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Episcopacy and "Gender Ideology"

Episcopacy and "Gender Ideology"

By Dave Doveton
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
July 26, 2015

Introduction

Since the Anglican Church of Southern Africa at its Provincial Synod of 1992 approved the ordination of women to the priesthood, there have been no serious theological debates within the church about the role of women in the ordained ministry nor of the nature of episcopacy -- or indeed whether the episcopate should be open to both men and women. These matters appear to have been taken as settled once the church lawyers announced that there were no canonical impediments to the consecration of women as bishops. Instead of a synodical decision making process, in effect canon lawyers decided a major ecclesiological issue for the church by deciding that there were no decisions to be taken! In practical terms, episcopacy seems to have been regarded as another step on a career ladder, and once the ladder had been 'opened to all', women logically had the right to the 'top position'. Any questions of ecclesiology or the nature of ordained ministry had to kow-tow to the juggernaut of gender ideology, any questioning of the validity of consecrating a woman bishop would be dismissed as recalcitrant males defending their last outpost of power in the church. But is church order really about power relations, or more about roles and functions -- and are there arguments of theological and biblical integrity which can be marshaled to support orthodox objections to allowing women bishops?

The first two women bishops in the ACSA were consecrated in 2013 thus including Southern Africa in the four Provinces of the Anglican Communion which had already done so. Women have been elevated to the episcopate in sections of Anglicanism, as well as the Church of Sweden, and among the Old Catholics of the Utrecht Union, Presbyterians (moderators), Lutherans, sections of Methodism. Some Free Evangelical, United Church of Christ and Baptist churches have women in top oversight positions (some have differing church polity, so they don't call them bishops).

Recently the retired assistant Bishop of Massachusetts was invited to be guest of honour at a celebratory function in this province. This is the same Barbara Harris who in 2009, publicly denied the sacrament of marriage at a "gay Eucharist" sponsored by the Episcopal Church's homosexual advocacy group, Integrity at the General Convention. She has been an active campaigner to change the theology, morality and polity of the Episcopal Church to the point at which we are today where this church officially preaches and practices a false gospel. Many local observers of her visit wondered about the message this visit was sending out. While there may be women in the episcopate who adhere to Christian belief as classically formulated, she epitomizes the current doctrinal and cosmological shifts that have occurred within many major protestant denominations in the past decades and to which I shall refer in greater detail below.

My approach in this paper will be based on an examination of the New Testament foundations for church order within wider cosmological issues. I will examine whether the current cultural obsessions with 'equality' are actually faithful to the biblical witness to the purpose of human sexual identity. I will also examine the influence of modern ideologies of gender and excessive individualism on our contemporary ecclesiologies.

Ecclesiology: what is the purpose of the church?

Ephesians outlines God's purpose for the church, and thus in a broad sense the theological basis of ecclesiology: "that God's manifold wisdom may be made manifest to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places". The problem of the fall outlined by Paul in this letter, is that humans are estranged from God and from each other and this state of affairs is a perversion of God's original ordering of the cosmos -- a single undivided human race, subject to God's sovereignty. This disordered cosmos does not reflect God's wisdom. However in Christ, God has restored this order -- redemption is a recreation, a restoration of God's original purpose. The church as the fruit of Christ's redemption is called to display this restored order in two ways

1) By displaying one new humanity where there are no divisions on the basis of class, colour, nationality, or any other humanly constructed boundaries.

2) By submission to God's sovereignty -- in practical terms obeying Christ as Lord, following the commandments of God and submitting to both the authority structures God has placed within his creation and ordered in his church.

A church order then which is faithful to the New Testament will be based on these two principles. It follows that no form of church government can contradict these principles, especially in terms of displaying what it means to be a redeemed and recreated humanity.

The New Testament: the model for church order

Scripture sets out certain authority structures and hierarchies. It assigns roles and functions with corresponding mandates and it also commands submission to those placed in authority. For example in the natural order, Christians are required to submit to magistrates and other civil authorities with the reason being that God himself has ordered all authority (Romans 13:1-5). Similarly, children are required to submit to their parents and all Christians are asked to submit to those placed in spiritual authority over them.

Of course, in the church Jesus is our ultimate authority, the head, the name above every name. He is also the paradigm of authority and submission; in Philippians 2:6 ff we read, " though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.." New Testament scholar, Denny Burke notes how the concepts of 'grasping for equality' and 'emptying himself' are put in opposition . If Jesus in his pre-existence had grasped for equality it would have prevented his taking the form of a servant. However Jesus did decide for incarnation and thus did not grasp equality of authority. Jesus voluntarily subordinated himself to the Father. This does not change the fact that he still has the form of God -- he is ontologically equal with the Father. Each person of the trinity has differing functions, and there is a hierarchy of functional authority revealed in the economy of salvation -- which reveals the eternal trinity. God is the eternal Father, Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father. However in essence each person is in the form of God -- ontologically equal. Thus in the Trinity ontological equality does not imply equality of function -- the son does not take over the function of the Father as the one who sends the son into the world, nor the Father the function of the Son who redeems humankind -- this includes functional authority. We can see this in creation; a magistrate may have authority over me, that does not mean I am in any way inferior to the magistrate. In an ordered world the magistrate is a 'servant' of God, he has a functional role. In the same way the church has an order of authority. In this order of authority there is an office or function which is in the New Testament assigned to men. This is the office of 'episcopos' or overseer. In the letter to Timothy the qualifications of an 'episcopos' are clearly set out. One of these qualifications is that an 'episcopos' be a man who has been married only once (1 Timothy 2:12-15).

The Household of God

In Ephesians 2: 19 Christians are called members of the 'household of God'. This description is part of a general theme in Ephesians which uses family imagery to describe our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. God is Father in person and in role (1:3), he has adopted us as beloved sons/daughters, he is The Father from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named (3:14, 15). It is a major motif describing the church -- used again in 1 Timothy 3:15 and Titus 1:7.

