Women's Ordination
[I was asked to comment on women's ordination by CM in the comment section below, and thought it deserved its own entry, and some minor edits]
Yes, we [in the Anglican Province of America and the REC] do not ordain women to the priesthood. As for further comment, I'm not sure how much information you want, or where your starting point is in thinking about this issue. I hope this helps: Affirming the equal and exceptional worth of people does not require that everyone have access to every role. Men can be equal to women and never be mothers. And I don't mean to be trite, but men can be equal to women and never be a convent's "Mother Superior." More to the point, it's OK with me if God has ordained some rules concerning who may or may not be ordained, and I believe this is true. If it's of God, all other concerns of "fairness" and "justice" fade away--we can know this stance is good, even if we don't fully understanding everything.
There are two general lines of argument for saying "it's of God," that is, for not ordaining women: from Biblical theology and from systematic theology. Traditional evangelicals tend to be persuaded more by the Biblical theology, Anglo-Catholics more by the systematic theology; whereas I find both to be solid--so much so, that I believe it to be prideful and rebellious for the informed to hold otherwise (yes, there are many uninformed and misinformed).
The Biblical theology is based on the fact that in Scripture, Paul both prohibits, and gives explicit reasons for his prohibition of women being pastors and exercising Church authority; and decisively, that those reasons Paul cited are from Scripture itself, in God's creation, and are not based on culture or feelings or anything that might change.
The systematic theology argument includes the example of Christ's life, with both His sacramental essence and His actions. A sacrament is a sign of/with effectual divine grace. Jesus' incarnation is much more than sacramental, it is the Reality (undivided Divinity, Humanity, Body and Blood) and yet the incarnation in a way is sacramental with such an earthly manifestation on our level. And Christ came as a male, not female, and not androgynous; He was the Son of God, not Daughter, not simply a child of God; He taught us to say, "Our Father," not "Our Mother," and not "our Parental Being." God is neither male nor female, but His incarnate maleness and revealed Fatherhood is purposeful, and thus priests who reflect and image His office partake of a broader sacramental mandate: not only "do this" but as "the Lord Jesus...took bread, gave thanks, and broke it..." There is a certain way in which a priest images Jesus that is especially consistent with His incarnate maleness. Just because we modern "enlightened" folk often don't like how God has ordered things, doesn't mean He hasn't ordered things in particular ways.
We also look to the actions of Christ and see that He had twelve chances to pick a woman to be an Apostle and did not, although women were present among the disciples and were His most faithful supporters, and although there were many priestesses in that Greco-Roman world. Christ was not a wimp, He often contradicted the traditions of men, and was fully capable of setting aside a women for apostolic leadership, but did not. Nor did the Church do so when selecting Judas' replacement. Mary, prominently, was the most qualified in character and her witness to Christ's life, death and resurrection; and a few other women were likely "the next best qualified", but the Spirit-filled Apostles only considered men, and chose Matthais as the twelfth Apostle.
Importantly, this has been the living Tradition of the Church, which has prayed, devoured Scripture, thought, and prayed again. The Spirit-filled successors of the Apostles have not wavered on this through the ages: we can't arrogantly say they were wrong, nor that the first Twelve were, nor Christ Himself. Only very recently has there been disagreement, especially among the modern, less traditional (and often "politically-correct") Protestants; the majority of today's (worldwide) Christianity still agrees that women's ordination is not of God.
For the details, scriptural citations, history of this argument, and specific rebuttal of the modernist arguments against, there are many resources on the web. For starters, one reasonably thorough examination was undertaken by the AMiA, which report mostly sets out arguments/details pro and con, but purposefully withholds conclusions; the data and analysis, however, are clear. Here's the link--it's a 2 or 3 minute adobe "pdf" download (141 pages, no graphics).
Yes, we [in the Anglican Province of America and the REC] do not ordain women to the priesthood. As for further comment, I'm not sure how much information you want, or where your starting point is in thinking about this issue. I hope this helps: Affirming the equal and exceptional worth of people does not require that everyone have access to every role. Men can be equal to women and never be mothers. And I don't mean to be trite, but men can be equal to women and never be a convent's "Mother Superior." More to the point, it's OK with me if God has ordained some rules concerning who may or may not be ordained, and I believe this is true. If it's of God, all other concerns of "fairness" and "justice" fade away--we can know this stance is good, even if we don't fully understanding everything.
There are two general lines of argument for saying "it's of God," that is, for not ordaining women: from Biblical theology and from systematic theology. Traditional evangelicals tend to be persuaded more by the Biblical theology, Anglo-Catholics more by the systematic theology; whereas I find both to be solid--so much so, that I believe it to be prideful and rebellious for the informed to hold otherwise (yes, there are many uninformed and misinformed).
The Biblical theology is based on the fact that in Scripture, Paul both prohibits, and gives explicit reasons for his prohibition of women being pastors and exercising Church authority; and decisively, that those reasons Paul cited are from Scripture itself, in God's creation, and are not based on culture or feelings or anything that might change.
The systematic theology argument includes the example of Christ's life, with both His sacramental essence and His actions. A sacrament is a sign of/with effectual divine grace. Jesus' incarnation is much more than sacramental, it is the Reality (undivided Divinity, Humanity, Body and Blood) and yet the incarnation in a way is sacramental with such an earthly manifestation on our level. And Christ came as a male, not female, and not androgynous; He was the Son of God, not Daughter, not simply a child of God; He taught us to say, "Our Father," not "Our Mother," and not "our Parental Being." God is neither male nor female, but His incarnate maleness and revealed Fatherhood is purposeful, and thus priests who reflect and image His office partake of a broader sacramental mandate: not only "do this" but as "the Lord Jesus...took bread, gave thanks, and broke it..." There is a certain way in which a priest images Jesus that is especially consistent with His incarnate maleness. Just because we modern "enlightened" folk often don't like how God has ordered things, doesn't mean He hasn't ordered things in particular ways.
We also look to the actions of Christ and see that He had twelve chances to pick a woman to be an Apostle and did not, although women were present among the disciples and were His most faithful supporters, and although there were many priestesses in that Greco-Roman world. Christ was not a wimp, He often contradicted the traditions of men, and was fully capable of setting aside a women for apostolic leadership, but did not. Nor did the Church do so when selecting Judas' replacement. Mary, prominently, was the most qualified in character and her witness to Christ's life, death and resurrection; and a few other women were likely "the next best qualified", but the Spirit-filled Apostles only considered men, and chose Matthais as the twelfth Apostle.
Importantly, this has been the living Tradition of the Church, which has prayed, devoured Scripture, thought, and prayed again. The Spirit-filled successors of the Apostles have not wavered on this through the ages: we can't arrogantly say they were wrong, nor that the first Twelve were, nor Christ Himself. Only very recently has there been disagreement, especially among the modern, less traditional (and often "politically-correct") Protestants; the majority of today's (worldwide) Christianity still agrees that women's ordination is not of God.
For the details, scriptural citations, history of this argument, and specific rebuttal of the modernist arguments against, there are many resources on the web. For starters, one reasonably thorough examination was undertaken by the AMiA, which report mostly sets out arguments/details pro and con, but purposefully withholds conclusions; the data and analysis, however, are clear. Here's the link--it's a 2 or 3 minute adobe "pdf" download (141 pages, no graphics).
posted by Fr. Greg at 1/26/2005 01:16:00 PM
1 Comments:
Fr. Greg,
I just wanted to say I thought this was an excellent post--enough so that I linked to it on my blog, Prydain. Please keep up the good work.
In Christ,
Will
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