I have a church nearby that's has woman clergy. Any advice?

Discussion in 'Questions?' started by Religious Fanatic, Oct 2, 2018.

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  1. Toma

    Toma Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This is one brutal thread. It reminds me of how I used to post, years ago, with complete conviction and maximalism, needing to determine every last thing before I could ever make any decisions.

    I should like to remind everybody that we are justified in the eyes of God by the grace of God working in us unto faith in Jesus Christ.

    God has already forgiven us, no matter what we do, and we accept this loving forgiveness by childlike faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

    If God is for us, who can be against us? If you are baptised by a woman, whether she - by a disputed point of unclear theology - exercises valid ministry or no, you are justified firstly by faith in God. If it were wrong to be baptised by her, God has already forgive you and justified you. Even if you eat the bread and wine from the hands of a female priest wrongly, God has already forgiven you and justified you. Perhaps people reject female ordination for what it may do to the theology of others, but as for your own soul, for goodness' sake be at peace, whatever you do, having faith in Christ.

    The fact is, whether Junia in Romans 16 was among the Apostles or known among the Apostles is forever unclear. Euodia & Syntyche in Philippians 4 are described by Paul with the same language as he describes Timothy and Epaphroditus, but they were confessed to be bishops in the early Church and the women were not. Perhaps Paul's "fellow workers" could just be a term of high esteem to godly women. How does one decide?

    Paul's exhortation that women should be quiet in Church seems to negate or qualify his earlier approval of women prophesying openly, as they did in church at the time. The first person to believe the Gospel in all of Europe was a woman. A woman called Priscilla acted swiftly in Acts 16 to correct Apollos, speaking equally with her husband Aquila. Deborah was a Judge with authority and inspiration from God.

    A lot of this is unclear and goes both ways. In such things, I no longer make a protestation. Trust in God's grace, mercy, and peace. Eating some bread and wine or having water splashed on you "incorrectly" or by the wrong person is meaningless if you have not love and faith anyway. Back to basics.
     
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  2. Toma

    Toma Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Tiffy, the individual evangelists and epistolarians who wrote the Bible, wrote the Bible. With the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And none of them were directed by a monolithic institution. Things were spread very thin in the 40s-60s AD. The Church, over several centuries, had to struggle with and "discover" which books were inspired, by prayer and debate. This doesn't strike me as the process of a confident institution which could determine immediately what was Scripture and what was not, simply by saying "we wrote this one, and not this one". Nobody ever made that argument.
     
  3. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Which makes your response all the more astounding. You won't listen to the clear testimony of Scripture, instead retreat to "the Church" and then when confronted with how the Church for 2,000 years has and does authoritatively interpret these clear Scriptures on who can and cannot be a bishop/priest, you dismiss them as "sexist" and spout literal Donatist heresy.

    By "the Church" it seems clear that many rich western progressives mean "myself." Every man his own pope.
     
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  4. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    My point was that it is the Church which produced the Bible, not the Bible that produces the Church. Ultimately our responsibility is to Christ Himself, The Word, not 'The Bible', the words, and certainly not a particular sect or denomination's notions as to what the scriptures contained therein actually mean, particularly when imposed by them, (as a system of rules and laws), upon the Church. That is what Wycliffe's Lollardism and Luther's Continental Reformation was about.

    In fact that is what Anglicanism and Reformed Theology is supposedly about. Or has some of 'the Church' stopped 'Reforming' and is becoming increasingly bogged down once more in ecclesiastical nostalgia for a bygone age of coercive control, like the pre-reformation Roman Catholic one had.

    Even the selection of which books should be included in the canon was a process of 'reformation'; there was so much material considered by the Church to be unworthy of acceptance. The canon is now closed, but how in its totality it is to be interpreted and understood is not the special and privileged mandate exclusively of pedantic literalist fundamentalists.
    .
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2018
  5. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    And the Church can make the Bible say whatever it wants to, right?
     
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  6. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    By no means, but neither can it be made,(by a vociferous few), to handcuff and hamstring the Church in its ongoing mission to serve Christ in the Power of The Holy Spirit.

    Which is exactly what the Priesthood and Pharisees were trying to do to the Church of the Old Testament, but God in Christ opposed them.

    They bitterly complained about the changes though, and eventually did something about it. :cross: But God did something even better, and where are the Pharisees now? :duel:
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2018
  7. Toma

    Toma Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Absolutely, our fealty and loyalty is to The Word, the person. But the Bible, or the word of God, contains all the authenticated words of The Word that we know of. So what's the difference, practically-speaking?

