Women in Ministry

I have always thought that there was 2 areas lacking in Ridley teaching.  The first is talk of Charismatic Spiritual gifts.  Sure, we kinda touched on it a bit in one of the Theology classes, but not much was discussed about speaking in tongues/healings today in the Pentecostals.  Second is the issue of Women in Ministry.  Ridley deems itself to not take a stance.  However, this means they allow women to teach and preach in lectures/Chapel.  Thus them "not taking a stance" seems to me to mean they are egalitarian.  Indeed in my 3 years I felt strongly that this was assumed.  And any complementarian just have to keep their mouth shut when certain topics came up.  If we say anything, I felt like we were like the "haters".  Indeed, it is a bit like how Christians feel in the outside world in relation to the topic of homosexual marriages.  This I strongly dislike.  Snide remarks and jokes would come up in classes which degrades the complementarian view, but there was no chance of the opposite happening, as it would obviously offends the women.  This is BS as far as I'm concern.  More and more I dislike Ridley in their biases and air of superiority (Don't take me wrong, there are great aspects of Ridley, which I am super grateful for.  However, their air of superiority and looking down on other views and other denominations are not one of them).  I guess they come from a background where the Anglican church was strongly complementarian, and thus feel that they are the minority and are fighting against it.  However, in my personal experience it is the opposite.  Most churches I know seem to have women teaching and preaching.  To say anything against it is taboo and basically being a hater against women.  This strongly feminist push is way too much inline with the world and society's thinking.  And I'm wary especially since it fits too much with how non-Christians think.  The arguments of how much more intellectual and less chauvinistic we are than the oldern times, and thus allow women full reign.... this is exactly the same arguments used by those who push for homosexuality being a norm and should be accepted as not sinful in the church.  In fact, the same passages are sometimes used (eg. In Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free etc...)!

For me, my life would be so much easier if women could be allowed to be pastors and preach.  I do believe that women are equal, and have the same abilities.  However, I do not believe that life is about us, about males nor females, about our individual rights and freedom.  Life is about God.  We submit to God.  This means we have to do difficult things, or things we may not like or agree with.  Things like loving our enemies, which makes no sense.  Things like thinking of others before ourselves, which make no sense.  Thus when it comes to things such as submission of the wife to the husband at home, or the idea that God calls men to be pastors, are things which test our commitment and devotion to God, that we would put God first and foremost, not ourselves.  There is a strong feministic pride to all this I feel by those who uphold women as pastors, a lot of times from males who think that because they are male and if they agree with females being pastors it means everything!  That they are uphold truth and justice for the women cause.  

Anyway, as I was saying: my life would indeed be much easier for me if I could see it that way.  The world is always attacking us of our views of the Bible, our views of sin, our views of things in life that we reject.  Indeed we are always ridiculed and mocked, and viewed as haters by those who find out we are Christian, even before we have a chance to open our mouths.  I feel the same persecution within the church, being a complementarian amidst all the egalatarians.  And yet, I know that majority is not always right.  I look at the Bible, and feel that there is a strong structure that God sets up.  Whether from the story of creation, whereby after Eve's initial sin and leading Adam astray, God held Adam accountable first and foremost.  Whether in the Epistles where passages say that men should be leading.  There is a structure.  Not necessarily due to our abilities.  But because God is setting it up.  Thus we should submit to authorities.  Thus we should listen to our pastors.  Thus we should submit to our parents.  Not cuz they are necessarily better or smarter or wiser, but because of their position that God has put.  It is the same with males and females.  It is funny, cuz people seem to assume that guys always are dominant and want power and authority and ruling.  However this is totally not true.  Indeed we live in an age whereby guys do not want to step up, do not want any responsibilities.  They just want to sit at home and play computer/console games and watch anime - to have fun.  Do guys want to step up and take responsibility?  No.  Indeed many guys are happy for women to step up and do things, as it means they don't have to do it.  Yet is this the call of the Bible?  In contrast, God calls men to step up and lead, to sacrifice, to be strong.  With women pushing for leading and authority, men are just happy to step back and be little boys.  It is a cycle of a problem, one leading to the other.

Am I willing to stand amidst persecutions?  Even persecutions from my Christian brothers and sisters who think that they are doing women a favour and defending women rights?  To be seen as a dying breed, surely to go out of extinction as humans get smarter?  I am!  I must stand amidst all of this.  Be seen as a minority.  Live, and die for my conviction.  People say this is a secondary matter.  Funny how people's view of what is primary and secondary vary though.  This may not have to do with salvation.  However, it does affect the Church, the understanding of God, as well as individuals' lives.  Thus this is important.

