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Originally Posted by Gryphonette  Quote:
Originally Posted by SRoper Or you have what happened at my church last week; a woman deacon was a part of the laying on hands in the ordination and installation of a new RE. So much for woman deacons being acceptable because the office of deacon is not an office of authority. | [glumly] This is depressing.
But all too common. Human spiritual fraility, combined with our innate arrogance, guarantees that give us an inch and we'll take a mile.
We're not especially deedy at respecting boundaries, always looking to see just how far we can go without going too far, and assuming that so long as divine fire isn't raining physically down upon us, we must be doing alright.  |
Thanks, Gryphonette! It is refreshing to see that a woman can be as wise and cogent as any man and have the humility to recognize biblical boundaries. Those boundaries were not set by our all-wise God to imply inferiority, but to glorify Himself through demonstrating the necessity and benefit of order and structure, which would include both the excersize of, and the submission to, enumerated stations of authority.
We all have 'offices' in the Church. They are not all recorded in scripture as offices that call for ordination. I am personally disqualified, by my own actions in the determinate will of God, to hold the ordained offices of Elder or Deacon. I am, however, called to hold the offices of sinner saved by the blood of my beloved Redeemer, husband to my beloved wife, father to my beloved children, lay member of my beloved local Church, and therefore member of my beloved PCA. I cannot say that I excel at the exercise of said offices, but I do try to take them seriously.
Women share many of the same offices, and then some others particular to their sex that are as important as any to the health of body of Christ. Wife, mother, and wise counsel to the younger women are a few that no man can perform. I believe that in every case where His people submit in faith to the authorities He has set over them it brings Him glory, because it is so very much a part of the nature of the flesh to rebel against it.
These are disturbing events.
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My friend, I think you really need to re-visit church history.
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Church history is replete with the rise, refutation, and fall of
multitudes of errors and heresies. Granted, the occupation of ordained offices by women has been asserted and rejected many times in that history. My remarks did not imply otherwise; only that the idea had been rejected by those who historically held to the true faith, and that this recent rehashing is only the product of the arrogance of humanity's perpetual 'modernity'.
Every generation assumes it has a 'new take' on everything it surveys. This one wants to press the PCA to investigate the issue further, and evidently has already begun to change practice prior to allowing the denom to determine its propriety. So you're right... there's nothing new under the sun, but that offers no mitigation of the sorrow to which these events give rise.