Women Bishops:
Church in all its Fullness
Sat 16 March 2013
New Malden, SW London
... a conference for all those in favour of women bishops
co sponsored with Yes2WomenBishops
@fulcrumanglican @yes2womenbishop #wb16mar
20th November 2012 is viewed by supporters of the full ministry of women with varying degrees of frustration, disappointment and anger. The question is what happens now?
“One major lesson is that the positive value of women’s ministry needs to be spelt out a great deal more. Too much of the discussion around the time of the Synod vote was centred upon the issues that its opponents were concerned about. This meant that women bishops was presented far too much as ‘a problem to be solved’ rather than a wonderful opportunity for the church to move forward to greater fullness and enrichment,” says Stephen Kuhrt, Chairman of Fulcrum, the central evangelical network, and vicar of Christ Church New Malden.
“More needs to be done to give those in favour of women bishops a greater depth of confidence in the weighty theological grounds for this. Then discussion is now needed of the various options in regard to the future legislation to go before General Synod,” he says.
Fulcrum and Yes2WomenBishops are jointly organising a conference for all those in favour of women bishops from whatever tradition. It is intended to help map out how we can bring this about.
Women Bishops: Church in all its Fullness
Christ Church, New Malden, KT3 4RE, Saturday 16th March 2013, 10.00 am – 3.00 pm: 20 minutes from Waterloo.
Speakers: Revd Jody Stowell, Revd Stephen Kuhrt, and Archdeacon Rachel Treweek
Book your tickets here
Media Enquiries: Andy Walton 07801073353
Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum
Forum Posts About This Article:
Posted by: Phil Almond
Sunday 19 May 2013 - 06:23pm
Bowman/DavidR/ anyone else in their camp
On the kephale thread I made 2 posts on 17 May 2013, one to Bowman and one to DavidR. I invite you both (and anyone else in your camp) to clearly answer the specific questions I asked in those posts.
Do you believe that the Christ-church relationship is symmetrical with respect to submission? (Yes, No, Still thinking about it). If ‘No’ why does Paul so strongly compare the Christ-church with the husband-wife relationship by saying in Ephesians 5:24 ‘But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything’?
Does Paul exhort wives to be subject to their own husbands? (Yes, No, Still thinking about it)?
Does he so exhort wives ‘..because a man is kephale of the woman...’ (Yes, No, Still thinking about it)?
Phil Almond
Posted by: Bowman
Sunday 19 May 2013 - 12:09am
The better we understand the passages offered to support Phil's argument, the harder it is to read them as having any relevance to OWE, and the more uneasy one becomes about its implications with respect to St Paul's main topic in those passages-- marriage in the Lord as a sign of the Love at the heart of all things. # The argument under review seems to confuse relations within the husband-wife dyad with relations between hypothesised classes of all Christian men and all Christian women. Now if the argument has no path to a conclusion that the class of all Christian women is prohibited, precisely as a class, from holding ministerial office, then it is moot and we should discuss something else! But if it does treat each Christian woman ordinand only as a member of a hypothesised class of her sex, then it contradicts scripture: St Paul is clear that women are not such a class-- Galatians 3:28; circumcision is abolished-- though he does recognise differences between men and women that unfold in the created order. # Meanwhile, the argument seeks scriptural warrant in passages about marriage like Ephesians 5. But to read those in terms of class relations not only strains the words, as has been suggested, but implies that, in their marital relationship, a given husband and wife are primarily representatives of their respective sexual classes, rather than each being a soul in Christ deeply responsive to another soul in Christ, both having, but not reducible to, a different sex. Though somewhat true of animals, the "battle of the sexes" view is, with respect to ordinary humans, an error that misses the Great Mystery itself. # I hope that Phil-- who writes beautifully on marriage, and clearly does not believe this pernicious conclusion himself-- can show us how his argument can be accepted by others without falling into that error. If he cannot convincingly do that, then regretfully we are left to decide whether a vague unease about women bishops in the Church of England is worth the actual and serious harm of projecting a divisive ideology from our own time into St Paul's inspired words about this sign of intimate communion-- uniting the Father and the Son, uniting Christ and the Church, and uniting Christ and the believer-- in the Holy Spirit.
Posted by: Bowman
Saturday 18 May 2013 - 04:39pm
Daniel's exegetical outline below makes more sense of Ephesians 5:21-23 than anything else I've seen posted here. The proposed rings make obvious intuitive sense, though I am still pondering the question what algorithm, if any, could (dis)confirm these intuitions. The rings lead one to see intimacy constituting the pairs and framing the duties of their members for a higher end. With respect to OWE, would St Paul have seen a comparable sort of intimacy between a bishop and diocese in the Church of England?
Posted by: djr
Saturday 18 May 2013 - 08:24am
Apologies for a second post, but having written what I did last night, I did a web search for Kenneth Bailey and Ephesians 5, and found this. Bailey has a very slightly different suggestion for the chiastic structure, but not very different. He sees more substructure out in the wings of the passage. On reflection, I think this is how I would now set it out:
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, the wives to their own husbands as to the Lord
_For the husband is the head of the wife
__just as CHRIST is the head of the CHURCH
___being himself saviour of the BODY
__Just as the CHURCH is subject to CHRIST
_so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
++++
__Husbands, LOVE your WIVES, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
____in order to make HER HOLY by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word,
_______so as to present the church to himself in splendour
____without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that SHE may be HOLY and without blemish.
__In the same way, husbands should LOVE their WIVES as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
++++
_For no one ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it
__just as CHRIST does for the CHURCH
___because we are members of his BODY. [*]
__This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to CHRIST and the CHURCH.
_Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself,
and a wife should respect her husband.
[*] ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’
In any case, there is certainly structure there.
Posted by: djr
Friday 17 May 2013 - 08:12pm
This is really a reply to Phil Almond's latest on the kephale thread, but it's an oblique reply, and probably fits better here. I was thinking about the Ephesians 5:21-33 passage, and wondering whether this, also, might have the "tree-ring" / nested structure. I don't have anyone like Bailey to guide me on this one, but I thought why not try and work out for myself whether it fits. And it does, I think, fit really really well. Here is my suggested structure, mostly using NRSV but with one or two bits (in italics) lifted from my Greek interlinear. Words in capitals are my thoughts on linking themes.
A Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, the wives to their own husbands as to the Lord
_B For the husband is the head of the wife just as CHRIST is the head of the CHURCH
__C being himself saviour of the BODY
___D Just as the CHURCH is subject to CHRIST, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
(CHURCH / CHRIST parable - wives' duty to husbands)
____E Husbands, LOVE your WIVES, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
_____F in order to make HER HOLY by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word,
______G so as to present the church to himself in splendour
_____F without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that SHE may be HOLY and without blemish.
____E In the same way, husbands should LOVE their WIVES as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
___D For no one ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as CHRIST does for the CHURCH
(CHURCH / CHRIST parable - husbands' corresponding duty to wife)
__C because we are members of his BODY.
_B ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to CHRIST and the CHURCH.
A Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.
If anything, now that I have seen it this way, I think it is even more convincing a ring structure than the 1 Corinthians 11 passage. Some quick comments:
1) It seems impossible to separate wives submitting to husbands from "submitting to one another". The word for submit doesn't even appear in the second clause of the Greek (verse 22), it is implied from verse 21.
2) Concepts of "headship" (whatever that means) are balanced by being "one flesh".
3) The climax and focus of the passage has to do with Christ presenting the church to himself in splenour and holiness, and the corresponding commands that husbands should love their wives. This is where the real weight of the passage lies. Is is as though Paul is saying, OK, if you want to be the "head" then this is what it entails. LOVE YOUR WIVES in the same way that Christ loves the Church!! I supect this would have been really radical teaching in its day.
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 13 May 2013 - 05:48pm
Villagers will recall that I do see a mildly "complementarian" strain in St Paul's thinking, but not an exfoliated system for which sex should do what tasks. His overwhelming concern seems to be, not enforcing proper "specialisation," but rather to show that there is a basis for family cohesion, both between sexes and across generations, in human nature as God created it. The scriptures he knew offer plenty of reason to care about this cohesion, but St Paul's particular motivation for this showing is his belief that as persons acknowledge Jesus as the image of the Father, so they will acquire both the wisdom to see the creation more as the Creator meant it to be, and also the love of God that inspires them to live wisely and so charitably with others. He presumably recalled such teachings of Jesus as the holding that Mosaic divorce was merely a dispensation from the ideal in Eden, and understood their wider significance in a dialogue, perhaps critical, with the Wisdom of Solomon. Though there is interesting controversy about that dialogue, most do see it shaping St Paul's composition of Romans. # None of this maps directly onto ordained ministry in the Church, whilst other incompatible scriptural "maps" have actually been followed. The author of Hebrews relates Christ's own priesthood to Melchizedek, and so to God's covenant with Abraham, and that would seem to set ministry that exhibits his priestly work in a post-edenic context. Likewise, in late antique polemics with the Jews, the fathers argued that God's only priests were Christians, again pointing, not back to Genesis, but instead to post-edenic Leviticus and the covenantal implications of the destruction of the Second Temple. (Indeed, Constantine's nephew and successor, Julian the Apostate, sought to rebuild the Temple to refute precisely that argument.) In this, of course, the fathers followed Jesus's own prophecies as we find them in the gospels, and thus situated the order for ministry outside of God's first intentions and instead in the provisional laws of the vanishing Mosaic commonwealth. Whatever we think of that argument, it is not the creation-grounded argument that we might have expected in a quarrel with Jews, and it it reminds us that nobody seems to have thought that once we are reconciled to God we will at last recognise a true organizational pattern of ministry from which we had been estranged. # For that reason, we probably cannot apply the idealising logic of St Paul's thinking about creation, wisdom, and love to any provisional blueprint for ministry. Fortunately, we have other resources for thinking in Christ about ministry, not least St Paul's own example of collaboration with women.
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 13 May 2013 - 03:55pm
How are we to understand-- as personal faith in Christ-- the distinction sometimes drawn between prophecy and ministry in the 1C Christian movement? As the precedents of Quakers and Holiness churches suggest, the modern Christians who began to admit women to church offices did so because they had a theology of ministry to which prophecy was integral, so that gifted women could not be excluded from it on scriptural grounds. When opponents of women's ministry distinguished between prophecy and ministry, both groups objected that insisting on a non-prophetic pattern of ministry was insisting on a half-dead ministry, and that in opposing the ordained ministry of prophetic women their critics were opposing both women and prophecy. Were they wrong to argue this? If women (or men) can be prophets, where in contemporary church order are they to offer this gift? And how does it strengthen church order to deny them ordination? Please note that, as Phil insists, we ask, not "who is right?" but "what is true?"
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 13 May 2013 - 03:13pm
Did followers of Jesus in the 1C model church order on an ideal family order? If so, then what did doing that mean to them as Jews and Gentiles becoming Christians? If not, then why would texts about husbands and wives generally have application to OW or OWE?
Posted by: Pluralist
Sunday 12 May 2013 - 06:28pm
I'm not sure 'suspicion' has much to do with my view on these matters. I just think people were products of their own cultures and views about what caused things, what works, and what was true: the supernatural, magical and superstition having a lot to do with it. There is still plenty of that around today.
I mean, if I want to look at anything to do with male and female, and origins, it would be in the many human species that once existed, and came into existence not through a 'first' human couple descended from a non-human couple, but something existing in fits and starts and indeterminants. There was never an Adam and Eve, only Adams and Eves, and back and forth. We also realise that even different branches of human lines successfully interbred, like homosapiens and neanderthals, otherwise we could not have neanderthal traces in us (the offspring would have been sterile). There is absolutely nothing derived from this leading to one sex standing above the other, one sex unable to teach the other. Religion to me is comment about the whole of life, so it is to the whole of life that one goes and biology here offers no restrictions.
I can understand that, if you think the Bible is a form of divine reporting, that the gap between that and someone dealing in, say, ahistorical text-driven definition-making for a community (and variations) is going to be as troubling as any gap with a position as mine. All I'd say is though I've done some theology and even biblical study, I don't regard comparative familiarity as the same as being compelled. I'm not compelled by anything in the Bible differently than many other a sacred or special book. But I know enough about predecessors who once read it before German biblical criticism started up in earnest and even reading it off the page found it variable and contradictory, even if it had a narrative force for them; but then came a more sophisticated, critical approach that Christians both rejected and accepted, and from that the sort of response I'd give of not being drawn along in a compelling sense.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Saturday 11 May 2013 - 03:49pm
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
Posted by: Bowman
Friday 10 May 2013 - 04:56pm
Are there any new thoughts on women bishops?
Villagers understand, I think, that necromancy was far from my mind in posting 23429, and may recall that 23402 (both are not far below) suggests reading the scriptures in a way that actively engages the best "empirical" understanding that we can get, whatever the source. After all, this sort of understanding comes highly recommended (cf St. Luke 16:8 and St Matthew 10:16). And to paraphrase Martin Luther's quip on tunes, there is no reason to let the devil have all the good research to himself.
Posted by: Bowman
Thursday 9 May 2013 - 03:00pm
Many posts on this topic, among others, have suspicion as their subtext. There are, indeed, some "grand divides" in Christendom that cannot be traversed by tourists. But some posts, I believe, confuse those truly deep oppositions with lesser differences of temperament and opinion, or of experience and imagination. Suspicion misdirected is useless, and suspicion prolonged influences us too much on too many things. It is the very opposite of intelligence, which takes each thing without prejudice in its given context. So for these conversations, knowing the grand divides for what they are can be useful if it enables us to see our lesser disputations in proper scale without at all denying that they too matter.
