tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post8605534583967930038..comments2023-12-08T04:43:40.135-06:00Comments on The Fire and the Rose: PET IV: Women in MinistryUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-27915822322094540942007-09-26T23:35:00.000-05:002007-09-26T23:35:00.000-05:00Thanks David, for your approach here. Very helpful...Thanks David, for your approach here. Very helpful.Michael J. Pailthorpehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07846022944571262451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-69804047335888906252007-09-24T17:36:00.000-05:002007-09-24T17:36:00.000-05:00Heh. Just saw this and couldn't resist adding a wo...Heh. Just saw this and couldn't resist adding a word.<BR/><BR/>Baptism is ordination even for Catholics (the baptismal office of priest, prophet, and king), and Catholic lay women can do almost ALL of those things that Protestant ministers do: there are even women that hold the office of pastoral associate. Now, I don't think that a lay person (male or female) can normatively be the official witness of a wedding, but the ministers of marriage are the couple themselves.<BR/><BR/>The reader who is interested in the apostolic mission of the Church may wish to read Joseph Ratzinger's discussion of it in his speech, <A HREF="http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/549/Theological_Locus_of_Ecclesial_Movements_Joseph_Cardinal_Ratzinger.html" REL="nofollow">The Theological Locus of Ecclesial Movements</A> (especially Part II, which discusses the historical development of the apostolic mission). <BR/><BR/>Few arguments for women's ordination do justice to Catholic sacramental theology. So, can women exercise ministry in the Church? Absolutely. Sacramental priesthood is another matter that requires other considerations... <BR/><BR/>~FredFredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01262662173303042998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-62680659833030281092007-09-21T05:05:00.000-05:002007-09-21T05:05:00.000-05:00David,Thank you for the lengthy response . . . sor...David,<BR/><BR/>Thank you for the lengthy response . . . sorry it has taken me so long to return.<BR/><BR/>Let me briefly say that I absolutely agree with your points on the cultural conditioning and context, as well as the occasional nature of all of the epistles in the NT (not to mention the whole of the NT); as well as the general principles to be gleaned and transferred to the church today.<BR/><BR/>I am not an egalitarian, surprise, at least when it comes to our created function and role within nature; but I suppose you could say that I am an ontological egalitarian in the sense that we all are indeed one in Christ (the good news/gospel message). <BR/><BR/>I don't agree with your christological/ecclesiological distinction in the sense that one is more important, or has more interpretive weight than the other--I think if we use these categories on scripture, as an analytic or interpretive paradigm then we artificially fragmentize the pieces of the whole, by way of priority, than we are warranted. Is the final canonical shape important to interpreting scripture indeed, intertextuality (or the <EM>analogia scriptura</EM>) is important; but INTRATEXUALITY is the first step that I think we need to take, prior to discussing intertextuality. In other words we need to look at the particular themes, motifs, and theological concerns that I Timothy, for example, is dealing with on its own terms. I think when we do this, egalitarianism and hierarchialism will clearly not be the issue (as you've appeared to frame it), and ecclesial order will emerge as an the emphasis Paul is concerned with here. In other words, I think women are not given place to fulfill the "office" of elder, presbytr, bishop, etc. in this passage; and I further think that I Tim. 3:1,2 makes this clear. These passages simply assume that a "man" might aspire to the office of overseer, and that this "man" will be the husband of one wife. Does this mean that a woman cannot function within her "spiritual gifting" of teaching? Absolutely not. But I think I Tim. in its own intratextuality asserts that the office of overseer is reserved for the man.<BR/><BR/>I think our difference on our hermeneutical approaches is obviously what leads us to disparity here, David. I do think canonical criticism has value, but I also think LGH does as well (exchanging the "Literal" for the "Literary").<BR/><BR/>You have provided much more for discussion, but that's all I have time for; in fact we are moving to a new house so I am going to be unavailable for a couple of weeks--I'll check back then.<BR/><BR/>peace.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-78786682851053796482007-09-20T19:46:00.000-05:002007-09-20T19:46:00.000-05:00Jessica,Excellent point about Jesus' disciples bei...Jessica,<BR/><BR/>Excellent point about Jesus' disciples being Hebrew. You succinctly stated what I was trying to get at in my response to the Catholic argument very well. The argument on the basis of gender is entirely arbitrary.<BR/><BR/>Great points, also, regarding the prophets. I think we forget how amazing it is that in such a patriarchal culture, the OT includes such important examples of female leaders who teach and rule over men.