There are many parallels drawn in the New Testament between God's order for marriage and the family and God's order for the church. In 1 Timothy 3 1-7, Paul lists the qualifications for a bishop. Among these is the requirement that he be the husband of one wife and that his suitability for oversight is gauged by his ability to manage his own family household. Polythress summarises the thrust of Paul's instructions more broadly in 1 Timothy 3:15; "According to Paul, the fundamental principles regarding the structures of the human family are to be applied to the church as God's household" . In line with this, Paul further instructs that qualified men are to be appointed as bishops (in the same way that a father has oversight of his family). Paul distinguishes very carefully the roles of men and women. Just as men and women are not interchangeable within families, nor are their roles interchangeable and thus reversible within the church. His prohibition of the teaching/authority role for a woman in the church flow naturally from his theology of creation and the role of the wife in marriage. In Ephesians 5:22-24 he makes it clear that the husbands headship reflects the headship of Christ over his church. Husband and wife have different roles and functions. The husband has the role of headship/authority. The roles are gender specific and not interchangeable - just as the church cannot exercise headship over Christ, so a wife cannot exercise headship over her husband. If headship roles are not interchangeable, a woman cannot exercise headship over men in the church. He refers clearly to Adams primacy in 1 Tim 2:12 as an appeal to creation order. His secondary reason for the prohibition has to do with the role of oversight in respect of teaching authority. The bishop is the guardian of the faith, the one ultimately responsible to reprove false teaching. If the bishop is easily deceived, how will the church effectively stand against the ever present danger of false teachers? (one of the main themes in Timothy which repeats the concerns in his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:17ff). His implication in verse 14 is that men are in general not as easily deceived and thus should exercise the teaching oversight. It should be pointed out that when Paul describes some of the false teachers (3:1-9) he refers to them as 'men'... 'who oppose the truth', so neither gender is blameless in this connection.

This vision of the nature of the church and ecclesiological authority structure, so clearly articulated in the New Testament is what those who campaign for women bishops are most vehemently against. One of those at the forefront of this campaign in England is Vicky Beeching who co-runs the Yes 2 Women Bishops campaign and hosts a website "Faith in Feminism". To support her ideological re-imaging of ecclesiology she canvasses sympathetic academic Linda Woodhead who bemoans what she identifies as 'paternalism' as something to be eradicated from the life of the church. Woodhead defines 'paternalism': "In the narrow sense "paternalism" means the rule of fathers. The father is the head of the family, with women and children depending on his leadership and discipline. His rule should be kindly and benevolent -- like God the Father -- but he's still the master..." . She is clear that for the church to be acceptable to feminism, "Fatherhood" as embodied in the life and structures of the church has to go; "And the most depressing -- if you care about Christianity and feminism -- has been so many churches' refusal to embrace this change and let go of... paternalism." It's part of their core symbolism and language -- 'Abba' God the Father, 'Papa' the pope, 'Father' the priest -- and it's mirrored in their structures and hierarchies of power. Talk about the church as a 'family' is usually a reflection of this -- it's a family under a father(s).

What is clear is that this is much more than advocacy for the structures of the church to be more representative, for more openness to the voices of women, or youth -- it is a virulent campaign against Fatherhood itself. As we have seen, the language of Fatherhood is at the core of Christianity. It is the basis for our understanding of the Godhead; it is the basis for our understanding of salvation -- we are adopted legally as children of the Father and thus it is the basis for our understanding of our very identity as Christians.

Cosmological Issues

Women Bishops and the 'divine feminine'

It is no accident that women bishops and the rise of the 'divine feminine' are contemporaneous phenomena. Neither are either phenomena new -- they exist and are linked as far back as at least the 3rd century AD when the bishops of the province of Asia declared the Montanist sect as heretical. Epiphanus in his refutations of heresy contained in Panarion, records a tradition in which a female 'Jesus' appears to one of the women leaders of the sect in a dream or vision. Their founder, he says, is Quintilla, along with Priscilla who was also a Phrygian prophetess, and further notes that "...They have woman bishops, presbyters and the rest; they say that none of this makes any difference because 'In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female (Gal 3:28)'." So the precedent of using Galatians 3:28 out of context goes back at least 17 centuries!

Tertullian observed that Gnostic churches gave women important administrative and theological responsibilities. Irenaeus in his refutation of heresies warned against a Gnostic woman leader named Marcellina who he says, "led multitudes astray" when she appeared in Rome around the middle of the 2nd century. Two prominent female leaders of the Valentinian sect, Flora -- who lived in the 2nd century and Flavia Sophe a leader and teacher from the early 3rd century -- are also known to us.

Most Gnostic sects of the 3rd and 4th centuries had a view of God as an androgynous being in whom male and female principles exist simultaneously. Elaine Pagels, a respected scholar of Gnostic belief summarises their view of this co-existence as "a harmonious dynamic relationship of opposites" . This belief in the divine 'feminine' manifested in many forms among Gnostic groups and made its way into liturgies such as found in the Gospel of Thomas, where God is addressed as 'mother' and 'father'. Gnostics follow the Eastern idea of perfection, which is the undifferentiated unity of all things. The co-existence of male and female principles within the godhead point to a deeper belief -- that the ultimate being is one where all attributes are transcended, all opposites merged and all distinctions abolished.

In our day the resurgence of belief in a 'divine feminine' has happened at the same time as the elevation of women to offices of oversight such as bishop, within many churches. In an interview published in "Christian Feminism Today" Jann Aldredge-Clanton speaks about the connection she uncovered between women in church oversight and the 'divine feminine' while researching her book . She states, "I began the book with a curiosity about ministers who are changing the church through changing worship language and imagery to include the Divine Feminine. My hunch was that other social justice changes would flow from this foundational theological change. I did indeed discover that ministers who include female divine names and images in worship also take prophetic stands on race, class, sexual orientation, ecology, and other social justice issues...(they)... believe that it is vital to include biblical female divine names and images in worship in order to have justice for women and all creation."

