Christ, (presumably on the criteria you are so exclusively proposing), apparently didn't choose, dogs, cats, kangaroos or PRIESTS either, (maybe for good reason). but did choose an ex Publican, a Zealot. a liar and thief, and other laymen, but no priests, as far as we know. I say, as far as we know because you are ASSUMING in your argument that there were only MEN present at the Last Supper, on the grounds that Scripture does not ACTUALLY mention there being any women PRESENT at that particular occasion. IF it did so mention women being present, your argument would logically fail to be convincing at all. As it is though, it barely has credence. Scripture had no need to mention women being present for it to have been POSSIBLE. Any more than scripture needs to have mentioned women anywhere RECEIVING communion, for it to have been possible. Indeed scripture does not mention women ever receiving communion but everyone accepts that it MUST have happened, but that scripture merely did not report it. Probably because scripture has been written entirely by MEN and so THEY considered it not worth reporting, so it would never occur to them at the time to report it. It cannot be logically inferred that just because something is not specifically recorded in scripture, it can never have happened. I don't find the "Jesus never ordained women in his own lifetime" argument, at all convincing. Just as Christ sent Saul to be an Apostle AFTER Christ's lifetime on earth, Christ is perfectly at liberty to Ordain women, after his lifetime on earth, if He so chooses. If scripture had not been 'CLOSED' after the canon was finally established, then women's ordination would probably have been recorded in the scripture that the church would still be writing about itself today, as Luke did in his Acts of The Apostles. A book which by its own abruptly unfinished ending suggests it was just the beginning of the church of Jesus Christ, the exploits of which would NOT actually be finished until ALL has been accomplished. .
I think you're actually making my point for me! You see, the practices which God established for His people even before the incarnation reflect the same things: Neither gentiles nor women were allowed to serve as priests in the Temple. When Jesus came, the status of gentiles was changed when they were declared 'no longer unclean', as you put it; but women remained restricted from serving as priests in the household of God, as church tradition reflects in an unbroken pattern for nearly two millennia. If we are to postulate that the church could have been wrong on this issue, beginning right after the Apostolic age and continuing thereafter for 1,900-plus years, then (logically) we can similarly postulate that the church 'got it wrong' from the beginning on such issues as paedobaptism and Eucharistic Real Presence. Agreed?
There is a significant difference between the concrete, living examples set forth by God in His dealings with mankind, and the 'arguments from silence' you bring up here.
Acts 6:1-7 strongly suggests the apostles had a special and exclusive role with regard to the Eucharist. I’m of the view that the “tables” in 6:2 are Eucharistic tables. Luke seems to expect that we are already familiar with “the daily distribution” referred to in 6:1 as though he previously informed us about it. But where? The only conceivable place is back in Acts 2:42-47. Connecting the two passages together paints the following picture– the apostles were involved in a daily ministry of the Word in the temple after which they dispersed and congregated in the homes of their disciples and converts, blessing, breaking, and distributing bread to them in a manner resembling Jesus at the Last Supper. Administering the Word required ordination to perform, and so too, administering the bread of fellowship required the same, so as more converts came into the fold, the apostles fell behind, and were forced to ordain the seven deacons who we read of in Acts 6 to distribute bread to the church. In narrating these things, Luke is casting the apostolic ministry as successive within Jesus’s ministry after He ascended. Jesus had at least around a hundred disciples, but until Acts 6, it’s the twelve who are governing the affairs of the church from public preaching to Eucharistic fellowship. After all, only the Twelve sat with Jesus at the Last Supper, a point which should be taken seriously. Jesus’s command, “do this. . .” was given to them only, not all of His disciples, not even most. Jesus did not shy away from feeding multitudes at once, yet on this occasion it was only the apostles. Why? It is more illuminating (to Luke’s work in particular) when the words “do this in remembrance of me” are interpreted not merely as a command to every Christian in general, but one that is addressed specifically to the Twelve. It was a command not only to keep but also to govern the ordinance of Jesus’s memorial feast for the wider Church. That Kingdom in Luke 22:30 was inaugurated at the ascension, and by the time of Acts 2, the apostles were sitting on the thrones granted to them by Jesus. Their relation to the Christian church was akin to that which the fathers and elders of Israel had to their familial households. When the Passover was instituted, the ordinance flowed from God to Moses, Moses to the Israelite fathers, and the fathers to their households. The pattern is very similar for the Eucharist– the ordinance flowed from God the Father to Jesus, from Jesus to the Twelve, and from the Twelve to the Christian family. Just as the fathers and elders of Israel were entrusted with governing the Passover feast, so too the apostles were entrusted with governing the Eucharist. All this to say, women did not preside at any Eucharist, neither did most Christian males, but the apostles alone, and those they laid hands upon in the Spirit to do so. Neither did any woman supervise the