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Thursday 9 May 2013 - 09:59am
DavidR, thanks for your interesting argument that Jesus's gospel message was welcomed by sinners. I wonder if that is true, although I see the strength of it, at least at first sight. 'For consider Him who endured such contradiction (αντιλογιαν) from sinners against Himself' [Hebrews 12:3] comes to mind. Great crowds followed Him as He healed the sick, but even many of his disciples left Him, when the message offended them (John 6:66). Were they not very fickle, crying out, in the end, 'Crucify Him'? It strikes me that the central offence of the gospel message is Jesus crucified, which of course could not be part of the Lord's own public preaching, at least not overtly. The model for our preaching has to be the apostolic proclamation, I think, and in Acts we see a great deal of opposition from sinners when their sinful ways were confronted with the message of repentance and faith in Christ.
I addressed my comment to you because of your [25 April]: 'Final comment: When it comes to observers watching the UK church today the irony is that the scandal is now reversed. A persistent conservative insistence on male hierarchy and the submission of women is offensive to the watching world and is actually obstructing our proclamation of the gospel.' The cross is an offence (Galatians 5:11) - σκανδαλον - a rock that causes men to stumble. 'We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews an offence (σκανδαλον) and to the Greeks foolishness'.
Andrew
Posted by: Pluralist
Thursday 9 May 2013 - 12:32am
My name has been mentioned, which is why I have re-registered to comment. The narratives I use Bowman are indeed those outside the Bible because they work. They work in terms of research - research that often gives answers one does not want. These narratives in science and social science in particular are constantly tested, and of course from the bottom factual challenges and additions can lead to paradigm shifts. The aim then is to produce a religion or a spirituality that works with these dominant narratives and not against them, and not inside a 'bubble of text' that is increasingly divorced from anything that delivers work. Wheels may turn but if no work is done there's little point in pursuing: many of the Christian terms that once meant something seem to be like wheels that turn but no longer do any work.
Posted by: Bowman
Wednesday 8 May 2013 - 06:45pm
Yes, Phil, whichever of us is more right about it, the rain that falls on our heads flows to the same river, the water of life, pure as crystal in the New Jerusalem. Where I live, scholars of culture would distinguish my "etic" (outside, theoretical) words from your "emic" (inside, traditional) and rather Reformed ones, but would recognise that your words and mine point to the same reality. There are other emic accounts (eg Lutheran, Orthodox) that I find plausible in the same way, and if the 20th C project of a biblical theology (eg Richard Gaffin, Tom Wright) continues and matures, it will likely become yet another emic account that, whatever its differences from the others, will never be watered from the other side of the divide, where the rains flow to the sea that shall be no more.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 7 May 2013 - 08:47pm
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
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 6 May 2013 - 12:14pm
A brief commendation of the kind of argument that Phil is trying to build: even if imperfectly, it tries to make sense of what the Chuch is and does on the Church's own transhistorical terms, not as though the some theory or culture from outside the Church was the criterion of her life. Writing just now to Angela about of one of Christendom's grand divisions of opinion, I might as well mention another one here: the one separating the view that the Church is an institution in the given culture that needs to adapt better to it from the opposed view that the Church actually is herself a culture, one forbidden to rely on resources outside of herself, and that she necessarily deals on her own terms with whatever society she happens to be in. Phil is on the latter side of that divide, and though I do not thus far follow him to his conclusion on OWE, so am I. That was, after all, the main difference between Adrian's views and mine.
Posted by: DavidR
Monday 6 May 2013 - 10:59am
Phil .. we are off thread. I agree with you of course. I have got your point. But just for the record I still have no idea if you have got the point I was making in the first place. Have a good bank holiday.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Sunday 5 May 2013 - 04:01pm
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
Posted by: Bowman
Friday 3 May 2013 - 10:37pm
Thank you, Roger, not only for kind words, but also for a reminder to read Ellen Davis on the wisdom books this summer, and for your comment on William Countryman's proposal for "triangular conversation," which I find here.
Before commenting on either, perhaps in another thread, let me return these favours with a link through Jason Goroncy's excellent blog to Robert W. Jenson's Burns Lectures, which cover about the same ground as his Canon and Creed. Like Countryman, Jenson is there offering a process to recollect the intelligent and faithful reading of scripture from postmodern fragmentation.
It's customary nowadays to acknowledge that Jenson is America's greatest living theologian, and that is my own judgement as well. More important to villagers, his oeuvre is, for several reasons, useful to evangelische Anglicans looking for a systematic theology to complement the biblical theology of Tom Wright. Happily, he too writes both long and mercifully brief books.
Posted by: DavidR
Friday 3 May 2013 - 08:52am
Phil .... of course they were. 'All have sinned'. But have you missed my point?
The difference between the sinners and the 'Good and the Godly' in the gospels is that the sinners seem to have known they were sinners. It is the welcome and love of Jesus that overwhelms them. In fact only the sinners seem to understand the gospel - because only sinners know their need of it.
In the gospels we never read of sinners, tax collectors conspiring to kill Jesus or grieving and angering Jesus for their hardness of heart do we. Instead Jesus points them out, ahead of the rest, entering the kingdom.
The deep, abiding, violent resistance to the gospel comes from those who know their bibles inside out, are morally scrupulous, who are devout and passionate about God, commited to utter holiness of life - public models for everything considered God and good .... and it is they who reject Jesus and bring him to the cross. In such a spiritual climate Jesus found the word 'good' to be so polluted that he even refused it of himself.
'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction'. Pascal
Posted by: djr
Friday 3 May 2013 - 08:01am
Bowman
I like your idea of the mathematical algorithm to detect the "tree-ring" patterns. A little care is probably needed... the passage is about men, women, and hair, so there is already a greater than average chance (as compared to randomly selected pieces of scripture) of finding keywords such as "man", "woman" and "hair" when you go looking for them. For a fair test to be made, I think you'd need to compare the structure against what it would be like if you just distributed the keywords randomly through the present section of scripture (i.e. verses 4-16) with the same frequency as found in the passage.
It is certainly true that Bailey sees such structures everywhere, and some reviewers aren't completely convinced there is this structure everywhere. But I think some passages, at least, are very convincingly structured this way. A couple more examples are 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:2 (and particularly the central section, verses 21-25), and also Ephesians 2:11-22 (the centre is verse 15).
Posted by: Phil Almond
Thursday 2 May 2013 - 09:02am
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
Posted by: Bowman
Thursday 2 May 2013 - 12:13am
Andrew, djr, Christian quants everywhere-- djr's interesting question about 1 Corinthians is not about how we interpret the text; it's about what the text actually is. Put another way, if you are ignoring its original "formatting," whether generic, rhetorical, poetic, or stichometric, you aren't reading the whole origunal text. Because of the probabilistic basis of neural functioning, this particular formatting must, if it is there, be recognizable to some straightforward algorithm. # So whatever Bailey says, djr's question appears to be merely mathematical-- is the probability that "repeated keywords are equidistant from a centre" higher in that passage than chance alone would predict? Answers to that question are testable predictions that verse-strings of the same length randomly selected from scripture will (answer "no") or will not (answer "yes") exhibit the same degree of "tree ring" patterning. The question could be posed computationally in more than one way with mildly different results, but it is hard to believe that a large sample of randomly selected passages from comparable texts would show the observed pattern often enough to render this "treering" pattern insignificant. # Does this pattern relate the "angels" of 11:10 to the "angels" of 6:3? Now that is a matter of interpretation, one more interesting than it was before djr posted.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Wednesday 1 May 2013 - 01:00pm
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
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Wednesday 1 May 2013 - 12:07pm
Bowman, thank you for your most recent and, as ever, erudite contribution. I greatly appreciate your analysis of 'ours' and theirs'. I am sure your friend Calvin, with his understanding of 'general revelation', would affirm that what is 'ours' and 'theirs' is, ultimately, God's. Ellen F Davis, writing on the Book of Ecclesiastes, makes a similar point: 'It is likely that the most acute spiritual vision belongs to the person who loves the world, recognizes that it proceeds from God, and yet can smile at its limits and especially at human limitations in understanding the world.'
Thank you too for your affirmation of a wider circle of feminists such as Julia Kristeva. 'Theirs' has much to teach those of us who spend too much time on 'ours'.
William Countryman offers a valuable hermeneutic tool, not only relevant to our debate on women bishops but also on 'that topic'. He sees the 'practice of interpretation' as a 'triangular conversation' between 'the text, the interpreter, and the community with which the interpreter communicates.' This is how he summarizes his 'three horizons' approach, in which 'ours' and 'theirs' are incorporated:
'While this is a daunting prospect for any student of Scripture, it is also the one most worth pursuing. It calls for a widening of our horizons, an inclusiveness of vision, a transcending of disciplinary and ideological boundaries. It looks toward the possibility that the conversation between ancient texts and modern communities may yet be full of surprise and discovery.'
Posted by: DavidR
Wednesday 1 May 2013 - 11:35am
Andrew. Greetings, Not sure why your post of 25 April is addressed me but some brief responses.
'All almost all aspects of the gospel message are offensive to sinners, I would have thought'. Well I note that in the gospels it was the sinners who welcomed the gospel actually. The people that found it the most offensive were the religious good and godly. It was the offended good who put Jesus on the cross not the tax collectors.
You include 'Christian feminism' after fornicators and idolators and those who violently persecute Christian men (you only mention men here). Have you ever stopped to wonder why what we call feminism ever appeared in the first place? Why do you find feminism undermining actually? Is the insistence that a Christian nation should give women vote as well as men? Or that women receive a full education alongside men and have the same career options and rates of pay according to their gifts and unrestricted by their gender alone? Is it an insistence that women deserve the same levels of health care and contraception .... and legal, property and divorce rights as men? Surely not the undermining of a society in which sexual exploitation of women, access to pornography, levels of rape, sexual and domestic violence against women remain appalling high and where conviction rates remain disgracefully low? Perhaps it is undermining a church which unlike Jesus has for too long refused to honour and bless the presence of women alongside men in the gospel. But what we would know of the struggle for any of these Andrew - we're men?
Well if Christian feminism is undermining any or all of that I will add my alleluias to yours but not until then.
Posted by: Bowman
Tuesday 30 April 2013 - 05:41am
"Do you know, Bowman, what is the most powerful idea in all of theology?"
"The perichoresis of the most blessed Trinity."
"Regretfully, no. It's 'nos.'"
"Nosh?"
"Nos. Russian and Church Slavonic. It means 'ours.' Nobody believes anything that is merely 'theirs,' even if God Himself were to teach it to him."
Roger, Andrew-- Insofar as gender is a creature in the world and not only a verbal construct in scripture, it behooves us to understand it as it is in life. To do this in an informed and reflective way, we should not a priori be afraid to consider anything intelligent on that subject, even if it is not, on the face of it, "ours." In this, I warmly agree with Roger.
In so doing, we follow the good example of Calvin who, when pondering the texts on usury, left his study and went into the market to meet actual alleged "usurers" so that he could discover what the scriptures are talking about in their many condemnations of lending at interest. After this, he based his doctrine on the text of the scriptures, of course, but he understood it better than those before him because he better understood the complex activity to which the inspired writers of several generations refer. Calvin's insight, please note, was not something in the zeitgeist that he caught like a cold, but an intentional investigation into an emergent practise of his time. Nor was it simply falling in line with almighty Progress-- had Calvin not taken this unusual step, the future relations of reformers and bankers might have been very different, with many historical consequences.
Of those who are in some way "others," Christian feminists are the most obviously interesting to any of us, though some are sometimes wrong about some things, as we all are. But I should point out that non-Christian "radical" feminists who take Woman as their central subject without any reservations at all have enabled me to make the best sense of positions, like those of Phil and Andrew, that recognise a meaningful difference between the sexes. Such feminists do not usually understand religion or our religion as we do-- some indeed are also Jewish feminists who read OT and even NT texts in quite different ways-- but they are very energetic in investigating the creature of their interest, even if they do not always know or acknowledge the Creator as we would do. Some of what they find makes a scriptural concern for distributive justice between the sexes easier to follow than either the flat "sameness" perspective adopted by most advocates for OWE, or the male-centered perspective of most opponents of OWE.
For example, Julia Kristeva's brilliant analysis of the feminine ego is no more holy writ than anything a lender told Calvin in the Geneva marketplace, but without her perspective on how the childbearer's sense of self is affected by a constant yielding to the often complex and competing demands of her family, the life-situation in which the idea of kephale is played out in life would be far less clear. In particular, a mother's sense of her own psychological autonomy is not that of her husband, and that has many consequences for the dynamics within couples, within families, and across generations. Not understanding those consequences in discussing kephale is like not understanding how the charging of interest influences the money available to poor borrowers in trying to understand usury. As a consequence, kephale is itself unclear to those for whom it is a priori only a word to be processed in a more or less technical way, just as those who knew the words for usury well, but not the practises of borrowers and lenders did not, in our judgement, understand them. However most of us do not follow Calvin's daring faithfulness because we do not accept that the creatures we meet in our world are the creatures described in the scriptures.
Some of us are sure that the world has changed too much for that to be true. They believe, I suppose, that when a quite radical feminist like Judith Butler reads Sophocles's Antigone, and finds that gender dynamics she knows are active in that text, she is mistaken because women and men have changed too much for this to be possible. They probably also disbelieve what developmental psychologists find about the striking consistency of patterns of infant attachment to mothers through time and across cultures. However, I myself find it simplest to think that the Bible is talking about something we know today just as the Iliad is talking about something we know today. It does no harm to think this; it could be harmful to many to think that the Bible has nothing to say about "the great mystery" because it is too old.
Others among us are trying to maintain the proud independence of Christian morality from any knowledge but that in the Bible. This is what leads to the thought that merely probabilistic arguments about philology can reveal more about creatures in the world than just looking at them would do. Of course, Calvin certainly thought that the scriptures framed what we would now call the "discourse" of Christian morality, and he enjoyed, as we all still do, the steadily increasing richness of our understanding of the Bible as a text. But if he had thought that he would find all the knowledge he needed in the text alone, he would have stayed in his study, and never ventured out of doors to meet those wicked "usurers" among the goldsmiths, pawnbrokers, and Jews of Geneva.