Leaving aside the category confusion involved in the linking of homosexuality with race as a justice issue, we note how Aldredge-Clanton, a self confessed feminist demonstrates empirically the linking of the divine feminine with female oversight in the church. Also we note her linking of the divine feminine with 'a prophetic stand on sexual orientation issues' (meaning in the context, acceptance of homosexual behaviour). Aldredge-Clanton highlights the central hermeneutical key to this whole debate -- spirituality is indissolubly linked to sexuality.

In Judeo-Christian terms, monotheism is linked with heterosexuality. Gore Vidal, the celebrated homosexual writer, often attacked Christians and monotheists. In an essay he called monotheism a 'sky-god', patriarchal religion, "the great unmentionable evil at the centre of our culture" and perceptively blamed the existence of a binding heterosexuality on monotheism. Vidal is absolutely correct in his assertion that heterosexuality requires monotheism. In Romans 1:18-32, Paul teaches quite clearly that when human beings abandon their belief in a Creator God transcendent and separate from his creation (a 'sky God'), they begin to worship creation itself as divine. This is the descent into pagan spirituality, and pagan spirituality says Paul, has its concomitant sexuality -- androgyny. Exchanging the worship of the true creator God for the worship of creation sets in motion an historical process within a culture in which there will be an exchange of heterosexual behaviour for homosexual.

In short, androgyny is the sacrament of pagan spirituality -- where God is seen as both male and female. A dyadic type of deity results when we project the feminine onto God, because we return to the pagan understanding of God. In this understanding, the Godhead is a dynamic interplay of masculine and feminine principles. This is a strong feature of Gnostic Christianity which was one of the first heresies in the early church . This understanding of God is reappearing with massive force today, sweeping all in the culture before it -- together with many church denominations.

Scholars such as Peter Jones assert that we are in a cosmological battle for the meaning of existence as either monist (Creation is part of God -- it is divine) or Theistic (God is separate in his being from creation), and gender is at the heart of this debate. Distinctions are being erased in a systematic kind of way in all areas of life, reconfiguring western culture along totally pagan lines. More and more 'Christian' feminist writers praise the wonders of "androgyny" which June Singer, the Jungian Gnostic, in 1977 already identified as "a sacrament of monism."

Karl Jung's theories have been standard teaching in western theological seminaries for two generations. Jung's basic notion was the "conjuctio oppositorum," the joining of the opposites, that is the breaking of the binaries in creation of male and female, good and evil and ultimately God and creation. A subtle agenda has been developing in the last 20 years which has promoted an androgynous ideology of what it means to be a human person. That is, that there are no inherently male or female behaviours; that all behaviour is socially conditioned. This flies in the face of the best and most recent neuroscience observations which tell us that we are hard wired to behave in certain ways corresponding to our roles as men and women, husbands and wives. More importantly it is against biblical anthropology.

Ideological egalitarianism is the philosophical base for this programme of "transformation" and it operates on the basis of 'claimed rights'- resulting in a scorched earth policy which makes no real provision for those who don't subscribe to that particular ideological frame of reference believing it is antithetical to the gospel and a Christian worldview. Heterosexual marriage is a particular target because marriage is the icon of 'heteronormativity' and the sacrament of a theistic universe, also a witness to God's binary creation order. Thus marriage is attacked and in its place another icon is erected -- androgyny -- and androgyny (in various forms) is the sexual icon of pagan monism.

Prof Stephen Smith had already discerned in the early 1990's that there was a war being waged between two diametrically opposed worldviews -- the worldview of classical theism and that of religious monism. He also foresaw that embracing the monist worldview would result in a change in the language used in liturgy and in preaching .

This has indeed been the outcome. Our worldview is being subtly shifted from a Judeo-Christian basis to a pagan basis -- this through the deconstruction of the very language we use to define ourselves and our relationships: mother, father, brother sister. In civil society throughout Western democracies basic documents which carry our identities are being changed. For example, the French government has proposed the elimination of the terms 'mother' and 'father' on official French documents; in the United Kingdom similar proposals have been made to eliminate the terms on birth certificates, while in South Africa they have also been eliminated on certain official documents. In Charlotte, North Carolina there are pre-schools where teachers cannot address the children as 'boys' or 'girls' because that would be gender 'discrimination'; American culture generally is moving towards the attitude that even referring to your husband or wife instead of the gender-neutral term 'partner' is construed as hate speech. In Spain birth certificates list parents as 'progenitors' not mothers or fathers.

The deconstrction of gender roles is part of a wider phenomenon to reorder society according to a model that is anti-Christian, anti-human and anti-life. Because this new order is not 'natural' in the biblical sense of 'being according to Gods creative purpose and plan', it will need to be enforced and that is why we increasingly see a loss of religious freedom in the West.

Doctrinal Issues:

"...the economic Trinity (the Trinity as it acts in the economy of creation and redemption) reveals the immanent Trinity (the Trinity as it is in eternity)"

This is classical Trinitarian theology formulated by Tertullian and used by Athanasius against Arius. Orthodox Trinitarian theology holds that there is a form of equality which is asymmetrical -- ie the persons are equal in being -- fully God (in their eternal immanence) while at the same time fully unique. They are not interchangeable -- the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct, different and unique. The persons of the Trinity are complementary but also equal. Moreover in the economic Trinity there is a submission -- Jesus submits to the Father, while at the same time he is ontologically equal.

The nature of the Trinity in classical doctrine is therefore a complementary equality where there is also a process of submission. Why was this important in the struggle against Arianism?

Arianism taught that Jesus had a beginning -- so was separate from the Father and also subservient to him. Jesus, Arius believed was divine but not equal to the Father, because he was a created being. He thus denied that it was possible to have two persons ontologically equal but differing in function. His opponents demonstrated that the outcome of this was the devaluation of Jesus -- he could not be fully God. Nicean orthodoxy means that we DO believe that persons of the Godhead are equal in being, but not equal in role.