Passover feast on which the Eucharist is typologically based, but rather, the heads of each household. There isn’t the slightest hint of evidence to the contrary until the latter part of the second century in syncretistic Gnostic sects. This of course is not to portray women as having no involvement in the church’s ministry. They had equal involvement, such as in orders of widows and deaconesses (which, of course, men were barred from participating in), but the duties of those orders did not involve serving at the table or public teaching authority over grown men. The idea of women ecclesiastically serving in a presidential capacity would be antithetical to the apostles’ worldview. Paul clearly wanted us to think of ourselves as redeemed Adams and Eves through participation in Christ. Creation is good, but fell, and in Christ, its fallenness is healed. One of Adam’s sins was placing Eve between himself and the serpent. A redeemed Adam is one who does the opposite, gives himself up on her behalf, takes initiative to lead lovingly and sacrificially, and stands at the front lines to fight the battle and take the shocks, whether that’s in family life or in the church. For Paul, women should not exercise public governance over grown men in the church, because a redeemed Eve defers to a man’s responsibility to stand inbetween her and the enemy. If Adam and Eve did not sin, it would look like Adam taking initiative as the head to fight off the serpent, to give himself up in Eve’s place, and secure her safety. It would look like Eve respecting Adam’s responsibility to do so while also being wise not to play into the serpent’s hands. That, I think, is at the heart of Paul’s addendum in 1 Timothy 2:13-15. It’s all about setting up the church structure in a way that bespeaks of the fall’s reversal in Christ.
This interpretation seems quite novel to me. Do you have anything you can quote from Jewel or any of the early Anglicans? I looked at the commentaries of Clarke, Matthew Henry, and Gill; none of them brought up even a hint of this possible interpretation. Since verse 1 speaks of the complaint that some Gentile widows were being neglected, the context of this passage seems more in favor of an interpretation that the daily nutritional needs were not being equally meted out. Most commentators think that the 'breaking of bread' was a common way of referring to ordinary meals. The normal procedure for conducting the Passover meal involved families staying together in homes; perhaps extended families gathered together if they lived close together, but generally it was a household-by-household type of practice just as the original event in Egypt was household-based. There was no large gathering in a synagogue or large venue with a priest presiding over the Passover meal, which is what would better comport with your interpretation. As you say, it went from Moses to the fathers (male heads of households, not "fathers" as the appelation for NT priests) and from the fathers to their personal households. Although I agree with this conclusion, unfortunately I don't agree with how you arrived at the conclusion in that particular line of reasoning from scripture. A "thumb up" for this paragraph!
I don't think so! God did not invent sacrificial offerings or a sacrificial system. It already existed from antiquity. You are trying to convince us that God established such practices for His people, in order to then claim such practices must of necessity continue unchanged. But that is not true because it would raise some awkward questions about God changing his mind on the efficacy of HIS chosen 'unbroken pattern' of ensuring the forgiveness of human sins and also mean that God had produced a defective system that needed replacement. Would God produce something that defective? Sacrifice was invented by man, in order to please God, without consulting God, who had not so far issued any instructions concerning 'sacrifices' in the first place, concerning what God wanted of man. The whole idea is THAT old. Gen.4:3-16 Sacrifice was already well understood, (by Pagan man), mistakenly, as a means of pleasing God or divining God's will. Gen.15:1-20 God merely went along with it until such time as He could get the whole idea of it abolished altogether. A priesthood sacrificing animals or even human beings in order to placate or please a vengeful God for sins repeatedly committed is an unnecessary, pagan, superstitious ignorance of God's requirements of the human race. They had been doing it for MANY more than just 2 millennia. God certainly didn't WANT Abraham to actually sacrifice his only son Isaac. God knew Abraham was stupid and pagan enough to think it would be a perfectly sensible thing to do, if God told him to it though. God even had to stop Abram from going through with it, to teach him a lesson. And incidentally to indicate prophetically how God's only Son would have to die to stop the whole ungodly human idea of sacrifices in its tracks, once and for all. Sacrifice, in the mind of God, was already considered a filthy, futile practice that needed to be dispensed with, but man was so convinced that God WANTED it that it took nearly two millennia to get rid of it, Once And For All. Heb.9:6-25 Sacrifice could never do what Christ achieved, the system itself was defective. Heb.9:15-28 This means that The Covenant was never the final word of God on everything to do with 'sacrifices'. Isa.1:11, Isa.66:1-4 God did not lay down instructions for sacrifice and set 'an unbroken pattern'. Jer.7:21-26 "For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices." God does not, and never has, required 'sacrifice' according to a supposed, unbroken pattern, of Levitical rules. Ps.50:7-15 The reason anyone believes such nonsense is because of a biblical fundamentalist erroneous mindset. No! definitely not agreed. I will not be intimidated by even an army of such straw men.
