How to defend the belief only men should be ordained?

Why have you completely changed the subject to Resurrection? Just asking!
.

 

But he didn't say "Unto women he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions; in sorrow you shalt bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husbands, and they shall rule over you all.

It was a direct address to Eve not all women.

 

So you seem to be suggesting that even though redeemed in Jesus Christ both male a female Christians are still "Under a Curse", especially women. Surely that can't possibly be what you are suggesting. Please reassure me. There was me thinking we are a new creature, 2 Cor.5:17 or do you think it says that only applies to men because it says "HE" is a new creature if he is in Christ. Did the death of Christ acheive NOTHING in terms of lifting that curse? What do you think "It is Finished" was all about then?

Gal.3:10-14. Some homework for those who may have forgotten. Gal.3:28. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

It's just amazing, but not surprising, how passionately some men will fight to preserve their 'doctrine' of male superiority and 'masculine headship'.
.

 

A valid point, if a bit obvious. Strange that fundamentalists don't take this verse fundamentally at face value as God telling EVE and perhaps an eavesdropping Adam something, isn't it, like they seem to take everything else they read in scripture at face value; quite literally.
.

 

Tiffy, Tiffy. Calm down. Take a deep breath.

Yes, mankind is still under the curse. We still work by the sweat of our brows. The ground is still filled with thorns and thistles (so is life). Women still have great pain in childbirth. And we still experience physical death.

So, yes, we are still in this fallen, cursed world and men are still (supposed to be) the bosses of the women (when men don't yield their duty of authority to grasping, overly-ambitious women). There can only be one leader in a godly household, and that leader is supposed to be the husband/father.

"Wives, obey your husbands... husbands, love your wives." That's the scriptural pattern for a godly household. God didn't suddenly wave his shepherd's staff and change the pattern 75 years ago, either.

Jesus finished paying the penalty we owe for our sins. He didn't finish off the curse; if he had, we would be living on flowery beds of ease and babies would pop out, easy as watermelon seeds. (Hey, that's poetry!)

 

When we decide that modern society dictates a new interpretation of Bible-based beliefs that have stood the test of time in the church for nearly two millennia, any doctrine becomes 'fair game' for change.

Surprised that I would need to explain that......

 

That really is not what is at issue. The core matters of the faith are intact. The resurrection whilst questioned by some, is not a matter for ontentious debate.

... For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. ...​

There is in the reception of scripture, and in the understanding of scripture, the matter of context. You will be familiar, no doubt with the maxim 'a text out of context is a con'. When we read scripture one of the thing we need to be aware of is the context.

For example, in psalm 137 we read 'Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!', and correctly we read that as a lament of people who had been carried far off from their homeland. That of course is entirely appropriate.

The social contitions of the early Church was straunchly patriarchal, and women were generally regarded more as possession than as equal. In that context we see Jesus prepared to engage in full fledged theological discussion, with woman, and nt just a woman, but a Samaritan women which was clearly unthinkable, and not just a Samaritan woman, but a woman whose standing was such that she comes to the well in the heat of the day as the other women do not want her in their group. Outcast of outcasts.

Paul works within the existring patrirchy, presumably on the grounds that he expresses iun 1 Corinthians 9:21-23

To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.​

The question we need to ask is 'would Paul have worked within the current social milleu' in ordert to save some?

Given the example of Jesus, I am inclined to think that he would.

 

But that's one hell of a rabbit trail you're trying to pave for us all to walk on buddy.

You sure you're not just trying to change the subject?.
.

 

For now, and within the Anglican Church, it is not a matter for contentious debate. But give it enough time and social upheaval, and who knows? As you say, it's "...questioned by some," but perhaps more than you realize in these modern times. For instance, Martin Luther King (whose birth name was Michael King btw) did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, and he had a doctorate in theology.

But at any rate, the post was meant as an illustration (sort of a parable, if you will). The point is, where do people get that sort of crap? They get it from liberal seminaries where professors teach new ideas that have been foreign to God's church for 1900 years. Just like WO was foreign to God's church for all those years.