Because we are made in the image of God, male and female, one would expect this complementary nature also to be reflected in the relationship between male and female. University of Texas Professor of Philosophy Jack Budzisziewski states, "if God is personal, and we are his image, then it pertains to our essence that we are personal, too. And if two kinds of personal reality are required to image him--male and female--then male and female must complement each other not just in gross anatomy but in the root of their personhood" .

The scripture teaches that human beings created as male and female are ontologically equal but not interchangeable. This doctrine is made concrete in the role of male and female as husbands and wives, and in the church in terms of its functional ordering with male oversight.

The proponents of women bishops usually argue, as we have said from the basis of an egalitarian understanding of equality in which there are symmetrical relations of independence. This understanding will not tolerate the essential Trinitarian and complementarian understanding of equality in which two persons are unique and ontologically equal, yet have different roles and status. This is semi-Arianism, and it is an unbiblical understanding.

The model of equality employed by campaign for women bishops is a secular humanist one -- "these models derive from a notion of symmetrical relations of independence, based on the idea that each person is an autonomous individual, with a centre of consciousness capable of radical freedom and agency" This is strikingly similar to the argument for gay bishops -- a person may be female or gay but they cannot be prevented from serving in any office of the church, or denied access to any institution.

It is an ideological egalitarianism in which the relationships between genders are totally symmetrical and their respective roles interchangeable because the ontological equality of genders is assumed to be indivisible from their economic equality. Here, gender is just a biological accident -- it is not significant theologically . This is not what is meant by Galatians 3:28, which I believe is basically saying that we are all -- Jew Gentile, male female -- ontologically equal with respect to our justification through faith. We all receive the same justification (the whole of Galatians is about the free gift of salvation, we do not come under law anymore). Nowhere in this passage does Paul mention ministry or church order.

What does Paul teach about male and female then? In marriage there is a divinely instituted order; Ephesians 5:22-33: "For the husband is the head (kephale) of the wife as Christ is head of the church". The husband thus has the spiritual responsibility for his marriage. His admonition to husbands -- "husbands love you wives as Christ loved the church", implies that it is a servant headship willing to sacrifice all for the beloved. It is a complementarian model. "In the same way.." is repeated, stressing the asymmetrical nature of submission here, and verse 29 explains why -- because his wife is now his own flesh -- the rejoining of what was previously divided at creation.

Further it is a mystery, and it refers to the relationship between Christ and the Church. In other words, before creation God had already decided that marriage would be an icon of Christ's love for us -- of the gospel. Insofar as the husband exercises Christ-like headship and the wife respects him, to that extent will people hear and see the gospel, and the relationship between Jesus and his church. Notice the implications. Christ and the church are not interchangeable and their roles are thus not reversible; The church does not create, redeem or have any authority over the Lord Jesus. In Paul's theology the husband plays a very similar role towards his wife that Christ plays towards us. He is responsible spiritually for her to nurture and sanctify her; he must be willing to sacrifice absolutely everything for her.

The flip side of headship or authority is submission. Submission according to Peter belongs to the very essence of Christian discipleship (no discipleship without submission). Christ is our model in his submission to the Father -- in like manner we submit to him. Not only do we submit to Christ, we also submit to divinely ordained structures. The misuse or abuse of those authority structures do not obviate our obligation to submit to them. We do not throw out the institution of judges just because there is a corrupt judge, we do not throw out the institutions of power or instruments of secular governance just because there are corrupt and high handed politicians who abuse their authority. We know that authority structures are part of God's providence for his creation, meant for the good ordering of societies.

Submission in the Biblical sense means to "sit under, be still and contemplate" (it does not mean submit to oppression or slavery). It "is ennobling because it recognizes and rejoices in the holy distinctions that are dignified in the structures of creation". The Apostle Peter affirms that there is a universal call to submission (1 Peter 2:11-13) -- we all should submit to rulers, wives to husbands. It is at the heart of what it means to imitate Christ -- to be a disciple - These distinctions mean nothing if male/female are interchangeable, thus egalitarianism is an impossible concept to fit the husband /wife relationship into.

Paul returns to these creation structures when he addresses the question of church oversight (episcopos) in 1 Timothy 2:11-3:1 Here he teaches that the bishop's role is the spiritual headship of the church and the guardian of its teaching ministry. His duty is to guard the faith and protect the flock against false teaching. The Greek didaskalai -- means the "careful transmission of received tradition about Christ and the authoritative proclamation of God's will in the light of that tradition"

The reference is to Adams primacy -- in Hebrew "first or beginning" has a chronological meaning as well as conveying the idea of hierarchical authority. Bereshith meaning "In the beginning" -- is the first word of the bible emphasizing the authority and pre-eminence of the creator -- Genesis has to do with divine order and structures of authority. It is from the same Hebrew root that we get Roshe -- a prince or ruler. Paul picks up and affirms that the creation order is not thrown out in Christ, but wonderfully redeemed, deepened and perfected. Men are still responsible before God for their wives. Here Paul is applying it to church order and particularly the apostolic teaching and oversight function -- this is the foundation of his reason for prohibiting the oversight of women. The bishops are to be guardians of the truth and the way people are led away from the truth is through deception. Eve is a reminder that the deception in Eden consisted in Eve taking the initiative away from Adam -- she usurped his role. This is corroborated by the fact that the Lord did not approach Eve as bearing ultimate responsibility, but Adam. Paul also refers to the creational structures instituted by God (and thus not the result of the fall!) in 1 Corinthians 11: 1-16. He always speaks about authority structures in the family and the church on the basis of a doctrine of creation. Thus his teachings on family order and church order which convey his beliefs about authority structures are given to different churches and different cultures -- Corinth, Ephesus etc. They are thus not culture bound, but meant to be universal apostolic teaching, and therefore normative for the church. Petrine teaching (1 Peter 3:1-7) echoes and reinforces Paul's teaching on the role of male and female within marriage and the ordering of the church life so that men have the role of ultimate responsibility. This is consistent with a Christian and more broadly Biblical cosmology.