In other words, there is an independence of the mind of Christ which is nourished by the text, and we are never beyond accountability to that text, but the mind is still a mind meant to inquire, observe, understand, and decide among the creatures of the time that God has given to us. Like Adam in Genesis 2:19, God brings each of us creatures to understand, and expects of us a bit of initiative. This is hardly diminished in the post-Fall creation where subtle arts of mind beyond Adam's lordly philology are required-- ponder, if you will, St. Luke 16:8 and St Matthew 10:16.
In those verses, Roger, I suspect, sees a hand from the clouds pointing on to Paul Ricoeur's "second naivete"-- and rightly so. A sheep with the first naivete may have been safe in the pre-Fall creation, but is hardly ready to outwit the wolves still at large even as the New Creation is taking shape. What may seem a resolute refusal of the understanding of the "others" is in fact a dangerous vulnerability if it leaves us less ready against our error or their strategems. Taking an apocalyptic turn, it may even be that in retrospect we will see that the New Creation was more emergent in the zigzag paths by which we evaded the wolves than in any visible success of "the devices and desires of our own hearts." But that is another matter.
Angela came close to Calvin's own approach-- actually the Lord's (eg here)-- when she pointed out that, whatever the usage and etymology of kephale, the word was used in reference to a rich narrative in Genesis that itself suggests the point of its being used. She is right in what she says, and all that is missing is what she tacitly assumed-- that the Bible's story is our story, and that our lives are in the same creation it describes, and that we gain nothing by ignoring this knowledge as we read and live.
The arguments in the village often remind me of T. S. Eliot's famous explanation for why the Church can have no fixed politics-- "Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things." Factional ideologies are so often mistaken precisely because they are organised around the refusal to recognise the part of the truth that is "theirs." The Church, when wily as a serpent, sees her Lord reconciling all to all as they were meant to be in the beginning, and just so is wise in her generation.
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Monday 29 April 2013 - 12:05pm
Roger,
Thanks for your moderate comments on the women in the bible, and the role they played. I would like to raise a query about the fall, and the nature of God's order in the church in a fallen world. My understanding is that in Christ, we are set free from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), not from the curse of the fall. Otherwise, we could stop working, go around naked, and women would be free from pain in child-bearing.
It struck me recently, having taken on an allotment for the first time, how much I love digging up brambles to clear the ground to sow. It is very satisfying and enjoyable, and seems 'right', despite being a result of the fall. It occurs to me that God gave a redemptive quality to the post-fall order, so that we may enjoy life and find fulfillment in it if we are obedient to God's commands and live in fear and peace and love in Him.
I do think we sometimes catch glimpses of life beyond the Fall - men are sometimes freed from work to serve full-time in ministry, women occasionally do have pain-free births through prayer, and there are moments in prayer, for example, when the truth of Galatians 3:28 is evident, and women exercise great authority and power to rule and reign from their position in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. But we aren't there yet, in the sense of having left the mundane completely behind, and there is a godly order to maintain in the church which is given to us for our benefit. The more we submit to this order, as laid down in the scriptures, the more we enter into true liberty in the spirit to love and serve the Lord.
Andrew
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Monday 29 April 2013 - 11:31am
DavidR,
You say that you are not willing to connect the word 'head' with the conservative idea of headship at all. What do you think kephale means in 1 Corinthians 11:3, where it stands on its own, and in Ephesians 5:23, where a head-body metaphor is visible? I have been surprised that nobody (if I am not mistaken) on the kephale thread has dared to defend the idea that it means 'source', despite the fact that this view is still commonly held by egalitarians. Tom Wright was still maintaining this c. 2005 in his Paul for Everyone series, and it was put forward by Awesome in their debate with Reform. I have seen this view expressed on this forum too, but not recently. Is it time to give it a decent burial, or would anyone like to expose it to proper scrutiny?
User 4976 suggested on that thread that it carries the meaning of 'unity', but hasn't responded so far to my request for evidence of that being a known usage in koine Greek. There isn't any, I am sure.
Andrew
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 29 April 2013 - 08:16am
On djr's question about 1 Corinthians 11-- yes. As far as it goes, the "treering" hypothesis is more plausible than the alternative. 1 Corinthians 11:4-16 is a unit, and verses within that unit are correlated by their distance from the "heartwood," v 10.
On Phil's question 3 about 1 Corinthians 11:10-- (3.1) yes, (3.2) no. As just noted, the passage comprises no less than all of 1 Corinthians 11:4-16.
On Phil's question about the general capabilities of language per se-- yes. See, for example, Euclid's Elements...
Posted by: djr
Sunday 28 April 2013 - 04:45pm
Hi Phil
Well, if I don't reply now, I might not get another chance this week, so here goes. I should say I get the impression that you know there is only one particular way through the texts that will arrive at the conclusion you wish to reach, and that any steps to the right or left will blow you off course; hence your repetition of the same point. My feeling is that each step in your argument is far from certain, so I wonder whether we will ever reach the destination you have in mind.
Can any piece of writing convey a meaning which is certain? Well, of course they can, but some are more clear than others. One of the ironies I find with some forms of the doctrine of inspiration of scripture (or other things beginning with "in-") is just how reluctantly some passages of scripture seem to yield their secrets. Could God have not made things easier for us to understand?
You talk of different ways of joining up the dots to form a different picture. But, the "nested structure" scheme proposed by Bailey is very far from arbitrary - on the contrary, it is extremely structured, and quite precise. Morover, he shows (in his book) that this is very far from an isolated incident: practically the entirety of 1 Corinthians is structured in this way. So, given this structure, and given that Paul clearly intended to write in this way, if you are going to understand the "meaning" that Paul wanted to "convey", then you need to understand his writing structure.
One immediate conclusion is that it rules out any interpretation of the passage that treats verses 3-10 as "one connected line of thought" with the various phrases of 11-16 as different afterthoughts, tacked on the end. It also rules out playing off verses 11-12 against the whole of 3-10. Verse 11-12 balance, and are part of the same thought process, as verses 8-9.
Anyhow, you asked some direct questions. My answers:
3.1 Yes, the translation seems reasonable.
3.2 I think you are stacking the argument by insisting that the "this" refers to the whole of verses 6-9. You seem to draw boundaries around certain parts of the passage in ways that are far more arbitrary than Bailey's scheme. The "because of this" forms part of a short section in which there are four occurences of "because":
For man was not created because of the woman
but woman because of the man
because of this, the woman shold have authority on the head
because of the angels
The structure suggests that the "because of this" at least refers to the previous two lines, and has something to do with the creation. But I think it is pushing it to claim it refers to all of verses 6-9.
Bailey also notes a particular structuring of the central section of the passage:
For man was not created because of the woman
_but woman because of the man
__because of this,
___the woman shold have authority on the head
__because of the angels
_More specifically, woman is not independent of man
nor man independent of woman in the Lord
Again, this demonstrates how strongly the different sections of the centre are linked.
But, as DavidR said, why not read Bailey yourself? It would have the added advantage of you knowing how we might answer you back!
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)?
Posted by: Bowman
Sunday 28 April 2013 - 03:40pm
Phil, djr, DavidR, Andrew-- Thanks to you all for several recent posts citing interesting off-thread texts. Rounding them all up-- Bailey is here; Petersen seems to be this; Ian Paul's essay is now here; and Wolters on authentein is here and here. I Corinthians 11:10 is of course here and elsewhere.
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Sunday 28 April 2013 - 03:31pm
Andrew, thank you for your response of 22nd March to my earlier post, in which you agree, to some extent, on the leadership of Deborah, Priscilla and, possibly, Junia, but add, 'The others I don't accept as being in a position of leadership over men.' I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply but, nonetheless, I have been following and appreciating further posts on this thread.
With respect to the women of the OT and NT (I see God's dealings with Israel and the Church in connected continuity) I mentioned. following Fern's post, I take your point questioning their leadership roles. However, it all depends on our understanding of leadership. Many of these women held roles of great influence and, although they functioned in patriarchal societies, their words and actions often showed greater wisdom than the men in their lives. Let me take two examples.
Eli the priest demonstrated male prejudice when he wrongly assumed that the fervently praying Hannah was drunk! Further, she countered her husband Elkanah by declining to accompany him to the yearly sacrifice, giving the priority to her commitment to Yahweh to present Samuel once he was weaned.
Esther showed great pragmatism, outmanoeuvring the anti-Semitic Haman, and courage in the court of King Ahasuerus, risking her own life to save her fellow-Jews, declaring, "If I perish, I perish" (Ester 4:16).
My views on the place of women in the Bible and the trajectory (to use DavidR's word) they offer towards our debate on women biships are as follows:
Women and men are God's co-image bearers in general and co-partners in marriage (Genesis 1 and 2);
The subjection and subjugation of women is one of the distortions of God's 'blue-print' for humanity following the Fall. Genesis 3 is descrptive of that domination, not prescriptive;
In spite of the pre-dominance of patriarchy through much of the biblical record, certain women's voices emerge influentially and powerfully;
Christ's new creation begins the restoration of women and men to play their full part in co-operative leadership and ministry. We see examples of this emerging in the Gospels, in Acts and the Epistles. Galatians 3:28 is the Credo for this development.
The seeds of this new flourishing are sown in the NT and its fruit-bearing is with us today, if we will allow it. Just as St Paul made concessionary statements within the context of the 1st century Church (as discussed on this thread) with regard to masters and slaves, so he did with respect to husbands and wives. In time we learned to move beyond mastery and slavery. At last we are learning to move beyond headship and unilateral submission.
Further Andrew, on 25th April, you wrote, 'Feminism in the church only hinders us by undermining the believers' confidence in the bible by pretending that the scriptures do not mean what they obviously do mean.'
I feel that it is too sweeping to talk of feminism this way, since it is a 'movement' that has many voices and insights. Many Christian feminists take Scripture very seriously indeed and offer refreshing and neglected perspectives. Take, for example, the writings of Sarah Coakley, Zoe Bennett Moore and Fulcrum's own Elaine Storkey.
Finally, thank you to djr and DavidR for the helpful references to Kenneth Bailey. As a result, I have ordered his book. Phil, do take DavidR's advice and do the same...
Posted by: Bowman
Sunday 28 April 2013 - 07:04am
Andrew-- Did you see any of our discussion of hypotasso last Spring?
Posted by: Bowman
Sunday 28 April 2013 - 06:33am
Phil-- I can see that I should have mentioned Genesis 2:18 alongside Genesis 1:28, but otherwise my post seems clear. God differentiated the sexes in Eden having purposes for marriages (commanding reproduction explicitly in 1:28, and companionship implicitly in 2:18), that cannot be for separable classes of men (apart from their wives) and women (apart from their husbands). Therefore, St Paul's comments in 1 Corinthians etc which depend on the priority of the farmer to the childbearer in Genesis are not about relations between those hypothetical classes, even if he does speak situationally of men-in-marriages and women-in-marriages. St Paul is always consistent with the ontology of "one flesh." A fortiori, the kephale he mentions cannot be that of one class with respect to another, and must be an intra-marital relation. As such, kephale cannot be related in the same sense to ordination.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Friday 26 April 2013 - 07:55pm
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
Posted by: DavidR
Friday 26 April 2013 - 09:32am
Phil Thank you for your response. Forgive me but pressure of work over the next few weeks prevents me answering at any length - which always gets unwieldy on these threads anyway.
I still think Petersen's rendering of that verse neatly clarifies what Paul was saying to men and women in Corinth about their created mutuality. He thus steers them away (the men and the women) from assumptions of hierarchy in Gen 1-2. Not sure what you want me to add to it.
As to your questions - I am not willing to connect the word 'head' with the conservative idea of 'headship' at all. Headship/male led hierarchy is simply not in Gen 1and2 pre fall by any reading I can see. So your questions to me 'is it before or after' the Fall do not make sense. Eve is created as 'ezer' to Adam. This word is often used of God coming to help/save Israel. There is no notion of submissive service in it. In Hebrew useage 'ezer is always the gift and provision of a powerful ally or one who saves/helps those in trouble. Furthermore if you wish to argue for significance by ordering the creation accounts start from the least to the most important - which is the wo-man, to be 'ezer' to the needy and incomplete man.
But I am very grateful to djr for his summary of Bailey's work on this text. Thank you. This is what I base my own exegesis on. Bailey argues convincingly that Paul structures his epistle by use of 'Hebrew parallelisms'. These take various forms, including what he calls 'ring compositions'. This is the interpretative key key to understanding the way Paul develops his arguments. But it an largely unfamiliar way of reading these texts for Western Christians and our own imposition of chapters and verses on the original text mask this still further. It is a very particular Hebrew literary style, much used in the Prophets and that Paul would have been trained in himself. It means that to understand any one verse within a passage you need to understand the structure and rhythm of the whole section. So the meaning and significance of 'because the man is the head of a woman' for example, can only be found in understanding the structure of that part of the epistle. A Western reader will tend to take that verse off the page as robustly factual and unambiguous in meaning. But when read as Bailey outlines we discover that verse is held in balance by texts that move in other directions and set the whole debate in a wider context rather than saying and meaning 'one thing' - and it warns us about imposing our own hierarchy of meaning on much more subtle approaches to theology.
But you are getting this very partially and second hand here and it is too important to miss. Given your passionate concern for scripture and its faithful interpretation may I strongly encourage you to read Bailey?
Posted by: Bowman
Thursday 25 April 2013 - 11:13pm
Phil-- Rather like Villager 4976, I doubt that there is any way to build a secure bridge from St Paul's mildly "complementarian" texts about married couples to a general theory of male-female relations to the ordained ministry per se, and then from there to the episcopate of the Church of England. When St Paul is writing about marriage he is writing about marriage.
