The Plan To Smuggle in Women Pastors

LOL

 

That's a demonstrable fallacy. Humans have always sinned, but "correlation does not equal causation."

 

Locking a collar of servitude onto a woman... Ooopsie! Clerical collars!!

I've gone slap-happy here, begging everyone's pardon!

 

A Call for the ordination of women in the church is not feminism neither is it an ideology.

I'm incinerating that straw man before it can walk another step.
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Humans have not always sinned, otherwise we would not talk of there ever being a fall. Or were Adam and Eve not human until the fall?

No more fundamental division is apparent in human relationships than that exists between man and womankind. It was one of the most characteristically healing aspects of Christ's ministry in the field of human relations. Coequality is a fundmental characteristic of the Holy Trinity, which the human race has marred in the image of God that it reflects since the fall. The restoration of spiritual coequality in humanity is a fundamental work of the Holy Spirit most often opposed by men but also somtimes opposed by women too, because of our predisposition to sin, even after regeneration.
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Simple: for the same reason women voting wasn’t “a thing” until the 1900s, either. (Voting is an act of sovereignty, let’s not forget.) False anthropological assumptions yield bad anthropological results. If that’s what the tradition is based on, then the tradition is wrong. One wonders how the conflicts of the mid-19th cent. might have been handled had women been able to vote and hold office at that time. I’d like to think many of the atrocities our country experienced (and committed) might have been avoided. In any case, criticizing premodern assumptions shouldn’t be controversial in the 21st century.

Actually, the Methodists were ordaining women long before the 1900s. And the Methodists were not trying to deviate from Anglicanism. The fact that the Methodists and Episcopalians ended up as distinct Churches after the War of Independence is largely a historical accident. And there were also, it is claimed, attempts to do so much earlier, which were struck down by various Popes. We aren’t bound by that. There is no dogma about women’s ordination.

On this side of the pond, we need to be careful that we’re not reading idiosyncratic American notions of government back into how we understand Church polity. Until the War of Independence, Anglicanism operated on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, not constitutionalism: no Parliament may bind a future Parliament. As long as we’re not talking about defined dogma, we are not bound by tradition or custom in matters of ritual or discipline. The present body is where the locus of authority resides.

And, again, this wouldn’t be an issue if Roman Catholic assumptions about the priesthood hadn’t been illegitimately imported back into Anglicanism…

 

So Anglicans were ordaining women prior to the methodist movement? Also, most men were not voting for most of history as well. I could create a new tread on democracy, I really don't want to voice my opinions on democracy though. Invictus, what is your opinion on the Enlightenment? Do you generally think it was a positive or negative for society? Sorry if such questions are too broad.

 

The Methodists did not believe they were doing anything contrary to the Gospel, as they had learned and developed it within Anglicanism. You keep trying to shoehorn this into a search for a precedent and I keep pointing out that precedent is irrelevant here. Tradition isn’t common law.

I am pro-Enlightenment. It had excesses, as all eras do, but it would be a disaster to turn back the clock.

 

Spiritual coequality does not translate to coequality of spiritual gifts or callings, because the latter are distributed severally as the Lord wills. Not everyone gets an "equal opportunity" to be a pastor or a teacher or to prophesy or to receive Spirit-sourced 'words of wisdom' for others. It is as the Lord chooses whom to distribute them to. So if God wants women to be priests, let Him tell us: "Thus saith the LORD-- women are to be ordained as priests"! He certainly could have spoken that through His people by now if He'd wanted it. But He hasn't. God has showed us in precedents, though, that all priests are supposed to be men.

There are some things only women can do, such as childbearing.
There are some things only men can do, such as being Fathers.

 

If we’re going to keep talking about tradition as precedent (even though that’s really not correct), I may as well point out that the practice of calling priests “Father” in Anglicanism predates WO in Anglicanism by only a matter of decades. And that’s aside from the fact that the title is symbolic, not literal. I’d hardly call that a slam dunk. One would sure hope an argument that purports to tell us what the Holy Spirit isn’t doing would be based on something a bit stronger than a recent - and not universally adopted - metaphor.