Pagan cosmology denies the distinctions in the created order. It firstly denies the distinction between Humans and God (creator and creature), because pagans worship the created order as divine. Because the male/female distinctions are a reflecting pool of the truth about the relationship between God and humanity, paganism denies these distinctions. While heterosexual marriage is a metaphor for the Christian cosmos, androgyny is the pagan ideal -- the undifferentiated merging of male and female. This takes several forms -- homosexuality being one. Paganism denies the binary nature of the universe -- male / female, God/humanity, good/evil. Pagans believe all is one and all is in God, they believe in the undifferentiated unity of all things which has been called "monism" or "one-ism".

Discipleship

1 and 2 Timothy contain the clearest instructions on church order in the New Testament. The qualifications for the office of overseer (episcopos) are outlined in 1 Tim 3 1-7, but the directions to Timothy himself who was the first bishop of the Ephesian church are also instructive.

Firstly, his personal witness and example are essential to his office and ministry (1:3-8); but secondly he is a guardian of the faith who has both received the core doctrine of the faith from Paul who was entrusted with it (1:12) and must pass it on to other men who are suitably qualified (2:1-2). Discipleship, as in the gospels, is essential to the healthy functioning of the church. This implies a powerful personal dynamic -- a relationship between disciple and his mentor/teacher. In the case of bishops it is an even more vital one, for they pass on the rule of faith -- the standard of true and correct teaching by which all doctrine and teaching in the church is judged. This apostolic function, says Paul must be handed on to men. We must certainly ask why.

Allow me some conjecture here, although I believe I have enough corroboration from scripture and the social sciences. Jesus ministered to men and women in different ways -- why is this significant? Discipleship is gender specific, it is caught, not purely inductively taught. In other words a woman may be an excellent example of Christian virtues, but she cannot pass on Christian manhood. It takes a man of God to disciple another man of God. This is because of both a spiritual dynamic (impartation) and the fact that male and female are different physically, as well as spiritually. These different attributes fit them for their roles in the family and the church. In 1 Corinthians 11 where Paul addresses the issue of why a married woman should display a symbol of authority (i.e. the fact that she is married) he notes that women receive their identity through man (v 7) whereas men receive life from women. Men receive their identity from a father figure, ultimately from God the Father. In Ephesians 3:14, 15 he teaches that all fatherhood derives from God the Father. Earlier (Eph. 2:19) he calls the church the 'household of God'. Here is the significance of the metaphor: the church is a household with a father.

Paul's reasons then for insisting on male spiritual oversight of the family and the church are rooted in the doctrine of creation. God's purpose in creating male and female is that they would be complementary; that this complementarity means that our created natures with different strengths and weaknesses are meant to complement one another, so that together we are stronger. This implies that we are not interchangeable, nor are we independent of one another, nor are we independent of each other's roles. Just as a father and mother co-operate and exercise roles in the bringing up of children, gender specific roles, there are gender specific roles in the church. Each needs both to exercise their role and also respect the role of the other.

In the New Testament, discipleship produces growth -- both in terms of maturity in the individual Christian, and by extension in the church. Christians who are growing in maturity are those who are engaging others, bringing them to Christ and discipling others. It follows logically that where there is dysfunctional discipleship, there will be little growth both in terms of maturity and in terms of numbers.

It is not therefore a matter of a few scriptures that can be appealed to , as if the argument depended on how we interpret a verse or two. It is rather the whole thrust of an ecclesiology which is based on a doctrine of creation and redemption.

Is this a question of equal rights?

The argument for women bishops is usually framed in terms of equality; Gender is irrelevant, women are just as capable of doing the tasks that men do. To exclude women on the basis of gender would be unjust and against human rights. These foundational concepts of 'equality' and 'rights' are taken as essential components of a progressive society. To disagree would be to 'regress' in some way to a morally inferior position. However the argument is based upon a secular western liberal ideology that I do not believe to be biblical.

The Western liberal concept of rights is a concept based on absolute personal autonomy: i.e. I have the absolute right to define the meaning and purpose of my own life. This in turn rests upon the concept of a human person as autonomous, self referencing and needing to express themselves through lifestyle choices. I have the right to exercise my freedom to choose a career path in line with this self-defined purpose. As a prominent Catholic theologian has noted, "If freedom is considered only as the exercise of free will, freedom can be exercised even without any relationship with truth. If, however, freedom is considered as a right whose exercise is linked to good, then freedom does not exist outside the relationship with truth..." In other words, freedom is only freedom, if I decide for the good (if I don't I am a slave of sin). In the Christian sense that means I decide to fulfill not my own will, but the purpose for which I was created. A more biblical understanding of rights is the 'natural law' understanding in which rights are grounded in and protect obligations, not autonomy. In this understanding my obligation is to seek the good for myself and others, and rights protect this obligation. I only really have a right to decide according to the truth about the human person as revealed in the natural order, and in scripture. Indeed as John Paul II observed, "To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, "rejoices in the truth" (1 Cor 13:6). To seek the truth and articulate it is a supreme act of love.

The gender ideology upon which pro-women bishops arguments are based is in fact a Gnostic ideology -- that the truth about human beings is not signified by their biology and physiology. In this ideology male and female are purely a social construct and we can be who we want to be. Indeed we can be anything we desire. Gnosticism held that material reality was to be rejected as a source of truth which would direct us to 'the good'. Truth and human well-being came from an inner knowledge or 'gnosis'. So human beings reject biology as signifying their sexual nature and thus their purpose and they construct another category expressing the truth about sexual nature -- orientation, or "what I desire". My desires are what really informs me about 'who I am' As Rod Dreher has put it, To be modern is to believe in one's individual desires as the locus of authority and self-definition. Because desire can manifest itself in an infinite variety so then 'who I am' is infinitely plastic and malleable . A Eucharistic liturgy used by the homosexualist group "Integrity" of the Episcopal Church expresses this Gnostic empire of desire perfectly;

"Spirit of Life, we thank you for disordering our boundaries and releasing our desires as we prepare this feast of delight, Draw us out of hidden places and centers of conformity to feel your laughter and live in your pleasure...."

