"The account of Uzziah's reign in 1 Chronicles 26 and his thwarted desire to function as a priest as well as a king needs to be seen in the context of the specific priestly call to the Levites and those in the lineage of Aaron.  The NT brings in a new dispensation which does not separate out a particular bloodline to be priests and opens the door for God's priestly calling to men and women of every class, race and age."

Roger, you haven't addressed the core point I made in the OP, namely that every type of argument for WO made today finds its analogy in the case of Uzziah.  But God showed that all such arguments were invalid then - therefore they are invalid today as well.  I have yet to read a refutation of this syllogism.

This is very important because it proves that the case for WO cannot be made simply by relativising away 1 Tim. 2 etc. (even if that can be done).  There must be a positive Biblical case for it - and no, Galatians 3:28 is not part of it.

PS mods, searching on "Uzziah" yielded no result, even though this thread is still here.  Anything wrong with the software?

I keep on being told that the church is the people not the building. This is a dangerous half truth. Church in English comes from a phrase meaning "House of the Lord". In the New Testament the word ekkesia is better translated assembly. It is the word used in Greek society for the assembly of the people when they made political decisions. It is also of the Isrealites assembled before Mt Sinai. It is also ised in the sense Phil refers to. We do not however find any national churches od denominations in the Bible. The church is essentialy local. The 39 Articles say"The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly- ministered ..."  This does not help us with the equality of the sexes. We need to look beyond definitions to the teaching of scriptue.

Dave

Yes Phil i follow that, "not all who face the wrath of God shall be redeemed" for redemption is reliant upon repentance of sin and submission to the "ways" of Christ. It was Christ way that ALL including himself would submit to God the father..

Of course Christ gave the ultimate sacrifice, or did he? Christ died for the world so that they would not have to kill each other because of sin, But many since have died for the same cause including people like Ghandi and the reason we are not saved from the wrath of God is because given the knowledge, and the power it is so often abused, it is not used to "consider your neighbour greater than yourself" it is not used for the purpose of "the strong shall defend the weak" For how can a person with no understanding of the concept of PEACE submit to free themselves from the wrath of God.. Forgiveness follows the wrath of God but not the wrath of people. Submission to God does not automatically free us from the consequence of human sin.

Freedom from fear, is a precious thing and we can be lulled into a false sense of security so easily. The devil will come like a thief in the night we are instructed in the bible. Indeed this happens often why? because we live in a world out of sinc. God created Harmony he made a world within which all things and life would co-ordinate to enhance one another, but the lack of submission leads to abuse at all levels in and out of the church floods ozone layer erosion fires and explosions poverty and premature death. The result of all this of course is fear.

Oh well thats another fine mess we got into.. BUT Jesus died that we might be forgiven and therefore saved from the wrath of God. It is all about  serving one another where we are at, at any given time and using the the bible to encourage people to accept the Love of Jesus in order to bring a message of Peace.For if i submit to the love of Christ i am empowered to bring the love of Christ

Waterangel

WATERANGEL

In my view the church comprises all those human beings, men, women and children, living and dead, who have been regenerated by God’s supernatural act and justified by God’s verdict in the blood and resurrection of Christ.

To repeat:

According to the Bible not all who face God’s wrath will be redeemed, although all without exception are commanded, exhorted, invited, beseeched to embrace the offered redemption by submitting to Jesus Christ in repentance, faith, obedience, love and fear.

Phil Almond

I offer this challenge!

Define the church!

Is the church a building?

Is the church a gathering?

Is the church the "people"?

Are the people MEN AND WOMEN?

Does this introduce the concept that all are equal before God and all are answerable to God....

Jesus is indeed head of the Church and the Church is his people where does it say that the church is only for men, it says jesus shall be head of the church in the  individual not collective sense. The quotes about men and women are in reference to the intimacy between husbands and wives, not to do with the intimacy between individuals and Jesus the Son of God and Saviour of the "world in totality" But of course you know this, but when i read these post i also like others are looking for fulproof ways of proving that i have "justification in faith" For that is the only hope i have or can offer, and i am not the only one.

Answer me this why waste your time trying to disect a god given message of peace and hope and freedom from oppression, to the point where what jesus died for cannot be attained, where is the justification in that..Where there is no hope there is no faith and where there is no faith there is no freedom to choose . It is choice that gives freedom in Christ or freedom without Christ...

Waterangel

This is just a response to Challenge 3

‘3. The Challenge

Cite a text from the Bible that defines the headship of Christ to the church as a relation of authority or of leadership.

The Facts

The New Testament defines the headship ministry of Christ to the church as a servant relation designed to provide the church with life and growth.  This headship is never presented as an authority or lordship position.

Eph. 1:22-23.  Christ is supremely and universally sovereign, but as head for the church, it is not said that he rules over it.  Instead, he provides his body with the fullness of him who fills all in all.  He causes the church to grow and flourish.

Eph. 4:15-16.  Christ as head provides the body with oneness, cohesion and growth.  This is a servant-provider role, not one of rulership.