    Anyway, what do you mean by "the Church" and "produced"?

    "The Church" could mean just the Pope. Or the Bishops. Or the Clergy. Or the Clergy and People - all of a specific denomination, too. Or does it mean all denominations and Christian peoples, heretical or not? Remember that schism and heresy were not exclusive to the era of the united Catholic-Orthodox church. Ebionites and Docetists already existed near the commencement of the New Covenant. We can bang on about "the Church" defining this or that, but which Church do you mean? The one that won out at Nicaea? Since it's all about reform, why not listen to the Arians, Gnostics, et. al., too?

    Also, the word "produced". The Church discovered and accepted books, but it as a whole did not "produce" them. Individuals wrote them, and others liked the works, and copied them. Many others wrote other works (the gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary Magdalene, etc.), but they are not canon. One church (for example, Gnostic bishops) said they are, one said they aren't. How do we rely on "the Church" to say what is "produced" by it, when it is itself in dispute?

    If interpretation or understanding are not in the hands of any one party, why should the canon itself even be closed? Why not consider the sermons of MLK Jr. or John Stott to be inspired?

    A lot of these are questions for myself, by the way, not an attack on you. :)

    We are not God in Christ. We must listen to God in Christ, as He spoke definitively while on Earth. The coming of the Holy Spirit changes things, for sure, but we can't imagine that any new interpretation or idea that seems powerful is exactly the same as Christ's ministry and teaching. Where is our anchor? If you say "in The Incarnate Word", how else do we know about the incarnate Word except in the plain words about Him in the Scriptures? We can't have an endless roundabout.
     
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  8. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Howcome "the Spirit" is telling you to make the exact same changes as demanded by the secular/atheist powers that be? Have you ever wondered that?

    It's one thing if you demanded that all women wear only skirts, the congregation be split by genders to the left and the right of the nave; that the laity do Morning and Evening Prayer every day. The Power of the Holy Spirit commanding you to do that. We could debate what's right and wrong here, but at least you wouldn't demand what the atheists are demanding. We would know you are not infected by the atheistic zeitgeist.

    How can you honestly sit here and tell us here that you are not infected by the atheistic zeitgeist? You with a woman priestess wife; surrounded by "women bishops" who demand abolishing gendered pronouns for God; in a culture suffocated by Gay Marriage, the Muslim invasion; performing infanticide on countless children; an epidemic of masturbation; and the final erosion of the traces of Christian virtue in Britain?
     
  9. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    What is "the Church"? Because it seems that any meaning besides the one discovered by a select few in the last 70 years in a small fringe of Christianity (unknown amongst probably 60%+ of Protestants, totally unknown among the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern or Oriental Orthodoxy), is miraculously rejected. Who is your Church?

    The Reformation was absolutely not about this endless march of changing what the text means. It was a restoration of the ancient, patristic doctrine on the infallibility and superiority of Scripture. It was not some authorization for endless revision. No Reformer - Lutheran, English or Calvinist- could authorize such a hermenuetic.
     
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  10. Toma

    Toma Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Incidentally, although it's never acknowledged by lay apologist types, the Roman Catholic Church shifted its focus away from Medieval categories and ideas starting in the 1940s. Patristics and what the Fathers say are now the primary study of almost all R.C. higher priestly studies, for Christian anthropology and theology.

    "What do the Fathers say?" is the cry of the professors of the Seraphicum, and the other great universities of Rome. They simply ignore and put down Medieval piety for the most part. Thomas Aquinas is ignored. Scotus. Scholastics. Rome has actually become 16th century reformers without admitting it. This is actually pretty important...
     
  11. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I don't think that's accurate. Pope Francis and any of the great people in the current hierarchy are not experts or even champions of Patristics. The last exponent of that was Benedict XVI, and he's now back to being Josef Ratzinger.

    According to Heiko Oberman and the Shape of Scripture, Rome has left its dual approach of Scripture and Tradition, and today (post Vatican2) teaches the belief that it can essentially shape and create doctrines at will, in the spirit and zeitgeist of the times. It actually matches Tiffy's theology. That's because both are liberalism. This is what liberalism teaches: that doctrine must adjust to the times. It is the same view among Anglican liberals, Roman liberals, Lutheran liberals, you name it. They are all of the same view on this.
     