I once had female classmates who were both ordained Southern Baptist clergy and teachers of headship as you describe it. They did not feel any contradiction about their position, and I saw none then and see none now. However, in their view and mine, it is most natural to understand these texts, not with the invidious comparisons of either "equality" or "asymmetry" but rather as distributive justice within the created order, which St Paul understands in a dialogue with Genesis, the Wisdom of Solomon, etc. Simply in themselves, neither men as men nor women as women may be entitled to much of anything, but as one man and one woman become a marriage each activates capabilities, rights, and obligations in the other, and in the glimpses of his teaching that we have, St Paul is mainly concerned that those in the Gentile world will understand these in a broadly Jewish way, yet without Judaism-inspired limitations on a woman's participation in Christ. End of story.
On 1 Corinthians 11, I agree with you that it is obvious that St Paul thinks the priority of the farmer to the childbearer has something to do with intra-marital relations. But it seems most true to his thought to see this something as more organic to the natures of men and women than the political constructs being debated here. I do not see the blunt crudeness of asymmetry or equality; I see the wisdom of intelligently integrated difference.
The New Testament does have the seeds of later thinking on ministry and order, but these have obviously exfoliated in several ways. One can build a scriptural case for any of them that is obliquely against all the rest, and for a few centuries churches busied themselves with that fruitless task. But on New Testament texts alone, one cannot establish any one of them exclusively, and the consequence of that well-known result is that there cannot be a New Testament map from St Paul's teaching on marriage straight through to a ministry and ecclesiology that was only embryonic in the 1C.
On 1 Timothy 2 (esp v 12), Andrew has already replied with another proposed solution to the textual problem of authentein that he likes, but what matters most is that even if we grant the traditional Vulgate translation of the word, we still do not know what sort of "mastery" is being mentioned there, nor how that relates to the ministry of later tradition down to the present. It could be no more than a sensible counsel that persons give spiritual direction, or in that age baptism, to persons of the same sex to avoid temptation or the appearance of impropriety. We do not know this because we lack the sources to know. The other puzzles in this passage may aggravate the difficulty of translation, as Tom Wright points out, but the core difficulty is not philological but rhetorical and historical-- the foreground concern of the passage is not ministry and the pastoral ecology in the background is not known to us.
You will note that those arguing your position and those arguing DavidR's position read vv 13 and 14 as referring back to different parts of v 12. Those on your side usually see this as where the step from marriage to that general theory of male-female relations is finally taken-- the farmer came before the childbearer, so men talk and women listen, and therefore the latter are not permitted authentein, whatever one takes that to mean. But on the other side, the same verses are read as a caution to women that the childbearer was deceived after hearing only at second-hand from the farmer, and therefore she is to learn at first-hand in silence, that is, from the trustworthy scriptures. The latter reading makes more sense of the context to me, but both readings rely on a vivid imagination.
The insuperable difficulties of the texts will not stop the most zealous on all sides from heroic feats of argument-building, but it will stop the rest of us from recognising the theorems that fall below the usual threshold of exclusive credibility for constraining practise. Since evengelicals normally consider this threshold to be quite high, those least prejudiced will come to see that the ordination of women is, so far as the New Testament alone is concerned, an adiaphoron.
That is not to say that WO is a "matter of indifference," but rather to say, as John Martin actually has, that the real biblical debate begins on the presupposition of evangelical freedom with a search for what sort of ministry best serves the gospel in a given time and place. In my own experience, those Southern Baptist women preachers were the most eloquent advocates for your overall views on marriage, and I suspect that you will know yourself that there are aspects of them that many women can only hear from other women. Meanwhile, DavidR is unfortunately right to point out that a ministry without women suffers from an understandable suspicion that the Church in fact stands for something far less worthy. Angela has taken this point a step further asking how global Anglicanism can bear a credible witness in places that do not respect the image of God of women without actually letting them serve and lead in the Church. As I have mentioned, Fern and Roger have set all this in the long arc of the God's own acts of trust in women that we see in the scriptures. It is important to maintain the integrity of Christian understandings of marriage and family and it is probable that this now requires OWE.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Thursday 25 April 2013 - 01:06pm
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
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Thursday 25 April 2013 - 10:30am
DavidR,
All almost all aspects of the gospel message are offensive to sinners, I would have thought. Fornicators are offended by being warned to cease their fornication, worshippers of foreign gods (especially) are offended by being told that these are worthless idols, and that they should turn and worship the Yahweh, the Almighty God of Israel, and Jesus His only Son. Hallelujah, it's a narrow way that leads to life and a broad one that leads to destruction. Why do you think the apostle Paul was constantly being attacked, stoned, imprisoned etc? Why did the same thing happen to John Wesley when he preached the true gospel? It's only the power and conviction of the Holy Spirit that convinces men and women of their need of a Saviour. Hallelujah, let us preach the unadulterated word of God, and pray constantly and fervently for the Spirit to be outpoured upon a needy world, for sinners to come to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Feminism in the church only hinders us by undermining the believers' confidence in the bible by pretending that the scriptures do not mean what they obviously do mean.
Andrew
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Thursday 25 April 2013 - 10:06am
Phil, you asked about Bowman's reference to the hapax legomenon (literally, 'once spoken', ie occurring only once) in 1 Timothy 2:12. As you probably know, he is referring to the word αυθεντεω, over which there has been much debate. Although it only occurs once in the New Testament, there are other known uses of it in koine Greek, and it is by no means unintelligible. There is a good study of the word by Al Wolters here, and a follow-up here. Although αυθεντεω is a rare word, the noun αυθεντης is quite common, and according to Wolters has two distinct meanings, possibly with two independent derivations. In classical Greek, it meant 'murderer', and specifically 'kin-murderer', but after the classical period, the meaning 'master' took over. Wolters (from memory, I haven't re-read the paper just now), says that in the koine period, the known cases of αυθεντεω derive from this second meaning 'master' - thus 'to be master of', or 'to exercise authority over'. Contrary to what many egalitarians claim, he says that there is no evidence that it is to be understood negatively as meaning to exercise control in an ungodly oppressive way. But I haven't studied it out.
Andrew
Posted by: DavidR
Thursday 25 April 2013 - 09:09am
Phil Not sure why you think I need challenging to say what I think. I am a regular contributor to threads on this topic - at least 10 since September 2012. I don't wish to repeat myself. But by way of summary of my position.
a. Community. In the NT both women and men are growing into new identity and new ways of relating. This causes tensions. Both sides need addressing. 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).
b.Context This is about Christians living in a majority non-Christian context/culture. Paul's teaching has an immediate local context. It is applied theology. The overriding concern is expressed in Eph 4.1 – ‘live up to your calling’ …. and not as the pagans live'. There will be a tension in such contexts between public behaviour and relating within the new community - but even when the community is gathered there Paul teaches caution. Head covering is a good example. Making complete sense of an otherwise notoriously strange teaching, Bailey argues that the 'angels' are literally 'messengers'. The practice of the wealthy and curious in those times was to send servants/observers to check out something that had caught their interest and report back (this happens at HTB Alpha evenings too actually). Women are to cover their heads in worship 'for the sake of the Lord' - for the sake of mission - because otherwise the reports back to the outside world could easily discredit and cause scandal.
c. Mission. Then, as now, to witness distinctively new patterns of relating into any society/culture needs wisdom. So in some parts of the world today Christians live publically in respectful submission to patterns of social life that do not actually reflect Christian teaching but which are a necessary honouring of the culture in order that any kind of positive witness can be offered rather than just causing scandal. An example would be the way a woman missionary in conservative muslim culture adopt the dress code of that faith and culture in public and the way Christian married couples relate in public. This is accepted ‘for the sake of the Lord’ (a theme that runs through Ephesians). But this is not the same as an endorsement of the ordering itself at all. In reality Christians are expressing and growing towards a new kind of community marked by mutual submission, a mutuality of ministries as the spirit gives (rather than restricted or defined by gender) and an approach to service and authority based on the example of Christ who came not to be served but to serve.
d. Trajectory. The NT is not a systemmatic document outlining belief and practice. There is always a sense that this is theology, faith and practice in progress. (Witherington argues persuasively that a developing of theology and practice can be traced from Colossians to Ephesians. It is an ongoing discussion). This is what I mean by trajectory. If so let's be cautious in where we presume to find universal principles of Christian ordering and practice. The clue is to pay attention to the local issue that is being addressed. So where, for example, the older language of patriarchal headship is apparently re-asserted my suggestion is that this is Christian community working out a call to radical new life together in a mission context . That this needs a Godly pragmatism remains true in many parts of the world today - ‘for the sake of the Lord’.
Final comment: When is comes to observers watching the UK church today the irony is that the scandal is now reversed. A persistent conservative insistence on male hierarchy and the submission of women is offensive to the watching world and is actually obstructing our proclamation of the gospel.
Posted by: djr
Wednesday 24 April 2013 - 07:11pm
I just posted on 1 Corinthians 11 trying to summarise Kenneth Bailey's take on the passage... I hope it went through... but I realised I forgot the most important point...
6) Paul could have said: "Women, please stop prophesying". He didn't. He said, essentially "women, WHEN YOU PROPHESY do is in a way that respects some sensitivity to the surrounding culture." This is clearly the most important thing in the passage, when considering women's ministry and leadership.
Posted by: djr
Wednesday 24 April 2013 - 06:48pm
Kenneth Bailey, in "Paul through Middle Eastern Eyes", makes many helpful comments about 1 Corinthians 11:3-16. I've kept meaning to summarise them on here, but found it difficult because of time, and because there are so many good points he makes - which to choose? But, I think I should try, so here are a few things I found helpful (there are many more).
1) About the structure of the passage. Perhaps the biggest contribution of this book is the way it disects the structure of Corinthians, and shows that the structure of its arguments are not in the standard linear form we are used to. Verses 4-16 form a nested structure, of form:
A Verses 4-5a
_B Verse 5b-6
__C Verse 7
___D Verse 8
____E Verse 9
_____F Verse 10
____E Verse 11
___D Verse 12
__C Verse 13
_B Verse 14-15
A Verse 16
(And, in fact much of 1 Cornithians is structured in this, or similar, forms). So, for example, Verse 8 is linked with, and balanced by, verse 12. Similarly Verse 9 with Verse 11. If you remove verses 9-11, then you don't notice the ommision, in the sense that the test would move cleanly from verse 8 to verse 12. The climax of the passage is towards the centre.
I think you have to account for this structure in any explanation of the passage.
2) Verses 4-6 and balancing verses 14-16 describe a practical problem and its practical solution, within a particular cultural setting. Some women, flush in their new found freedom in Christ, were leading worship (prophesying and praying) with heads uncovered. The trouble was, in that culture, women's hair was seen as a bit of a problem. Temple prostitutes would go around with hair uncovered, for example. Paul did not want people getting confused about the church. So, he says, please, ladies, cover your hair (the modern equivalent being, perhaps, please, ladies, don't wear short skirts and revealing tops when leading worship, and gents don't wear lycra cycle shorts). Then he says, if you don't like that solution, you could consider shaving your head instead...(verse 6) but we don't want that, your hair is your glory (verse 15). If you don't like it, then I'm afraid this is the practice of the church (verse 16).
3) Verse 8-9 emphasise gender distinctions, but balancing verses 11-12 emphasise interdependence. You can't have one without the other. It is as though Paul is moving people back from Genesis 2 to a consideration of Genesis 1. It as though Paul is saying "be careful, those of you who want to say man was Created first - don't forget that you were born through woman". Also, as someone else pointed out, "created first" usually means less important, in the order of creation.
4) Verses 11-12 are the only place in the passage where woman + man + Lord/Christ + God are mentioned together, after the introductory verse 3. So, if you are going to link verse 3 to any point in the rest of the passage, this should be it. So, I would say that the main thing Paul wants us to take from the difficult verse 3 is interdependence, and "all things are from God".
5) The centre of the passage is the difficult verse 10. Why "the angels"? (Bailey thinks it is to do with angels being witnesses of creation). "Authority on the head" - can mean submission to God, but also that God gives authority too (the Queen wears authority on her head).
I have to go now.... would like to have written more, but time presses on.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 23 April 2013 - 02:53pm
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
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 22 April 2013 - 11:08pm
Iconoclast, DavidR-- The "meta-position" nearest to Phil's is theological voluntarism, and whilst he and you may see all this differently, the questions that you have both raised are the ones that people ask theological voluntarists, and his replies are most consistent with that position. You can find a good article on this tradition online in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and you will note, probably critically, that Plato's Euthyphro, not God's Genesis is the source of it. # What one would expect of a villager holding that position is an unusual confidence that, as the good is nothing but what God has arbitrarily decided to consider as good, there is no source of knowledge about the good but the promulgated law of God itself. Indeed, there is no reality for there to be knowledge about apart from that will. Both of you, I know, believe that information on the historical situation of a text can shed light on its meaning, but the concern of a theological voluntarist is-- can it do so without implying that the good is discoverable somewhere else than in the pure will of God? If you are thrown back on value judgements somewhat independent of the text in order to make sense of the text, then a theological voluntarist will decline to join you in them. # In the interesting case of Phil's argument, however, the historical situation of the promulgator (and independently that of his readers) leads the inquiring villager back to a logically prior commandment (ie Genesis 1:28) known in the 1C. That should satisfy a theological voluntarist, but of course we do not know what Phil himself thinks of it.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Monday 22 April 2013 - 07:57pm
WATERANGEL
You posted:
‘Phil can we clarify here now you appear to be saying, that because of the fall the woman was put in the subordinate position, making Adam the head of the woman, whom in this case was Eve’.
