tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867467970813012874.post7510669395142498016..comments2023-10-30T06:18:18.671-07:00Comments on Dogmatic Enigmatics: A Challenge to EgalitarianismAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01302611752231009233noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867467970813012874.post-58238851487929220932012-02-07T15:33:41.082-08:002012-02-07T15:33:41.082-08:00Robert,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, and I ...Robert,<br /><br />Thanks for the thoughtful comment, and I sympathize with your touch-screen typing woes. Physical keyboards are indispensable. <br /><br />I think you're right on as it relates to your point about God, throughout Scripture but especially (perhaps) in the OT, being 'preferential' in a sense and certainly not fitting into the mold our 'democratic' cultural biases would perhaps wish that He did (a point I echo, from a more evangelical perspective here: http://nateduffy.blogspot.com/2011/12/discriminating-god.html ). This in addition to Paul's writings on the subject. <br /><br />You also make a strong case regarding the prominence of men in Christ's ministry and the early church. I would even add to that the fairly significant fact that God chose to become a *man* in the Incarnation. Not a woman, not a gender-neutral being, but a *man*, complete with male genitalia (not to be crude, but I think that kind of drives home the point). It's hard for those who are in favor of dissolving the significance of gender in the church, when God Himself became a man. When God desires to be known as our Father. When Christ is the groom and The Church the bride. etc.<br /><br />While egalitarians seem to desire to write off these things as expressions of some cultural patriarchy, and not God's will, I find it takes some fanciful, strained exegesis to maintain such a stance. That or a fairly low view of Scripture.<br /><br />I love the Orthodox flavor you add to the discussion Robert! Just as you did at Socrates the other night. I hope you get to move back to California.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01302611752231009233noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867467970813012874.post-37878703126275659762012-02-07T14:12:37.784-08:002012-02-07T14:12:37.784-08:00I have been thinking about this issue allot (mostl...I have been thinking about this issue allot (mostly from my talks with T. Peck). In my opinion allot of the problems evangelicals have with this issue is that they are starting with the wrong paradigm. And that is minister vs priest. When paul is talking about leadership in the church, he is addressing a specific type of leadership ...the role of episkopos/prespryter vs the more general minister. <br /> <br /> Historically office of bishop and prestpryter have been associated with a very specific type of ministry, that of the priestly one. And it is that ministry that excludes women...among others such men who are divorced, polygamous or have certain physical defects. <br /><br /><br />For those who hold that an all male priesthood is unjust or limiting "certain gifted people" have some questions that need to be answered I think. In the OT was God unjust when he limited the priesthood not only just to men but to just one tribe of Israel? Was it unjust to the women and those of the other tribes not to mention the handicaped? There seems to be more a foot me then just the moral qualifications.<br /> listed by paul. <br /><br /><br />In the OT the priesthood was a liturgical role to represent the people of Isreal to perform the rituals of sacrafice on behalf the people. The high priest wore specific items to represent this (the stones on his chest and names of Israel on his shoulders). Also the priest prophetically represented out great and high priest Jesus Christ.<br /><br />In the early church it is clear they understood worship in a liturgical sense. They understoood the eucherist as a "pure offering" a sacrafice of the thankgiving (Malachi 1:11 and the didche). If you look at the earliest worship services of the church, they were composed of two parts the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the eucherist ...read st justin martyr circa 150 ad. Also the oldest services are those of st james the just the brother of our lord and st Mark the first bishop of Alexandria and the author of the gospel of Mark. They took the temple sacrafice service and the synagouge and combined them, which became the prototype for all Christian worship until the reformation. <br /><br />The OT worship and the NT liturgical services of sacrafice were highly symbolic filled with various forms of icongraphy of which the priest is a part of that icongraphy. The preist representing the church and Christ the great high priest in tremendous visual terms. Why a man? well those who support an egalitarian priesthood have to answer why God chose men as Icons of him in the OT? Why Christ himself only chose men ( I don't think is was because Christ feared bucking jewish convension) (also priestess were plenty full in pagan rome and greece they had no stigma attached to it.<br /><br />Do I support women in the "ministiry" and as leaders of course. In the history of the Church there have been many roles for women in the life of the church from empresses all the way down to church council leaders. The church is replete with stories of great woman for Christ, martyrs, confessors, philosophers, teachers, evangilizers, spiritual guides and so on. But I believe God has set the boundires for the priesthood and who am I to move them. <br /><br /><br />As far as in the home st john chrysostom among other saints tell us our home is a little church of which the father is the priest as fathers we always need to bear our family like the high priest with them on our shoulders and close to our hears and intercede on there behalf for surly we will give an account of this on the great and fearfull day of judgement.<br /><br /><br />Sorry for the misspells and typos I am typing on an I pad for the first time havn't figured out the word processing very well.rdedwardshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04168293896225691084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867467970813012874.post-6104461817907780602011-11-21T18:58:41.005-08:002011-11-21T18:58:41.005-08:00Hey dad,