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  12. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    It's ironic we're having this discussion on where does the Bible from from: "the Church" or the Holy Ghost. I was just reading Clement of Rome this morning. Let's see what he has to say:

    Look into the Holy Scriptures, which are the true words of the Holy Ghost. Ye know that there is nothing unjust or counterfeit written in them.
     
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  13. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    The Church.

    The English word 'church' is derived from the Gk. adjective kyriakos as used in some such phrase as kyriakon doma or kyriake oikia, meaning 'the Lord's house', i.e. a Christian place of worship. 'Church' in the NT, however, renders Gk. ekklesia, which mostly designates a local congregation of Christians and never a building. Although we often speak of these congregations collectively as the NT church or the early church, no NT writer uses ekklesia in this collective way.

    An ekklesia was a meeting or assembly. Its commonest uses for the public assembly of citizens duly summoned, which was a feature of all the cities outside Judaea where the gospel was planted (e.g. Acts 19:39); ekklesia was also used among the Jews (LXX) for the 'congregation' of Israel which was constituted at Sinai and assembled before the Lord at the annual feasts in the persons of its representative males (Acts 7:38).

    In Acts, James, 3 John, Revelation and the earlier Pauline letters, 'church' is always a particular local congregation. 'The church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria' (Acts 9:31) may look like an exception, but the singular could be distributive (cf Gal. 1:22) or, more likely, is due to the fact that the verse concludes a section about how 'the church in Jerusalem' (Acts 8:1) was persecuted and its members scattered. Although every local congregation is 'the church of God' (1 Cor. :2), Paul makes no use of the term in connection with his doctrine of justification and salvation, and it is conspicuously absent from his discussion of Israel and the Gentiles in Rom. 9-11. But in the later Colossians and Ephesians Paul generalizes his use of 'church' to indicate, not an ecumenical church, but the spiritual and heavenly significance of each and every local 'body' which has Christ as its 'head', and by which God demonstrates his manifold wisdom through the creation of 'one new man' out of all races and classes. In God's purpose there is only one church, one gathering of all under the headship of Christ.

    But on earth it is pluriform, seen wherever two or three gather in his name. There is no need to explain the relation between the one and the many. Like the believer, the church is both local and 'in heaven'.
    Heb. 12:23 also has a picture of a heavenly 'assembly' (ekklesia), but this is based on the model of the 'congregation of Israel' at Sinai, and it is uncertain whether the 'first-born' who comprise it are human or heavenly beings. likewise, Jesus' 'church' of Mt. 16:18 may not be - identical with what Paul means by 'church'. Jesus may mean the gathering of his apostles to form, under him, the restored house of David (cf Mt. 19:28; Acts 15:16), by means of which salvation would come to the Gentiles (Rom. 15:12). (In Mt. 18:17, 'the church' refers to the synagogue.) Paul likens the local church to a body whose members are mutually dependent (1 Cor. 12: 12ff.), and to a building being erected, especially a temple for God's Spirit (I Cor. 3: 10ff.). Metaphors of growth are used, and also the image of a flock being fed (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:2). 'Church' is not a synonym for 'people of God'; it is rather an activity of the 'people of God'. Images such as 'aliens and exiles' (1 Pet. 2:11) apply to the people of God in the world, but do not describe the church, i.e. the people assembled with Christ in the midst (Mt. 18:20; Heb. 2:12).

    This Church is prophesied by Christ to continue in history to our present day and even the gates of Hell would not stand against it. Only Jesus Christ himself knows exactly who it comprises of, (there being both wheat and darnel in the worldwide Church on Earth).

    So I referred to the Church of scripture. Certainly not 'The Pope', nor any other specific denomination or sect. I refer to the 'priesthood of all believers', which is hidden within the ecclesiastical structures we call the 'visible church on Earth'.

    Produced.

    The Bible is a collection of writings that were produced by (1) The scribes and prophets of the Old Testament period. (2) The Evangelists, Apostles and Teachers of the New Testament period. We assume that they were all 'inspired by God' and therefore members of God's Church on Earth, OT and NT.

    The 'Books', 'letters' etc. which the Church in the New Testament period most used and valued in the period between 100 and 365AD were collected and complied together to form a 'canon' of scripture, considered by the church of Constantine's reign to be of sufficient doctrinal agreement with one another to form the basis of a unified ecclesiastical body of literature, suitable for Constantine to effectively Govern the Roman Empire, with the support of The Church and its, by that time, significant numbers of citizens.