I am not saying that, as I think you will see if you read the conclusion to my post on 1 Corinthians 11. The man-woman asymmetrical relationship is before the fall, part of the ‘very good’ creation by God. And that relationship is appealed to in 1 Corinthians 11, Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 2; appealed to by the Apostle Paul, who met the risen ascended glorified Christ on the road to Damascus. This is the post-resurrection pattern to be obeyed in marriage and ministry.
Bowman
I have given the first 2 of my promised 3 posts to state my case again. 1 Timothy 2 is yet to come, and that will link what the first 2 said to ministry. Before I do that it would be helpful please if you could explain what your
‘The unintelligible hapax legomenon in 1 Timothy 2:12 has no solid weight of its own to change this, of course’.
means.
I’m sorry if you have explained your meaning of this before – where please?
Are you willing to say whether you agree or disagree with my conclusion to my post on 1 Corinthians 11?
DavidR
Reform take a line quite similar to mine except that they make a lot of the Father-Son relationship whereas I consider the Christ-church relationship to be the right place to start. I have repeated my case because I think there are several balls in ‘your’ court. I particular want to challenge you to say what Paul could possibly have meant by appealing to Genesis other than the conclusion to my post on 1 Corinthians 11. I acknowledge there are also some balls in my court which I have to play back.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Phil Almond
Monday 22 April 2013 - 02:15pm
Iconoclast
You made a number of general statements. I wonder if you could be more specific please?
1 You said ‘However I do not think you have adequately demonstrated to many of us on this thread, that you have taken the cultural analysis into account in your arguments regarding Women Bishops’ . Could you set out just where you consider the ‘cultural analysis’ undermines my arguments?
2 In particular could you please give a view on my arguments set out in my recent posts on Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11 which lead me to the conclusion at the end of my 1 Corinthians 11 post? Do you agree that this is an instance of ‘truth values which are culturally invariant and expressions of the Kingdom of God’?
3 Could you give specific instances of where your ‘ evangelical colleagues’ have talked about the 'plain meaning of scripture' and ‘where under further examination the meaning wasn't quite as plain as they thought (and in fact turned out to be quite different)’?
4 Could you tell me just where you consider ‘my understanding is flawed’ because I have erred in ‘understanding the original meaning’.
5 You said ‘I consider myself to be very much on the conservative side’. To understand your overall position could you say which of the 39 Articles you believe and which (if any) you think are not true?
Thank you.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Monday 22 April 2013 - 02:04pm
Fern, thanks for the reference to Micah 6:4. It only says that God sent Moses, Aaron and Miriam before Israel - Moses was the leader, Aaron the high priest, and Miriam was a prophetess. Your translation is wrong, so far as I can see.
Who are these 25 or 30 women in the bible that you claim to exist, who had 'some sort of governing power'? Name them, please, and we can look at each one, if need be.
Roger provides a list, and says that the voices of these wonderful women are heard, which indeed they should be. I would admit Deborah as being in a position of authority over Israel, for sure, and Priscilla perhaps as exercising a leadership role in the church along with her husband. (Junia with her husband, probably, if you would like to add her). The others I don't accept as being in a position of leadership over men.
The commandment - or apostolic inistruction of 1 Timothy 2:12 is to the church, not to Israel, so the case of Deborah does not provide an exception to that.
Shalom in Jesus Christ,
Andrew
Posted by: Bowman
Monday 22 April 2013 - 01:49pm
Phil-- If Fern's list of women leaders shows that God commissions women, then why would the Church not be able to ordain them? Her approach is simplicity itself, narrow, but directly on point-- God commissioned women to lead his chosen people, and we follow his unimpeachable example when we ordain them. If she has even one solid example of this, her point is made. In fact, if she has that example, the idea that the God-Christ-husband-wife series forfends women from holding church office is unmade.
As you point out, the God-Christ-husband-wife series relates marriage to the saga of the irrigation farmer and childbearer of Genesis 1-3 who were the first couple to obey the great commandment in 1:28 to "be fruitful and multiply." However, even with sympathy for the complementarian strain in St Paul's thinking, it is still not clear how it gets us from the man-woman relation within marriage to a men-women relation at large, and then from that relation to a constraint on the Church in selecting her leaders. When I read St Paul in the more philological way that you favour, I see the "be fruitful and multiply" of Genesis 1:28 behind his obiter dicta on husbands and wives, warranting them, yes, but also limiting their scope to marriage. When I read these same pauline passages in a more historical way, they suggest that St Paul sought to fulfil the messianic prophecies of Zion by introducing the Jewish family to the Gentile world. This too confirms the importance of the husband-wife relation for the post-Resurrection Church, but anchors that importance in marriage's rhyme with Eden in the New Creation, not in any further implications for church office.
Putting these two arguments side by side, what do we see? They do not conflict since the scope of your argument falls short of church office. However, were one forced to choose between the two, one could not give your reconstruction more weight than the scriptural reports of God's deeds cited by Fern without rather forcing the imagination. The unintelligible hapax legomenon in 1 Timothy 2:12 has no solid weight of its own to change this, of course. The most logical result is to accept Fern's argument with respect to church office and yours with respect to marriage.
Women and men must both obey Genesis 1:28 as God gives them lawful opportunity, and St Paul's guidance for marriage shows how this is done. However, provided that they discharge that duty well, either men or women may be called to lead God's people. For women, this was rare in ancient Israel, possible for women of means in the apostolic age, possible among women monastics in the Middle Ages, and is now commonplace for the majority of women in societies like ours today. For such women, the duty to "be fruitful and multiply" no longer conflicts with another vocation, such as the ministry, and our expectations for them have changed with their circumstances.
Posted by: DavidR
Sunday 21 April 2013 - 07:59pm
Phil you have said all this before, more than once. I am not sure why you are repeating your case again.
What would be new is if you would share some of the theological sources you are drawing on to shape your views on these texts. I have asked you more than once if you would. I have done this often, as others have. It doesn't guarantee I am right of course (but it does flag up what good company I am keeping in my reading of these passages). With whom are you testing and shaping your ideas here?
Posted by: DavidR
Sunday 21 April 2013 - 07:59pm
Phil you have said all this before, more than once. I am not sure why you are repeating your case again.
What would be new is if you would share some of the theological sources you are drawing on to shape your views on these texts. I have asked you more than once if you would. I have done this often, as others have. It doesn't guarantee I am right of course (but it does flag up what good company I am keeping in my reading of these passages). With whom are you testing and shaping your ideas here?
Posted by: WATERANGEL
Sunday 21 April 2013 - 08:42am
Phil can we clarify here now you appear to be saying, that because of the fall the woman was put in the subordinate position, making Adam the head of the woman, whom in this case was Eve.
Now whether Jody David R or anyone else agree or disagree with that, is not really relevant to "todays jesus" todays Jesus is the same a yesterdays Jesus last years Jesus and the Jesus who hung on a cross 2000 years ago, to say this one very important thing. God is not happy with the way you have been behaving and "I Jesus" am the son of God sent by God to pay the price for the sins and iniquities of those whom God created, to show a NEW way ie "the New Testament. So whilst there may be paralells between the Old and New Testament they are and always will be two separate halves of one Bible a Beginning and the promise of an End . Everything else that went into the body of it was the journey of all those who were recorded, thus they were as incomplete as we are they were Humans just like you or I . So whe looking at the inspired word of God one must always at all times look at the context and relativity of it.
Peace
Angela
Posted by: Phil Almond
Saturday 20 April 2013 - 10:38am
This is the second part of my attempt to summarise again my case against the ordination of women with references to other posts where I have tried to counter objections raised against it.
1 1 Corinthians 11
General outline:
In verse 2 Paul praises the Corinthians for remembering ‘all things of me’ and for holding fast the traditions as he delivered to them.
In verses 17-34 he does not praise them because ‘ye come together not for the better but for the worse’.
In verses 3-16 the overall sense is of Paul’s concern about some aspects of worship (praying and prophesying) at Corinth. His praise in verse 2 is an encouragement to them to take on board what he says in verses 3-16. Verse 16, ‘But if anyone thinks to be contentious, we have not such a custom, neither the churches of God’ supports the view that Paul is saying that in some aspects the Corinthians are out of step with other churches. Verse 13-15, ‘Among you [your]selves judge: is it fitting [for] a woman to pray to God unveiled? Not nature [her]self teaches you that a man indeed if he wears his hair long it is a dishonour to him, but a woman if she wears her hair long it is to her a glory? Because the long hair instead of a veil has been given to her’ is Paul appealing to them to recognise the wrongness of the aspects he is concerned about.
Detail
So what are those aspects and how does Paul set out the grounds for his concern? Are these aspects about veils, head-coverings or hair, or perhaps a combination of all three? It is clear that Paul’s concern is that the Corinthians are doing the things mentioned in 11:4-5 which Paul says ‘shames the head’ of the man in verse 4 and of the woman in verse 5.
The grounds for his concern are best understood by considering verse 10, (my translation) ‘Because of this ought the woman authority to have on the head because of the angels’. The right understanding of this verse has of course been the subject of much disagreement. But, by the syntax and grammar of the sentence, it is clear that Paul is saying that a woman ought to have authority on her head ‘Because of this’ and ‘because of the angels’. Whether these two instances of ‘because’ are connected in some way or whether they are independent of each other is a question to be considered. How we should understand ‘authority on the head’ and the reference to ‘angels’ are also questions to be considered. What is the ‘this’ in ‘Because of this’ is also a question to be considered. However the answer to this last question is clear. The ‘this’ is what Paul has written in 11:6-9. So the ‘authority’ the woman ought to have on her head should be there because (linked to or independent of ‘because of the angels’) ‘..but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered’ (see also verse 13) and because a man is ‘[the] image and glory of God’ ‘but the woman is [the] glory of a man’ and because ‘man is not of woman but woman of man’ and because ‘man was not created because of the woman, but woman because of the man’. It is also clear that the ‘authority’ the woman ought to have on her head would avoid the ‘shame’ in verse 5. These grounds in 11:6-9 for the ‘ought’ in verse 10 are all about differences between the man and the woman. Given that 11:3 – 11:10 is one connected line of thought, ‘this’ in ‘Because of this’ also includes 11:3 ‘and [the] head of a woman the man’ (clearly this means that the woman is not the head of the man – another difference). In verse 3 what he says about the man-woman relationship ‘and [the] head of a woman the man’, is very similar to what he says in Ephesians 5:23, ‘…a man is head of the woman’ and the meaning of the two phrases is identical, and the key Greek words are identical. Ephesians 5:23 (‘..because a man is head of the woman…’) gives the reason why in 5:22 Paul exhorts wives to submit to their own husbands. Therefore this thought, and the man’s authority that goes with the fact that he is ‘head’, must be present when he says ‘and [the] head of a woman the man’ in 1 Corinthians 11:3.
That means that ‘head’ also implies authority in the God-Christ and the Christ-man relationships. This is challenged (e.g. Richard W 10 March 2013 on thread ‘Women Bishops: Church in all its fullness’) on the grounds that Jesus is fully God. I counter this challenge in my 22 November 2012 post on thread ‘Evangelical opponents….’.
Crucially verses 8 and 9 point to Genesis 2 and make it clear that ‘[the] head of a woman the man’ is true of man and woman as created before the Fall.
DavidR in his 15 March 2013 post suggests that since (in his view) Genesis 2 has no notion of male headship before the Fall then Paul is ‘making different points when (he) draws on those texts’. This cannot be the case. Paul is explicit that submission of wives to own husbands is because the man is head of the woman and explicit via 11:3 and 11: 8-9 that the man is head of the woman as created, before the Fall, in Genesis 2.
It is sometimes also asserted (e.g. in Jody Stowell’s address at the YES2Bishops Conference) that the being whom God formed from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) was not male. See my post to thread ‘Women’s Ministry and Homosexuality: Questioning the connections’, 1 October 2011, for reasons why this assertion cannot be true.
It is also clear to me that 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 does not contradict 11:3-10 (as is sometimes asserted) but emphasises that while men and women are different they complement each other. 11:13-15 reverts to emphasising the differences.
Conclusion
The man-woman pre-Fall creation relationship is asymmetrical. The man is head of the woman and this has implications of authority/submission/love/cherish/nourish as in Ephesians 5. Paul’s concern is that what the Corinthians were doing obscures this asymmetry. This is clear, whatever ‘authority on the head’ and ‘because of the angels’ mean.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Roger Hurding
Thursday 11 April 2013 - 04:42pm
Fern, thank you for your excellent response to Andrew. You write, 'There are about 25 to 30 women mentioned in the Bible who hold some sort of governing power. Some were good rulers and some bad, just like the men. There is no suggestion that any of them were wrongfully in power because of their sex or that the wielding of power by such women is contrary to their nature or the divine order.'
Yes, I quite agree. The Bible from Genesis Chapter 1 onwards celebrates women, in spite of the inroads of male sexism as a result of the 'Fall'. In Genesis 1, women and men are co-image bearers of God; in Genesis 2, they are co-partners before God. Through the figures of, amongst others, Miriam, Rahab, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Ruth, Esther, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Lydia, Dorcas, Priscilla, Phoebe, the voices of women are heard. The only developed characterization in the Book of Proverbs is that of women. It seems that, in spite of male dominance since Genesis 3, many of these women were clearly called by God and a number were in positions of authority, commanding or advising men. It is interesting to observe that, in the Acts of the Apostles, we at first meet 'Aquila and Piscilla' and later 'Priscilla and Aquila' (see, too, Romans 16:3), indicating at least the possibility of Priscilla's increasing dominance in the marriage.
Isn't this whole discussion, and its parallels on other threads, a point of issue between those who give primacy to two or three verses, whose understanding is much debated, and those who seek to pick up the Bible's overall message? For some, the individual trees are given the priority; for others the shaping of the whole wood is acknowledged, and celebrated.