 

Sure it is. It wasn't me who said, that,

Thus we see the difference between the Episcopal Church and ACNA. Our dear brothers @Invictus and @ZachT, being in the Episcopal Church, are immersed and continually subjected to the catechesis of learning about "modern assumptions" (whatever those happen to be at any given time). And the inevitable pressure is to revise prior Christian teachings in light of those (ever newer) "modern assumptions".

In ACNA on the other hand, there is no such pressure. Your guiding lights are Scripture, history, science, evidence. If something is not shown by science (but is a "modern assumption"), we are under no pressure to accept it. In fact we are pressured to reject all such false inventions, as heresies and inventions of the Devil. In natural knowledge, science reigns supreme. In supernatural knowledge, scripture reigns supreme. "Modern Assumptions", fueled by activist media, and a chase after social respectability, be damned.

As I wrote in my previous post, the title of Father in the 16th century was universally applied to all the bishops. You have John Jewel being called "The Reverend Father in God, John Jewel"; and the same for Archbishop Grindal; and the Reverend Father in God, Richard Bancroft; etc.
https://books.google.com/books?id=WTIJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false

It was also frequently given as an honorific to the lower clergy as well:
Matthew Parker: "that excellent and reverend father, Martin Bucher, whom God hath called to his rest"
https://books.google.com/books?id=H...PA1#v=onepage&q="father martin bucer"&f=false

But that's not even a major point, since even denominations who don't use the honorific of 'Father' reject women's ordination. Its use among Anglicans merely amplifies our historic and theological incompatibility with women's ordination.

 

Scripture Refuted- Cultural context, the priesthood of all believers, Junia, Paul was a sexist, Paul didn't write those letters, etc.
Tradition Refuted- Tradition is not precedent, Tradition is something that can be built upon (ie common law), tradition is generally sexist on WO, etc

I accept that tradition can be built on in a sense. For instance, the Trinity was defined in the tradition of the church. However, the Trinity wasn't something novel or independent/against a plain reading of scripture. WO is both novel and against a plain reading of scripture. I hope a bit of grace will be extended to me if I have used improper terminology.

Trinity- Good "addition" to tradition because it can be observed in scripture and tradition prior to Nicea.
Wo- Bad because it cannot be seen in tradition and cannot be observed in scripture.

 

If you guys read St. Athanasius treatise On the Incarnation, he never appeals to tradition in order to defend the Trinity. He shows it as a simple and clear Scriptural doctrine, present as much in the old as in the new testaments. It's typically a Roman argument to make extra-scriptural tradition as the source for the doctrine of the Trinity (with obvious benefit to them).

 

I do believe that the Trinity can be viewed in scripture without a council needed to define it as such, but I hope you saw the point I was attempting to make. Obviously (I hope), no one would wish to ascribe to a tradition that they could find no support/basis for in scripture.

 

It seems some people in here would have rather we had all been kept in the dark. That would definitely strike me as being a definite negative from where I sit in enlightened time and space.
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There is little scriptural support, (in fact I'd say there's none), per se, for a male only priesthood as we see it today, the character and style of which is more a result of Roman Catholic tradition carried forward from the Constantinial period, than any actual scriptural warrant.
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Ordination of the kind that excludes women of good standing in the church is both novel and against a plain reading of scripture.

Where do you read in scripture that no woman may be ordained in the church of Christ, written by any Apostolic authority. You don't. You rely upon tradition and convention alone.
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Ok, but again, tradition can’t be a precedent in instances where one of the premises of that precedent is now held to be false.

