DavidR

In my 10 April post on ‘Women Bishops: Church in all its Fullness’ I set out the  Ephesians 5 part of my case and refer to other of my posts where I have engaged with and argued against opposing views. Including the view that in some sense the Christ-church relationship is symmetrical – i.e. one of ‘mutual submission’. The ball is in ‘your’ court on this point. If you accept that the Christ-church relationship is not symmetrical – i.e. not one of one of ‘mutual submission’ you have to give a view on why, in that case, Paul so strongly compares the Christ-church with the husband-wife relationship by saying in 5:24 ‘But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything.’

Phil Almond

Bowman

You (and others) are just not facing up to what Ephesians 5:22-23 says. That is, in 5:22 Paul exhorts wives to be subject to their own husbands as to the Lord, and in 5:23 he says that they should do this ‘..because a man is kephale of the woman...’. I’m sorry if I have missed it but I do not recall you saying explicitly whether you agree or disagree (or are still thinking about it) that he does so exhort, and the exhortation is for that reason.

Phil Almond

In Ephesians 5:22 Paul exhorts wives to be subject to their own husbands. This cannot be mutual submission because of the Christ-church analogy and because of the master-slave and parent-child exhortations in Ephesians 6. The exhortation to wives in 5:22 is because ‘a man is head of the woman....’. So kephale in marriage is the ground for the husband loving, cherishing, nourishing and ‘dying for’ his wife and the ground for the wife being subject to her own husband.

Whether or not this has any bearing on the question of women’s ordination, whether or not this is Paul making an accommodation to the first century which is no longer ‘valid’ is anyone in the DavidR/Bowman/Roger Hurding, djr etc camp going to explicitly agree or explicitly disagree (on what ground?) that in this Ephesians passage kephale in marriage does have these implications?

Phil Almond

Bowman

It is an open question whether Tom Wright, Lutheran, Orthodox, Reformed, your views are or are not separated from my view by a watershed as big as that separating me from Pluralist's view.

I stress again that I am talking about 'what are the truths of Christianity' not about 'who are the Christians'.

We have no agreement on what are the greater and what are the lesser disagreements. I do not see ‘suspicion’ as a feature of our disagreements; I see a determination to candidly and painfully explore where we really agree and where we really disagree – about what the truths of Christianity are.

Phil Almond

Bowman

Thank you for your post. I would rephrase my conviction as follows, repeating myself somewhat:

The one church of the Lord Jesus Christ is made up of all those persons, living and dead, who, having been predestinated to life by the everlasting purpose of God to deliver them from curse and damnation, and chosen in Christ by God before the foundation of the world, by his counsel secret to us, have been called according to God’s purpose by his Spirit working in due season; have through Grace obeyed this calling; have been justified freely, have been made sons of God by adoption; if still living, are being made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ and, if still living, are, (with many ups and downs, sins and graces, repentances and forgivenesses, backslidings and restorations, agonisings, chastenings) walking religiously in good works.

This church actually is herself a fellowship, one forbidden to rely on resources not derived from the God and Christ whose being, character and words and actions (past, present and future) God has truly disclosed in the Bible, and that she necessarily deals on God and Christ’s  own terms with whatever society she happens to be in.

I hope that given this rephrasing we are still on the same side of 'one of Christendom's grand divisions of opinion’.

Phil Almond

DavidR

My point is that sinners never know they are sinners until God softens their hearts and brings them to see their desperate need. This is true whether they are outwardly respectable and 'godly' or not.

Phil Almond

DavidR

The ‘religious good and godly’ were really sinners essentially the same as the prostitutes and tax collectors and all of us. Andrew’s ‘All almost all aspects of the gospel message are offensive to sinners’ is true until God softens our hearts and brings us to see our sin and our desperate need.

Phil Almond

djr

My reply to your

‘Now, you have asked direct questions, perhaps I should ask a direct question back:  Do you accept that the passage is structured in the nested way I outlined below, and (if so) do you accept that this means there are links between the different sections of the passage (regardless of what these sections actually mean)?’

is

I do not accept that ‘the passage is structured in the nested way I outlined below’.

I could respond to recent posts from you, DavdidR, Roger Hurding and Bowman on the basis of what you have variously said about Bailey’s view on this passage from 1 Corinthians 11. But it seems best to wait until I have got and studied a copy of Bailey’s book and then respond to you all (I disagree with you all) from first-hand knowledge of his view.