I must admit that I have not spent a lot of time thinking extensively on this topic, of exploring the passages in Greek and Hebrew, of forming a complete theological opinion.  I am sad that Ridley has not provided space for this issue.  I feel that the role of gender, identity, and sexual ethics is the grounds to be fought at the moment and in the close future ahead.  Christians, especially seminary-trained Christians, need to have formed a framework of thought on these matters, no matter what their final conclusions may be.  I hope to be able to do this during this semester, in my Capstone experience with the subject of Church, Ministry, and Sacrament.  I had originally hoped to do this next year, whereby I will devote a whole semester on just this one subject, but now I have to do it amongst the other 3 subjects... sigh.

Anyway, may God help me, and lead me, and guide in my formation.

Reward... and the paradoxes in Scripture

Just a short quick reflection:

The concept of "reward" is a funny thing.  It's something I've been thinking about for a long time.  If God elected and predestined us, and everything we have and do come from God himself (He even predestines us to do the good work that we do), then why would there be a reward?  What do I have that I did not receive?  And if I receive it, how can I boast in it?  1 Corinthians 4:7.

Paul gives a dual view:  sometimes he talks about running to claim the prize that God calls him (Phil 3:14), having run the good race (2 Tim 4:7), getting a reward for building (1 Cor 3:8, 14)....

While other times he talks about how his work and preaching is laid on him and he has to do it (1 Cor 9:17), so to get reward, he has to go beyond that and do it without cost to the people he's ministering too.  Then there's Jesus' words in Luke 17:7-10, whereby we should just say that we've merely done our duty, and do not deserve any recognition.

The Bible is full of seemingly paradoxes.  I wanna write a book on them!  Will/choice vs Election/predestination.  Trinity. Jesus' work on the Cross.  Eschatology ("already" vs "not yet")... the list goes on and on.  And heresy are those who tend to lean too much on one or the other.  Instead we need to always uphold and balance out the truths that the Scripture presents.  Not trying to harmonize them and come up with an answer which ticks both boxes (which would be nice, but never works - for we usually end up compromising BOTH views).  Instead upholding BOTH sides as full truths. 
 

How can they both full truths?  

              Only God knows.

Atonement through Recapitulation

Atm trying to write an essay on Irenaeus' Doctrine of Recapitulation.  It's very confusing and difficult, as his doctrine is from putting together bits and pieces of his writings in his 5 books titled "Against Heresies" (plus some from another of his book) which he wrote mainly to refute Gnosticism.  Irenaeus' writings is from around 180AD.  He claimed to have heard Polycarp taught (Polycarp claimed to have direct contacts with the Apostles), and thus believed that he inherited the views and traditions from the Apostles themselves.

Its been very interesting and challenging, for his view of atonement for sin is totally not related to Jesus being the perfect sacrifice for our sins.  Our current orthodox view is that Humanity was initially good, and became corrupted with sin at the Fall of Genesis 3.  The rest of the OT was dealing with the sin of humanity, and about God's promise to restore us back to our original state.  The sacrificial laws were just a temporary measure to deal with sins, until a better way came.

This better way is of course Jesus Christ.  Jesus lived a perfect life without sin, and in the end intentionally chose to die on the Cross.  There, God the Father put all the sins of humanity onto Jesus and punished him.  Thus our term 'substitutionary atonement'.  Jesus died, that we may live.  Therefore we are now considered righteous in God's sight, for our sins are no longer held against us - Jesus has been the perfect sacrifice for the sin of humanity.  This free grace is extended to all who would acknowledge their sin, accept that Jesus has died for them, and proclaim him as their Lord and Saviour.

Irenaeus has a very different view.  While still centred around Christ, his focus is on Jesus' obedience in life, rather than our strong emphasis on his death.  Irenaeus rely heavy on Romans 5:12-21, which talks about Jesus as the new Adam.  Basically humanity fell as a result of the disobedience of Adam.  Since then humanity was stuffed.  However God came down as Jesus, and reversed this act.  Thus his life is a recount of the fall, except Jesus was obedient and passed each stage where Adam failed.  Jesus was tempted by Satan but succeeded.  Jesus lived a life of full obedience, without sin.  He was obedient even to death on the cross.  Thus as sin entered through the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, Jesus reverse it through the tree of death - ie on the cross at his crucifixion.

Therefore Jesus has reversed the state of humanity.  Furthermore, because he is also God who has entered humanity, we can, through him, go back to God.  Thus Irenaeus' idea of deification, that humanity will not only be restored to the state before the fall, but will surpass that and become like God himself.

