This forum was closed on October 1st, 2010. However, the archives are open to the public and filled with vast amounts of good reading and information for you to enjoy. If you wish to meet some Wardrobians, please visit the Into the Wardrobe Facebook group.

Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Comprising most of Lewis' writings.
Forum rules
Please keep all discussion on topic and in line with our code of conduct.

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Tuke » June 6th, 2009, 6:44 am

"The 'great golden chain of Concord' has united the whole of Edmund Spenser's world.... Nothing is repressed; nothing is insubordinate. To read him is to grow in mental health." The Allegory Of Love (Faerie Queene)

2 Corinthians IV.17 The Weight of Glory
User avatar
Tuke
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 971
Joined: Jun 2007
Location: Florida

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby john » June 6th, 2009, 6:58 am

john
Chief Wardrobian
User avatar
john
Chief Wardrobian
 
Posts: 6495
Joined: Jul 1996
Location: near seattle

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Tuke » June 7th, 2009, 1:44 am

Ecce ancilla!
"The 'great golden chain of Concord' has united the whole of Edmund Spenser's world.... Nothing is repressed; nothing is insubordinate. To read him is to grow in mental health." The Allegory Of Love (Faerie Queene)

2 Corinthians IV.17 The Weight of Glory
User avatar
Tuke
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 971
Joined: Jun 2007
Location: Florida

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby rusmeister » June 7th, 2009, 4:03 am

Tuke, I'm taking a little trouble here because you have always been a considerate poster in spite of our disagreements. I'd like to make sure I've done the best I can to be understood.

It should not surprise you that any faith teaches that it has the most correct version of truth and that others are in error. Being sad and shocked about it makes no sense. It looks like you want me to say that the version of faith that you accept is just as valid as mine.

The terms orthodox and heterodox are valid terms - we will just disagree on what exactly is orthodox (small 'o'). But it's not an insult. Obviously there must be right ways and wrong ways to worship God. It must, logically, be possible to worship God in a way that is not correct or right or the way he would like us to. However, terms like "Orthodoxer" sound on a level with terms like "bapsy" or "methoder" or "catholickian" and therefore appears derogatory. You can tell me I'm wrong (heterodox) - fine. But you shouldn't 'concoct terms of your own', which is basically insult. If Christians disagree and even say or suggest that others are (gasp!) wrong about something, this is not insult. It is our society today that teaches that the mortal sin is to say that someone is right and someone is wrong, but Christ had no problem saying when worshipers of God went wrong. However, we should do the best we can to observe the law of charity (love) in doing so. Sometimes I fail in that, and I hope you will forgive me where I truly have. But it is my position that merely saying that non-Orthodox (big 'o') faiths are not orthodox (small 'o') is not such a failure, but rather its fulfillment.

No, I do not remember the name of your church. Feel free to tell me. (Perhaps you told me a few thousand posts ago - I'm sorry that I don't remember.) But it's enough, for purposes of this discussion, to know that it is not an Orthodox church. Heterodox means literally "That which is not orthodox". Therefore I will see any teachings which come from it to be heterodox - some of which will coincide with Orthodox teaching, and some of which do not.

Your idea that I ought to mention the name of Jesus much more often - or if you insist, that I do refer to the Church more often - springs from the prime difference between most people on this site. A majority are believers - and are seeking Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life, or (at least) claim to have found Him. So far we are in agreement - well and good. But where we are in agreement there is much less to say. But since, in our quest for the Truth the prime difference really is in our worship and doctrine, it is inevitable that in order to talk about those things at all, we must refer to the authority by which we do so, and this is going to lead me to talk about the Church, which teaches what Jesus taught. The conclusion you have drawn from that is wholly wrong - at the very least talking as if it were important shows grave misunderstanding.

I'll continue further discussions if the tone changes to reflect, if not charity, at least civility. A vigorous and manly defense does not require anger or peevishness. It would require a defense of the root difference - what I called the fatal weakness - of relying on your own intellect and knowledge to correctly understand Scripture. But only as long as we don't get personal.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
User avatar
rusmeister
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 1795
Joined: Dec 2005
Location: Russia

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Bulgakov » June 8th, 2009, 11:43 am

I'm late to the discussion. I see the discussion taking two different terms (priestesses and the role of tradition and human authority). I think I can address both.

I am a Confessional Protestant. However, I have spent the past year studying the Orthodox Faith. Rusmeister has made a number of comments that have gone unanswered. How do you all account for the Table of Contents page in your bibles? Is that page inspired, too? Secondly, how do you account for passages like 2 Thess. 2:15? I hold to another form of Sola Scriptura. It is called "Reading the Bible with the Church." It's not original with me. I always have on my shelves copies of the Fathers, Aquinas, etc.

In continuation with the Orthodx thing, in dealing with priestesses, I would like to quote the late Fr Schmemann, or summarize him anyway. We seem to think that we are better than the previous cultures. If I can say it in a more precise way, we assume a form of historicism (see Peter Kreeft's lecture on ). But if we know more than other cultures because we come after them, does it not follow that the next genereation (or century, more likely--it will take a while to work out the kinks) will know more than us and will (rightly, on the terms given) reject women priestesses?

If knowledge and at least some ethical decisions are historically relative, (and the unspoken premise is that later ethical decisions in time are to trump the ones from the past), does it not follow that the current ethical decision (priestesses) is, too, relative and should be rejected?