This modern Gnostic culture, notes George Weigel, "...dismisses out of hand the very notion that there is a morally significant givenness to reality: a structure of The Way Things Are that can be discerned by reason and that, being known, discloses certain truths about the way we should live." Because the Church has accepted the basic premise of the culture it drifts with the cultural mindset and it no longer stands as a counter cultural beacon -- fixed amidst shifting sands. It can no longer stand as a bulwark of the truth because its institutions express another vision of reality - it has become captive to the spirit of the age.

Further, the Christological interpretation of marriage in Ephesians is that it is a sign of the love Christ has for his Church. The intelligibility of this sign depends on the reality of male and female bodies and the significance of biological sexual difference. The gospel becomes incoherent if not meaningless if male and female are interchangeable -- if biological difference is unimportant. If like Gnostics we reject the belief that our embodied gender corresponds to the reality of the 'self', we have separated our bodies from ourselves. In this understanding, we use our bodies, they are instruments we use to obtain pleasure or do a task or a job of work -- we degrade the idea of personhood to one that is merely instrumental -- so we say "if a person can do the job what does it matter if it is a man or a woman?" A bishop in the church of God is more than a functionary, he is a sign because male episcopacy manifests Christ as the head of the Church. That sign becomes confused, if not unintelligible if a woman is a bishop.

When a new order is proposed which is predicated on the obliteration of gender, the human body is denied its deepest and most fundamental meaning -- male or female. It is actually not self evident because it is not a historical claim (except if you count the heretical sects) but it is a counterclaim to the prevailing order, a protest against male bishops. But where does this project spring from? how did it become immoral to have only male bishops? We have seen the one root as being the logical outcome of a radically individualistic anthropology in which human beings are understood as autonomous, self referencing and entitled to the freedom to 'be' whatever they choose.

The other root of this novelty is found in a new cosmology. As I have tried to illustrate, it is not a Christian cosmology, but a pagan one. A cosmology is simply the way that people and cultures perceive and order reality. It is the framework by which we structure our moral order and the ground in which we root our most basic beliefs and behaviour. Usually it also orders the relationship of the physical with the metaphysical.

In every cosmology there is an ordering principle. In Christian cosmology the ordering principle is the word of God. It is God who creates and orders his creation by his word. God as King and Lord of the Church is no less responsible for ordering its pattern of life and its principles of polity. These are set out in the New Testament and to them we have already referred. Pagan ideology dismisses the Word of God as the ordering principle. Its basic impulse is towards the obliteration of all created distinctions. However order is needed in every sphere of life, so the world is reordered to conform to a pagan cosmology, a pagan understanding of reality. One such example is Marxism. Marxism proposes that history is the record of a struggle for power within societies -- between classes. That struggle for power becomes the way of defining reality, all must be understood in its light. The ordering principle in Marxism is class struggle. Substitute gender for class and we have the struggle for power between male and female. Dale O'Leary describes how John Money advanced theories of 'gender identity' which were then given a Marxist twist: "Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists combined (Money's) concept of gender identity as socially constructed with the Marxist idea that all history is the history of class struggle. According to their gender theory, the first class struggle was between men and women and women were the first oppressed class and all social differences between men and women were not natural, but made up by men to oppress women. According to this gender theory, the way to eliminate the oppression of women was to eliminate all social differences between men and women. This would be achieved by mainstreaming a gender perspective under which every societal recognition of the differences between men and women would be labeled a stereotype and eradicated. Quotas would be imposed so that men and women would participate in every activity in society in statistically equal numbers and receive statistically equal power and rewards. Any deviation from absolute statistical equality would be regarded as evidence of sexist discrimination."

As these ideas have become more mainstream in the culture at large it is easy to see how church order came to be understood primarily in terms of power. To put it crudely, men have the power, women want it. In the late 1990's systematic theologians like William Abraham were making incisive analysis of the trend. He noted, "There is now abroad in theology a form of Radical Protestantism which constitutes a whole new vision of Christian faith and existence. Its proponents claim that the tradition is dominated by patriarchy and exclusion, the product of oppressive forces linked to geographical location, social class, race, and gender. It is not to be tolerated, but stamped out and destroyed." The church has absorbed both the cosmological presuppositions and the gender ideology that prevails in the world. It has seen the issue of church order in terms of class/gender struggle, diagnoses a problem and then goes to the extent of prescribing the same solution. In the New Testament authority is given to leaders not to facilitate the exercise of a political power over others, but to serve. It is given to perform a role, a function. Jesus himself understood that the leadership role would become subject to power aspirations, and warned against this .(It seems that the Lord predicted a gender struggle in Genesis , but interestingly his solution was not to give women the headship, or an equal share, but to recall both men and women to their intended roles in creation).

Pope Benedict accurately observed one of the Gnostic pillars of this new gender ideology "According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves." And also that human beings have a nature that is 'given', not self constructed; defined by their biological identity. Benedict then draws our attention to a further implication of denying that male and female as created are complementary versions of what it means to be human. "...if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation" . This must have its theological equivalence in the Church. Just as we can decide what compromises a family, we can decide what the Church is and who makes up the church. If we can decide on our own identity without reference to the will of the creator, we can decide on the composition of the Church without reference to our creator and redeemer. The so-called 'radical gospel of inclusion' preached by leaders in the American Episcopal Church is a logical outcome. Not only do human beings become divorced from reality, the Church order they promulgate will also.