That is an entire truckload of nonsense. God did establish the particular system of sacrifices for the Israelites; read Exodus and Leviticus, for crying out loud! The fact that humans practiced sacrifices (on their own and not ordered by God) prior to the exodus is irrelevant. Your use of the word "invent" is misleading. As for your supposed "awkward questions," The Bible explains that God put the sacrificial system in place for His good reasons; those reasons included temporarily covering (while not removing) the sin-guilt of the people, foreshadowing the coming Messiah, as well as showing them their depravity and their need of a Messiah for the ultimate forgiveness of their sins. The sacrificial system was integral to the Mosaic Law, which we know was put into place as a "schoolmaster" until Christ's arrival. God created a perfect system, not a defective one, but it was a system that included more than one stage. Well, He created Lucifer.... And yet God the Father sacrificed God the Son for our sakes. How can you say that the sacrificial system was defective, when Christ fulfilled it perfectly? This passage says that God presented the Israelites with His will and desire that they live obediently, and if they had done so they would not have been given the sacrificial system. But God foreknew that they would be disobedient and He foreknew & fore-planned for the sacrifices. The words here recorded in Jeremiah speak of God telling the people His will that they simply be obedient, but that in no way contradicts the fact that God subsequently set forth, in response to their disobedience, the sacrifices. That was then, and yet later on He did speak to the people and command them concerning sacrifices. Anyone can see through this weak attack. You create a straw man of an "unbroken pattern" regarding sacrifices which no one ever claimed except you (so you could knock the straw man down); note that the 'unbroken pattern' I referred to was that of appointing only males to priesthood, not of the entire sacrificial system. You then follow up with an ad hominem attack. Rubbish.
Your argument here is actually with God, not me. You say, when they came out of Egypt - "God established for His people rules concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices: Neither gentiles nor women were allowed to serve as priests in the Temple." God says differently than you do. You had better take up your argument with God because God says HE didn't, right here: 21 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24 But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. [Backward to a sacrificial system, instead of forwards to FAITH and walking IN THE WAY that God actually commanded them through the prophets God had sent.] Though scripture does not tell us their names or their message at that time. 25 From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; 26 yet they did not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers." What you see in Exodus and Leviticus is NOT God's commands concerning sacrifice, (God never gave any - God says so here), it is a stiff necked non inclining of the ear, a backsliding back into pagan sacrificial means of atonement and a refusal of the people to believe the prophets God had sent, day after day, to give that all up and just obey God by offering only a sacrifice of praise, LISTEN to God and be obedient to God's prophets when he sent them, day after day after they had left Egypt. When God says he didn't give instructions or commands concerning sacrifice, do you think God is telling a lie? .
So what do you believe about all the other prophets and Jeremiah, telling the people that one day pure sacrifices of rams and bulls etc. would be offered? We could have a scripture war over this all day but the Torah is the main of Hebrew religion and it includes sacrifices. I don't know why some people are so squeamish about them. The Apostles even offer sacrifices at the Temple.
Hosea 6:6 " What shall I do with you, O E′phraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings." We are not OF the Hebrew religion. Our Covenant for salvation by God is not The Covenant God made with the Hebrews. Our Covenant Head and High Priest is not a Levite and descendant of Aaron. The Levitical ordanances are no longer binding upon US and are fading away into obscurity, under a New and better Covenant dispensation altogether. Because they didn't work, don't work, and won't work, any more? Reason enough? I hate to appear ignorant but can you show me your working on that, I suspect groundless, assertion please? Unless you mean the trouble that St Paul got into when he booked ahead to have sacrifices for himself and four Gentiles one time, but didn't manage to actually pull it off without getting arrested and put on trial for disturbing the peace. .
I am surprised that you have not figured this out for yourself. It's so obvious. Jesus said He was sent to the house of Israel (both males and females) for the duration of His earthly ministry, and to this end He chose only Jews (but only male Jews) to be Apostles. Get the significance of that? When He was about to ascend, though, He let it be known that the Gospel was to be preached to all the nations (the Jewish nation and the Gentile nations alike). Therefore, church leaders could from that point on be of any heritage, but they are still to be males like the Apostles. Romans 16:7 is too uncertain to serve as a basis for any assumptions.
