, and can contain error.  Scripture can’t contain error.

——————————————

I’m assuming the answer to my questions above is no. Ask yourself the same question: Why wouldn’t Jesus’ maleness have theological significance? Are gender and human sexuality irrelevant (secondary) for the creative and redemptive acts of God?

Sometimes things are what they are.  It is possible to over analyze.  I don’t think that the fact that Jesus was male has any relevance with regards to the WO issue. 

————————————————————

Let us remember that this is a discussion about the Church, and Dr. Turner’s ideal church, as best as I can tell from comments she has made elsewhere, would be a sort of Diocese of Sydney that ordains women…..and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal.

Really?  There are very many low church evangelical Anglicans who would disagree with you on that.  Is there no room for the low church in your vision of Anglicanism, then?

Ron Baird+, I have sent you a private message.  Mrs. Falstaff, if you would like, I will send you to posts where the question of Tradition (which is NOT of human origin) is discussed.

For myself, I want to believe in WO.  At the same time, I think it is unhelpful and wrong and that the arguments that attempt to make Scripture support it are misdirected or wrong or irrelevant.  Again, for myself, I have heard no persuasive arguments for WO from anyone here but a string of suppositions which we then choose to accept, even after naming them suppositions, because we desire the WO conclusion.  From where I stand as a Christian who holds to the teaching that ordination is a sacrament, these arguments point out essential problems (for a sacramental theology, for the Eastern Orthodox Communion and for Roman Catholicism) with aspects of Evangelical, Reformed movement ESPECIALLY as it is manifested in Sydney ... that in departing from the tradition which they received, they did not so much make priestesses as they unmade the sacramental priesthood. Furthermore, it seems to me that the logic that argues here for WO, leaves you with little if any defense against accepting the recent difficulties that Sydney has posed the Anglican communion. By my lights, if you give up a sacramental priesthood, you give up the priesthood ... in favor of ministerial functions that do not require ordination in the first place. You may be perfectly happy with abolishing the sacramental priesthood but I don’t consider it Anglican but a departure from the fullness of the Christian faith.  It is a serious enough matter that it prevents the possibility of communion with the historical churches of Christendom.  It would appear that C.S. Lewis is on the same page here regarding WO and I provide this link to a letter he wrote on the topic:
http://www.acahome.org/submenu/docs/cslewis.htm

. . . or at least I thought I sent a private message.  My “sent” box is empty, so let me know.

FWIW, there is a significant difference in the theology between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism with regards to priests.  The former do not claim that the priest becomes Christ and never forgives the penitent during Confession except in Christ’s name.  Nevertheless, the importance of the sacramental priesthood remains.

You will of course all forgive the fact that I have been doing other things since my last contribution here. May I say how pleased I am by the general tone and intellectual level of this thread?

What is the theological significance of Jesus’ maleness?

Why does the fact that Jesus was a man have to have theological significance?

As I tried to say earlier, the theological significance attaches to typology: only a male could represent all the Old Testament ‘types’ and fulfil all the Old Testament expectation. Whether His maleness continues to be significant after the Resurrection is another question. In major old denominations that has tended to be answered in the affirmative, but major newer ones have said in effect that to think about His maleness is to think of Him “according to the flesh”. I am inclined to think that that is more in accordance with the emphases of the New Testament. And even in the days of His flesh, was anyone thinking primarily about His physical sex? Some women perhaps, but they had to be diverted from that. The imitation of Christ for females is not of a male person.

In purely practical terms, the Saviour if female could not have functioned. For a start, She could not have chosen to be celibate, then engaged in public ministry in Judaism. Such freedoms were to issue from Christ, but did not exist before Him.

Just because with God “all things are possible,” especially in heaven, does not mean the Church can discount the signified maleness of the Father and the Son, any more than it can institute Coca-cola as the sacramental Blood. It is not just a matter of discipline or avoiding chaos, it is a matter of deferring to God’s revelation. It doesn’t matter if I don’t understand well why the OT priesthood was male-only and the Incarnation was male-only (c.f. the Father and the Son); it doesn’t matter if I don’t understand why Paul chose to argue from Creation and God’s revelation instead of from culture, regarding male headship in the Church.

If I may say so, the “maleness” of the Father is a very odd idea. A male Father must have a female Consort, as opposed to being maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That idea belongs in paganism. “Masculinity” perhaps; but we are speaking of the God out of Whose mind all matter came, including sex-difference.

Coca-cola may have to be used in emergency, in my view, like water in the Jap camps. How could it invalidate the sacrament? What of those who never meet an ordained priest? But it would bother me as a regular thing, given the availability of the original substance, and freedom to access it.

I think an excellent case can be made for the existence of ordination in the Pastoral Epistles, at least in 1 Timothy and Titus.  Since I think these come from the generation after Paul, I don’t have a problem with the authentic Pauline letters’ using diakonos more generally as a term for a person who ministers, as in 1 Corinthians.

I do not work on the assumption of pseudepigraphy in the Pastorals, or of any New Testament document. As for ordination, in the sense of commissioning for a particular task, that is seen in the early part of the Acts. The first deacons in the technical ecclesiastical sense were ordained all right, but not CALLED deacons. Other deacons in the technical sense (greeted after the elders at Philippi, for instance) are not stated to be ordained. This unusual greeting just possibly arises from the fact that the elders were to take in hand two quarreling female deacons. They do mostly seem to come, like elders, in bunches. They are not named, except in the case of Phoebe, whom as I have written I am inclined to think that the congregation at Cenchreae commissioned by laying on of hands. Please see my DIAKONOS search.

Like Dr. Turner, I could provide links to things I have written on this subject (e.g. on Adam and Christ, or Tradition, or the maleness of Christ), but I thought StandFirm had a policy against commenters linking to their own blogs.

I have no blog, but I’d be surprised if linking to documents in order to make more extensive material available to readers were forbidden.

I too could haul out the ol’ LSJ or check usage in the papyri or hunt for parallels in classical or patristic literature. It’s one of the things I do.  That sort of thing is very useful and important, and it is obvious that Dr. Turner is very good at it. 

Not to mention LXX, so often the key. But thanks all the same for the kind words.

But we would still be arguing over a chasm of prior assumptions that would not be resolved by a single one of the texts she so ably discusses.

Let us remember that this is a discussion about the Church, and Dr. Turner’s ideal church, as best as I can tell from comments she has made elsewhere, would be a sort of Diocese of Sydney that ordains women.  If that is correct (and if not, I apologize in advance), well, she’s welcome to it, but I don’t think that is the sort of church envisioned by the New Testament, it is not any sort of church that could be called catholic, and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal. 

If you knew me better you might be very surprised. I am one of the most thoroughly Anglican people that you could ever meet. However, in the context of this thread, I have addressed the texts because I thought it necessary to challenge a sweeping statement about their meaning. I have not ignored any patristic interpretation of them, though our documentation is predictably spotty, and interestingly the Fathers are less interested in the whole woman question in connection with them than some moderns. One of the many assumptions which I believe we all share is that the Church may not do what Scripture forbids.

I at least am not engaged in “a discussion about the Church” in this space. I have never visited any part of Australia. Though I am not a ritualist, I can worship in a great many styles; as a steady diet I might be happier with worship less plain than that customary in the Archdiocese of Sidney. Their doctrine and scholarly standards, not to mention their ability to make Christians out of paganism, are wholly admirable. Many of my best friends etc. etc. … including Jim Packer and David Short. “I don’t think that is the sort of church envisioned by the New Testament, it is not any sort of church that could be called catholic, and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal.” That is astonishing! And not only because it thinks of catholicity as purely chronological not spatial. What aspect of the faith is not held in Sydney?

No one is ever going to “do a Gagnon” on the texts on which she focuses, at least not to her satisfaction, because that sets a bar that cannot be reached.  Texts such as Titus or 1 Timothy will never yield the sort of clarity that commenters here are seeking to achieve, because relations between the sexes will always involve an ambiguity that homosex does not, an ambiguity that will not be resolved purely by a resort to philology, and because the nature of the church itself, and therefore its ministry, will never be clarified only by resorting to specific texts about qualifications for bishops, etc.  That is why I gave up on arguments over whether or not the “ordination” of women can be “biblically based.” They are essentially arguments over arguing, and they go nowhere.

No, IRNS, the reason why no one is ever going to “do a Gagnon” on the texts is much more straightforward. The marriage of God with His people is the Great Metaphor for His love and our response. All of us, male or female, ordained or lay, are feminine in that relation. Chastity and its opposites are overarching themes in Scripture and thus in our faith and practice. There is not, and I believe never will be, discussion and application on anything like the same scale of MO, ‘male headship’ or allied concepts. It is, if it holds water at all, too small an idea within the whole great Christian system.