Eph. 5:23.  Christ is head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior.  His headship to the church is defined as saviorhood which is biblically defined as a servant, self-sacrificing function, not a lordship role…..etc’

But Eph 5: 23-24: ‘….because a man is head of the woman as also Christ [is] head of the church, [him]self Saviour of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to the(ir) husbands in everything’. ‘But as the church is subject to Christ’ carries with it the idea of submitting to Christ’s leadership and authority.

Phil Almond

.

Dan, in your post of 11th June, you write that Galatians 3:28 'cannot possibly have anything to do with an interchangeability of social roles, otherwise Paul would be saying that Christian slaves and freemen should henceforth have identical social functions, whereas we know that elsewhere he never tells either to seek to change it as a matter of Christian obedience, but simply to be good in the station in which conversion found them.'

There is another way of looking at this verse.  Although you are right in that Paul didn't directly tell slaves and the free to change their social functions, there is no doubt that, eventually, Christians in revisiting scripture were able to see the pernicious nature of slavery.  In turn emancipation from that condition led to slaves joining the ranks of the free.  Further, in Christ, the deep rift between Jew and Gentile has been abolished so they can stand, shoulder to shoulder, united in him, functioning faithfully within his church.

Surely we can argue, backed by scripture, that there is a parallel here to the other two groupings, so that women and men can function on an equal footing, both lay and ordained, serving the Lord in the church and wider community.

The account of Uzziah's reign in 1 Chronicles 26 and his thwarted desire to function as a priest as well as a king needs to be seen in the context of the specific priestly call to the Levites and those in the lineage of Aaron.  The NT brings in a new dispensation which does not separate out a particular bloodline to be priests and opens the door for God's priestly calling to men and women of every class, race and age.

Dan,

The "Uzziah factor" is simply an illustration of the need to take God's commands seriously. Has anyone ever challenged Elaine Storkey or Gilbert Bilezikien onthe  substantive point? There is no reason for them to look at this passage to prove their evangelical credentials. Gilbert Bilezikien's article http://www.godswordtowomen.org/bilezikian.htm issues ten challenges to those who use scripture to question woman's equlaity. How do you repond to them?

Dave

Dave

"Many see the equality of women as part of the gospel so that in your terms it is an intrinsic argument."

Slippery terms, eh?  The Gospel is about saving sinners from sin, death and hell.  By nature we're all "equal" in terms of being sinners and deserving hell and needing redemption by the blood of Christ, without needing circumcision.  That, and that alone, is the scope of Galatians 3:28, as anyone who attends to the context can see.  It cannot possibly have anything to do with an interchangeability of social roles, otherwise Paul would be saying that Christian slaves and freemen should henceforth have identical social functions, whereas we know that elsewhere he never tells either to seek to change it as a matter of Christian obedience, but simply to be good in the station in which conversion found them.  But I suppose that means little to anyone who doesn't mind using Galatians 3:28 to overrule 1 Timothy 2:12?

More acutely, this is precisely the sort of argument that Uzziah could have used:  he could have cited the "kingdom of priests" and indeed the so-far correct observation of Korah & co. that "all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them".  But the grand lesson of 2 Chronicles 26 is that none of this availed one whit to weaken God's clear instructions limiting the priesthood to Levites.  So as I've reasoned earlier, there is no conceivable valid inference from Gal. 3:28 etc. to nullify the teaching of the Pastorals.

Has Elaine Storkey ever engaged with the Uzziah argument?  Gilbert Bilezikian certainly hasn't, at least not online as a Google check quickly confirms.

The ball remains firmly in the feminist court.

Dan,

Many see the equality of women as part of the gospel so that in your terms it is an intrinsic argument. I hope you will engage with Elaine Storkey's recent post.

Celinda

The argument about homosexuality is only about priesthood in a secondary way. The biblical condemnations are about activity in the general population. As with divorce, drunkenness and child rearing the argument these disqualify someone from leadership does not imply they should be accepted generally.

David

Thank you Celinda for your thoughtful post, and interesting and relevant quote.

To get to the heart of your comments, re. the relevance of the Uzziah story to WO (and potentially other issues, but this is the biggest and most urgent presenting one):  it may help if we imagine as it were a pair of scales with arguments pro and con WO in each of its pans.  I do realise that many Christians think that the usual "intrinsic" arguments against WO aren't as strong as all that; indeed some on here seem to think that they amount to nothing.  But I'm not saying Uzziah has anything to do with that; rather, with the opposite side of the balance.  When one considers the main arguments advanced for WO in the CoE and so many other denominations, we find the same sorts of claims repeatedly urged, sometimes allegedly from Scripture, but mainly as a matter of common sense, almost.

Well, the significance of the Uzziah account is that it addresses all those sorts of arguments by implication, and indirectly shows that they are the ones that amount to virtually nothing.  You can run the test yourself:  can you think of any such "prudential" argument for WO that, in its essence, couldn't have been proposed to allow Uzziah to work as an OT priest?  But Scripture proves that he couldn't; therefore all such arguments are invalid!

So that it makes a decisive difference to the way the balance tilts:  even if the "anti" pan doesn't seem to contain much, what now is left in the "pro" pan?  Remember that the "anti" pan can also contain the "extrinsic" arguments relating to unity etc. which I outlined in my previous post here.

It's for sure that if this had been duly considered, the famous vote of 1992 would never have gone through, and all our history since would have been different.