I’m not sure you realize just how controversial homoousios was in A.D. 325. The term was seen by the majority of the bishops at the time as quite untraditional (due to its materialistic connotations), in addition to not being a biblical term at all, and that’s aside from the fact that it was effectively imposed by the secular authority and inspired widespread resentment among clergy and laity alike who saw themselves as conservatives. They fought over it for longer than WO has been around in the Episcopal Church so far. Even Anglicans like Jeremy Taylor thought its adoption was a mistake. I happen to disagree with Taylor on that point, but it would hardly be un-Anglican to take that position, if we’re going to treat tradition as binding precedent in every case. (Everything is a precedent, but not every precedent is binding.)

Also, I do ask that it not be assumed that because I favor WO, that I think the settled dogmas of the Church are up for grabs. I do not. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the Creeds and the Liturgy, the Ten Commandments, the Word and the Sacraments, are all nonnegotiable. There have been prelates who haven’t upheld those, but their disobedience toward their own Church’s message doesn’t invalidate the message.

I consider the matter of who is eligible for ordination to be a matter of Discipline, not Doctrine, and I do not see any connection at all between WO and actual heterodoxy. All of the female clergy I have ever personally witnessed, known, or interacted with have been exemplary. There was never any question of their doctrinal orthodoxy, and to assume otherwise as a matter of course is condescending. I don’t see the lack of WO in the first 19 centuries as binding in any way whatsoever. We ordain men and women alike and we will continue to do so.

The question was asked at some point whether any Churches have grown more orthodox over time. It’s interesting, because if you look at the ways that the first American Prayer Book in 1789 revised the 1662, some of the changes were quite striking. The Athanasian Creed was removed entirely, over the objection of Seabury who thought it should at least be retained non-liturgically as an authoritative doctrinal statement. The Venite was chopped up. The Gospel Canticles were removed. And so on. Compare the 1789 to the 1979 and what does one find? The Athanasian Creed is included again, for the first time in an American Prayer Book. The option to recite the full Venite has been fully restored in the rubrics. The Gospel Canticles, which had been restored in earlier editions, were retained. There are prayers for the departed where none were before. The Eucharist is now served every week rather than no more than once per month. Each of those moves corrected what were eventually recognized as shortcomings, mistakes, and overreactions in previous editions. A person who uses the 1979 will find in it a solid rule of prayer that can be used and depended upon most profitably. It’s not perfect, but no prayer book is. Those who have no use for the Prayer Book will eventually have no use for the Church that uses and endorses it. People like me are the kinds of people the Church attracts. A Church that struggles at times to define itself amidst the prevailing culture is at least trying to engage that culture. It is a sign of vitality, even when it involves mistakes, and I am optimistic about its future.

 

I'm in the Anglican Church of Australia . I am regularly subjected to "modern assumptions", but only because I regularly seek them out (along with traditional views to balance them), I don't have anyone in my church community thrust them upon me without asking.

 

It comes out of Christian anthropology (which IS binding). If man is made in the image of God and woman in the image of man, then the words of Saint Paul placing very unequal roles upon men and women are not sexist or scandalous.

But if you swap out that anthropology in favor of “modern assumptions” of what sex and gender are, in short if you adopt Feminism, then yeah, the words of Scripture are incredibly scandalous, and need to be “dealt with”. I.e. “managed”. I.e. put into a closet.

It’s all about what preconceptions you being into Christianity with you. As for the Church, it has been clear about whether Feminism is a legitimate understanding of human nature.

But here’s the thing, even if you see the 4000-year old (OT and NT) rejection of women’s ordination as less than Revelation, and more a Church Tradition, it still deserves our utmost pious respect and assent. The Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. Aside from God himself, there is nothing holier than the Church in this world of iPhones and offices around us.

The mind of the Church is greater than any one individual.

That’s especially true if the tree of this Church was watered with the sweat of saints and the blood of martyrs. What have any of us here sacrificed for the Church? We’re pudgy in our air-conditioned plastic civilization. I doubt anyone here has been tortured for the Church. And thus the teachings of the Church deserve our true and genuine piety. Backbiting them as, “yeah but it’s not revelation” is the language of schism and reprobation.