A “Gagnon” equivalent was already done. “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” (RBM&W;) by Piper and Grudem is now dated, but served as a pretty comprehensive spring-board for all sorts of dialogue twenty-plus years ago. The follow-up is “the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” website; there is also a Journal. The best works are responses to critiques of RBM&W;. There is much more biblical theology there than could fit in several “Gagnon”-sized tomes. http://www.cbmw.org/Articles/

While strong on biblical theology, the limitation of the “RBM&W;” website is its avoidance of sacramental and catholic theology. Hopko, Lewis and many others have ably addressed the symbolism and representational issues.

IRNS, I take a protestant view on tradition. Just because the church has been teaching something for a long time doesn’t necessarily make it right.  That is why the church goes through reformations every few hundred years or so.  Furthermore, where do you draw the line?  Is everything the church taught up to x date tradition, and thus on the same level as scripture?  Who gets to decide when that is, exactly?

Monologistos,

What part of the logic of my argument do you find to be predicated on suppositions? How do you see any denial of a sacramental priesthood?

I am actually a strong proponent of a sacramental priesthood. I just do not see that it need be exclusively male in gender.

Ron Baird+

I’d rather not say,

I received your message and look forward to reading thru your blog.

Ron Baird+

I would like to echo Dr. Turner’s remarks on the generally high caliber of this discussion. I hope the new province can continue this as well.

Ron Baird+

I’m sure it will, Ron+!

#270, we appear to simply talk past one another.  Do you have a different theology than what I presented in #190?I have a friend who truly admires street preachers and believes strongly that the Good News needs to be introduced by the Bad News.  In fact, he cannot understand why any church would not emphasize the fear of hell at least as much as the love of heaven, seeing them as two sides of one coin. Regardless of his churchmanship, he has sought to maintain the street preacher mode in his life by catching people in the parking lot after church and witnessing to them.  When I remind him about the obedience owed by him to the church, he becomes obsequious and cunning.  I hear him reasoning that we who emphasize that both an overfocus on punishment and wrath and an ignorance and forgetting of the same - are actually morphing our religion into salvation for all and no hell at all. It is a falsehood but one he believes viscerally and no amount of denying the fact really touches him. He’s a very concrete thinker.  Now, for those who love the fear of hell, I’m sure it is an everpresent reality but we begin with obedience to the Church, concretely in both its Holy Scripture and in the person of its bishops and priests. I don’t believe that to preach that the norm for people is that they are bound for hell is helpful.  It certainly isn’t very effective outside of certain evangelical circles that already have bought that message hook and sinker.  Since these same persons continue to sin, one has to wonder at what kind of intellectual acrobatics go into that. Is there a kind of righteousness that comes from condemning oneself along with everybody else to hell that becomes a blessing when preached?  It doesn’t come across as humility but as humiliation.  I often think of Chick Comics. It isn’t about our personal crusades, our individual gifts.  You know how sad it is when someone like Gene Robinson rambles on about himself and his feelings and his version of reality.  It’s all about him.  He is the measure of all things.  This intensely private focus ... whether on salvation in terms of whether a person is “saved” or “bound for hell” .. or on the theological mush peddled by Robinson falls short of the Church’s witness.  It isn’t entirely wrong but it’s unbalanced and unwhole.I find this example to be prevalent in all of us western-thinking people.  My purpose here is not to catch anyone out in errors in their logic or in their argument.  In fact, I tend to pass over some more obvious things in silence simply because I’m not here for that purpose.  Frankly, I have not observed that reason is very convincing to people unless they agree with the conclusion.  We are like cigarette smokers who “argue like Philadelphia lawyers” for our freedom to do what we want regardless of the consequences to ourselves or others.  Yes, these are generalities that do not make an argument.  I would note that Protestants have been arguing ALL these points for five hundred years and there is STILL no substantial agreement.  I expect this comes from elevating reason above Holy Scripture and Tradition.  The fundamentalist project has become the Reformation project ... arguing about which set of minimum core theological principles are necessarily submitted to by the intellect.  The fruit of this project is endless schism into hundreds of thousands of denominations.  I also think Roman Catholicism has become the “other side” of this rhetorical exchange and simply enshrined this Protestant individualistic hermeneutic in Papal infallibility.  I think the two are one argument, the one elitist, the other egalitarian.  Neither are conciliar, despite having conciliar aspects.

Monologistos,

“But it is some men, not all, and no women, that are capable of embodying the iconic, sacramental ministry of Christ as new Adam, as husband, as King, and as father.

This is the teaching of my church.  We don’t use Chicken ala King for Eucharist (though God covers us with his pinions and delivers us from the snare of the fowler) for He is not a chicken nor our Mother and we don’t ordain mothers to be fathers or husbands to be wives because we believe God has made things the way they are on purpose and that purpose is valuable.”

It seems you hang much of your argument on the complementarity view of gender. I think that there is much to commend in this thought. What I would like to know is how you leap from this complementarity to an application of it to priesthood in the Church. I do not see the connection.

In #162 I stated my thought on the matter;

“The issue confronting women’s ordination is centered on the person of priest as the presider at the Eucharist. Is this person meant to be the Incarnate Lord for the Church gathered or is the entire Church the Body of Christ with the priest serving as the president of the assembly and thus a representative person of the Church as the Body of Christ. If the priest as an individual is a new sacramental incarnation of Christ at the altar, then a male would be the outward and visible sign of the inward grace that is Christ. If the priest is representative of the Body of Christ gathered, then the Body includes men and women and the presider could be either. There is support for both of these theological positions on who the priest truly is in the Church although they do not address the issue of women as priests in conjunction with this. Scripture, on the other hand says nothing about who presided at the Eucharist. It only tells us that is has been handed on.”

Can you address how this intersects with your line of thought?

Ron Baird+

Requirements to become president of the U.S.:

i) Birth:  Either native-born U.S. citizen or those born abroad to parents who were both citizens of the U.S., or those born at the time of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution (1789)

ii)  Age: At least 35 years old,

iii)  Residency:  At least 14 years of residency. 

However, the Constitution says nothing about non-native born citizens who have made great contributions to the US.  That the Founders did not insert that particular modifier does not logically require us to discard all non-native born citizens to the office. 

Indeed, it is more likely that the Founders are restricting native-born citizens who have live abroad for too long.  You know who I’m talking about - trust fund kids who go on endless ski and surf vacations.  That the Founders did not mention these stipulations for non-native citizens, would indicate that the reason why non-native people do not have restrictions imposed on them, is because typically are not the sort to live off of trust funds. 

Furthermore, the Constitution was not written in a cultural vacuum.  At the time, there was great enmity between the US and England.  The government of the fledgling nation was undoubtedly concerned that England would stage a coup simply by raising up a qualified US presidential candidate from their own ranks, in order to establish a puppet government.  But clearly, the time for such institutionalism (though possibly judicious, at the time) has passed.

Dr. Turner,

Moot, please point us to even ONE commentary according to which a Greek Future tense may be read as an Aorist.

As I said, many fathoms of ink have been spilled on this passage. I know of no suggestion that the conventions of Greek grammar should be radically re-written.

Given my meager Greek (and absent Hebrew) training, I am presently unable to argue on philological grounds, much less with an accomplished philologist.  My view is based on Patrick Fairbairn’s view, whose objective is to keep v 15 consistent with the rest of the text:

“It is clear from the structure of the passage, that while Eve was formally before the eye of the apostle, it was she as the representative of her sex, womankind:  hence, she shall be, not she has been saved ; and to render still more plain how the general was contemplated in the particular, it is added, if they abide.”**

..and he goes on for 3+ pages to develop the argument, buttressing it from Genesis (as it should be). 

While still convinced that Fairbairn’s interpretation is most faithful to the context, I will have to retreat somewhat until I can get some Biblical language classes under my belt, and get back with you on that. 

**  Patrick Fairbairn, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus (Geneva Series of Commentaries), pp 130-131

Ron writes:

Is this person meant to be the Incarnate Lord for the Church gathered or is the entire Church the Body of Christ with the priest serving as the president of the assembly and thus a representative person of the Church as the Body of Christ.

After church, I will see if I can address the matter concisely.  It is difficult.  If it were not, presumably we would have less problems with it.  And of course it isn’t a new problem.  Among the Montanists in Phrygia, such a practice of woman presidency evidently did emerge for a short time for the bits we have of the Council of Laodicia in the fourth century forbid the practice.  It is difficult indeed to speak of there being a single practice everywhere and at every time when we must include those groups which in fact departed from orthodoxy into heresy, and were sometimes reunited, bringing with them for a time various delusions of Hellenic practice.

