Anglican/Episcopal Ordinations

[MarcoPolo]

It doesn’t, and I never claimed it did. I’m speaking of the cultural context of the 1st Century here.

Well then we needn’t rehash, because I think we all know what some of us think of the cultural argument by now.

In any event if you really want to make the argument that women can’t be ordained because the Twelve were all men, then you better have a rule saying all who are ordained must also be Jewish! After all, Christ never appointed a gentile as one of the Twelve.

You could go into whatever physical attribute you want if you want to really play devil’s advocate. It has to be a person named Jesus with skin tone X, height and weight of Y and Z, etc… But there is sacramental theology behind his masculinity that just isn’t there with his Jewish nationality. If you want to give it a go, and make an argument how one’s nationality is part of the sacramental, natural sign go ahead. But I don’t think you can. The masculine theology is way deeper than just the “Jesus picked men” argument you seem to be opposing. Anyway, the Jewish nationality angle would not fit with the bridegroom argument I’ve made here anyway. Can a Jewish man be a bridegroom? Yes. Can an Italian man? Yes. Can an Australian man? Yes. Can a woman? No.

Your point about the Eucharist is better but it only works if you believe in the RC doctrines about transubstantiation, with it being an actual sacrifice and how the NT Priesthood is of the same nature as the OT Levitical Priesthood etc. Protestants don’t.

That’s mostly true. But if Protestants are wrong, then their error is irrelevant to the theology.

 

[Contarini]

You’re welcome I’ll leave it at that then. You have an awful lot of text there and I’m just going to leave what I said as-is for anyone interested to compare–plus back & forth dialogue is very time consuming and you may notice I rarely engage in that anymore.

I appreciate that. However, I would like to summarize the points I think I’ve made so far. I don’t want to be obnoxious, but this issue comes up over and over and I would like to avoid continually rehashing the same points if possible:

1. From the examples you yourself gave from the Apostolic Constitutions and St. John Chrysostom, it appears that the Fathers’ reasons for opposing the ordination of women had to do with a belief in the inherent “subjection” of the female sex (in continuity with the view found in the Pastoral Epistles, and strikingly different from the view of gender found in Pope John Paul II and other mainstream Catholic defenders of the male-only priesthood in modern times). St. John’s equation of “all women” with “most men” is particularly telling here, implying that while some men may be rational enough to exercise governance, no women can be.
2. Gregory of Nyssa presents sexual differentiation as a feature of our “lower” nature. This does seem to imply egalitarianism of sorts, but it comes at the cost of saying that our “higher” nature–our truest self–stands beyond sexual differentiation. Again, this is quite different from what Bluegoat has been arguing or what most contemporary opponents of women’s ordination would say, though I grant you that it is also different from the view found in the other excerpts you cited. St. Gregory has an amazing ability to take the good elements of “Origenism” and purify them of heresy, so perhaps he’s the best starting point for a serious theological inquiry into sexual differentiation. That being said, he at no point presents his reasons for accepting the fact of an all-male priesthood.
3. I grant that the bride/bridegroom imagery is the best way to explain the Church’s stance on an all-male priesthood. I have questions about how, on this view, the universal and ministerial priesthoods are related to each other, and I am not convinced that it’s any more impossible for a woman to represent the “bridegroom” sacramentally than it is for men to be part of the “bride” sacramentally, as we clearly are. But I think this is a strong and serious argument.
4. In contrast, I continue to see no merit whatever in the argument from the maleness of the Twelve. I have twice asked you to explain how your “counter-cultural” view of Jesus (which seems to mean that Jesus was totally independent of culture, which isn’t what I think “counter-cultural” means) explains Jesus’ “failure” to condemn slavery or save millions of lives over the centuries by explaining about germs. Until someone can explain this to me, I see no reason to take seriously the argument that since Jesus was so “counter-cultural” he obviously would have chosen some women to be among the Twelve if it was possible to do so. On the contrary, it seems quite obvious to me that Jesus was a first-century Galilean and acted in ways wholly consistent with His culture except where doing so would be sinful. What this does prove is that neither “failing” to condemn slavery nor “failing” to choose women to be among the Twelve are in themselves sinful acts given Jesus’ cultural context, while failing to treat women with personal respect, or failing to challenge concepts of purity that dehumanized people, would have been sinful acts.

Like I said, I prefer at this point to move beyond the issue of bias

I have been trying to do so throughout this discussion, which is why the only person who has spoken of “bias” or “sexism” has been you!

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I still don’t see how your understanding is coherent. By essential, I mean part of our essence. If we are taking the model that differentiation comes from matter alone, then anything that is of that kind is not part of our essence, it’s an accident. What you seem to be suggesting is that maleness and femaleness are accidental, which is not a Christian position.

But it’s Aquinas’s position! Surely he was a Christian! See this discussion of the subject. (Note: Prof. Popik does go against my argument insofar as she says that the Fathers had little influence on Aquinas’s view of women, while I’ve treated Aquinas as a good representative of the assumptions held implicitly by much of the Christian tradition; however, she says this because, as I have noted, the Fathers did not generally write about women in theoretical ways.)

I think you understand “accidental” too weakly. “Accidental” doesn’t mean “trivial.” It just means “not pertaining to the essence of the species.”

Edwin

 

[Mickey]

I continue to see no merit whatever in the argument from the maleness of the Twelve.

Of course you don’t.