 

A false equivalence argument. Job 39:9-10 i.e. Unicorns never existed, therefore, the bible is all fiction. i.e. Every idea that the church has, that is not at least 2000 years old, must therefore be a bad idea.
And don't try to tell me the translation is a bad one, this is the actual KJV I'm quoting here.
There is no sin in asking questions. God is not the least bit angry because we may ask questions, even theological ones.
Notice also that the Bible does not say " If any of you lack wisdom, let him read the Bible or ask a male priest. all the answers they need have already been written down and only male priests really understand enough to answer them".

It says - " If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him".

And it certainly does not mean that God does not give wisdom to WOMEN but only to MEN and therefore women can't teach men anything.

There seems to be certain religious Christian believers that think so, and would like us to believe the Bible actually says something like that though.
.

 

I came across arguments from silence like this a lot when I was EO. Much of what we assume to have been continuous practice turns out not to have been upon further investigation, and the level of doctrinal rigidity you’re assuming is something even the early 20th century Fundamentalists knew was untenable as well as self-defeating. “It wasn’t done 1,900 years ago, therefore it can’t be done today” - where’s the missing premise? - is overly broad and is not itself supported by tradition. It’s not a serious position to take. Apparently it’s “Anglican” fundies’ version of the Filioque.

 

This is not a good argument against Women's Ordination, even if it may appear to be so.

Firstly "that sort of crap" is an attempt to draw an equivalence between the proposition that the church should allow women to be ordained and the faithless notion that Jesus Christ remained dead and did not appear to his disciples as related in the resurrection narratives in the bible. The two are by no stretch of the imagination, 'equivalent'.

Next comes an attempt to blacken and dismiss all theological reasoning labelled 'liberal' on the false premise that all such ideas 'taught' by 'liberals' have been (1) Never been taught by the church. (2) Never been taught for 1900 years, (3) All 'crap'. None of these statements can be proved or disproved. We simply do not have every example of everything that the church has ever taught and we don't know every instance where women's ministry was discussed or even perhaps taught by the leadership of God's church during the last 1900 years. We do know the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches persecuted and even in some cases eradicated 'churches' which they declared heretical, but what does that actually prove? Not that the church doing the persecuting was actually God's church, I guess.

Finally we are handed the assertion that, similarly to disbelief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, women's ordination has been foreign to God's church for 'all those' years. Thus a false equivalence has been drawn between faithlessness in the Resurrection of our Lord, and any proposition, past, present, or future, that women should be ordained and admitted to the priesthood.

Surely this is not treating the proposition with the respect it deserves in the light of Apostolic statements such as "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

Surely the only one overriding qualification required of any person, male or female, entering the priestood in God's church, should be that they have "Put on Christ".
.

 

Nothing short of an example “from the first 1,900 years” will ever be treated as relevant by such people. It simply does not matter to them that the civil and social emancipation of women wasn’t even a thing more than two centuries ago. Nor does it matter (to them) that it actually is the “traditional” position that scriptural interpretation should change with science (cf. Augustine, et al), and that this includes by implication the social sciences. This is purely about defending a crude fundamentalism for the sake of the culture wars. It’s not a good faith debate with equal consideration given to both sides and it was never intended to be. There are arenas where such do occur (among the Lutherans, for example, from what I’ve seen…“ordination” isn’t the issue for them, but rather the question of whether women should be pastors), but this isn’t one of them. It’s a waste of time: only certain facts matter, the totality of them does not. Fortunately such anti-modern views are in the minority in Anglicanism today.

 

Indeed, I would go as far as to say such 'anti-modern' views have been 'imported' into developing Anglicanism, from 'foreign' forms of denominationalism rather than being a traditional expression of truly Anglican forms of churchmanship, theology and attitudes. The view, it seems, owes more to Fundamentalist Dispensationalism and Romish Tradition than it does to Anglicanism per se.

We actually have a case in our parish here in the UK where an American incomer to our congregation had complained that we were not religious enough, (particularly at coffee conversation after the Eucharist), so he left and has started a rival 'Anglican' assembly in the village hall. Still using 'Anglican' worship style presumaby but having imported 'male headship', 'womens head covering', 'dispensationalism', escatological presumptions etc, etc, etc. We, the parish church are now regarded as un-Anglican by him. The irony is that our priest is actually against WO, our congregation is not, but we like him none the less. He's a good priest, for all that. We are happy to wait for him to retire with our blessing.
.