(Bleary eyed, he takes another swig of his morning coffee, turns on his computer and checks his e-mail.  Oh no, he thinks.  More comments on that never ending thread on StandFirm. What’s it up to now?  300? He tries to resist, but he can feel himself weakening, his will giving way to the urge to hurl more words into cyberspace.  Just one more, he promises himself.  Just the hair of the dog.  Please.  I will quit.  Honest.  Trembling, his fingers reach towards the key board . . . )

Dr. Turner, 

As I tried to say earlier, the theological significance attaches to typology: only a male could represent all the Old Testament ‘types’ and fulfil all the Old Testament expectation.

This is either selective (Are there no female types?)  or question-begging (If not, well, why not?). 

However, on the question of typology and maleness, the usual example is Adam and Romans 5, which has been the crux of the argument thus far.  It is, well, faulty typology.

From the OED

type: trans. a. Theol.  To prefigure or foreshadow as a type; to represent; to represent in prophetic similitude.  b. To be the type or symbol of; to represent by a type or symbol; to symbolize

typology: 1. The study of symbolic representation, esp. of the origin and meaning of Scripture types; also transf. symbolic significance, representation, or treatment; symbolism.

It is, of course, a commonplace to say that Adam is a “type” for Christ in Romans 5.  However, I have always found this puzzling.  I just don’t see how the text supports that.  I suspect it is a scholarly invention which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

In Hebrews, Melchizedek is a type for Christ; in St Matthew, the gifts of the magi foreshadow the tomb; in the earliest liturgies, the ark is a type for the church, and the crossing of the Jordan is a type for baptism; the lamb is a symbol for Christ, etc.

But whatever St Paul meant in Romans 5, he did not treat Adam and Christ as types or symbols or figures, nor has the church. St Paul believed that Hagar and Sarah were an allegory for the old and new covenants (Galatians 4:21-31), but Paul clearly does not see Adam and Christ as anything of the sort.  Whether or not we today take Genesis literally, for Paul Adam is our fallen ancestor and Christ is our restoration.  There simply is no symbolizing or foreshadowing here.

Whether His maleness continues to be significant after the Resurrection is another question.

It is indeed.  Are you suggesting (like the gnostics) that the Resurrection canceled sexual distinctions such that women would become male?  In any case, Crucifixion (dying for the sins of humanity) and Resurrection (raising humanity to new life) are of a piece, and cannot be separated here, I think.

In major old denominations that has tended to be answered in the affirmative, but major newer ones have said in effect that to think about His maleness is to think of Him “according to the flesh”.

Interesting but puzzling.  What “major newer” denominations do you have in mind?  (Does TEC qualify?) Who judges if they are “major” and not merely “more recent sects”?

The imitation of Christ for females is not of a male person.

Nor is it for men (we’re not all celibate).  Imitation is not the issue.

In purely practical terms, the Saviour if female could not have functioned. For a start, She could not have chosen to be celibate, then engaged in public ministry in Judaism. Such freedoms were to issue from Christ, but did not exist before Him.

Oh dear.  The “cultural conditioning” argument again.  Why is it that every time Jesus does something contrary to the religious or cultural mores of first century Judaism (sufficient to get him crucified) we all stand up and cheer, but whenever it is is contrary to our religious and cultural mores, well, that was a concession to the conditions of the first century?

If I may say so, the “maleness” of the Father is a very odd idea. A male Father must have a female Consort, as opposed to being maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That idea belongs in paganism. “Masculinity” perhaps; but we are speaking of the God out of Whose mind all matter came, including sex-difference.

Myself, I don’t hang much on the “maleness” of the Father in re: ordination either, but the first sentence of your paragraph is very, very strange.  Since when is the maleness of a father an odd idea?  And when Christ refers to his Father, I don’t think he implied a female consort!  And I find “masculinity” vs. “maleness” to be a distinction without a difference.

Coca-cola may have to be used in emergency, in my view, like water in the Jap camps. How could it invalidate the sacrament? What of those who never meet an ordained priest? But it would bother me as a regular thing, given the availability of the original substance, and freedom to access it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said the hard cases make bad law.  Similarly, emergencies make bad theology.  Coca-cola doesn’t invalidate a sacrament—with Coca-cola, there is no sacrament.  Water is Japanese prison camps was a pious exercise which I am sure God honored, but that doesn’t make it a eucharist, and even if it did, once the emergency is over, the proper thing to do is revert to the norm, as you yourself suggest.  As for those who never meet a priest, don’t worry, they will—He’s waiting for them.

“I don’t think that is the sort of church envisioned by the New Testament, it is not any sort of church that could be called catholic, and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal.” That is astonishing! And not only because it thinks of catholicity as purely chronological not spatial. What aspect of the faith is not held in Sydney?

What is astonishing is that you think I believe catholicity is purely chronological.  When it comes to spatial catholicity and the “ordination” of women, I think I’m on pretty solid ground.  As for Sydney, I take as my witness Peter Toon:  http://pbs1928.blogspot.com/2008/11/gafcon-bishops-diocese-of-sydney.html  Besides, “lay presidency” is not just heretical, it is a contradiction in terms.

I confess I do not understand what your last paragraph has to do with your last quote from me.  But I appreciate the time and thought you put into your comment overall.  You are very gracious, and I am sure I would enjoy meeting you.

Oh, and Mrs. Falstaff, I am sending you a private message.

Comment 1 says “WO not important at this time”
WO cannot be defended by Scripture or Tradition and therefore is indefensible and as such is unreasonable. To base a new church on a heresy is a guarantee of multiple jurisdictions and “Anglicanisms.”  Multiple Anglicanisms do not serve any of us. 

No one has ever presented any argument from Scripture that was a twisting and therefore a violation of Article 22 in that it as the doctrine of Purgatory” it “is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God”.

The initial act of ordaining women in 76 was an unlawful act- not a violation of any civil law of the Pharisees, but a willful adoption of a secular notion that overturns 2000 years of Holy Ghost inspired Tradition.  Now I know some you believe the Holy Ghost is your pet and that He has only come to you in this generation but that is another issue.  For thousand of us this is the touchstone issue because it was the beginning of the end of ECUSA.  It is the beginning of the uprooting of the fig tree.  It is a guarantee of disunity and further scism in the Church and those who support it will be responsible.
XXIII. Of Ministering in the Congregation.
It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.

Comment 74 presents the question of Authority.  I think both 1 and 74 are important because the question of authority need be answered firstly because it is the ultimate question.  What is the ultimate source of authority in the proposed province?  Is it the Zeitgeist as has inspired WO and VGR or is it Scripture and tradition? 

The Centurion says to Jesus he is a man under authority and Jesus replies that his faith is a marvelous thing.  Man or women, whose authority are you under, or are you able to be under any authority?  The simple act of being obedient is pleasing to God as is demonstrated time and again in the Scriptures.  Disobedience and unlawfulness lead to death.  Jesus asks the question “Who do you say I am”  if you willfully invent things, defy his Bride, contradict what the Holy GHost has ensured we receive who are you really saying He is?

Without authority that is based only on Scripture Tradition and administered in right Reason there will be chaos and chaos is not a sign of the Church Catholic to which we all ascribe in the Creeds we recite each Sunday.

Pardon meant to say: “No one has ever presented any argument from Scripture that was not a twisting (of Scripture) and therefore a violation of Article 22 ”

I agree that this is not the time or the place to bring up the issue of women in positions that could cause a riff in the church right now. We need to get planted on solid ground before we take any large steps. I for one am looking at what Pual said about women in church and that is that when they speak their heads have to be covered and I feel any woman can hold a position within His Church as long as she has the covering of a man over her.

ps The arguments wrung out of Scripture would be pleasing to Ezekiel Bulver who was well known to C.S. Lewis.

Dr. Turner,
Thank you for your extensive post(s). I appreciate much of what you have said. I do feel you find a greater “fuzziness” in what must be a key verse in this debate (1 Tim 2.12) than that which is actually warranted by the historical, lexical and exegetical facts at hand. Would it perhaps be valuable to re-visit the 2nd edition of Women in the Church by Koestenburger and Schreiner?

Hi Just Wondering,
Why is Ezekiel Bulver relevant here? I thought that referred to ad hominem attacks.

“RB+, “no Scripture that shows us that the Apostles were the celebrants of the Eucharist” I certainly agree that it is not explicit, and that is why “down under” they still are progressing toward lay presidency at the Eucharist. I yield to Tradition for interpretation.”

The Scripture says nothing against a homosexual presiding either so what is the point?  Does silence mean it is ok to ram a plane into a building?  Nothing in Scripture anbout airplanes so we can do as we please?

It is relative because of the nature of the argument that WO is Scriptural and the need to prove it is so because it is desired by it’s supporters.

A rework of WIki:
The form of the Bulverism fallacy can be expressed as follows:
You claim that WO is true. Because of the Social Justice agenda’s and women’s Liberation movements, individuals personally desire that WO should be true. Therefore, WO is false.

Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.

The “man” has never been shown to be wrong by the proponents of WO by the Scripture or the Tradition (which is based on the Scripture).  The “man” being the Church, has never had his day in court in Ecusa or the Contemporary Anglican Communion.  The Church was summarily judged to be wrong by the those in the thrall of the zeitgeist and that still continues.

The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.

Illegal ordinations and accusations of gender bias and other PC pressure distorted the argument by changing the argument from Scripture to the secular concerns of a particular generation.  Further; these secular concerns are not based on Faith but overturn Faith by implanting distrust and covetness.

In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism”. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — “Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment”, E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.

Speaks for itself. 

We say that women’s ordination is a ontological impossibility not because of the example of headship as is found through out Scripture or because of Christ being the Husband of his Bride and that the Priest rightly represents Him here, or that the example of Scripture and of those who received Authority from Jesus himself, but because we men want to oppress women. 

That is as good an example of Bulverism as I can think of.

I agree that this is not the time or the place to bring up the issue of women in positions that could cause a riff in the church right now. We need to get planted on solid ground before we take any large steps.

No offense but this is an oxymoron.
We are in a riff because of WO. WO has lead directly to Hom-O.  The queers site this fact themselves and so do the women who were the first ordained- they were the trail blazers.

Innovation is not solid ground but a sailboat on the sea with out a keel.

It should be surprising that anyone, let alone a member of the clergy, would bring up this contentious issue even when the ink is barely dry on the ACNA canons.  However, it is not surprising for those who have been involved in this issue for the last forty years.  She is showing once again what their priorities really are as well as complete insensitivity to the realities of the situation.  As long as women are given any clerical position other than deaconess, WO will remain the Achilles Heel of ACNA.  Lord have mercy on us.

Don’t do it, if continuing Anglicans want to talk about unity with Orthodox and Catholics! We Eastern and Oriental Othodox won’t talk with you except perhaps nod politely)if you have female clergy. We see the Diaconate and priesthood and the high-priesthood of Bishops, as iconic of Christ.
On the other hand, if all you are looking for is ‘Anglican unity’, well go ahead. But please don’t mention the 39 Articles when you engage in serious discussions with the other Chruches. We don’t subscribe to them at all.
Rdr. James Morgan
formerly Anglo-Catholic, but now Orthodox.
PS I could answer particular posts but there are so many of them by now!  I guess this is a hot-button issue for y’all.  Good luck, and God bless!

BTW
Dr Paton describing herself as a “conservative” should be of no surprise. 

The modern conservative can conserve anything because there is never a need for truth just a desire to be right and then to conserve the sentiment by politics. 

Being conservative or liberal is irrelevant to being a Christian it is a political thing.  A lot has been said about things implied or not in the Scripture on this site.  Well there is no mention of either of these descriptives anywhere in Scripture or the early Church and both words are modernist and secular. 

That Dr. Paton claims the secular and political monicker of “conservative” and claims to be ordained is perfectly reasonable… from a secular viewpoint and is wholly consistent with the views of such as Chane, Bennison, Spong, Griswold and Schori etc.  There is no difference in gifts, roles or gender in her world view. Unfortunately for her and others this view is in direct contrast with the Bible they claim to defend by the very act of being ordained in a Church that has preserved that Office from the beginning.

Just Wondering—thank you very much.  That is exactly what I believe also.  Being a conservative supporter of WO is a contradiction and that is doubly true when the office of bishop is involved.

Guys,

I don’t believe that this “just happened,” in 1976.  It had to have been brewing a long time before that. 

Mario Bergner+ (a WO proponent) in his book Setting Love in Order, describes a faulty patriarchal model that may well be the antecedent to WO:  Parishes with a few influential men at the top layer, with peon men at a distant second, and women and children at the bottom.  When I read this, I wanted to shout, “Hey! - but you should see how things work at anti-WO parishes I’ve been at!  Women and men are all encouraged to find and exercise their gifts, with gusto.” 

But then I think back to some weird things in my own family, and I have to admit that Bergner+ aptly captures some ‘old-school’ dysfunction, quite well.  Grandpa was one of those ‘top dogs,’ at his parish and Dad (bless him) well, was one of those peon men he talked about. 

So, the old-school patriarchal model appears to have produced a lot of weak men.  Since nature abhors a vacuum, it is consequent that women fill the gap.  And the devastation of both sexes, much like the devastation to American appliances used in Europe, ensues. 

I feel that all of us (pro and anti WO) can work against what preceded WO - simply by shamelessly encouraging everyone to find and exercise their gifts.  The principal is rather simple - God gives gifts and expects that we will use them.  Offices are not requirements for exercising gifts.  If we all did that, I think WO would be rather irrelevant.  But we’d have to have something in place before “creating” another vacuum;  and that something had best not be the same thing that created the original vacuum. 

This is our desert.  We are not the generation that will enter into the promised land.  The sooner we accept it, the sooner we can make the best of it.

  In purely practical terms, the Saviour if female could not have functioned. For a start, She could not have chosen to be celibate, then engaged in public ministry in Judaism.

Oh dear.  The “cultural conditioning” argument again.  Why is it that every time Jesus does something contrary to the religious or cultural mores of first century Judaism (sufficient to get him crucified) we all stand up and cheer, but whenever it is is contrary to our religious and cultural mores, well, that was a concession to the conditions of the first century?

You aren’t making a whole lot of sense here.  Why can’t the fact that Jesus was male simply have been because of the practicalities of the time?  That doesn’t invalidate anything found in scripture. Our Lord was male in the incarnation, but we are all, male and female,  made in his image - therefore in the broader sense God is beyond gender.

My previous post isn’t clear.  The first paragraph in the blockquote is Dr. Turner - the second is a response to her, and I was responding to the response…

However Orders are gifts specifically given as is plainly recorded in Scripture. 

Surely each of the elect has a gift or gifts.  But God does not give all gifts to every individual anymore than a persons body is made up of all arms, elbows or sphincters many parts and gift make up the body. 

If you desire a gift or a role that has never been given your gender and take it overagainst the authority of the Church than you sin.  That is covetness. If you persist and spread that sin to others than you seek to overthrow God’s Order.  That (perpetuating a lie regarding God’s Will) my friends is a first order issue concerning salvation.  The homosexual also overthrows Order by negating creation WO negates a Sacrament that Christ demands of us that we participate in and Paul sternly warns us not to consume but at our peril.

Well said, TJ [33], and I would posit the obverse as well:
if not having women priests and deacons is a first order issue for you, this might not be your best choice in terms of church affiliation.

The ACNA compromise provides shelter for those willing to guard Scripture-based morality as their most important “first order” issue. It is a given, of course, that the scripture-based morality grows from an understanding of the centrality of Biblical authority.

If having women priests and deacons is a first order issue for you, The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of which Anglicanism is a part might not be your best choice in terms of church affiliation.

Why can’t the fact that Jesus was male simply have been because of the practicalities of the time?

Indeed.  We might easily ask what all the fuss would be regarding Jesus’ humanity.  Why did Jesus have to be human?  If we’re concerned with the practicality of speech in getting out the Gospel, we need look no further than Balaam’s ass.  Why wouldn’t the Incarnation itself be but an acquiescence to practical considerations? 

(Answer.. Heb 10:4)

So, Jesus’ humanity is a necessity.  Given that this is profoundly significant in our salvation, do you really believe that Jesus’ sex would be based on something so banal as practicalities of the time?  What evidence do have to support your thesis?

Just Wondering,

The straw man you set up by saying “The Scripture says nothing against a homosexual presiding either so what is the point?  Does silence mean it is ok to ram a plane into a building?  Nothing in Scripture about airplanes so we can do as we please?” is comparing apples and oranges. My point is to say that being a priest does not directly correspond to apostleship in Scripture. It is an argument from the positive, not an argument from the negative as you have set up in the above quote.

Ron Baird+

Moot   Of course he had to be human, for the reasons you stated.  But practicalities matter too.  Why dismiss them?  It is pretty obvious historically that in order for Jesus to accomplish what He did in the time and place in history in which He lived, He had to be male.  There doesn’t necessarily have to be any deeper reason that that.  There might be, but there doesn’t have to be.

It is pretty obvious historically that in order for Jesus to accomplish what He did in the time and place in history in which He lived, He had to be male.  There doesn’t necessarily have to be any deeper reason that that.  There might be, but there doesn’t have to be.

If there were deeper reasons, would you be interested in hearing about them? 

FWIW, since I’m not Anglo-Catholic, I don’t reckon the importance of Jesus’ sex to a matter of salvation (ordo salutis).  I do however see it as a very important matter in the history of salvation (historia salutis).  It’s not that “there didn’t have to be” better reasons, it’s that the reasons already exist independent of our need to pay attention to them or ignore them. 