Posted by: Bowman
Thursday 11 April 2013 - 05:36am
Christos anesti, Fern, and welcome back to the village! Glancing at this thread whilst in transit, the synopses that you and Andrew offer of women in leadership raise an historical question: if women in biblical societies were not absolutely excluded from "leadership"-- as you both convincingly show-- were they nonetheless excused from it on the presumption that they had a prior responsibility for children, and perhaps for husband and wider family? That seems to be the most common view among rabbis that I have heard on this. If so, then the need and applicability of the excuse turns, not on a view of the equality of women in the workplace, but on a view of the irreplaceability of women in the family. Or rather-- even conceding that women can capably serve wherever similar men serve, the converse may not be quite as true. Equality of status does not necessarily entail commutativity of function. # You and Andrew will both know, I suspect, that the practise of not ordaining women to the rabbinate has been seen to have been an application of the same principle that excused women from the daily minyan in the congregation and other fixed-time obligations that conflict with family responsibilities. Consequently, those rabbinates that find the excuse unnecessary today have both ordained many women and also more or less explicitly counseled all women to take up the full responsibilities of Jewish life. (Though interestingly some women do resent the thought of single men lighting sabbath candles, as women traditionally do, and it seems similarly odd to some men that women would don tefillin for daily prayers, as men traditionally do.) On the other hand, those rabbinical associations that do not do either of these things (or at least do less of them) have attempted a renewal of Jewish family mores in which the woman's role-- never neglected in Judaism-- is stoutly defended against "secular dilution." # Of course, for some Anglicans, a similar "secular dilution" is the whole exhilarating point of advocating OWE (among other things)-- they want the Church's uncritical validation of "the way we live now." Likewise, implacable hostility to "the way we live now" motivates some straightforwardly reactionary opposition to OWE. An evidence-based discussion of all sorts and conditions of the scriptural and contemporary family might be difficult to achieve but more productive than either. # Again, my thanks to you and to Andrew for your discussion of leading women.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Wednesday 10 April 2013 - 07:19pm
As mentioned in my 13 February 2013 post on this thread, ‘But I will try, in a subsequent post, to summarise it (my case) again with references to other posts where I have tried to counter objections raised against it and I will try to answer User 4976’s points about kephale’. This is the start of my attempt to do so. I hope to make 2 subsequent posts: on 1 Corinthians 11 and on 1 Timothy 2.
1 The key words/ideas in the church’s submission to Christ are: doing the will of God or the will of Christ; obeying the words of Christ or God; obeying the commands of Christ or God; obeying the gospel. See my 5 October 2012 post on thread ‘Evangelical opponents of women bishops’ for NT examples of such exhortations to submission (because Jesus has authority) and for my counter-argument that neither Jesus washing the disciples’ feet nor Jesus’ words in Mark 10:45 should be taken as instances of Jesus submitting to the church. The Christ-church relationship is asymmetrical with respect to authority.
2 See my Friday 12 October post on thread ‘Evangelical opponents…’ which aims to prove that 6 passages put forward by Ian Paul to support his view that ‘…the NT support(s) the idea that in some way the church-Christ relationship is symmetrical’ do not support that view. Also Ephesians 5:29 cannot be regarded as Christ submitting to the demands of the body (the church ) as user 4976 maintains (7 February).
3 See my 12 October post on thread ‘Evangelical opponents….’ for my view on how strong the analogy is that Paul makes between the Christ-church and husband-wife relationships, which means that the husband-wife relationship is also asymmetrical in terms of authority, submission and loving, nourishing and cherishing. And, key point, the exhortation to wives in Ephesians 5:22 is ‘….because a man is head of the woman as also Christ[is] head of the church…’.
4 See my 12 October post on the thread ‘Evangelical opponents…’ for a line of argument against the view that Ephesians 5:21 is a ‘wider instruction’ under which falls Ephesians 5:22-33 (the asymmetry of the Christ-church relationship also speaks against this) and for what I believe is the true understanding of Ephesians 5:21.
5 The distinction drawn by some between ‘submit’ and ‘obey’ is contradicted by the use of ‘obey’ in 1 Peter 3:6 as an illustration of ‘submit’ in 1 Peter 3:5
6 The fact (assuming it is a fact) that kephale is not (or rarely) used in the LXX to translate Hebrew terms for authority lacks weight in this disagreement. In Paul’s mind kephale clearly has authority/submission/nourish/cherish meanings and is appropriate to describe the Christ-church and husband-wife relationships. The fact that Paul grounds his Ephesians 5:22 exhortation to wives to submit to their own husbands on the fact that a man is kephale (5:23) gives the word these authority associations. User 4976’s ‘I can see that anyone who has spent years building doctrine and constraining practice on the assumption that kephale carries the idea of authority will find it difficult to consider the possibility that it doesn’t and will interpret other scriptures to fit in with that belief…’ has an exact opposite: replace ‘constraining’ with ‘changing’, ‘carries’ with ‘does not carry’ and ‘doesn’t’ with ‘does’. That exact opposite is what Tom Wright and those who follow his view have been doing for many years.
7 It is sometimes argued (e.g. User 4976 7 February) that just as there is no exhortation to wives to love husbands in Ephesians 5:21-33, but that must be assumed, so no exhortation to husbands to submit to wives but that must also be assumed. But this fails because of the clear asymmetry of Christ-church submission relationship.
8 Conclusion thus far: the husband-wife relationship overall is asymmetrical: the husband is called upon to imitate Christ in his relationship with the church by loving, nourishing, cherishing and, indeed, ‘dying’ for his wife; and the wife is called upon to imitate the church in her relationship to Christ by submitting to her husband. 1 Corinthians 7: 1-5 makes it clear however that within this overall asymmetry there is a symmetrical component with respect to authority over each other’s body.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Iconoclast
Wednesday 10 April 2013 - 04:24pm
Phil,
I still contend that the proper interpretation of any scriptural text must by necessity, contain an element of cultural analysis to a greater or lesser degree. In one sense everything in the Bible is cultural in that it is a record of God's dealings with humans through cultural forms, motifs and means of communication. All communication has a cultural context and the Bible is no exception to this. This does not mean that it is not divinely inspired but it is necessary to determine which parts of scripture are expressing truth values which are culturally invariant and expressions of the Kingdom of God, and those which are bound in cultural milieus using a specific hermeneutic.
Now before someone shouts that such a view gives carte blanche to interpret the Bible as we like, it really does no such thing nor does cultural analysis of the Bible undermine any notion of divine inspiration. The starting point in discerning a truth-value as expressed in the scripture is to determine as far as is possible how the truth would have been understood by those to whom it was written. We routinely do this with any modern form of communication but I have found that evangelicals (and I consider myself to be very much on the conservative side), are often guilty of suspending any form of semantic sense, historical context and cultural understanding when interpreting a passage of scripture.
Often the discussion on Fulcrum threads (and elsewhere) is about the finer points of Greek tenses or propositions and bouncing scriptures off each other to justify one's assertions but this all rather misses the main point as what the text would have meant to the original readers. It is of fundamental importance that we get this right. I have often heard my evangelical colleagues talk about the 'plain meaning of scripture' where under further examination the meaning wasn't quite as plain as they thought (and in fact turned out to be quite different). If you are justifying your understanding of one scripture using another and that understanding is flawed because you have erred in understanding the original meaning, then that error is likely to be propagated.
Now determining the cultural context can be tricky as sometimes the Bible gives us some information (e.g. Acts 17:16) and sometimes it does not. When it doesn't, then unless you have a time machine it is necessary to gain information from historical research, contemporary extra-biblical sources and compare them carefully with scripture to obtain a clearer picture of the cultural scene that the original hearers were embedded in. There really isn't any other way you can do it.
An example may illustrate what I mean. Consider 1 Cor 11:10. This passage is again to do with women in the church and has to do with "because of the Angels". It has always puzzled me what the angels have got to do with a women covering her head (and this verse is largely responsible for many women feeling that they need to wear a hat when going into a church). Space BTW, does not permit me to digress to a detailed examination of this verse and its surrounding passage- however here is a brief synopsis.
Many explanations have been offered for the inclusion of 'angels' in this verse including those relating to headship and authority. It wasn't until I got talking to an expert on ancient Greek culture who explained to me that in Corinth which was a very Roman influenced city, a woman covering her head was considered to be a noble and respectable woman. Those women that did not have their heads covered were considered to be rather loose and immoral. Now the church in Corinth had many people visiting it from the local community (Paul indicates as much). However the rich and wealthy in Corinthian society who wished to know what was going on would not initially go themselves but would send their messenger (or angel) to report what was going on(he word angel here does not necessarily denote the heavenly variety- the word means 'messenger').
In the Corinthian church women were taking off their head coverings and men were covering their heads (a common pagan practice of the time which was frowned upon). So the messenger (angel) could easily have reported back to their master that these Christians were an immoral lot and should be avoided. Paul was saying 'look I know you feel free to do this but there may be messengers (angels) in your congregation who are giving the church a bad report so observe the cultural niceties to avoid bringing then church into disrepute'.
Now this interpretation may be completely wrong, but my point is that as well as taking scripture into account including the meaning of individual words this explanation it also takes note of the cultural context and makes an attempt to understand what it would have meant to the original recipients. It attempts to get inside their minds (and to my mind) this make it a more complete explanation of this passage. It is not clear from a cursory reading of the passage in our modern day, of the significance of ancient Corinthian society yet the cultural milieu clearly has a role to play in determine the correct way we should understand the meaning of 'angel' in this context.
Now I am not saying that that your interpretation regarding WO is wrong Phil, you might well be right. However I do not think you have adequately demonstrated to many of us on this thread, that you have taken the cultural analysis into account in your arguments regarding Women Bishops. This whole issue is compounded by many cultural difficulties not least of which the CofE is hardly a model of NT church governance being bound up with English history, Henry VIII, the Elizabethan settlement and a host of other things. One wonders if you can compare like with like. There are also the cultural distinctions between the developing Jewish and Gentile NT churches.
When I study the scriptures I am always conscious that I may not be reading the text as it was written to and understood by the original readers. If I do not fully understand how they would have understood it, then I am in danger of unconsciously bringing my own cultural suppositions or preconceptions to the text .We need the help of the Holy Spirit to understand.
FWIW, my view is that the only thing you can be certain about in church governance is that it will have leadership of some kind and if this leadership is of God then in will bring forth godly growth and fruit.
The apostle Paul when speaking of men and woman who played leading roles in their local churches extolled the virtues of their ministries rather than their sex. If I go into a church and it is either a man or woman speaking or leading then the question that crosses my mind is not whether they are male or female but whether their ministry is of God or not and this judgment is the same I expect to be made of me by others (I am a lay pastor), when I minister in my own church.
I rest my case.
Posted by: Fern
Tuesday 9 April 2013 - 11:13pm
Andrew, I’d like to look a little further into the statements you make in your post of 8th April which I reproduce below:
“Are there women leaders in the bible? Yes, there was Deborah, and an evil queen called Athaliah (2 Kings 11). Miriam led the women on one occasion. Was there any commandment given to Israel to prohibit women leaders? Not specifically, I think, although there is much in Genesis 1-3 and elsewhere to suggest that this would not be the normal order of things. “
Micah 6:4 has God saying “I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam”. Note the verb form “I SENT”. Miriam has not drifted into a leadership position by default, she was commissioned by God. All three names are mentioned together and on the same level as sharing in a common leadership. No distinction is made between the authority of the two men and that of Miriam as if they were different in kind or degree. All three spoke as God’s mouthpieces and their authority was both religious and institutional.
Deborah’s authority was given to her by God and she was both a religious and institutional leader. She made legal decisions, arbitrated disputes and generally dispensed justice. We’re told “the sons of Israel came up to her for judgement”. These presumably included men who submitted to the judgement of this woman.
Women are named as tribal chiefs in the Bible. The ‘wise woman’ who negotiated with Joab (and saved her city) clearly had authority and was an accepted leader.
There are about 25 to 30 women mentioned in the Bible who hold some sort of governing power. Some were good rulers and some bad, just like the men. There is no suggestion that any of them were wrongfully in power because of their sex or that the wielding of power by such women is contrary to their nature or the divine order.
In Creation, God gives women authority over nature. He does not merely allow them to exercise it, He commands they do so. David declared this truth in a prayer “What is man?......You make him to rule over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet”. The word for ‘man’ is translated as a mortal which obviously includes both sexes. Women, like men, have had all things put under their feet. There’s no suggestion that men have the bigger feet, as it were.
Posted by: DavidR
Monday 8 April 2013 - 07:43pm
Andrew I wonder if you ever saw Ian Paul's article - http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=634? It offers a convincing and strikingly wider, inclusive perspective on men and women in scripture than your summary which I find very one-sided. If you want to convince people like me of your view point you need to show you have engaged much more directly than you do with the relevant scriptures.
Posted by: Andrew Chapman
Monday 8 April 2013 - 12:19pm
Are there women leaders in the bible? Yes, there was Deborah, and an evil queen called Athaliah (2 Kings 11). Miriam led the women on one occasion. Was there any commandment given to Israel to prohibit women leaders? Not specifically, I think, although there is much in Genesis 1-3 and elsewhere to suggest that this would not be the normal order of things.
Are there women leaders in the New Testament? Only in the sense of giving a lead, rather than being in a position of authority over others, and only with their husbands, so far as I can see: I am thinking of Priscilla and Junia. Phoebe is an interesting case, she being described as a διακονος and a προστατις of many. I think there may have been female deacons, but it looks to me from 1 Timothy 3:12 that the formal position was for men only. Practically, there have to be female deacons, who are recognised as qualified by the church of Jesus Christ to minister to women in their homes. I notice that the Reform group in the C of E are promoting this ministry, and I think this is good. Προστατις can mean leader or ruler, but it can also mean protectress just as well. If we have any deisre to uphold the truth of scripture as a whole, then we must surely choose the latter, since it doesn't contradict 1 Timothy 2 (and 1 Corinthians 11:3 etc).
