Holy Orders
Women and Men in Ministry
In 1970 the Episcopal Church USA eliminated the canon for deaconesses and included women in the canon on deacons. In 1976 its General Convention approved the ordination of women to both the diaconate and priesthood. Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church condemned both moves, protesting that these changes were made unilaterally and against…
How to think like an evangelical catholic about the proposal to ordain women as pastor-bishops
Confessing Anglicans are divided on the question whether women’s ordination is in accord with the teaching of Scripture and consistent with the doctrinal heritage of the Church. On the one hand, there is great exegetical disagreement regarding the status of women in pastoral ministry in the New Testament itself. That, certainly, is the really decisive…
Pascal’s Wager and the Ordination of Women
“IF women cannot be priests but are allowed to “act” as priests then they are putting the souls of God’s children at risk.”
Holy Orders Within Anglicanism
OR…If Anglicans don’t have priests, nobody does Archbishop Frederick Temple is not known as an original theologian or scholar. In fact, Frederick Temple is probably best known as the father of a future Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple. However, one extremely important event occurred in 1896 while Frederick was Primate of all England: The…
Convenient Forgetting and the Jerusalem Declaration
“Forgetting pain is convenient, remembering it; agonizing. But uncovering the truth is worth all the suffering.” ~Lewis Carroll Convenient forgetting. Over thirteen years have passed since the Jerusalem Declaration was released in 2008. At the time, I was a 28 year old priest, and the recipient of a young leader invitation to this pivotal conference….
Catholicam Fidem: An Open Letter on the Consecration of Female Bishops in GAFCON
To the Primates and Bishops of the Holy Catholic Church in the Global Anglican Future Conference: Every Trinity Sunday, we confess that “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.” This faith has been passed down to us from our Fathers. It is the faith by which…
Hail, Thou That Art Highly Favored
Unable to answer these arguments, I remained silent toward these people; but now I beg you Father, to instruct me in what I should say to defend the truth, so that (following the Apostle’s injunction) I may “be ready to give an account of the faith that is in us.” —St. Gregory Palamas I’ve been…
Review of Icons of Christ: Symbolism and Conclusions
Part 4: Symbolism and Conclusions In the previous three installments, we have examined the plausibility structures of women’s ordination (WO), Witt’s view of history, and his handling of Greek philology. We now turn to questions of symbolism, a topic that Witt discusses mainly in dialogue with Roman Catholic authors, especially Manfred Hauke.[1] Hauke’s argument is…
Review of Icons of Christ: Errors of Philology
PART 3 – ERRORS OF PHILOLOGY Having discussed plausibility structures and history in the previous two parts of this review, we come now to what, for Protestants, will be the central question of the debate: can Witt show that the passages that have long been thought to pose an obstacle to women’s ordination (WO) do…
Review of Icons of Christ: Errors of Protology and Eschatology
PART 2: WITT’S CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY In the first part of this series, we examined the plausibility structures on which Witt’s book relies for its persuasiveness. We saw that Witt teaches a novel modern anthropology: he sees human beings not as fundamentally sexed creatures in a pervasively gendered cosmos, but as individuals who take on…