They exist.  And they’re important.

It’s not that “there didn’t have to be” better reasons, it’s that the reasons already exist independent of our need to pay attention to them or ignore them.

They exist.  And they’re important.

So make your case.

As I recall, you made an assertion that Jesus’ maleness need not have any more importance than practical considerations.  I asked you to provide evidence for the ‘need not.’  You responded by reiterating your assertion (which is not evidence).  It’s okay for you to make the assertion without providing evidence, but not okay for me. 

Oh well..

From Genesis 3, we see that Adam was tempted and failed.
From Luke 4:1-13, we see that Christ was tempted and triumped. 
Romans 5 draws a parallel between two men (Adam and Christ). 
Plus, there are texts which support the importance of Adam(!) being male.  Consider e.g., the order of which sins occured in the Garden (Serpant, Eve, Adam), and the order of which the prosecution occurs (Adam, Eve, Serpant). 
If it’s important for Adam, then it has to be important for Christ. 

... so, we see that there is a wee bit more importance than Christ’s maleness than simply practical considerations for his ministry. 

As I said, I don’t see Christ’s maleness as critical to our salvation, but certainly critical to redemptive history.  What gnaws at me is the assertion that Christ’s maleness “need not” have any more importance.  One “need not” be pro-WO to agree or disagree, imho.

and then there’s this little gem from Dr. Turner in #267:

As I tried to say earlier, the theological significance attaches to typology: only a male could represent all the Old Testament ‘types’ and fulfil all the Old Testament expectation. Whether His maleness continues to be significant after the Resurrection is another question.

IOW, Dr. Turner believes that Christ’s maleness bears more significance than cultural practicalities.

I didn’t merely repeat my assertion, I explained it. 

If it’s important for Adam, then it has to be important for Christ.

Seems to me the important parallel there is their humanity, not their gender.  What gnaws me is insisting that every single aspect of Jesus’ life has to have a deeper theological significance.  I think that devalues His humanity.  Some things just are.

Moot,

Certainly Christ’s maleness fulfills the prophecy and restores the failings in the OT. However, 1) I still do not see how that applies to priesthood, and 2) is God then confined by these strictures or are they a part of his plan for salvation?

Ron Baird+

#303 But, all those prophesies were set up by God, given by God, who knows all - He set it up to happen that way.  Why couldn’t the culture and time that He was going to use for his incarnation have been one of the reasons?

#305 That is really the point, isn’t it?  Thanks for bringing us back to it.

Hi Fr Ron,

First of all, I appreciate the acknowledgement that Christ’s maleness is more important than issue of practicality within His earthly ministry. 

In response to your comments:
1)  I personally do not base my argument against WO on Christ’s maleness. 
2)  Assuming that we are still talking about the historia and not the ordo salutis (and even if we are), I don’t see a dichotomy as you suggest.

Ron I did not set up the straw man I just pointed it out.

I didn’t merely repeat my assertion, I explained it.

I understood it the first time.  There was no lack of understanding on my part;  only lack of evidence on your part. 

Dr. Turner and Fr Ron agree that there is a wee bit more significance to Christ’s maleness than practical considerations in His earthly ministry.  You’ve apparently held on to the notion that there “need not” be any more importance. 

We’re not even talking about the nature of that importance at this point, or the ramifications thereof, just establishing that it is in fact, more important.

“1) I still do not see how that applies to priesthood, and 2) is God then confined by these strictures or are they a part of his plan for salvation?”

It has been said if you meddle with the Creed or the Faith- ie say this or that article is optional then the rest will fall.  TEC bares this out.  I subscribe to the reasoning.

If you set up a straw man ie ‘God is confined by his own decisions’ then that God is limited and his order can be dissected, amputated or revoked at will because such a god is no god at all and certainly is not my God. We would be talking about an evolving philosophy not God.

The question is are you wise enough to second guess whether or not what has been delivered to us is disposable or changeable at the will of each generation.  You also must ask yourself if you are a gambling man because is God’s Order is complete, interwoven and purposeful as is and you meddle with it than you need to admit you face judgement for superimposing your judgement upon it.  Again we are back at salvation’s doorstep.

I accidently truncated the reply…

Facts: God reveals Himself in the male pronoun. He enters our world as Son. His Spirit is refered to in the male pronoun as well as he is 3 in 1 and 1 in 3. Not Father, Son and Mother but triune God.  He picks 12 men to be his apostles. He breathes the Spirit on them and gives them Authority to bind and loose and forgive or retain sins and to perpetuate their Order and the Church. As they do so by ordaining other men as they were taught by the Son of God and so on and so on.  This in line with Jesus saying ’ I came to not to change one iota but to fulfill’. He refers to his Church as his Bride- we are all in that sense feminine. The Priesthood of Mechelzidek is male as were those of the Levites they represent the male God as best as we are allowed to understand the mystery in this life- this fact is only detestable to the zeitgeist or those in it’s grip.  There is not a single instance of the Apostles laying on hands and ordaining a woman and there is not a single instance of a woman leading a congregation in the NT as a deacon, presbyter, elder or bishop, not a single recorded instance in the Didache or elsewhere, not a mention by Chrysostom or Athanasius or Augustine- the Articles use the male pronoun as well.  Now we can say this is silence or that it is inconclusive or merely implied but so then does the proponents of VGR.  As they say the word homosexual is never mentioned or forbade.  They are right of course as the word was not coined until 1900 years later.  The great thing about ambiguity is one never has to make a decision about right or wrong and thus does not have to suffer the consequences of a decision this is the stuff of Rev Ch3 Neither hot or cold!  Insisting that the Biblical record is not clear on this issue is simply dodging Authority which is an act of disobedience and leading people to be disobedient will have consequences as we are talking about the Living God not a systematic set of principles.  The Bible says God is merciful but it also says He is vengeful.  I doubt he is going to go on the Cross again just so we can opine. Next time He comes you better have your Church in Order.

That the Apostles never mentioned gender in regards to the gifts of the Holy Spirit is not applicable here as those gifts which are given selectively are not the same as Divinely apportioned role of priesthood otherwise there would be no mention of the priesthood and only of the Seven Gifts and they (7 Gifts) certainly do not negate headship.  If roles are interchangeable then homosexual clergy should be acceptable.  WO + Hom-O joined together at the hip of confusion, obsfucation and disobedience.

“And thick and fast they came at last
And more, and more, and more.”

”Bleary eyed, he takes another swig of his morning coffee, turns on his computer and checks his e-mail. Oh no, he thinks. More comments on that never ending thread on StandFirm. What’s it up to now?  300? He tries to resist, but he can feel himself weakening, his will giving way to the urge to hurl more words into cyberspace. Just one more, he promises himself. Just the hair of the dog.  Please.  I will quit.  Honest.  Trembling, his fingers reach towards the key board . . . )

Caffeine? Never touch the stuff, haven’t for decades. It makes me cross, unreasonable, migrainous and liable to stroke. It could make me inclined to SCREAM AND BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL when I consider that I just eat and go to bed and then to church and eat and there’s ALL THIS STUFF here when I get back… But far be it from me to deny you your substance.

Dr. Turner,
“As I tried to say earlier, the theological significance attaches to typology: only a male could represent all the Old Testament ‘types’ and fulfil all the Old Testament expectation.”
This is either selective (Are there no female types?) or question-begging (If not, well, why not?).

I was trying to explain that of course Christ had to be male, and The Twelve male, for him to be Prophet, Priest, King, Son of David, greater than Solomon, spotless Lamb etc. etc., and for the Twelve to represent the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes. Hebrews was what was chiefly in my mind when it came to Types. His maleness is of the essence in the light of the Old Covenant.

However, on the question of typology and maleness, the usual example is Adam and Romans 5, which has been the crux of the argument thus far.  It is, well, faulty typology.

I have not mentioned Adam or Romans 5 in this connection, nor was he in my mind.

“Whether His maleness continues to be significant after the Resurrection is another question. In major old denominations that has tended to be answered in the affirmative, but major newer ones have said in effect that to think about His maleness is to think of Him “according to the flesh”.
It is indeed.  Are you suggesting (like the gnostics) that the Resurrection canceled sexual distinctions such that women would become male?  In any case, Crucifixion (dying for the sins of humanity) and Resurrection (raising humanity to new life) are of a piece, and cannot be separated here, I think.

I am saying that what was originally essential for Him to be Who He was may not be so significant now. His must always be a male body, but it is a male RESURRECTION body. Does that have powers of generation? Surely not. Sex in the Resurrection must be significant if at all as part of our personal history and individual recognisability. “With what rapture/Gaze we on those glorious scars.”

Interesting but puzzling.  What “major newer” denominations do you have in mind?  (Does TEC qualify?) Who judges if they are “major” and not merely “more recent sects”?