This idea is attractive in that it does use the Bible and tries to be theological - accounting for the bigger story of the flow of the Bible.  However, a few significant things worry me.

Firstly is Irenaeus' view of the original mankind as being imperfect.  He views that God made Adam imperfect, and thus Adam fell. Irenaeus believes that God could not make humanity perfect, because they are 'created', and came 'after' God - and he views perfection as being uncreated and out of time.  Thus he claims that Adam could not receive divine status (perfection), as he was immature and not ready.  He gives analogy to giving solid food to a newborn baby.  Thus God intended Adam to grow and slowly mature.....evolve so to say, until he reaches a stage where God can give him Divinity.  The fall basically stopped our evolution, and thus Jesus was needed to restore us back to the state of Adam.  Of course this is not the end, as even now we are still in the process of becoming Divine.

This argument is weak as it has no Biblical grounding other than his speculation and thinking up new ideas.  It contradicts the start of the Bible, which attests that the creation of mankind 'was good'.  Sin is what corrupted mankind.  However Irenaeus views mankind to be flawed from the get-go, thereby implying it was God's fault.  Irenaeus also contradicts himself, for he starts his argument by strongly asserting the Sovereignty of God, and that God could have made Adam perfect if he wanted to.  Irenaeus then went on to say how God can't give Adam divine status as Adam could not receive it, and thus God has to go through this longer path of maturing Adam.  These 2 ideas are in total contradiction with each other.  Many people prefer Irenaeus' view as it seem to align more with Darwin's hypothesis on origin of mankind through evolution (going from bad to better) rather than the traditional view of the Bible (was good but became bad through sin).

Irenaeus also introduces Mary's obedience to reclaim Eve's disobedience, possibly being the source of the Roman Catholic Tradition of Mary today.  Irenaeus takes pain to explain how Jesus had to be God himself in the physical flesh to be able to redeem humanity.  A lesser god, or a pure human could not do it.  Nor could Jesus be just in spirit as the Gnostics claim, for he had to fight for humanity.  Yet Irenaeus felt nothing wrong to claim that Mary reversed Eve's disobedience in the same way Jesus reversed Adam's disobedience, even though there was nothing divine about Mary.  Indeed this confusion is most likely what has led to people thinking so highly of Mary.  If only God himself could have reversed Adam, then Mary would have to be almost that level to do the same for Eve!  Once again Irenaeus pulls out new ideas which does not have basis in the Bible.  Extrapolations taken too far.  Ideas which are illogical even based upon his own arguments.

Irenaeus' view of atonement through recapitulation (meaning is literally 'summing up' - ie Jesus summed up humanity in himself.  He basically was a champion for humanity, and beat Satan at his own game, thus winning for us the victory - thus the idea of "Christus Victor") neglects strong passages in Romans 3:21-16 and Hebrews Chp 10, which clearly describes propitiation of God's wrath through the sacrifice and blood of Jesus in his death.  Irenaeus deals with evil by saying Jesus defeated Satan by championing humanity in his own life, but neglects to account for God's wrath and judgment on sin and sinners.  This reminds me of modern views that God is all loving and wouldn't condemn anyone to eternal hell.  Thus he'll save everyone even if they don't believe in Jesus.  Such 'fluffy' theology neglects why God would give the Law and sacrificial system temporarily to Israel, while waiting for the perfect Lamb of God (referred to esp in Revelation).

Yes Jesus did encapsulate humanity (esp Israel) in himself and lived a perfect life.  However his perfect life is so that he could be a pure and spotless lamb to die as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity.  Yes Jesus' actions reversed the consequence of Adam's disobedience.  However it is through Jesus' blood poured out for many in his death.

Granted Irenaeus was an early church father (many of whom have some views which are very strange), who defended the faith from Gnosticism, which was a huge contribution in Christian History.  We usually excuse early church father, for they did not have as many resources and thinkers which we currently benefit from.  However Irenaeus had access to the full NT as we have it, but failed to exegete from it.  Rather he eisegeted, philosophically came up with new ideas, and tried to grab verses from the Bible to back him up.  Irenaeus is also basically the father of Greek orthodox, and this view of deification and atonement is what they believe even today.

Irenaeus contributed significantly to our Christian thinking.  However we must be careful, when reading writings from the early church fathers, to not easily fall under their arguments of rhetoric.

Anyone without sin..

Yesterday at COAH (City On A Hill - a church near Melbourne city), a very interesting passage was discussed, being John 8:1-11.  This passage brings forth the famous "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" line.

With my recent studies, this passage has become a bit of an enigma to me.  I'm not sure what to do with it.