Shalom,
Andrew
Posted by: WATERANGEL
Sunday 7 April 2013 - 09:16pm
Thankyou very much for this David it is clear and concise and very helpful to me at least for understanding.
I am sure i had been told this before but i had not registered it as well, I thought though that Jesus had made women central to his ministry before the death and resurection, although men were more present and it was more in the role of servitude ie being alongside Christ and catering for his and the disciples needs. So maybe thats me answering my own question that women were alongside jesus and not before the men whereas you state there were much more in the forefront post ressurection, it does make sense that such a significant change should take place at that time.
I just wonder why such an obvious point has not been raised before?
Angela
Posted by: DavidR
Sunday 7 April 2013 - 10:29am
My Easter reading has led me back to the continuing debate here scripture and women and men in leadership.
Kenneth Bailey in his Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes (SPCK 2008 Part 5 pp195ff) traces the roles of men and women either side of Easter in Mark's gospel. It is very revealing and very relevant.
A. The account of the burial (men are central - women in background)
1. Women are peripheral. Follow at a distance, only appear at beginning and end of narrative.
2. Joseph of Arimathea is central figure as he seeks the body of Jesus
3. An outsider (Male, Centurion) is called on to witness the death of Jesus.
4. Pilate is the antagonist from whom Joseph must rescue the body.
5. Joseph is afraid and must ‘take courage’ in order to accomplish his task.
B. The account of the resurrection (women now central - men absent)
1. The women again appear at beginning of account (chatting) and at its conclusion (trembling, afraid, silent)
2. The women are the central figures throughout the story, and now it is they (not Joseph) who are seeking the body of Jesus.
3. The initial witness to the resurrection of Jesus is a young man dressed in white.
4. The antagonist is no longer Pilate but death itself. The success of the rescue is not the act of will by Joseph or the women- it is an act of God.
5. The women, like Joseph, are afraid. They are challenged to overcome their fears and declare the message of resurrection to the men.
Bailey's conclusion: The women move out of the shadows (cross and death) to central place (resurrection life) and are sent to witness to the men. Symbolically and actually they are signs and witnesses at the threshold of the new age and the new community in all its vulnerability and possibility. Bailey find this totally consistent with the way Jesus relates to women and men throughout his ministry – a point he finds particularly stressed in Luke.
Posted by: Richard W
Friday 15 March 2013 - 09:04am
Phil,
I realise you want to take things slowly and a step at a time. I don't believe it's your intention but this kind of discussion reminds me about Sir Humphrey Appelby's little demonstration of how surveys can be skewed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
I do believe theological discussion is important, but rather than taking difficult passages and trying, and failing to come to a consensus on working out the exact minutiae of what a single word means, I think Christians need to weigh the overall argument. I think this is similar to what Jesus meant about straining gnats and swallowing camels. The camel here is the neglect of the overall mission of the Christian in the world. I would venture that this has little to do with whether the Church is led by men or women and more to do with where we place our energies.
To be honest I'm prepared to be wrong about the nature of church leadership if it means that we spend our time doing what we are put on earth to do rather than trying to strain gnats.
Peace,
Richard
Posted by: DavidR
Friday 15 March 2013 - 08:41am
Phil 'the man is head of the woman' (whatever the meaning and implications) was true in pre-Fall Eden'. You have added that to C1 and C21 in your last post. Just where do you find this in your bible? 'Helper'/'Companion' is very hard to translate but to find male headship in it is a stretch by any measure. Indeed if there is hierarchy of any sort in God's creating we must note that the most important comes last not first - which surel;y suggests female headship. Male headship appears quite explicitely after the Fall. It is part of the curse. Trying to read back something that is not only not original but actually 'cursed' is a very big serious error if that is what it is. And I believe that to be so. (Though I am in no doubt that those who follow headship teaching seek to express it in a faithful, redeemed form in their own marriages. But I just do not believe it to be in any way 'original' to creation as God intends.)
Now I know you will say - but Jesus and Paul clearly find it there. But it is not unreasonable to read those texts and expect to see exactly where they find it. We don't expect Paul and Jesus to contradict the original sense of the Genesis text do we? If headship ordering is not there 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.
Posted by: DavidR
Friday 15 March 2013 - 08:41am
Phil 'the man is head of the woman' (whatever the meaning and implications) was true in pre-Fall Eden'. You have added that to C1 and C21 in your last post. Just where do you find this in your bible? 'Helper'/'Companion' is very hard to translate but to find male headship in it is a stretch by any measure. Indeed if there is hierarchy of any sort in God's creating we must note that the most important comes last not first - which surel;y suggests female headship. Male headship appears quite explicitely after the Fall. It is part of the curse. Trying to read back something that is not only not original but actually 'cursed' is a very big serious error if that is what it is. And I believe that to be so. (Though I am in no doubt that those who follow headship teaching seek to express it in a faithful, redeemed form in their own marriages. But I just do not believe it to be in any way 'original' to creation as God intends.)
Now I know you will say - but Jesus and Paul clearly find it there. But it is not unreasonable to read those texts and expect to see exactly where they find it. We don't expect Paul and Jesus to contradict the original sense of the Genesis text do we? If headship ordering is not there 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.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Thursday 14 March 2013 - 07:13pm
djr
I should not have used your word ‘deal’ since it could be interpreted as compromise. I believe that at the heart of this disagreement is a fundamental disagreement about the doctrine of mankind - the creation relationship between man and woman; no compromise is possible. I assume we all want to know and obey the truth God has revealed. I have said more than once that the ministry of women is vital (as exemplified in the NT) but that not all the ministry roles can be obediently done by women. I hope to give my view of 1 Corinthians 11 as a whole soon.
I do not accept what you say about Ephesians – see my posts on Ephesians 5.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Phil Almond
Thursday 14 March 2013 - 11:45am
John Martin
I agree with your last post. Clearly we disagree on what Paul meant by 'the man is head of the woman' and we disagree on what Paul believed were the implications of 'the man is head of the woman' for ministry and marriage. I have tried to stress that the questions I have asked in my recent posts are not trying at this point to get people to accept my case. What I am trying to do (probing what I see as weaknesses in your 'team's' case) is to tease out whether we agree that Paul's meaning and his beliefs about the implications (whatever those meanings and implications are) were true in the first century, and that the identical meaning and implications are true in the 21st. century. In other words 'the man is head of the woman' (whatever the meaning and implications) was true in pre-Fall Eden, was true in the first century and is true (the same meaning and implications as in the first century) in the 21st. century.
Phil Almond
Posted by: djr
Thursday 14 March 2013 - 07:55am
Phil
Thanks for the reply, it wasn't entirely unexpected. I wonder whether you could try thinking through the argument from the other side? What would you be prepared to accept in such a hypothetical deal? That there were prominent women in the church, mentioned in Paul's letters? That Jesus entrusted the announcement of his resurrection to women? Would you accept that, in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul did not tell the women to stop prophesying in church, but he did ask that they did it either with heads covered or shaved?
I'm sure there must be more. Would you accept that, in Ephesians, the only instructions given to the "head" were to "submit to one another" and to act in a Christ like manner, even unto death? When I read this passage, the echos I pick up are of Phillipians 2 and Matthew 20:20-28.
Though, maybe I push for too much.
Daniel
Posted by: John Martin
Wednesday 13 March 2013 - 11:12pm
Phil. It's not a matter of dispute that the Bible text says what it says. The issue for us today is (a) what does it mean? and (b) how does it apply to us today (if there is an application). I for one don't draw the same conclusion as you and it has nothing whatever to do with believing or not believing the Bible.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Wednesday 13 March 2013 - 01:20pm
djr
No deal. That Paul wrote '...the head of a woman the man...' in the first century is just a matter of fact for those who accept the Bible. The question of women leaders is what we are disagreeing about.
Phil Almond
Posted by: djr
Tuesday 12 March 2013 - 10:28pm
As a newcomer, I am tempted to suggest that a deal is done. Perhaps everyone else will agree to accept that Paul wrote that "man is the head of the woman" in C1, if Phil will agree that there were women leaders in the church in C1? Both seem to be Biblical positions.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 12 March 2013 - 08:55pm
DavidR
We disagree about how the various passages on this subject can be best harmonised. In my 5 October 2012 post on ‘Evangelical opponents of women bishops’ I have explained why Ephesians 5:21 (which I agree Paul did write) cannot be rightly used to deny the authority and leadership asymmetry in the man-woman, husband wife relationships. The fatal flaw in your approach is the authority and leadership asymmetry in the Christ-church relationship, and other flaws are the authority asymmetries in the parent-child, master-slave, elder-younger, pastor-church member relationships.
Paul also wrote ‘…and [the] head of a woman the man…’ (1 Corinthians 11:3). I cannot understand why you are reluctant just to agree that this statement of Paul’s, whatever it means, was true in the first century AD, since from your point of view, which of course I disagree with, you can set it ‘in the wider context of Pauls repeated emphasis on love, mutual submission, interdependence and vocational partnership (not least in the continuing debate in 1Cor 11)’. Of course if you do agree that it is true in the first century my next question to you will be whether it is true in the 21st century. But you could agree with that as well and still set it in your wider context.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 12 March 2013 - 08:12pm
."What is Paul's understanding of the gospel?" (there are several statements in his writings).
To answer that question we should consider all that Paul says about the gospel.
Romans 1:1-8:39, Ephesians 1:3-14, Ephesians 2:1-10, Galatians 3:1-29 may cover all the key points. But Galatians 3:28 is about salvation, not ministry nor marriage and should not be used to deny the authority and leadership asymmetry in the man-woman, husband-wife relationships so evident to me in Paul’s other writings on those topics.
Phil Almond
Posted by: John Martin
Tuesday 12 March 2013 - 04:50pm
David R you rightly say, "Where we start from determines where we end up."
I want to suggest that the best place to start is to ask: 1."What is Paul's understanding of the gospel?" (there are several statements in his writings) and 2. "Are conclusions we draw about his teaching consonant with Paul's gospel?"
Discuss.
Posted by: DavidR
Tuesday 12 March 2013 - 09:02am
Phil I think what Paul actually said was 'be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.' Eph 5.21
Where we start from determines where we end up. I am not prepared to start from verses on 'headship' because I am convinced they belong in the wider context of Pauls repeated emphasis on love, mutual submission, interdependence and vocational partnership (not least in the continuing debate in 1Cor 11).
Posted by: Richard W
Tuesday 12 March 2013 - 08:39am
Hi Phil,
I will agree that someone wrote those words, for the sake of argument we can call that person "Paul".
Those words having been written ended up in the canon of scripture, along with the rest of 1 Corinthians and 65 other books.
Richard
Posted by: djr
Monday 11 March 2013 - 09:41pm
I'm not sufficiently clever to have original thoughts or insights into the Greek of 1 Corinthians 11. But, it does strike me as one of the most obviously culturally-conditioned passages in the whole book!
I very much recommend Kenneth Bailey's "Paul through Mediterranean Eyes" for its discussion of this passage, which seems to me sensitive both to the text and to the cultural setting. Honestly, I would like to say, simply: go away, read that, and come back when you're done. His discussion is far more satisfying than arguments over the meaning of "head".
One thing of note, though, is that Bailey considers the passage taken as a whole to be discussing a solution to a problem which is: what to do about men and women who prophesy in church? The very fact that the problem comes up indicates that both men and women were exercising gifts of leadership in the church, C1. Paul's solution (women, if you're going to be at the front prophesying, could you cover your head so the men don't get distracted by your sensuous hair?) is more or less the same as, in a modern setting asking your female worship leader not to wear a revealing mini-skirt and low-cut top. Not that there's anything wrong with mini-skirts and low cut tops, it's just that men are weak, and it's distracting for us. And we might get the wrong idea.
Another nice suggestion is, that in verses 9 and 10, all four occurences of the Greek "dia" should be translated as "because of". Woman was created because of the man. Because we couldn't cope on our own.
Anyhow, please, go read it. I'm sure some of you will disagree with him. I'm sure it will help others.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Monday 11 March 2013 - 11:50am
DavidR
But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:3 that 'the man is head of the woman'. I tried to stress that I am not prejudging at this point what he meant. I can't believe that your post is saying 'the man is not the head of the woman in the first century AD' because that would mean that you are saying that the Apostle Paul was mistaken. Can we not agree, surely, that the man is head of the woman (in the first century AD), whatever that means, because those are the words that the Apostle is using, and using them in writing to people in the present tense in the first century AD!
Richard W
I am asking you to agree that Paul wrote that the man is head of the woman, and that that sentence meant something to the Apostle Paul, and that he was saying that the sentence is true in the first century AD and that it is still true, whatever it meant to the Apostle, today.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Richard W
Sunday 10 March 2013 - 09:30pm
Hi Phil,
I can't speak for anyone else, but generally I find it hard to agree with something I don't understand.
Things I don't understand about 1Cor 11:
1 - What does "head of" really mean? (I realise this has been the topic of an entire thread, but pinning down a practical application seems no nearer after reading it.) If God and Jesus is the example and Jesus is fully God then I find that hard to relate to men and women.
2 - Does it refer to husbands and wives or men and women in a more abstract sense - it's not clear to me. If it does relate to husbands and wives then my own experience of marriage leads me to realise that we both take turns in being the "head". If it's a more abstract application then what does that actually mean? Is a random man the head of a random woman?
3 - When referring to head covering and hair in v13 the writer says:
Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.
First of all I realise v13 is meant as a rhetorical question, but it shows how different things are now. If I were to judge for myself I would say that women praying with their head uncovered wasn't improper at all, and that men having long hair isn't a disgrace. If this simple appeal to the natural order doesn't work, then what does it say about the rest of the argument?