Who outside Rome and Orthodoxy lays any stress at all on the Lord’s maleness   since He was raised and ascended?

“The imitation of Christ for females is not of a male person.”
Nor is it for men (we’re not all celibate).  Imitation is not the issue.

I’m sorry, but it is a vital issue, since we are commanded to attempt it. The Imitatio cannot be of Him in His maleness, since some of us are female, and need not be of His celibacy, since some of us have been called to marriage. That we are all commanded ἀνδρίζεσθε, which means ‘act with masculine courage and determination’, is a somewhat different point.

“In purely practical terms, the Saviour if female could not have functioned. For a start, She could not have chosen to be celibate, then engaged in public ministry in Judaism. Such freedoms were to issue from Christ, but did not exist before Him.”
Oh dear.  The “cultural conditioning” argument again.  Why is it that every time Jesus does something contrary to the religious or cultural mores of first century Judaism (sufficient to get him crucified) we all stand up and cheer, but whenever it is contrary to our religious and cultural mores, well, that was a concession to the conditions of the first century?

I’m sorry, dear brother, but you have entirely misunderstood me. I am saying, in the face of claims in this thread that the Lord’s sex doesn’t matter, that there are not only overwhelming theological arguments against that view, but PRACTICAL ones as well. There are similar and very strong PRACTICAL arguments against an originally female apostolate.

”If I may say so, the “maleness” of the Father is a very odd idea. A male Father must have a female Consort, as opposed to being maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That idea belongs in paganism. “Masculinity” perhaps; but we are speaking of the God out of Whose mind all matter came, including sex-difference.”
Myself, I don’t hang much on the “maleness” of the Father in re: ordination either, but the first sentence of your paragraph is very, very strange.  Since when is the maleness of a father an odd idea?  And when Christ refers to his Father, I don’t think he implied a female consort!  And I find “masculinity” vs. “maleness” to be a distinction without a difference.

Come now, IRNS, you are not a theologically or philosophically naïve person. Or are you? You understand analogy, surely? You know perfectly well that the distinction is vital. We MUST speak of God as a (masculine) Father, and we may NEVER speak of Him as male. To be male is to be embodied. I am speaking of basic orthodoxy here.

I don’t think that is the sort of church envisioned by the New Testament, it is not any sort of church that could be called catholic, and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal.
“That is astonishing! And not only because it thinks of catholicity as purely chronological not spatial. What aspect of the faith is not held in Sydney?”
What is astonishing is that you think I believe catholicity is purely chronological.  When it comes to spatial catholicity and the “ordination” of women, I think I’m on pretty solid ground.  As for Sydney, I take as my witness Peter Toon:  http://pbs1928.blogspot.com/2008/11/gafcon-bishops-diocese-of-sydney.html Besides, “lay presidency” is not just heretical, it is a contradiction in terms.

I must say that I reserve the adjective heretical for positions contrary to credal orthodoxy. Sexual immorality is credally unorthodox, because it denies that He came down from heaven for us men and for our SALVATION, and that the Holy Spirit is the LORD, the GIVER OF LIFE. But liturgical arrangements?
A bit far out from Anglican decency and order, I do agree.

Dr. Turner,
Thank you for your extensive post(s). I appreciate much of what you have said. I do feel you find a greater “fuzziness” in what must be a key verse in this debate (1 Tim 2.12) than that which is actually warranted by the historical, lexical and exegetical facts at hand. Would it perhaps be valuable to re-visit the 2nd edition of Women in the Church by Koestenberger and Schreiner?

I’m not sure that I have seen the 2nd ed. The original discussion was not quite close enough to the words, in that it saw the two infinitives, to teach and to ‘bear authority’ as parallel. It did not come to terms with the fact that the second term is a whole phrase including ‘over a man/husband’ in the genitive, whereas διδάσκειν is intransitive. My discussion was aimed at excluding the impossible rather than establishing any interpretation as certain. Too often for instance people quote KJV and supply out of their own minds ‘men’ after teach, not possible syntactically. We must pray for a really useful scrap of papyrus to turn up!
We really don’t know the connections between passages in the Pastorals. Perhaps this is because, as some have suggested, they are compilations of various notes from Paul to the recipients. The same suggestion has been made about sections of I Cor. as I’m sure you know.
This is a “key verse” only because we give exclusive teaching authority to our presbyters, who tend also to be solitary figures, contrary to the New Testament pattern of presbyters in bunches. Anglican patterns of ordained ministry owe much to the medieval village with its persona at the core. I used, as I have said, to think that I ought not to preach because of it.

However Orders are gifts specifically given as is plainly recorded in Scripture.

Where exactly is that?

Struggling with all of this, I reread the story of Uzzah being slain for placing the Ark on a cart, instead of having it carried on Acadia poles by a particular order of Levites.  I think I will play it safe on this issue.

Dr. Turner - re: #313 -

With kindness, I feel the data you have adduced is off the point. Koestenberger’s assertion was a semantic one, drawn from more than 200 syntactical examples: if “to teach” is positive in its connotation, “to exercise authority” must be also.  The reason “a man” is in the genitive is because authentein (as do many verbs of control/authority) requires its object in the genitive - and “a man” is syntactically closest to authentein. If didaskein is intransitive, it actually argues against (if I understand you correctly) what you are saying. Lacking any other Pauline data, here we would have an absolute prohibition on a woman teaching at all (however, see, e.g.  Tit 2.3-4 ).
As to “aner” being “husband” in this passage and not a generic male, what would that make of Paul? Is he implying a husband should leave the room when his wife teaches? Go to a different house fellowship? Are we to understand it’s okay to teach other people’s husbands, but not a woman’s own? As to finding “team ministry” here, that is an intriguing idea. But in Ephesus, of all places, why would Paul not commend the example of Priscilla and Aquila?
Just some thoughts….

Best Regards.

Dr. Henry, I do not have the collection of essays edited by Koestenberger and Schreiner here in the house (where I am snowed in). But thankyou for causing me to look at the passage again with my existing resources.

I do not for one moment deny that both terms are likely to be either positive or negative. You will see that from my posting in #202 above. However, there is a question whether a woman/wife is here forbidden to do two things that are evil, and so forbidden to all in principle, or two things that are good, but not for her. “Gadding about teaching” plus “bossing her husband about” are my tentative suggestions for a pair of negatives; and I am quite attracted to that idea. It does, as I have said, fit well with the domestic and marital concerns of the Pastorals, and the passage can be preached in a practical, relevant and edifying way. The Apostolic teaching would thus remain liberating not oppressive in tone. εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ does naturally mean “lead a quiet life”.

I have sometimes wondered whether we can’t postulate a “think of herself as independent of her husband”, even “gang up on her husband”, sense for the second term. That fits well with some examples of αὐθεντεῖν, but makes the genitive a gen. of separation; perhaps not as obvious a construction as the “over” sense of the (actually not huge number of) verbs of ruling, controlling.

If the pair is positive, then a woman/wife is being forbidden to engage in two activities that in another person, or a single woman, or a person differently situated, or a person of the other sex would be permissible. Teaching is certainly a thoroughly positive activity in principle, as the NT concordance shows. That’s why, if a positive sense is found here, and the prohibition is absolute, the instruction or prohibition cannot be universal and permanent. It would rank with the head-coverings business in I Cor. 11. We should need to discern what principle was involved in that local situation. As I have said, another way of getting out a positive sense of διδάσκειν is to read it as “teach with authority”. To teach with authority and to manage or rule a man are good actions provided that they are done by the right person in the right place at the right time, and this prohibition for a woman/wife could be read as both positive and universal. That the unbelieving world placed no such restrictions on a woman/wife would be of course by the way.

No reading can stand which does not come to terms with three linguistic facts (and the text is not in doubt here): firstly, Greek does not pair up verbs with a first object understood in one case and a second expressed in another. If Paul meant “teach a man” or “teach (e.g.) the Gospel”, with the second verb governing an object in the genitive, he needed to express that. The older versions, made by people whose sense of Greek was often much sounder than that of many moderns, did not understand that, nor seek to express it. Secondly, the switch to singulars, which cannot be insignificant. The earlier plurals are ‘generalising’, the singulars innocent of articles must mean a narrowing down to the particular. Thirdly, the close juxtaposition of the words for man and woman from 11 ff. is most naturally read as signalling a switch to the marital context, in which, pace many commentators, St. Paul was quite as interested as in who exactly led worship.

All discussion of the Pastorals is complicated by the fact the Greek is often uncommonly rum. I suggested years ago to George Kilpatrick of blessed memory that this is so because by definition they were written by a Semitic speaker with no skilled amanuensis to hand. He thought that very plausible; but however we got this Greek, it represents a complication. If you want to stretch a point, perhaps Paul DID mean an accusative ἄνδρα understood after διδάσκειν! But I am inclined to think that it is quite as probable that this gets supplied by those who are quite sure on a priori grounds that he must have intended that.