Phil Almond

DavidR

You used the phrase ‘male headship’ when you said in your 15 March post ‘Male headship appears quite explicitly after the Fall’. My questions 1 and 2 in my 25 April 2013 post on this thread were asking you whether, in your view, Paul was referring to such a post-fall male headship in Ephesians 5:23 and 1 Corinthians 11:3. When pressure of work permits it would clarify our disagreement if you felt able to reply to those 2 questions.

Bowman, djr and DavidR

DavidR’s and djr’s approval of Bailey’s approach to and understanding of 1 Corinthians 11 and a recent post by Roger Hurding take us back to ‘woods and trees’ and Tom Wright’s different ways of joining up the dots to form a different picture, which we have debated and disagreed about on other threads, and perhaps begins to point to a fundamental question which may help to account for our disagreement.

The question is: can any piece of writing, in any language, in any literary convention convey a meaning which is certain?

My answer to that is ‘yes’. I wonder who agrees with me.

The third question in my 25 April 2013 post is a test case. In my post on 1 Corinthians 11 I translated 1 Corinthians 11:10  ‘Because of this ought the woman authority to have on the head because of the angels’. And I said that it is clear (certain) that the ‘this’ in ‘Because of this...’ is what Paul has written in 11:6-9.

So my conviction is that, given the correctness of my translation of verse 10, it is a certain fact that the ‘this’ is what Paul has written in verses 6-9, and that therefore verses 6-9 provide part of the reason (coupled with ‘because of the angels’ ) why ‘the woman ought to have authority on the head’. This fact is a certain fact regardless of what  verses 6-9 actually mean and regardless of what ‘authority on the head’ and ‘angels’ mean.

So I restate my question 3 as follows, and invite responses from all of you when work pressure permits:

          3.1       Do you agree that my translation of verse 10 is right?

3.2       Do you agree that what I have claimed to be a certain fact is a certain fact (regardless of what  verses 6-9 actually mean and regardless of what ‘authority on the head’ and ‘angels’ mean)?

Phil Almond

DavidR (and others)

I had in mind your 15 March 2013 post on ‘Women Bishops: Church in all its Fullness’ where you say ‘If headship ordering is not there (i.e in Genesis 1 and 2 in your view) that strongly suggests that Jesus and Paul are making different points when they draw on those texts.  So I must return to their words and seek understandings that accord with the Genesis texts’. I was challenging you to put forward such an understanding of Paul’s words about the man being head of the woman in Ephesians 5 and in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and 11:8-9 (which, taken, as they must be, as one line of thought, means that male headship is a Genesis 2 creation fact) because, as I said in my 1 Corinthians 11 post, no such alternative understandings are possible.

Perhaps your

‘When Paul refers back to the creation texts I think he does so as a corrective to one group or other - or both. 1Cor 11 is a good example of this and Petersen captures this sense well. 'The first woman came from man, true—but ever since then, every man comes from a woman! And since everything comes from God anyway, let’s quit going through these “who’s first” routines.' (The Message)’

is your answer to that challenge. But you do not set out in detail how in your view Paul is correcting one group or the other or both, other than giving the Peterson quote. As you will have gathered the conviction that ‘…a man is head of the woman’ is a pre-fall creation fact is central to my case. Whereas in your 15 March post you say ‘Male headship appears quite explicitly after the Fall’.  To try to clarify where we disagree I would like to ask ‘you’ (I mean your ‘team’ – Roger Hurding, djr, Bowman, the Fulcrum Leadership Team, most CofE Bishops) the following:

1             When Paul says in Ephesians 5:23 ‘...because a man is head of the woman’,  is he referring to the ‘male headship’  which you assert ‘appears quite explicitly after the Fall’?

2             When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:3 ‘...and [the] head of a woman the man’, is he referring to the ‘male headship’ which you assert ‘appears quite explicitly after the Fall’?

3             Do you agree or disagree with my understanding set out in my post on 1 Corinthians 11 of the meaning of ‘this’ in ‘Because of this..’ at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 11:10?

Phil Almond

Bowman

I note that you have not at all responded to my request for clarification on your comment on 1 Timothy 2 and I am not sure whether or not your reference to Genesis 1:28 is a roundabout way of responding to my request for your view on the conclusion of my 1 Corinthians 11 post. Are you able to be more direct please?

Phil   Almond