I have evolved in my understanding of women clerics. I think PDL summed it up very well for proponents of an open and inclusive priesthood. Forbidding women the collar is discriminatory. Our Lord never forbade it and the places in the Bible used as a basis for all male clergy are a stretch to say the least IMHO, especially given the reformation understanding of the priesthood. If one feel's called and meets all the material qualifications to take the Orders, why would one's gender be a reasonable obstacle?
How do you know that the Lord only called men to the role of priest?? The call is internal is it not? The demonstrable track reord shows only that the all-male leadership of the Church refused to collar anyone other than the men they chose as fit. Don't blame Jesus for what men with misogynistic views did.
What was the reformation 'understanding' and how did that justify logically the exclusion of female priests? .
I was referring to the change in the Anglican Reformation of viewing priests as presbyteros rather than Roman view of priests as sacerdotos or hiereus. The Anglican Reformers saw priests as ministers of Word and Sacrament rather than as indelibly marked representatives of the person of Christ offering sacrifices.
They are still in Apostolic Succession, however, and this has never included women. I don't believe that it can.
It is the antipathy to the idea that a priesthood continues to 'offer sacrifices', which is I think the most significant reason that the previous assumption violated a scriptural view of what a New Testament Priesthood actually does. That certainly would represent reformational theological reasoning that the previous pre-reformation 'traditional' assumption was effectively. in New Testament terms, a heresy. Christ's sacrifice of himself was thereafter publicly stated to be a (one oblation of himself once offered ) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death, until his coming again: Since the function of a New Testament priesthood is essentially now to bring to our remembrance Christ's once and for all sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and our Great High Priest is not of the line of Aaron, but of Davids line, the function of the priesthood is no longer regulated by the Levitical Laws and no longer involves the killing and sacrifice of anything, and therefore cannot be restricted only to the male gender, since the New Testament makes it clear that ALL believers, in the once and for all, Atonement of Jesus Christ, both male and female, are regarded by God as a holy priesthood. New Testament priests in the Anglican church are therefore now drawn from the WHOLE body of believers, not just the men. This idea now strikes me as being almost heretically idolatrous. To regard a fellow sinner, as much in need of a saviour as anyone else in the human race, as a 'stand in' or 'representative' for Jesus Christ himself is a diabolical anathama that should be given no place in any true believer's consciousness. The priest, be they man or woman, is truly only a representative of us sinful believers who constitute the 'body of Christ', not a male substitute for Jesus Christ himself. .
Ok. I don't believe Apostolic Succession really has any bearing on the matter nor do I believe AS is a necessity for valid orders.
You're right. AS is not necessary for valid orders. I don't have apostolic succession and I can give my wife valid orders. Not that she pays any attention to them... I'll be here all weekend, folks!
There is no, and never will be a demonstrable track record of who is called, if only men can be called the basis for that belief would be the Bible, not a demonstrable track record of only men happening to be called.
The Roman Catholic church defines its priests as 'servant leaders', presumably because our Lord himself requires his leaders to be servants. A bit incongruous then that women, designed by God to be 'helpmeets' to men, usually seen by men to mean in the role of a servant, have been forbidden by the men in the priesthood to even apply for the position of priest, in a priesthood supposing themselves to be servants of the people they are supposed to be serving, not lording it over those beneath them. .
I think the arguments were more based on feminism than sound theology. On the other hand the prohibition of women priests is largely based on one verse and I would find it more compelling if there were more explicit instructions.
I assume you're being facetious here. They might not have driven cars which hadn't been invented but they did sail on ships. They didn't watch TV but they did read and write books.
But, it has ALWAYS been possible for the New Testament church to have female priests. It was just that those priests that were male would not recruit female ones into the priesthood. There may have even been a very few female celebrants in the very early days of the New Testament church, judging by some of the eucharistic art in the Roman Catacombs, (but this is hardly proof). The lack of female recruitment can easily be attributed to the inability, in those times, for the Holy Spirit to overcome Jewish, Roman and Greek social conditioning, which were all generally opposed to women being allowed any position of honour, prestige or authority, an attitude that until recently has been overwhelmingly influencial also in the church even in western 1st world civilisation, and remains at least tacitly disapproving of females participating or taking leading roles in important ceremonials, both in the Americas, the Antipodes and Europe. The same principle could justifiably be observed in the fact that the scourge of slavery has only recently been actively condemned by the church and the states influenced to abolish it, thus establishing a greater degree of the freedom of God's Kingdom principles over a greater area of human interaction here on earth. It also took a long time for the church to overcome its inbred social conditioning of over 1800 years of resisting the Holy Spirit's opinion on the matter of freedom for all. .