I haven’t I think found team-ministry particularly here. But ministry does normally seem to have been team-ministry in the NT. Aquila and Priscilla, sometimes with Paul, sometimes without him, formed such a team. Some of us would testify that when spouses work in double harness the result is “the best bliss that earth imparts”.

If roles are interchangeable then homosexual clergy should be acceptable.  WO + Hom-O joined together at the hip of confusion, obsfucation and disobedience.

That doesn’t follow.  The issue of ordination of practicing homosexuals has nothing to do with roles - it has to do with being an example and leading a godly life. I would have no problem with the ordination of a homosexual person who promised to be celibate. Our lives aren’t about what we are tempted to, they are about what we do with those temptations.

The issue of ordination of practicing homosexuals has nothing to do with roles - it has to do with being an example and leading a godly life.

It has everything to do with gender roles and identity in the context of marriage and sexual relations.  The argument being made would appear to be that if women’s ordination is acceptable because gender is irrelevent in the eyes of God, then so is same-sex marriage.

The argument being made would appear to be that if women’s ordination is acceptable because gender is irrelevent in the eyes of God, then so is same-sex marriage.

Then it is a straw man, because I don’t think anyone who is in favour of WO on this thread is in fact making that argument.

I’ve had a pang of conscience with regards to my participation in this thread.  I was reading in the end of Romans this morning, and it is obvious to me that I am not building anybody up.  I think I will only read and not comment for a while.

Our Lord was male in the incarnation, but we are all, male and female, made in his image - therefore in the broader sense God is beyond gender.

I think we need to keep in mind a potential distinction between sex and gender, the latter being grammatical in some usages.  In the grammatical sense, God is not beyond gender but I don’t think it makes a great deal of sense to speak of the Father as male ... the Father is pure spirit.  Maleness is generally conceived as a biological aspect of creatures who do not reproduce asexually.  No part or aspect of God the Father is of creation.  “Old Testament” types are generally understood as foreshadowings.  Thus, the bronze serpent bieng lifted up foreshadows the Cross.  The suffering servant in Isaiah foreshadows Christ.  They were not understood as Christ for the Israelites.  However, we should not distinguish too completely from the people of the Old Covenant and the people of the New for God’s people are one people, unless they should turn away from Him.  The types and foreshadowings of the Old Testament are not irrelevant to our understanding of Christ ... He Himself uses them to explain himself.  The priestly order of Melchizedek addressed in Hebrews comes from the “Old Testament”.  Certainly, the priesthood of Christ proceeds from Jesus Himself and not from any prefigurements but our understanding is not complete without them.  And sure, the revelation of Christ surpasses the imagination of the men of the Old Testament ... as well as our own.  We all see as if through a glass darkly.I did not forget this topic yesterday; rather, I became wary of the prideful attempt to put it all together in a nutshell ... as if that were a possibility.  I will try not to provide “the answer” here but I will try to inject some clarity, according to my lights, from time to time.  The work at hand is your work, however much by the investigation I am myself enpassioned and benefitted.

Also, I would suggest that you consider what it means to be created in the image of God from several complementary axes.

Another thought comes to mind with regards to the context of this theological debate.  We should remember who is the ultimate enemy and who benefits from the ongoing destruction of the Episcopal Church and challenges to all:  none other than the father of lies.  We are all snared, to some degree and to some degree we all share in the Ancestral Curse.  But we Christians also share in Christ’s triumph and we know from our Lord’s words who are our brothers and mothers ... whose who do the will of God. Let’s start with that ... in all the small things of our day and hope to make it a habit.

To Antique:
Amen. I am soooo weary of people preaching an agenda. When I was in seminary I was spurned by a goodly number of women for not being ‘on board’ with the message. There are lots of worthy (and, sadly, not-so-worthy) causes that become sermon material, but if your agenda comes before Jesus Christ, I for one, don’t want to hear it.

Caffeine? Never touch the stuff, haven’t for decades. It makes me cross, unreasonable, migrainous and liable to stroke. It could make me inclined to SCREAM AND BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL when I consider that I just eat and go to bed and then to church and eat and there’s ALL THIS STUFF here when I get back… But far be it from me to deny you your substance.

Whereas I am a confirmed addict, probably in need of rehab.  Oh wait, I teach for a living . . .

I was trying to explain that of course Christ had to be male, and The Twelve male, for him to be Prophet, Priest, King, Son of David, greater than Solomon, spotless Lamb etc. etc., and for the Twelve to represent the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes. Hebrews was what was chiefly in my mind when it came to Types. His maleness is of the essence in the light of the Old Covenant.

“Of the essence”?  Interesting.  And how has that changed in light of the New Covenant?

I have not mentioned Adam or Romans 5 in this connection, nor was he in my mind.

Yes, but I would contend that it should be, particularly given the stress you place on the difference between aner and anthropos.  Romans 5 has been a central part of the discussion thus far and would seem pretty central to question of whether or not Christ’s maleness is “of the essence.”

I am saying that what was originally essential for Him to be Who He was may not be so significant now. His must always be a male body, but it is a male RESURRECTION body. Does that have powers of generation? Surely not. Sex in the Resurrection must be significant if at all as part of our personal history and individual recognisability. “With what rapture/Gaze we on those glorious scars.”

Interesting but perhaps beside the point.  I note that you say “MAY not.”  Is his sexuality like his scars?

Who outside Rome and Orthodoxy lays any stress at all on the Lord’s maleness since He was raised and ascended?

Ahem.  Who indeed?  Or in other words, nearly 100 percent of the Christian world until a few years ago, and now a mere 80 to 90 percent or so . . .

<blockquote>  “The imitation of Christ for females is not of a male person.”
  Nor is it for men (we’re not all celibate).  Imitation is not the issue.

I’m sorry, but it is a vital issue, since we are commanded to attempt it. The Imitatio cannot be of Him in His maleness, since some of us are female, and need not be of His celibacy, since some of us have been called to marriage. That we are all commanded ἀνδρίζεσθε, which means ‘act with masculine courage and determination’, is a somewhat different point.</blockquote>

Yes of course it is a different point, which is MY point.  Imitiation is a vital issue, but it is not a vital issue for determining whether or not Christ needed of the essence to be male, or whether this extends to Christian priesthood.

<blockquote>  “In purely practical terms, the Saviour if female could not have functioned. For a start, She could not have chosen to be celibate, then engaged in public ministry in Judaism. Such freedoms were to issue from Christ, but did not exist before Him.”
  Oh dear.  The “cultural conditioning” argument again.  Why is it that every time Jesus does something contrary to the religious or cultural mores of first century Judaism (sufficient to get him crucified) we all stand up and cheer, but whenever it is contrary to our religious and cultural mores, well, that was a concession to the conditions of the first century?

I’m sorry, dear brother, but you have entirely misunderstood me. I am saying, in the face of claims in this thread that the Lord’s sex doesn’t matter, that there are not only overwhelming theological arguments against that view, but PRACTICAL ones as well. There are similar and very strong PRACTICAL arguments against an originally female apostolate.</blockquote>

I understood you perfectly.  You see the practical arguments as overwhelming, and the theological arguments as weak.  I see it 180 degrees differently.

<blockquote>  ”If I may say so, the “maleness” of the Father is a very odd idea. A male Father must have a female Consort, as opposed to being maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That idea belongs in paganism. “Masculinity” perhaps; but we are speaking of the God out of Whose mind all matter came, including sex-difference.”
  Myself, I don’t hang much on the “maleness” of the Father in re: ordination either, but the first sentence of your paragraph is very, very strange.  Since when is the maleness of a father an odd idea?  And when Christ refers to his Father, I don’t think he implied a female consort!  And I find “masculinity” vs. “maleness” to be a distinction without a difference.

Come now, IRNS, you are not a theologically or philosophically naïve person. Or are you? You understand analogy, surely? You know perfectly well that the distinction is vital. We MUST speak of God as a (masculine) Father, and we may NEVER speak of Him as male. To be male is to be embodied. I am speaking of basic orthodoxy here.</blockquote>

No, you did not write “male” but “maleness,” which I still have a hard time distinguishing from “masculinity.”  In any case, of course God is, ultimately, not male.  But He has taught us, when speaking to Him or of Him, to address him as Father.  Scripture seems pretty clear that, since we, limited as we are, only know people as male or female, we are to think of him as Father in his personal relationship to us, however we may try to penetrate the mystery of His being.