The first issue is whether it should be in the bible at all!  The earlier and more reliable manuscripts in fact do not have this passage, with its addition only incorporated into the later copies.  Last Saturday I had an interesting discussion with my brother on whether the end of Mark should be in the bible at all, for similar reasons.  His view was that no matter who wrote it, we believe that the final bible that we have is the work of God - ie it was inspired by God.  Thus whether it was there or not originally does not matter; it is here now in our bible, and thus we should accept it as the word of God.

I'm not too convinced of his argument.  For even if we trust in the end result of this bible as being from God, all bibles take pain to state that these 2 passages are missing from the earlier and more reliable sources.  Each passage starts with a little note stating so.  I feel that they have been left in more for tradition rather than anything, possibly following the King James Bible traditions.

We must acknowledge that our Reformed Christianity nowadays differ from the original pathway of Christianity (ie the Catholics).  If we just accept everything as being inspired by God, then certainly we should all be Catholics and following their teachings.

Another possibility is that we should accept whatever was accepted as the Canon when it was introduced.  This seems more valid to me, although I'm not sure if these passages were in the gospels at that time.  Anyway this area is probably way more complicated that I can reflect on here (and also I must admit that I have not done enough research into this to make a final conclusion).

My second issue is the famous phrase "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her".  The pastor at COAH explained that this passage does not mean as we normally think it mean - ie that we shouldn't judge others because we ourselves have sinned too.  He rightly explained that those kind of interpretation is wrong (although very often used by Christians and non-Christians alike: "No one's perfect" etc).  If that was so, then there will be no source of morality.  No sense of right and wrong, anyone can just do anything they want in this life without being judged (until God comes back anyway).  The Law of Moses however was a set up jurisdiction for the nation to operate.  Sure, we shouldn't judge/condemn others for their sins, for we are sinners too.  However, as the government, they are allowed to pass law and judgement upon their people.  The judges of the country judge on behalf of the nation, not by themselves.

The pastor went on to explain that what was happening here with the Pharisees and Scribes was just a trap for Jesus (as clearly stated in 8:6), and that this was not a real court case.  They're trying to pass on the Law of Moses, but not in the way that the Law itself stated for it to be done.  It should be in a private trial, giving the accused a fair chance to present their own case.  The male whom she was caught in adultery with should also be there.  This was a farce.  They were in no legitimate position to be passing on the Law of Moses. 

I agree with everything the pastor said.  He explained it very well.  However... the problem remains.  Jesus' words were not "if anyone of you is without sinful intentions, let him cast the first stone", which was what the pastor was arguing for the interpretation of this verse to be.  That Jesus was saying that their motives for such judgement were sinful, and thus they cannot pass the sentence of the Law.  But Jesus did not say that!  I feel like that was eisegesis, rather than exegesis... putting things into the Bible to make it make sense.  Jesus clearly said that if anyone is without sin, let them be the first to throw the stone.  Furthermore, after they all had left, Jesus told the woman that because none of the others had condemned her, then neither will he.  Surely Jesus' motives/intent is pure.... but he does not pass judgement either.

The question then, is the role of the Mosaic Law, and Jesus' abiding to it.  Throughout the gospels, Jesus was always a good Jew.  He fulfilled all the requirements, did everything he was supposed to.  His "breaking" of the Sabbath was in fact a breaking of the extra traditions imposed through the line of the religious leaders, and not breaking of the Law itself.  And yet in this case, we see clearly that Jesus is suggesting that it's okay to break the Law.  Now Christians will find it easy to accept.  Of course Jesus would favour love and mercy and forgiveness over the Law; and nowadays we don't follow a lot of the Law anyway.  But I'm confused to why Jesus would suggest it that clearly.  Is Jesus saying to the people of that time that they shouldn't be allowed to pass judgement (as a government) over those who do wrong?  Surely not??

It goes back to my question of whether this passage belong in the Bible in the first place....hm..

Pilot

Theological college has been a great experience and a continual blessing to me.  It has raised many questions and reflections.

Unfortunately often I'm caught up in writing essays and answering questions and doing homework... I think and reflect upon many things...but have no place to gather my thoughts.  Sometimes the thought is only very small..very fleeting.

Thus I have decided to start this blog, mainly has a place to put my questions, my reflections, my learning, and hopefully some answers as well.  I don't really mind if people read it or not... the main point is for me to be able to collage my floating thoughts.

Of course I am very much not an essay/writing person.  In fact writing is my weakest area, being heavily trained in the field of science and health.  Thus please do not expect any great crafting of the pen (or the keyboard in this case).