The Jewish sociologist Philip Rieff, observed that in early, classical Christian culture, the first line to be drawn between Christian culture and pagan culture was in the area of the understanding of human sexuality and sexual behavior "the rejection of sexual individualism......was the consensual matrix of Christian culture" . He saw that the rejection of individualistic sexual autonomy and polymorphous sensuality of pagan culture were at the heart of Christian culture. Paradoxically it is the very reverse to which the Christian church is now succumbing. In some parts of the world it is leading the charge.

Is this a question of justice ?

Proponents of women bishops by and large see the issue in terms of justice and equality, so they say it is unjust to deny a woman the right to become a bishop. But is it an issue of justice?

Harvard professor Michael Sandell points out that every construal of justice assumes an a priori view of right and wrong and of human nature --it is not empirical, nor is it totally objective, but based on a belief system . Concepts like 'equality' and 'freedom' are in the end empty concepts -- they are often used as pretexts for advancing another ethic behind which is a hidden belief system. "Justice" is not self-evident, it can only be ascertained when you know the purpose of human beings. As Christians we believe that human purpose is defined by the Creator who has given clear indications of that purpose in scripture. His laws when obeyed, lead to human flourishing, when disobeyed they lead to human brokenness, disintegration, discord.

We can compare these arguments for women bishops to the arguments advanced for 'gay marriage'. It was an argument framed in terms of equality and justice --'equal marriage' was the slogan in the streets. The campaign for gay marriage is in fact a campaign to alter the definition of marriage. Marriage is clearly defined in scripture as being the union of one man and one woman, an institution created to advance the flourishing of human beings by establishing the foundation of family life and the secure environment which is the optimal for the raising of children.

So too the campaign for women bishops is a campaign to alter the definition of a bishop by eliminating the gender qualification. Altering the definition of a bishop would also have an effect on the institution of which bishops are a part. This institution, like marriage and family is intended for human flourishing both of the members within the institution (the church) but also the wider society of which the church is part. Paul calls it 'a pillar and bulwark of the truth' . Truth is something which must not only be preached, but modeled and models are not neutral, they either point to the truth or to something that is false. Because the Church has accepted the basic premise of the culture, it drifts with the cultural mindset and it no longer stands as a counter cultural beacon -- fixed amidst shifting sands. It can no longer stand as a witness to the truth because its institutions express another vision of reality - it has become captive to the spirit of the age. It speaks a gospel-sounding language, but it witnesses to a false reality.

Writing about the effect of 'same-sex marriage' ideology, Anthony McCarthy writes on the implications of the ideology underlying same-sex 'marriage'. The result of jettisoning male and female as fundamental markers of human identity and substituting the category of 'orientation' based on what we 'desire' or 'wish to be' results in the fundamental sexual polarity of male and female being reduced and made arbitrary. "We, as apparently disembodied beings, now decide on what we 'are' and wish to be, and the law must be made to fit our desires".... "Against the grain of real biological differences is constructed a vision of the world in which the human body is drained of meaning, and mere 'orientation', not the body, is all. This new vision of the person is radically anti-familial insofar as it denies the very polarity, with all its rich meaning, that our bodies have from our conception" i.e. If we are to claim the authority to define what our roles and behaviour are to be in life, without any reference to our created nature as primarily sexually defined by our creator we paradoxically deny the meaning of our bodies. David Crawford elaborates further on the attempt to redefine marriage based on what he calls 'liberal androgynous anthropology'; "The liberal movement of the extension of the right to marry same-sex partners is ... a tacit step towards the anthropological nullification of sexuality and gender altogether. Whatever the new right to marriage would be, the one thing it cannot be is a mere extension of the same right. Thus the liberal model is inherently unstable because it contains an internal contradiction: first, it asks for assimilation into the existing institution of civil marriage, but, second, its basic anthropology radically subverts or evacuates the meaning of that institution."

In the same way, the new right for a woman to be eligible for the office of bishop is not an extension of the institutional office, but a redefinition and a subversion of that office. It is not based on the truth about human nature, human purpose, it is based on a lie.

Both arguments for women bishops and gay marriage are based on an anthropology which is primarily androgynous -- it not merely blurs the difference between male and female, it denies the polarity, the binary essence of what it means to be male or female (etymologically sex means difference). In one instance this anthropology evacuates the meaning of marriage; in the other it claims to extend the institutional office of bishop yet it both subverts the meaning of the office and makes a counter claim which is an inversion of the truth.

If the institutional role of bishop is an icon which profoundly reveals the headship of Christ over his church in the same way a father is head over his family, then changing the institutional definition so that the bishop can be female leads to several outcomes.

A) It implies the interchangeability of male and female -- and hence a change to an anthropology based on the essential androgyny of human beings.

B) With a woman in the office of bishop a model of human relationship is displayed in which women claim authority over men. This the picture of male/female relations after the fall in which the woman "desires" (Power) over the man. It is not a picture of redeemed humanity, but a mirror of the state of the fallen world. This violates completely the basic principles of ecclesiology outlined above.

In this debate we are faced with a choice between two definitions of what a bishop is. Inseparable from and allied with these two definitions stand two doctrines of God and two anthropologies. They are the philosophical foundations of these two definitions. They are in turn mutually exclusive and opposed.

There can be no reconciliation between the two, there can be no reconciliation between an androgynous deity and the Christian God -- the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as there can be no reconciliation between an understanding of human beings based on androgyny, and an understanding based on the revealed nature of human beings as fundamentally binary -- male and female.

In Canaanite religion, the Baal and the Asherah represented the male and female principles of divinity, effectively an androgynous deity. The prophets knew that submitting to a pagan cosmology would be anathema to the faith of Israel and its institutions and thus Elisha's words to the people of Israel are apposite here: "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." 1 Kings 18;21. ESV.

The Rev. Dave Doveton is the Rector of two parishes in the Anglican Diocese of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He is also Anglican Dean of Studies at Stellenbosch Theological Seminary.