I for one do not think this has much to do with ordination, but it has a lot to do with the Church.  I’ve been to liturgies where all references to Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been altered to Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.  This sort of thing is common now, and I suspect you would disapprove of it as much as I do

<blockquote>  I don’t think that is the sort of church envisioned by the New Testament, it is not any sort of church that could be called catholic, and it is certainly not the church either outlined or assumed in the Prayer Book or the Ordinal.
  “That is astonishing! And not only because it thinks of catholicity as purely chronological not spatial. What aspect of the faith is not held in Sydney?”
  What is astonishing is that you think I believe catholicity is purely chronological.  When it comes to spatial catholicity and the “ordination” of women, I think I’m on pretty solid ground.  As for Sydney, I take as my witness Peter Toon:  http://pbs1928.blogspot.com/2008/11/gafcon-bishops-diocese-of-sydney.html Besides, “lay presidency” is not just heretical, it is a contradiction in terms.

I must say that I reserve the adjective heretical for positions contrary to credal orthodoxy. Sexual immorality is credally unorthodox, because it denies that He came down from heaven for us men and for our SALVATION, and that the Holy Spirit is the LORD, the GIVER OF LIFE. But liturgical arrangements?
A bit far out from Anglican decency and order, I do agree.</blockquote>

Maybe I’m a bit over the top, but not by much.  I may be wrong, but I believe that both Vicki Gene Robinson and Katherine Schori are, or claim to be, creedally orthodox, insofar as they formally declare their acceptance of Nicaea and Chalcedon, as do a great many of their supporters.  In any case, “lay presidency” is not a matter of decency and order, nor does it offend against it.  I’m sure that the “lay presidents” of Sydney won’t be sloppy.  There is an inescapable matter of doctrine here.

Enough.  Genug.  Basta!  Back to my coffee . . .

Addendum:

Hmmm . . . I suppose, on reflection, there might still be a difference between “maleness” and “masculinity” if you see the one as referring to essence and the other to imitation (like “mannish”).  But that would an arbitrary distinction on your part.

I understood you perfectly. You see the practical arguments as overwhelming, and the theological arguments as weak. I see it 180 degrees differently.

That is 180 degrees untrue to my view. The theological arguments are overwhelming, the practical considerations are much much weaker, but do in fact chime with them. What the whole caboodle adds up to is the position taught throughout the NT, that the Incarnate Lord could not have been other than He was, from the Old Testament requirements, through the choice of Mary’s ovum that month, with its particular genetics, its particular mix of physique and personal gifts including a brilliant intelligence, to the place and circumstances of birth and upbringing. Even the existence of the Roman road system was part of the right, indeed perfect, timing.

I suppose, on reflection, there might still be a difference between “maleness” and “masculinity” if you see the one as referring to essence and the other to imitation (like “mannish”).  But that would an arbitrary distinction on your part.

Arbitrary distinction??? On MY part????? Only if the elementary distinction between the Creator, Who is transcendent, and the Creation, that cannot come to be apart from Him, originated in the mind of this female animal creature.

Which of the Fathers would not vigorously repudiate the notion that God the Father is male? Which would not assert with as much vigour that He is masculine? IRNS, some considerably deeper reflection on your part would not come amiss. Try to reflect that Christian doctrine actually requires us to see animal maleness as a divinely-given picture of divine gender. The Son’s generation by the Father is eternal, remember?

As a footnote to a thread that really ought to die about now, in my view, I add this about the Aaronic and Levitical priesthoods. The priests were male, but their maleness had to be severely disciplined, so that it was not mixed with their sacerdotal functions at all. Recent sex-relations rendered the priest ritually unclean. The male sexedness was carefully concealed by robes which had to be worn in public worship. So far as we can tell, two aims were secured by these regulations: priests were qua males not confused with the female cult-prostitutes typical of fertility-worship; and with the maleness carefully muted in public they were not confused with the male cult-prostitutes who serviced females in those pagan rites. Certainly a priesthood whose maleness is obtruded cannot claim to be modelled on that ideal.

Dr. Turner,

Just to belabor the point, you over-interpret me.

In comment #267, you wrote:

If I may say so, the “maleness” of the Father is a very odd idea. A male Father must have a female Consort, as opposed to being maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That idea belongs in paganism. “Masculinity” perhaps; but we are speaking of the God out of Whose mind all matter came, including sex-difference.

In comment #279, I wrote:

Myself, I don’t hang much on the “maleness” of the Father in re: ordination either, but the first sentence of your paragraph is very, very strange.  Since when is the maleness of a father an odd idea?  And when Christ refers to his Father, I don’t think he implied a female consort!  And I find “masculinity” vs. “maleness” to be a distinction without a difference.

In comment #313, you wrote:

Come now, IRNS, you are not a theologically or philosophically naïve person. Or are you? You understand analogy, surely? You know perfectly well that the distinction is vital. We MUST speak of God as a (masculine) Father, and we may NEVER speak of Him as male. To be male is to be embodied. I am speaking of basic orthodoxy here.

In comment #325, I wrote:

No, you did not write “male” but “maleness,” which I still have a hard time distinguishing from “masculinity.” In any case, of course God is, ultimately, not male.  But He has taught us, when speaking to Him or of Him, to address him as Father.  Scripture seems pretty clear that, since we, limited as we are, only know people as male or female, we are to think of him as Father in his personal relationship to us, however we may try to penetrate the mystery of His being.

I for one do not think this has much to do with ordination, but it has a lot to do with the Church.  I’ve been to liturgies where all references to Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been altered to Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.  This sort of thing is common now, and I suspect you would disapprove of it as much as I do

Then I added in comment #326:

Hmmm . . . I suppose, on reflection, there might still be a difference between “maleness” and “masculinity” if you see the one as referring to essence and the other to imitation (like “mannish”).  But that would an arbitrary distinction on your part.

This seems to have unsettled you (or is it some coffee, perhaps?), as you replied with caps and multiple question marks. 

Arbitrary distinction??? On MY part????? Only if the elementary distinction between the Creator, Who is transcendent, and the Creation, that cannot come to be apart from Him, originated in the mind of this female animal creature.

However, I was not accusing you of making an arbitrary theological distinction in my addendum, but a linguistic one.  I was merely pointing out the difficulty, or ambiguity, in the terms you use.  You made an infelicitous distinction between “maleness” vs. “masculinity,” one on which you seemed to be hanging a point..

From the OED:

maleness. a. ‘Masculine’ or vigorous character; masculinity; also = virility. b. The quality of being of the male sex.

In other words, “maleness” can either mean either character or quality.  Thus my comment.

There is, in fact, an ambiguity here which may or may not be related to our argument.  Questions of essence vs. accidents, if you will, or of homoousios vs. homoiousios vs. hypostasis, etc.  (For the record, I do not think that the sex of Jesus, and certainly not of any priest,  is related to the hypostatic nature of any member of the Trinity, although I have heard that argument.)  I am merely suggesting that there was a lack of clarity in your terms, which may be related to a lack of clarity in your argument. 

As for the first part of your comment in #327, I still think I understant you quite well, but we are in serious danger of talking past each other, if we are not doing so already.  But I agree the thread is dead—at least for me.  I am sure there will be other occasions.

I have spent hours wading through this extended discussion and am quite impressed with the learned arguments both pro and con.  However, this seems to be a vivid example of a major crack in ACNAs armor. It seems that there will never be agreement based on this sample.

On the contrary, there already is agreement on the part of the members of the new province.  Whether the agreement will hold is the operative question.  Thus far, the agreement is to honor differences between dioceses on the issue of ordination of women.  Those who chose not to honor that agreement are not thus far in a position to make choices for the rest.  If various “special interests” hijack the effort, the province will certainly fall apart.  TEC does not offer a Christian alternative unless you are comfortable being in communion with those who follow the Unitarian Universalist kind of thinking.  Those conservative insiders who remain are driven to a Congregationalist way of understanding not simply governance but also communion.  Perhaps that is their short term inheritance and I won’t argue that point here but it is a diminishment at best from my perspective.  From where I stand, the new province is the only hope for an Anglican presence in North America.

Hi Matt.  I will be more than happy to provide my reference if you can givfe me direction on how to search the Stand Firm archives.  The specific reference was during the controversy between Good Shepherd and your parent Diocese.  The comment was a recommendation for congregations to pursue action in the courts if they believed they could win.  I am certain that it is there because I recall being somewhat surprised by your statements and the strength with which they were put forth.  Again, please give me direction on how to search your postings and I will be glad to provide the exact reference.

Hi EmilyH, strange that you should post here. I remember well those comments. They were in the context of a discussion about whether or not churches should simply hand over their property and assets when leaving their dioceses’ or take them and risk a lawsuit. My advice was that if they had the resources to fight and a chance of winning a DEFENSIVE battle, churches should not give up their property to the diocese because that only encourages future attempts to steal parish property on the part of dioceses and the larger churches. I did not and do not believe that churches should ever take the offensive.

The search function is found here:
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/search/