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the comment!David W. Congdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03009330707703611224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-55443100470808882702007-09-20T19:31:00.000-05:002007-09-20T19:31:00.000-05:00From Jessica Carter: This is an interesting post, ...From Jessica Carter: This is an interesting post, and I'm glad to see a post involving a more canonical approach to this issue. One noted evangelical NT scholar, Gordon Fee, also addresses this issue quite thoroughly in his works.<BR/><BR/>A few other worthwhile arguments/debunks to add to the discussion:<BR/><BR/>1. Some scholars argue that women are excluded from ministry because all of Christ's apostles were men. But they ignore the fact that all of Christ's disciples were also Hebrew. No one would ever suggest that non-Hebrews are not welcome in ministry because of the ethnicity of Christ's disciples. It is inconsistent, then, to argue that they are excluded on the basis of gender. (Same argument applies to the priesthood!)<BR/><BR/>2. Along the same lines, remember in Acts how Peter was SHOCKED that God poured the Holy Spirit out on the Gentiles? And the others contended with Peter when he arrived home that he had been around Gentiles. There is plenty written in the OT about Gentiles joining God's people, rejoicing with them, etc.. Not to mention that Abram himself was a Syrian, so that God had first visited the nations when choosing a people for Himself. But no one understood what was ALREADY written. Much the same with women in ministry. <BR/><BR/>Here's an example: the Old Testament has Huldah the prophetess saying "Thus saith the LORD", and the priests (all men) came to her for the Word of the Lord. And Jeremiah was Huldah's contemporary. Haven't heard a sermon yet on why the priests went to Huldah and not Jeremiah--maybe folks haven't figured out yet that they were contemporaries. <BR/><BR/>Or when Micah the prophet describes God's deliverance of Israel by Moses, Aaron, and Miriam!<BR/><BR/>Lots more to say, out of time.<BR/><BR/>All the best.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-43173940812506070972007-09-18T15:40:00.000-05:002007-09-18T15:40:00.000-05:00Bobby,Your question is a good one, and I will try ...Bobby,<BR/><BR/>Your question is a good one, and I will try to answer it briefly. But first, I need to stress that I am not a qualified exegete of these passages. I highly recommend the exegesis of Franklin Pyles (which I link to), and there is plenty of other great work out there which will do a more than adequate job of explaining why these passages are not universally applicable.<BR/><BR/>1. The prohibition in 1 Cor. 14 is clearly not universal because of 1 Cor. 11:5. Even though Paul seems to state unequivocally that women cannot speak, a few chapters earlier he speaks about women prophesying in the community. Consequently, 1 Cor. 14 speaks toward a specific situation, one that does not have universal application.<BR/><BR/>2. You can only view the prohibition in 1 Tim. 2 as universally applicable if you also wish to take every other passage about church worship, decorum, order, etc. absolutely literally. (It would still be wrong to make it universally applicable, but at least it wouldn't be hypocritical cherry-picking.) <BR/><BR/>3. 1 Timothy (like all of the Pastoral epistles) is as universally applicable as the Acts of the Apostles. They are authoritative in two ways: (1) first, they give authoritative insight into how the church in the first century carried out its mission, and (2) second, they provide authoritative <I>principles</I> for how churches should conduct themselves.<BR/><BR/>The second point is the important one. To apply the details literally is exegetically and historically foolish, not only because it forgets that these are pastoral letters for specific churches but also because the church itself changes with time and cannot be bound to one specific form. We see this development within the NT itself, and many of the letters are written because of the need to adjust to these new situations. The cultural concerns over how men and women dressed and wore their hair no longer apply to us today, so to maintain those rules in the absence of any external necessity would be another form of pharisaical legalism. It would be of no concrete benefit to the church. It would turn an exhortation meant to benefit the gospel into a law that only hinders the gospel.<BR/><BR/>We need to get beyond biblical literalism and see the basic principles which guide the thought process of the Pastoral epistles. The basic principles are easy to identify: decorum and order in worship, prevention of gossip and myths that might confuse the message of the gospel, cultural sensitivity. These are the concerns of the Pastoral letters. Any attempt to imitate them exactly misses the point. In fact, to imitate these churches exactly might actually contradict the principles Paul and others are seeking to uphold in the church. By preventing women from speaking in church today, we end up confusing the gospel message (that all are one in Christ Jesus) and undermining our sensitivity to our culture (which recognizes equality for men and women both). We certainly should not let the culture dictate how we conduct ourselves, but in this case, equality between men and women in ministry is funded by the gospel message itself. It is simply a happy coincidence that Western culture affirms this as well.