Thread by @AnglicanMan19, Women’s Ordination is one of those issues that can easily cause great [...]

Women’s Ordination is one of those issues that can easily cause great division in a Christian communion. If you oppose it, you’re accused of being a woman-hater and a sexist. Is this issue really something only stick in the mud male chauvinists oppose? [THREAD] 1/20

We know that for millennia, women were not ordained to the priesthood in the Church catholick. It therefore is against our traditions. Yet despite their antiquity, traditions can be in error. As in all major questions, we must see what Scripture says about women’s ordination 2/20

“I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
3/20

But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.” - 1 Timothy 2:8-13
4/20

It seems quite clear that women, even the most godly and righteous among them, are not permitted to hold priestly authority in the Church. Okay, but this is just one passage. Is this issue spoken of elsewhere in the New Testament?
5/20

Another passage, this time in reference to the episcopate:

“A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach” - 1 Timothy 3:2
6/20

In addition to these passages, we have the design of the Church left to us by Christ. Jesus chose twelve men to be his Apostles, to preach the gospel and plant churches to the ends of the earth. The New Testament records some female deacons, but no priests.
7/20

Our Lord shocked many in his day by disregarding the social conventions of his culture, so saying the absence of female apostles is an artifact of first century Judean norms does not hold. Their absence is no accident, nor was it motivated by malice.
8/20

The priesthood of the New Testament differs in some ways from the Old, but they share in common the fact that the lawful priesthood is exclusively male. Rather than being the result of sexist attitudes, this is due to the Biblical understanding of men’s& women’s differences
9/20

Sex is a definitive feature of one’s identity in Scripture. Unlike in our age, Men and women are not seen as interchangeable. Today our culture sees people as serving a function; unless particular genitalia is required for that function, the differences are unimportant.
10/20

Creation has a natural order, one we ignore today. In Genesis it is revealed to us that Eve was made distinct from Adam, from his side, to be his companion and helper. Adam was made from the earth, to till the land and impose order in the world.
11/20

While men are described in ways that ascribe to his essence one of imposing order on the earth, women are often compared to the earth itself, as bringing forth fruit from their bodies. All future men come from women, as all vegetarian and life arise from the earth itself.
12/20

In mankind’s relationship to the Creator, God speaks of himself as our Father. A father’s relationship to his children is a different relationship than a mother has, creating us through his Word, with a distance between us and him not found in mothers and their offspring.
13/20

Priests represent the fatherly authority. God is not a mother. His transcendence, a separation, is masculine. Priests are not just functions; they stand in for God’s authority. We respond to maternal and paternal authority differently, even when they’re doing the same thing
14/20

Sometimes Liberal Christianity speaks of God, blasphemously, in maternal language. We lose something when you speak of God as a mother; it becomes pantheistic, emphasizing a primal intimacy of child to mother, emphasizing union rather than a transcendent distance.
15/20

This is why the priesthood is a masculine vocation. Churches need not just male priests, but manly ones, as leaders. Patriarchy has been more or less a universal norm for societies, being protected by the strength of groups of men, upholding tribes and civilizations.
16/20

A priest possesses those essential masculine qualities of strength, and the paternal authority imbued in our nature. As pastors they are, in addition to being living sacraments through whom the grace of the sacraments are transmitted to us, leaders/protectors of the flock.
17/20

A female “priest” utterly changes this by virtue of her femininity. Church leadership transforms into something more about the therapeutic, nurturing of people. This weakens the congregation and allows more problems to seep in. It is likewise with effeminate male priests
18/20

This is not to say women have no function in the life of the Church. They are extremely important to parish life, raising up children, organizing activities, and aiding the priest in a multitude of ways. There is also scriptural support for deaconesses.
19/20

Innovation can be good in many areas of life, but when it comes to the constitution of the Church it is never wise to deviate from the model set forth by our Lord and Savior. Women’s Ordination is a unbiblical practice which weakens us and invites corruption.
[END]

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