Asked and answered: I already explained this passage, but you didn't understand. I'll try one more time. Look at verse 22: 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. Is this talking about the entire 40 years that they wandered in the wilderness? No! It's talking about the time when they were first brought out of Egypt! At the beginning of their journey they were given this command (v. 23: "Obey my voice..."). But they disobeyed. They did not trust God enough to enter into the Promised Land, but instead they sent spies and chose to believe their bad report. THAT is when God gave them the sacrificial system. Do you grasp the distinction yet? The record of Exodus and Leviticus clearly shows that God did give them the system of sacrifices. You can't misuse this one passage in Jeremiah to contradict the plain words of entire Books of the Bible!
I think it more likely that 'In the day' refers to Ex.19:3-6, and the disobedience reference encompasses the whole 40 years, until that generation apart from 2 of them had died off. I am convinced that God only tolerated sacrifice, and only then if it was not human sacrifice or sacrifice to other Gods. Rather than 'instituting it', God regulated it because the people were already wedded to the idea, rather than God recommending it, (it was of course only ever an ineffective substitute for the real thing anyway), and I don't think God demanded THAT effective sacrifice either, it was entirely the human race's sin that accomplished that dirty deed, God didn't lift a finger to stop us and WE all as a human race entirely bear the whole guilt of murdering God The Son.). And for even THAT we are forgiven. 'In the day', is obviously not intended to mean a single day, otherwise it would have to mean the day they left Egypt. It denotes more likely the whole time in the wilderness, 'When your fathers tempted me, proved me and saw my works'. I don't believe God ever approved of animal or human sacrifice, only tolerated it, until it could be abolished as the human race finally understood it to be defunct at removing sin, therefore knowing it to have been a futile attempt at placating a God who is no longer holding their sins against them anyway. .
Lev 7:37 This is the law of the burnt offering, of the meat offering, and of the sin offering, and of the trespass offering, and of the consecrations, and of the sacrifice of the peace offerings; Lev 7:38 Which the LORD commanded Moses in mount Sinai, in the day that he commanded the children of Israel to offer their oblations unto the LORD, in the wilderness of Sinai. Num 15:25 And the priest shall make an atonement for all the congregation of the children of Israel, and it shall be forgiven them; for it is ignorance: and they shall bring their offering, a sacrifice made by fire unto the LORD, and their sin offering before the LORD, for their ignorance: Num 29:12 And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work, and ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: Num 29:13 And ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD; thirteen young bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year; they shall be without blemish: Deu 16:1 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. Deu 16:2 Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall choose to place his name there. This is a small sampling of the many scriptures which prove that God instituted the sacrificial system. For someone who "never approved" of sacrifices, God certainly issued a phenomenal number of detailed commands to make sacrifices! You believe what you like about it; I'll believe what the Bible says.
This subject has been bantered about for a long-time and I betcha no one has changed their personal point of view on the issues discussed. I guess now is the time to scroll-on.....
Whatever you happen to believe about it you are stuck with the fact that ALL this catalogue of 'a phenomenal number of detailed commands to make sacrifices', has been abolished, set aside, superseded, because it couldn't provide atonement with any degree of permanence. The prophets who spoke The Word of the Lord had been sceptical of its efficacy long before the Writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews stated that fact. And yet you still insist upon claiming GOD himself instituted and commanded this whole defective system of sacrifice, should remain in place, presumably intending it to last, as an example of leadership policy and the exclusion of women from certain ministries in the New Testament church, just because that didn't happen under the Old defective system, which you are saying God was responsible for putting in place, and presumably, since you believe originally , put it in place, still wants it kept in place. (or at least certain aspects of it, namely no women allowed to offer sacrifices). .
Here are some more of those examples of scriptures supposedly proving God instituted them in perpetuity. So Are you now postulating then that Deut 24:1-4 still stands as an edict, a standard and example by which God insists His church should have forever stood and to fail to live by it would constitute disobedience to God? "Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the LORD, and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a possession." That we, as Christian believers can write our own certificates of divorce and dismiss our wife if there's anything we dislike about her, and God won't be upset about it because God said we could in the scripture? Are we to assume by the thrust of your reasoning that the church of the New Covenant must live by this statute and ordinance? Deut 25:5-10. "When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. But if the man has no desire to marry his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the elders at the gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I have no desire to marry her,” then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” Throughout Israel his family shall be known as “the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.” How has Christ's church traditionally drawn the distiction between God's edicts which were intended by God to stand in perpetuity and those only intended to temporarily stand under a fading and past Dispensation? .