That seems like the standard defense of ...Hey dad,<br /><br />That seems like the standard defense of the egalitarian position that I've read, and, like I said, I have no real strong objection to it, though I don't find it particularly compelling either.<br /><br /> But it seems like the only sentence of yours that addresses what I wrote is the one about being wary about basing doctrine on metaphor, which I don't fully accept.<br /><br /> For example, our understanding of God the father's relationship within the trinity, and toward humanity is based on a metaphor because His true nature is incomprehensible. God isn't a biological male, or 'merely' a father in the human sense, but he is LIKE a loving father in many ways. This metaphor helps us grasp God's nature and is indispensible to our doctrine of the Trinity, for example. It also works in two directions, teaching Christians how to act in their roles as fathers.<br /><br />Do you have any thoughts on whether egalitarianism, if true, proves injurious to the Church-as-bride, Christ-as-groom metaphor? I think it does, and you didn't address the issue, which was really the only point I attempted to make.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01302611752231009233noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3867467970813012874.post-67239328331395343982011-11-21T18:24:39.664-08:002011-11-21T18:24:39.664-08:00Good question. I think building doctrine from meta...Good question. I think building doctrine from metaphor is shakey in general. Here are my thoughts on the subject. Tim and I collabarated on some of this.<br /><br />6. There are over-arching New Testament principles to support women being afforded full access to church leadership roles, if they demonstrate giftedness and calling.<br /><br />Regarding women in ministry, for many years evangelicals have held the ‘complementary’ position of men and women. If looked at critically, it would appear this position unintentionally marginalizes women in both church ministry and marriage devaluing their personhood and treating them as children rather than adults.<br /><br />The ‘DNA’ for the full equality of women is found in Galatians 3:28, as well as both Jesus’ and Paul’s practice, though this passage isn’t specifically written about church leadership (regardless of what you think Paul is saying in 1 Timothy, Chapter 2, regarding a specific problem with gender roles in Ephesus). Equality is an over-riding principle in the New Testament - in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female.<br /> <br />Most of the arguments used to keep women out of leadership and unequal in marriage sound similar to the kinds of arguments used to support slavery in our country’s infancy. Yet we universally affirm that though the Bible teaches about slavery, its’ tenor is to ultimately abolish slavery. I would argue for a redemptive trajectory in the Bible that ultimately would lead someone reading it closely to affirm the full equality of men and women in marriage and in church leadership.<br /><br />Another way to approach this topic is to isolate the issue, using philosophic techniques, in hypothetical situations and see how we react and interpret them. One such situation would be to ask the question, “What would happen with a group of evangelical women if they were shipwrecked on a deserted island with no men?” Would it be wrong for gifted women to step up and be the spiritual leaders of this new community? Would God take exception only in such an extreme situation and not in others? Another question might be, “Could a group of men in a given town be so morally corrupt that the women would have to look for spiritual leadership from among themselves for a period of time – or maybe their entire lifetime?” Could a language barrier create the need for particular women to step up in leadership roles? Could a community of people be so new or small or isolated so as to warrant a legitimate church start without male participation? If the exceptions against a ‘rule’ mount in number the rule itself becomes suspect.<br /><br />Certainly the principles found in 1 Timothy regarding individual qualifications for leadership positions could be just as easily prescribed to women as well as men – one spouse, established convert, not greedy, not a drunkard, having a servant’s heart, etc. But the church could not and has not followed the principle of women being silent in all of its’ churches for all time in all places.<br /><br />Arguments from a single New Testament case (1 Timothy 2), where Paul is defusing a specific problem, can be weak and easily susceptible to criticism if one fixes an entire scriptural principle on the context of one example exclusively. Certainly Jesus or Paul or any of the disciples could have stated, categorically, that the church never be led by women for all time - but they did not. So why does the evangelical church feel compelled to be conservators of such a position? What benefits does it provide the church? Could it be equivalent to the same ‘supposed’ benefits the Catholic Church receives from compelling priests not to marry – the loss of many gifted people from their calling to church leadership?Michael Duffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10352107781106827643noreply@blogger.com