<BR/><BR/>To return to my comparison with the Book of Acts, when we read the stories about the early church, we don't feel the need to model ourselves after them in every detail. It would be impossible to imitate them exactly. The point is rather to adopt the same underlying principles. That may not mean selling all property and living together, but it may mean selling a lot and forming an intimate community of mission in the midst of our own contemporary empire. We have to remember that the church grows and changes and matures with time. The early didn't have creeds, but that's no reason to dispense with them. The early church didn't have a lot of things which we view as essential to Christianity in terms of theology, but we recognize and affirm that the church changes and develops as new cultural and intellectual shifts take place. The beauty of the gospel is that it can adapt to these changes, because Jesus Christ is the same "yesterday and today and forever" (Heb. 13:8). We can be confident that the message never changes even though the form which it takes today may be different from the form it took yesterday or will take tomorrow.<BR/><BR/>My question to you is whether you think every detail about the early church needs to be adopted wholesale? I think it goes without saying that picking one detail but not another is out of the question. We cannot pick and choose which aspects of Paul's exhortations we feel like implementing today. But we also need to consider the genre of the work, the nature of the letters, what they seek to communicate, and the relation between these passages and other passages in the NT.<BR/><BR/>Are these Pastoral exhortations on the same level of importance as Paul's explications of the gospel? I answer no. The notion that Romans and Galatians are equally important and authoritative as 1 Timothy is fundamentally flawed on a hermeneutical level. Christ is the hermeneutical key to Scripture, and thus we need to read and interpret the Bible in light of his work of reconciliation. What he accomplished for us is the lens through which we must read Scripture, and that means giving priority to those passages which explicate this christological reality. Ecclesiological concerns are subordinate to what is eternally true on the basis of what Christ accomplished.David W. Congdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03009330707703611224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-29658317414139085062007-09-18T08:08:00.000-05:002007-09-18T08:08:00.000-05:00Michael,Barth seems to have a similar understandin...Michael,<BR/><BR/>Barth seems to have a similar understanding of baptism as ordination. Interestingly, his son Markus attended / was a member of a baptist congregation during his time in Chicago...W. Travis McMakenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12347103855436761304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-33161756904599641312007-09-17T17:13:00.000-05:002007-09-17T17:13:00.000-05:00What's weird is that evangelical feminists gave th...What's weird is that evangelical feminists gave the best biblical arguments for this back in the '70s. Mainline feminist Christians moved on to other issues--evangelical feminists could not because they had to keep arguing the same points over again. Also, they had to fight new organizations like the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood which were begun just to stop and reverse evangelical feminism!!<BR/><BR/>As for WTM's bumpersticker, that is particularly appropriate for those of us who are Baptists or Anabaptists since, for us, baptism IS ordination (of ever believer) in a very real sense. The Catholic view against women's ordination is tied up with its very false view of ministry: a huge clergy/laity split and a heirarchical understanding of power--completely alien to the NT, but borrowed from the Roman empire.<BR/><BR/>It's sad to see Protestants and even Free Churches buy into so much of that same model to various degrees.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-38639260996984407132007-09-17T17:00:00.000-05:002007-09-17T17:00:00.000-05:00I've only read your evangelical section. You go wi...I've only read your evangelical section. You go with the cultural argument, what is Paul saying to those first cent. Christians in particular; and why can't what he says to them be universally applicable for us?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-3977274090006185012007-09-17T14:59:00.000-05:002007-09-17T14:59:00.000-05:00This is a well-thought post. The truth is that th...This is a well-thought post. The truth is that this is really one of the major issues that makes me hesitant about entertaining the notion of becoming Catholic. Were their view of women's ordination to change, I might not be able to help myself. Or I still might.Haldenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03936185959033443640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-34752518255252827332007-09-17T07:27:00.000-05:002007-09-17T07:27:00.000-05:00I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said: "S...I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said: "Start Ordaining Women, or Stop Baptizing Them." <BR/><BR/>Touche.W. Travis McMakenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12347103855436761304noreply@blogger.com