 

Did you know that women have today the lowest amount of mental health and happiness, than they've ever had in recorded history (since the late 1800s)? There is a chart (I can find it if you want) that plots women's self-reported happiness, vs year. And the graph is an abysmal decline, with the highest self-reported happiness in the 1950s, and the lowest one in 2015 or so.

I have serious doubts and questions about this "emancipation of women" that you talk about. I used to think that it was good and right for women to vote, and now I have doubts. I used to think that it was good and right for women to work, and now that I'm raising a family I realize how evil it was to teach our families to hand our kids to be raised by some external (often governmental) "instructor".

So yeah I have a lot of new questions about feminism, that I didn't when I was in college. Feminism just may be quite a harmful and an evil thing. Certainly our blessed Lord did not find it a noble thing to promote. And neither did any of the holiest men in Christian history. Maybe we should stop trying to think we are smartest and bestest ever.

"Social science" is not science. "Social science" is humanities. And St. Augustine would never say that the Church should adapt itself to the humanities.

It can be as easily argued that you characterize our view as "fundamentalism" in order to pigeonhole us into a category that then never gives us a fair hearing. Check that log in one's own eye.

I reject fundamentalism, btw. But I am a traditional Christian. Those are not the same thing.

 

I think we need a radical reappraisal of the fruits of modernism and the enlightenment. I get the sense that our true disagreements with Tiffy and Invictus aren't our biblical worldview vs their Biblical Worldview (a concept that they would probably reject, as they seem to suggest the Bible is only useful in terms of salvation), but rather our Biblical worldview vs their worldly worldview. Continuing to discuss what the Bible or tradition says about these issues is almost entirely meaningless because they haven't arrived at their views based on the Bible, but rather based on woke Tiffy values or enlightened Liberal Invictus values. Thus, to get to the core of the disagreement, we would need to deconstruct Tiffy's woke ideology and Invictus' enlightenment ideology. Sadly, I feel that would turn us more into a philosophical/political forum rather than a theological one.

 

Quite the contrary in fact, I think Invictus and I would agree that The Bible is not our hard taskmaster, but rather a Lamp to Guide our Feet, Such as John 13:34.

The Bible is "God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man [ or the woman ] of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good action".

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, [ or woman ] that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

The general thought behind all male only priesthood advocacy is that men's salvation itself may be detrimentally effected by women being allowed to celebrate communion. Either detrimentally affected by the fact that the celebrant is unfit to celebrate, (through merely being female), and therefore the Eucharist would be invalid, ineffective or tainted, or because the receiver of the 'non'-sacrament could not believe it to be the body and blood of Christ, because the celebrant was a woman. Some such 'believers' have even expressed the opinion that they would find such a non-'sacrament' offensive to them and therefore refuse to receive it.

I believe there should be no place in Christ's church for unworthily prejudiced opinions, such as these.

I deem such a 'belief system' to be superstitiously repugnant and offensive to both, women, to God, to the Bible and to any respect for the Spirit of Jesus Christ and his teaching.

This might account for the passion with which this proposition that women be allowed to enter the priesthood of The Church of England, even as far as the Episcopate, has been debated by the great and the good among us, in The Church of England.

Far from this, my opinion being 'worldly', I am confident that it is in accord with the mind of Jesus Christ himself. We shall see, one fine day. History records many English Martyrs have been harried to their deaths by 'The Church', for expressing the same faith and confidence in their Godly opinions, in the face of leaders who were devoid of vision at the time. See Fox's Book of Martyrs.
.

 

I am glad we all can discuss this like mature adults, without rancor and pettiness.

While we are on the subject of how we all should "put on Christ," I'm sure you would never intentionally lie to us and therefore I am confident that your misquote of Colossians 3:11 was entirely unintentional... perhaps a Freudian slip, but never any deceitful motive.

Col 3:11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
Col 3:12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
Col 3:13 Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

 

The quote was from Galatians 3:28, not Colossians 3:11:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

 

Whoops, my mistake!