4 - The writer seems to contradict himself in a way I can't resolve:
For man did not come from woman, but woman from man;
versus:
For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.
This whole section reminds me of a university maths professor who having used several blackboards to explain a proof and left still left with a long equation to simplify, runs out of time and takes a leap of faith and says "clearly this means x=y". It probably means something to someone but not to me.
Posted by: DavidR
Sunday 10 March 2013 - 08:38pm
Phil You know very well we don't all agree on this - either as a reading of C1 or C21.
Posted by: Phil Almond
Friday 8 March 2013 - 12:25pm
The Apostle Paul said (1 Corinthians 11) that the man is head of the woman, as created, before the Fall. He also said (1 Corinthians 11, Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 2 (by implication)) that the man is head of the woman in the first century AD. Setting aside for the moment the disagreement whether 'male headship' carries with it authority and leadership, are we all agreed that the man is head of the woman in the 21st century?
Phil Almond
Posted by: Richard W
Thursday 7 March 2013 - 11:07am
Hi Rosemary,
Thanks for your response to my post!
I think the point I'm trying to make (maybe very badly) is that Paul is now dead and can no longer write an epistle based on the current circumstances in which the CofE finds itself. As we know, his influence continues in his writings which church leaders have the benefit of being able to read. However, I believe the important thing to note is that the important job of running the church has been passed on to others. Clearly they are going to take account of the advice Paul wrote to the early church, but they have to put that in the current context and frame a system which also takes stock of how things are right now. Of course individuals might disagree with decisions made by the church hierarchy, but those decisions are theirs to make. That is the role of Elder/Bishop that we're talking about, and that's why it matters. If it did not matter we would not be having this discussion.
To answer some of your points directly:
What makes you believe that 2000 years ago, things were worse than today for women or men?
I'm not making any claims for what has happened, only that things could well be different now to how they were then. Nothing in Paul's epistles says that things are going to go on being the same. One day we could have a genetically engineered world only inhabited by females (yes I know, I enjoy too much science fiction). I probably wouldn't like that particular world (and by definition I wouldn't exist), but an argument for a male-led church would be fairly superfluous then. Obviously that's an extreme case, but it seems to demonstrate to me that sensible leadership is required which takes account of what is going on in the world.
"In the world but not of it" is a phrase often used to characterise the church's relationship with our neighbours on this planet. I would say that often it seems to me that some opponents of women in church leadership are "of the world but not in it" and would like to be taken off to another place where they can ignore what's actually going on around them.
What makes you think/believe that women did x and men did y?
I don't know if they did. Maybe women have always been top lawyers and running banks and industrial plants, and men have always stayed home to look after the kids. That doesn't match up with my limited historical knowledge, but I don't think it matters from the overall point.
What makes you put your reliance in human social advancement to the detriment of God’s Word?
By advancement in this case I just mean that it moves on as time moves on. I don't put any reliance in it, other than that it goes on happening. I don't doubt that there are many situations where what the Bible tells us is in conflict with what most people in the world would like to believe. However I have to realise I'm looking at both with my 21st century eyes.
Some truths are timeless. Clearly "You shall not kill" is a command from God to all people in all times. I just don't think that "I do not allow women to teach" or women wearing having to cover their head in church are examples of those timeless truths.
Incidentally have you read through the relevant points here: http://www.intervarsity.org/mx/item/4175/download/ ?
I would also like if I may, to understand what you mean by ‘women who have shown an obvious calling.’
I mean those women who, like various clergy and other teachers I have known, are carrying out a valid and helpful ministry within the church. In order to get to that point those individuals usually have to have demonstrated a calling to someone in a position to judge these things.
If the current (male) bishops are not doing a good job of discerning a calling, then that seems to be not such a good argument in favour of male leadership.
Peace,
Richard
Posted by: Rosemary
Wednesday 6 March 2013 - 09:32am
Richard, surely before anyone answers such a question, you might answer the opposite so as to increase understanding of your question. What makes you believe that 2000 years ago, things were worse than today for women or men? What makes you think/believe that women did x and men did y? What makes you put your reliance in human social advancement to the detriment of God’s Word?
I would also like if I may, to understand what you mean by ‘women who have shown an obvious calling.’
Posted by: Richard W
Sunday 3 March 2013 - 11:51pm
Phil,
Forgive me, but I'm intrigued to know whether you think that sexual differences are the same now as they were 2000 years ago, and whether you think that the women (or men) of today are essentially the same as their early church counterparts. All of the "Women should do X, Men should do Y" arguments based on biblical passages seem to assume that 2000 years of human social advancement has not had any effect on the relationship between the sexes or the sexes themselves, or even humanity as a whole.
Also it does appear that even in OT times we see exceptions to what we might consider traditional roles (one example could be Deborah). Might those exceptions not be more frequent now? Doesn't it make more sense to treat applicants for ministry on their individual merits and circumstances rather than performing an initial filter based on gender?
I find it hard to see how Paul, who spoke so strongly against legalism, would have enforced rules to the extent that a women who showed an obvious calling to any kind of ministry would not have been allowed to perform that.
Thanks,
Richard
Posted by: Phil Almond
Saturday 2 March 2013 - 10:42am
Jesus said, ‘If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments’ and ‘Going therefore disciple ye all the nations…..teaching them to observe all things whatever I gave command to you…’ and 'I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come' and Paul said, ‘Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.’
So how do we know what Jesus has commanded? By paying attention to and obeying the teaching, exhortations, warnings and commands of Jesus and his Spirit-inspired disciples, found in the New Testament. The disagreements about the importance of gender differences in ministry and marriage are therefore disagreements about what that teaching is on those subjects.
It would be good if Carrie Longton could engage with the arguments I have put forward and say where she thinks I am mistaken.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Rosemary
Saturday 2 March 2013 - 03:02am
Some things that Carry has written, I simply don’t understand. This for instance .. “..people who don’t know my Jesus will look at this decision and feel either vindicated that they have never got to know him or vindicated that they have left him and his church behind in their youth.”
However one thing is clear to me, and that is that the Jesus Carry knows is quite different from the Jesus I know, trust and love, so one of us is wrong! Perhaps our definition of ‘love’ differs so badly that our understanding can be so different .. I don’t know. I must I suspect rejoice that Carry is more concerned about finding ‘lost’ sheep than the gender of leaders [although Jesus when He was here last did NOT choose any women Apostles, and quite why Carry thinks that would be different this time is not clear .. but she is SURE]. It would also seem that Jesus .. who we are told wept twice in Scripture, [not about the lack of women in the Sanhedrin though] would be weeping now if He were here because the church isn’t majoring on renewal. I’m in agreement, but the subject isn’t that easy is it? at the moment the church can’t decide whether to go for Scriptural truth or compromise, especially if you believe this article.
Posted by: ColinDarling
Friday 1 March 2013 - 05:26pm
Hi vernpeace
The writer's of the material that became the Bible did not understand some of the things we can now comprehend and or aspire to.
Their understanding of the role of women in society and the Church, of slavery, of the nature of the earth and its processes, of the scale of the cosmos and the origins of the universe, and yes, of human sexuality were conceptualised within the context, culture and in some cases limited understanding of their day.
Since Jesus challenged implicitly and explicitly many of the prejudices of the world he encountered we should do likewise and go further in the way he showed. We should indeed do more than he in the same spirit.
When people act and think as if inspired by the legalistic and pharisaic approach perhaps more than nomenclature and little c's and big C's needs a fundamental re-think.
Surely there is an urgent need for proportionality? Some christians invest immense amounts of time and it sometimes seems hatred on the subject of homosexuality and yet invest very little time in combatting violence against women and rape or other injustices. It is notable to me how little attention there has been in certain sectors of the Church to the 'One Billion Rising' movement.
When... some... Christians... behave... like... this... they... adopt... the... cultural... prejudices... of... a... cruel... tradition... they... surely... fill... God's... heart... with... sadness. Things.. .have... moved... on... since... the... Bronze... Age.
colindarling
Posted by: Erasmus
Friday 1 March 2013 - 03:52pm
It's very sad that society, and many people in the church like Carrie, have now absorbed the liberal propaganda technique of conflating truth and love (but only when it suits them).
So, it is completely unloving to differentiate between men and women's ministries or to differentiate between male-female and male-male or female-female sexual attraction - whatever the basis of that differentiation or, indeed, the facts of the matter. On the other hand it is not unloving to be viscous in your criticism of people who do differentiate, and to blithely accuse them of being unloving without bothering to listen to their reasons, or notice how they actually relate to people! And yet it is still ok to disapprove of sexual attractions that society agrees are wrong (and worries because they seem to be immutable) without being "unloving"!
Was Jesus unloving when, after stopping her execution, he told the woman caught in adultery to "leave your life of sin"? I don't think so! It is perfectly possible in Christ to love someone even if you disapprove of what they want, think or do... (in fact we'd all be lost if God were not like that!).....
Let's wake up to the irrational and unreasonable propaganda that our society unculcates into us and THINk! Unlike modern liberals we do not have to "hate the sin, hate the sinner"!
Posted by: 3 Gen Rev
Friday 1 March 2013 - 03:32pm
Surely part of the problem is the Bishop/Priest model of leadership is a poor reflection of the richness and dynamism of the New Testament Church and is essentially a semi political model designed to control an established Church with an assumed and disempowered membership. Where the New Testament justification is for a empowering a special subset of Priests within the church while disempowering the "Kingdom of Priests" I do not know? And if we want to invest all power in the "Overseer" and decide to do without pastor, teacher, prophet, evangelist, and the like do we wonder that we are too often a Church focussed on control and administration and not mission and the kingdom of God.
If it's not working we might find we've got it wrong, and even managed to get it wrong for many years... doing the same thing for a thousand years is not a guarantee of doing it right!
Just a thought!
Posted by: Richard W
Friday 1 March 2013 - 02:54pm
"My Jesus, were he back on earth, would not, I am sure, be spending his time agonising about the gender of his church’s leaders or indeed the sexuality of those who worship there."
I appreciate that this is someone's private thoughts, not a theological treatise, and I value the particular sentiment, but I wonder why the author stops short of mentioning the sexuality of the church leaders. Is this not a rather large elephant in this particular room? Or is Jesus only allowed to show compassion when it doesn't upset the present Evangelical mindset?
Posted by: User 3487
Friday 1 March 2013 - 02:38pm
I am always highly nervous of the expression 'My Jesus'. None of us own him or his name, it is the other way around. He often surprises us and is never 'tame'.
Posted by: Jody
Friday 1 March 2013 - 02:18pm
Hi Friends
we have just published Carrie Longton's short reflection on the November Synod.
Please do use this thread for discussion and if you're interested come and be part of the conversation at the Conference!
blessings, Jody
Posted by: Bowman
Tuesday 5 February 2013 - 11:49pm
This is a very hopeful sign. The second of Stephen's points is the cardinal one.
Posted by: vernpeace
Tuesday 5 February 2013 - 03:41pm
hi, many...prefere...the...Bible...in...its...Fullness
...if...and...only...if...we...confess...to...be...Christains
...then...we...surely...must...live...by...the...word...of...
the...Bible...we...can...not...let...the...whims/opinions
...of...the...day...dictate...what...principles...we...are...to
...live...by...surely...if...we...stop...living...by...the...principles
...set...down...clearly...in...the...Bible...and...look...to...another
...authority...we...no...longer...can...call...our...selves...Christians
...but...must...find...another...term...to...describe...themselves...or
maybe...at...the...very...least...use...a...very...very...small...c.
peace&love...vern
p.s...marvelousness...is...a...foot!
Posted by: Origen Adam
Tuesday 5 February 2013 - 03:30pm
How ironic to see one of the Kuhrts supporting women bishops! It almost makes me laugh to see him arguing against 2000 years of church tradition, if it weren't so sad :(
“But the result has been twenty years of immensely fruitful ministry by women clergy for which many of us are utterly grateful.”
And indeed we are, but we are also grateful for the ministry of the huge numbers of gay clergy who are stuck in 'don't ask, don't tell.'
“varying degrees of frustration, disappointment and anger.”
I'm glad he feels such emotions as it might make him reflect on how LGBT people feel when Fulcrum puts out yet another anti-gay article.
“This meant that women bishops was presented far too much as ‘a problem to be solved’ rather than a wonderful opportunity for the church to move forward to greater fullness and enrichment. “
The irony is just staggering...
Posted by: Phil Almond
Tuesday 5 February 2013 - 02:15pm
Stephen Kuhrt’s article includes “Whilst the ‘biblical case’ against women bishops is overwhelmingly reliant upon the deployment of two New Testament proof texts”, presumably 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14, mentioned later in the same paragraph. I agree that 1 Timothy 2 is critical (I do not think any responses to it are convincing) but it is supported by Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11 and Genesis 2 as understood by Paul in the latter. “A man is head of the woman” is how God created man and woman in Genesis 2 and the male “head-authority-nourish-cherish-self-sacrifice” links of Ephesians 5 are clearly to be obeyed in marriage and ministry in this life, whatever may be the position in “the resurrection”.
Phil Almond
Posted by: Stephen Kuhrt
Tuesday 5 February 2013 - 01:26pm
Fulcrum has just published my article 'Women Bishops: Church in all its Fullness' which explains some of the thinking behind the Fulcrum/Yes2WomenBishops conference taking place at Christ Church, New Malden on Saturday 16th March. Please use this forum for discussion.
Add your comments on the Fulcrum Forum
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Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill
Commons Report and Third Reading Briefing. CofE Website, 19 May 2013
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Dear Friends
We have pleasure in publishing an artlcle asking us to take a fresh look at the legacy of Margaret Thatcher The Iron Lady and the Dissident by Michael Bourdeaux.
Please continue this thread in discussing this article.
Best wishes
John Watson
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