    No books were included unless they were (1) Agreed by the majority of 'Churches' to be authentic, (though some were disputed and some interpolations admitted or not spotted). (2) None were included which either conflicted with the already established doctrines of The Churches, (plural) or were considered, at that time, to be obviously pseudepigraphal. i.e. not written by the author they claimed to be written by. Many were therefore rejected.
    .
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2018
  14. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Then you have very little room not to accept the face-value interpretation of the Biblical definitions of priesthood/episcopacy. There are no texts authorizing priestesses, there are no texts authorizing bishopesses, there are several texts limiting the priesthood to men and there are several texts limiting the episcopacy to men.

    The Church as you defined it has held to these definitions from the beginning (I am genuinely supposed to believe that rich western moderns 1,900 years later figured out the true meaning of the Word but the people living in the actual time it was delivered to the saints could not fathom it). You haven't questioned this but rather dismissed them as "sexist" as if this changes the meaning of the Word or the historical fact that the Church collectively has not held to your definition but rather the Biblical definition.

    The modern revisionism of the rich Global North has no leg to stand on; biblically or traditionally. A baptism from a woman is valid but not licit and should not be the norm in any church.
     
  15. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I want to add that in the traditional Anglican understanding, 'the Church' extends to before the New Testament, into the Old Testament. Pretty much all major treatises that I've seen covering the Episcopacy and the nature of the Church cover this topic. Aaron is called "a bishop". Lancelot Andrews mapped levite-priest-high priest, to deacon-priest-bishop.

    This is strenuously opposed by the Church of Rome, which argues that the Church was founded in the New Testament (because they want to argue that the Church springs from Peter). Perhaps it's this influence of Roman theology that has affected our proper understanding of the Church. In the Anglican understanding, there was always one single Church, for all time, under the same divine map, structure, and mission, from the first revelation to Abraham, to Noah, and definitively established under Moses and Aaron.

    By that reckoning, all of the Old Testament must impact how we understand the qualifications for ordination. We are shown what the church of the future should look like (since it cannot look different from what the church of the past looked like).
     
  16. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    There are no New Testament texts establishing any male priesthood whatever. The New Testament priesthood is a priesthood of all believers both male and female, with Jesus Christ as our Great High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, (not Aaron).

    The male only Aaronic priesthood is restricted only to the Jewish Diaspora and there is absolutely no connection between IT and the New Testament idea of 'Priesthood'. Both the 'function' and the 'office' are different under The New Covenant. The priesthood as you know it, including their vestments, dates from the time of Constantine, their vestments being derived from the robes of office of Roman Secular Officialdom. Constantine started the Church's decline into ignorance, superstition and the lust for secular power, which only got reversed by Reformation.

    The Church has most certainly not held any definition of a 'Priesthood', let alone a male only 'Priesthood', in the New Testament scriptures. You may search all you like and you will never find one. The 'Priesthood' you support as 'Biblical' is in fact no such thing, it is a product of historical development which took place within the church well after Apostolic times and well after the New Testament was already complete.
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2018
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  17. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This is not a traditional Anglican understanding. You do not possess an Anglican understanding of holy orders.

    This is not a traditional Anglican understanding. You do not possess an Anglican understanding of holy orders.


    Sure he did. When he appointed all male Twelve, he made his choice pretty clear. There were plenty of holy and pious women followers who would follow him to the ends of the earth, if he thought they were suitable to be the bishops of the New Testament Church. But they weren't. And likewise for the presbyters -- all male, and likewise for the deacons -- all male.

    By the way, "priest" is just a concatenation of the Middle English word prester, which just stands for presbyter. When we say priest, we mean prester, ie. presbyter., ie. the New Testament Church, which follows on the divine pattern of the Old Testament church, in particular the kohannim (also called priests, in English). Checkmate.
     
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  18. Peteprint

    Peteprint Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Those who support WO have to make the argument that the Church was wrong for most of the past 2,000 years. They can claim it was the result of patriarchal prejudice or misunderstanding the scriptures, but what does this say then about the Church? That the Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Roman Catholic Church and, until very recently, the Anglican Church, Presbyterian/Reformed, and Lutheran churches all got it wrong is a big claim to make and raises many troubling questions.
     
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  19. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    Stalemate.
     
  20. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    1. The NT texts have been cited to you ad infinitum. Paul's words on this are exhaustive and clear.

    2. It is a historic fact that the Church has restricted the priesthood and the episcopacy to men. Period. At most there were discussions of lay deaconessses. There have never been priestesses in the Church until modernists in Protestantism started to experiment.
     
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