---------------------------------------------------

See Appendix 1 by Michael Ovey in The Church, Women Bishops and Provision, The Latimer Trust, 2011, p82.

Denny Burke, Christ's Functional Subordination in Philippians 2:6: A Grammatical Note with Trinitarian Implications, The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Volume XVI, issue 2, Fall 2011, p 25.

Vern Sheridan Polythress, The Church as Family: Why Male Leadership in the Family Requires Male Leadership in the Church, in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. By John Piper and Wayne Grudem, CROSSWAY, Wheaton Illinois, 1991, p 239.

Et seq; Interview with Prof Linda Woodhead, retrieved at: http://faithinfeminism.com/linda-woodhead-despairs-of-the-churchs-paternalism/

Epiphanus, Panarion: Against Quintillianists 2,5.

Against Heresies (1.25.6),

Epiphanius, Against Heresies, 33.

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1979, p51.

See http://www.eewc.com/Articles/jann-aldredge-clanton/ .

Aldredge-Clanton, J, "Changing Church: Stories of Liberating Ministers", Cascade Books, Eugene OREGON, 2011.

Vidal, Gore, Monotheism and its Discontents, in "The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal", Knopf Doubleday, 2008.

See Dave Doveton, The Way of Balaam: False teachers and the re-appearance of ancient Gnostic beliefs,Cadar, Mauritius, 2010.

Stephen Smith, Worldview, Language and Radical Feminism, in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed by Alvin F Kimel, Eerdmans, 1992, p 260.

Mike Ovey, Appendix 1: Submission to the Commission on Women in the Episcopate, The Church, Women Bishops and Provision, p 93.

J. Budzisziewski, Natural Law Revealed, in First Things, December 2008.

The Church, Women Bishops and Provision, p32,33.

This ideology of gender, discussed in more detail below, has affected other disciplines. For example it can be seen in the field of neuroscientific research where from the 1980's onwards there has been strong resistance to the idea that there are inborn biological differences between the male and female brain. Dr Larry Cahill examines the mountain of research that invalidates this idea and concludes, "At the root of the resistance to sex-influences research, especially regarding the human brain, is a deeply ingrained, implicit, false assumption that if men and women are equal, then men and women must be the same. This is false. The truth is that of course men and women are equal (all human beings are equal), but this does not mean that they are, on average, the same" https://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2014/Equal_%E2%89%A0_The_Same__Sex_Differences_in_the_Human_Brain/

Wayne Grudem

The massive loss of numbers in Dioceses in the Episcopal Church (TEC) following the election in those dioceses of women bishops is well documented and is still proceeding. It parallels the massive decline in the other protestant denominations in the USA and Europe who also allow female oversight at the highest level. In the particular case of the TEC decline has occurred under ALL female bishops during their time of tenure, bishops of both conservative and liberal persuasion. (e.g. TEC has 7 serving diocesans, 1 provisional, 11 suffragans, and 3 assisting bishops. (total 22) .

Some statistics: Diocese of Vermont: Mary Macleod - membership dropped over 20%, El Camino Real dropped 17%, Massachusetts (2 suffragans) over 21%, Indianapolis (Catherine Waynick) dropped over 18%, Rhode Island (Geralyn Wolf) over 27%

Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi; retrieved at http://www.zenit.org/article-35644?l=english

Benedict XVI, Papal Encyclical "Caritas in Veritate".

This Gnostic ideology of gender in which biological gender is rejected as a material referent to the transcendent must of necessity reject one important meaning of the incarnation; that Jesus Christ gave absolute significance to the gendered human body. The effective rejection by many people of their God-ordained biological sexual identity in favour of 'androgyny' or other identity markers described as various 'orientations' is tantamount to declaring that there is a flaw in their own personal created bodies. It must also lead therefore to the Gnostic conclusion that creation itself is the problem -- the flaw in the otherwise harmonious cosmos. This leads to several outcomes

1) the deconstruction of the classical notion of sin as existentially toxic to human beings and then substitution of the therapeutic notion that sin is merely that which inhibits me from realizing my full potential. (sin can't be the problem anymore if creation is)

2) the deconstruction of human identity as a given -- defined by our biology as male and female --and consequently calls into question our whole understanding of human identity.

Thus if I as a male sexually desire another male, I am "homosexual" ; if I feel that although I was born with the genitalia of a woman, I am really a man trapped in a woman's body, I am a "transsexual"

Sex after Christianity, R Dreher, The American Conservative, April 11, 2013.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sex-after-christianity/

As George Wiegel has observed : "Reality and Public Policy", retrieved at http://www.eppc.org/publications/reality-and-public-policy/

http://juicyecumenism.com/2012/07/10/transgender-homosexual-activists-hail-victories-at-episcopal-convention/

George Weigel, op cit.

Gender Theory: Alienated from Reality, http://daleoleary.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/gender-theory-alienated-from-reality/#more-359 Talk given in Brescia, Italy 2013.

Abraham, Prof W J, United Methodists at the end of the mainline, FIRST THINGS, June 1998.

The Provincial Synod of the ACSA proposed representation targets in terms of gender

"But Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant."" Matthew 20:25,26. The Greek verb translated as 'lord', katakurieuō has negative connotations of control and subjugation.

"Your desire shall be against your husband, and he shall rule over you." Genesis 3:16b my literal translation.

Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI on the occasion of Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, Friday 21 December, 2012.

Philip Rieff, The Jew of Culture: Freud, Moses and Modernity, University of Virginia Press, 2008 , p 95

Sandell, M, "Justice, What's the right thing to do?", Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

1 Timothy 3:15.

Andrew McCarthy, An evening in Cork: Telos on the run in southwestern Ireland, retrieved at: https://www.spuc.org.uk/blog/docs/2012/cork20121030

Andrew Mc Carthy, op cit.

David S. Crawford. "Liberal Androgyny: 'Gay Marriage' and the Meaning of Sexuality in Our Time." Communio 33 (Summer 2006)

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