RCs push for 'women deacons' in England and Vatican

Okay, noted. I'll attempt to explain why I took your posts as argumentative, so you have some idea of my thought process.

Well, that's fine. Where did you pick up these ideas about the women "leaders" mentioned in the Bible? From books? From a pastor's preaching? My point is, you didn't get these ideas from simply reading the Bible, straight up, because the Bible just doesn't expand that much on those women. Where did you get the following assertions?

By saying, "they are not entirely baseless," you necessarily are excluding the possibility that they might actually be baseless. I'll explain why they might indeed be such.

Here you're citing one song of praise made by Deborah, and upon this tiny morsel of evidence you are concluding that the claim of Deborah being a worship leader has a basis in known fact. Look, if I managed to ace one serve in a tennis match, does that provide any real evidence that I am a tennis pro? A worship leader would be someone who has been placed in that position to lead the congregated followers in worshiping God, but we have zero evidence that Deborah ever led anyone to "sing along" or anything. This is more like God giving someone an impromptu "solo" to sing while at the shopping mall or someplace. It's not as if we'd been told that she sang this in a synagogue (if they'd existed at that time) or in front of the Lord's Tent of Meeting when the Israelites were gathered. A "one-off" cannot reasonably be advanced as a legitimate "base" for such a claim, can it? And how, exactly, do we take Deborah's presence at a battle site as any indication that she was a military leader, a person who directed troops in military strategy? What do any of these tidbits (singing one song and being present at a battle) have to do with qualifications in God's eyes for the priesthood? (And therefore we should ask ourselves, why do the WO advocates cite Deborah as evidence for WO? Those folks play 'fast and loose' with their definitions of "military leader" and "worship leader" in their quest for Biblical support, don't they?)

Why go into this? Does any of this show Prisca as a leader on a similar level as a priest is a leader? That is the issue, after all: 'should women be priests?' Teaching, alongside her husband, the fundamentals of the faith to one person (Apollos) is hardly evidence of equivalence to priesthood eligibility (Apollos' level of education is irrelevant when we're talking about learning an entirely new subject at which he was a total neophyte). Being esteemed highly by Paul? That and $2 will get a cup of coffee.

This is so true it goes without saying, which raises the question: why say it? Remember, the WO advocates' allegation is that Deborah or Miriam (OT people) are examples of women who would be qualified to lead the faithful in a priesthood office. Yet they were not priests in their day, nor were any other women priests. So you see, the tie-in between OT and NT priesthood is the fact that we are looking through the entire Bible for any sign from God that He wants or accepts women in a specific leadership role: priesthood. And we know that God established a precedent of always having males serve as priests (for His own very good reasons). We also know of no NT priests during the entire history of the church prior to the 20th Century. In both the OT and the NT, the priests were the primary spiritual leaders of their day. The similarities speak more loudly than the differences (or at least they should). (BTW, there is a prevalent line of thought among many Anglicans, and probably some RCs and Orthodox also if I'm not mistaken, that the Church spans all the way back to Adam and that the faith is essentially monolithic during all the periods of history; we had a lengthy thread on this topic a couple of years ago.)

I would not say that Deut. 32:11 is "God representing himself in a feminine way," but merely that God is representing himself as one who is capable of having feelings toward his people that we would best describe as 'maternal.' I don't know if you can see a distinction between those two, but I do. One goes to God's characteristics, while the other goes to his thoughts or feelings. (One might feel frightened due to a given situation, but does that make frightfulness a characteristic of the person?) And the connection to the WO issue is this: God, as our ultimate leader, teaches us His nature and how He relates to us humans throughout scripture; 98% of the time He describes Himself in male terms, and the great majority of the time He describes His people (as a body or group) in female terms. One can only get the sense of this from reading the entire Bible, because the Bible is like an intricate tapestry and we tend to miss some of the overall patterns if we just look at the sections we like to focus on in services or personal devotions.

Now, I want to point out that I'm not opposed to WO in total; I think that deacons are helpers (albeit top helpers) to the priests, and therefore they may be seen to fall under the 'ministry of helps' category. And I am not sure that I necessarily oppose women being pastors of non-liturgical churches. The distinction in my mind lies in the distinctive role and duties of a priest, in that their denomination assigns to them (and them alone) the right to offer an absolution, the right to consecrate the Eucharist, and (with circumstantial exceptions) the right to administer the rite of baptism. These distinctions, along with the vestments (mode of dress), cause people to view the priests in a different light than the way other Protestant ministers are viewed; from a standpoint of image and persona before the faithful (and, to a lesser extent, before the world at large) it is as if they are somehow "closer to God," "holy men," and special representatives (ambassadors) of God. (In this regard they find common ground with the OT priests.) Because God overwhelmingly self-represents as a male authority figure and has always chosen males to represent Him as His priestly authority figures, it makes sense to keep it that way.

If the priesthood is to be preserved, then I feel it must remain as it has always been: males only. Is this a decree from on high? Not in so many words. Can we see a pattern in the Bible and in historic church practice that indicates this to be true? Yes, and I think these things strongly carry the day against the new, relatively weak reasoning put forth in recent years to support female priests. I daresay all of us on the forum are quite familiar with those new lines of thought, though, and there are some on here who actually subscribe to them. One member, @Tiffy , is even married to a female priest, may God have mercy on his poor soul! (Just joshing with him .) The Anglican world is quite broad, encompassing religious progressives and religious conservatives alike.