EDIT: Only boys can be daddies


Many here are not true to the spirit of Lewis. Lewis, as a medievalist, did not blindly accept whatever his culture said, but criticized it from the standpoint of earlier cultures.
Jacob
"Your revolver in your hand, a prayer on your lips, your mind fixed on Maleldil. Then, if he stands, conjure him.” “What shall I say in the Great Tongue?” “Say that you come in the name of God and all angels and in the power of the planets...." (That Hideous Strength)
Bulgakov
 
Posts: 32
Joined: May 2009

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Dan65802 » June 8th, 2009, 3:15 pm

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King
User avatar
Dan65802
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 2666
Joined: Feb 2007

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Dan65802 » June 8th, 2009, 3:23 pm

By the way, I don't think women should be priests. If you're going to belong to a church that holds tradition as infallible, then by all means follow that tradition! If you don't hold to the Council of Trent two source theory of special revelation, you probably aren't true Orthodox or Catholic anyway!

- Dan -
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King
User avatar
Dan65802
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 2666
Joined: Feb 2007

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Bulgakov » June 8th, 2009, 3:26 pm

Jacob
"Your revolver in your hand, a prayer on your lips, your mind fixed on Maleldil. Then, if he stands, conjure him.” “What shall I say in the Great Tongue?” “Say that you come in the name of God and all angels and in the power of the planets...." (That Hideous Strength)
Bulgakov
 
Posts: 32
Joined: May 2009

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Dan65802 » June 8th, 2009, 4:24 pm

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King
User avatar
Dan65802
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 2666
Joined: Feb 2007

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby rusmeister » June 9th, 2009, 3:27 am

My brief comment on Dan's reference to paradosis -
It is exactly that why I can only see logic in accepting the most traditional forms of christianity - ones that can show a continuous passing down, from hand-to-hand. The truth is, most can't. They have to, at best, claim to reach back six, twelve, or eighteen centuries, and admit that there is no evidence for that paradosis in all of the meantime. That's how history came to convince me that I need to become part of the historical Church, rather than try to make MY church like the historical Church.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
User avatar
rusmeister
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 1795
Joined: Dec 2005
Location: Russia

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby maralewisfan » November 14th, 2009, 6:13 pm

I do not believe in women serving as priests/pastors in the church. Now that I have stated my position on that topic I have a couple of points that I would like to make.

ALL humans are sinful, the church fathers included, therefore we all have something to learn. I do not believe that there is any religion here on earth that is infallible. THE CHURCH is something that we will become members of when we are judged by God with Jesus as our intercessor. We cannot have a universal church here on earth because of our sinfulness. 2 Tim. 3:16ff "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work."

I don't have a problem with learning from the church fathers, but I think that we need to remember that they were sinful, fallible, human beings. I will try to learn what I can with my sinfilled mind from the original church fathers: Peter, Paul, James, Luke, John, etc.
maralewisfan
 
Posts: 51
Joined: Oct 2009
Location: Oklahoma

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby Mr Bultitude » November 19th, 2009, 5:35 am

I think it’s unfortunate that a large part of this thread has been devoted to a tangentially related subject instead of the subject of the original post. While exegetical authority is of course related to the discussion of priestesses in the church, I don’t think it has to be the focus of the thread, nor must it be the focus of any particular polemic regarding Christian dogma.

Should one’s church be the final authority on the meaning of Scripture in his worldview, then obviously those authoritative interpretations should be brought into the argument. It might be edifying to discuss how those interpretations were developed, as in, the reasons why church X interprets passage Y to mean Z. They are likely powerful reasons.

But despite the authority that one’s church might wield in his worldview, one is still able to listen to different, even contradictory, interpretations and address them, for their worth independent of their source, or independent of the perceived authority, or lack of authority, upon which they are borne.

Further, and I’m sure I’m getting into some sticky water here, but it is not clear to me that it is a necessary truth that those who have canonized Scripture would have the only true interpretation of Scripture, or have exclusivity regarding the fullness of truth of Scripture.

I see the following syllogism as the basic argument, which I find invalid:

a. All of the Bible is the true Word of God.
b. My church decided what would be canonized into the Bible.
c. Therefore, my church has claim to the only true interpretation of the Bible.

I would appreciate Rusmeister’s clarification on this point, but there seems to me to be a missing link between canonization and interpretation that would grant the canonizing body the final authority on interpretation. To be sure, the canonizing body would have Scriptural interpretations of gravity and truth, but I don’t see that this authority could discount out-of-hand the interpretations of all that were not part of the canonizing body.

I apologize for continuing the discussion of authority, which is clearly not the intent of the OP (despite its relation to it and nearly all other topics), but the thread is what it is at this point.
User avatar
Mr Bultitude
 
Posts: 21
Joined: Sep 2009
Location: New Jersey, USA

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby agingjb » November 19th, 2009, 8:05 am

I suppose I can see why people argue that priests cannot be women, but pastors?
agingjb
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 104
Joined: Sep 2008

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby rusmeister » November 21st, 2009, 2:49 pm

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
User avatar
rusmeister
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 1795
Joined: Dec 2005
Location: Russia

Re: Priestesses in the Church? ... from Jack's God in the Dock

Postby maralewisfan » November 22nd, 2009, 12:50 am

maralewisfan
 
Posts: 51
Joined: Oct 2009
Location: Oklahoma

PreviousNext

Return to Apologetics & Other Works

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered members and 9 guests

cron