Women and the Church

So forgive me - I genuinely hadn’t seen your earlier comment. Social media threads do have a way of running ahead of us….mine are also a tad prolific at present!! So the issue is what’s the difference between “proof-texting” & just “react”? So this is not one between texts we like and texts we don’t. It’s about how Scripture is used. Let me attempt to map a difference. A text is simply part of biblical witness. “Proof-texting” is about lifting verses out of its wider literary, historical, and canonical context and using it as a decisive argument on its own for contemporary theological arguments So so, in the past isolated verses were used to justify slavery or racial hierarchy. The issue wasn’t that those verses didn’t exist; it was that they were being treated as self-interpreting without the wider witness of Scripture - we might say the biblical story as a whole, or we might say the story of God’s becoming a human person in Jesus Christ - being part of conversation. So the question isn’t which texts we like or dislike, but how we read them within the whole scriptural story as well as the story of Jesus Christ and the tradition of interpretation both of the biblical texts and of Christology. The Church has never believed that Scripture is simply a collection of standalone verses; it has always insisted that Scripture interprets Scripture, and that the whole must illuminate the parts. I suppose that is where I see the difference although I cannot speak obviously for @WATCH_ACT. I am a member and in general I agree with most of their aims, although perhaps sometimes I would not express things in the way that they do But - having said that - I am not a woman - and that is the issue her. And I wouldn’t want to imagine what it may be like to inhabit a woman’s body and to interpret the scriptures because I don’t have one. Nor can I imagine what it might be like to be a woman in the present @churchofengland Ad a man I have some of the privileges of maleness, although as a gay person and Irish person and working clads person, there are other similar issues and difficulties rising there…

@WATCH_ACT I believe and support strongly the ordination of women, but this comment is really mean and quite vicious. Indirectly yes, but a comparison of the exegetical teaching of ASLP to Hitler is insidious. The tone of this account is really undermining the cause you are promoting.

@WATCH_ACT Priesthood is no lording or any rate of 'right'. Anyone who desires it for these nonchristian characteristics they apply to it doesn't deserve it either.

@WATCH_ACT As someone who supports the ordination of women to to the 3 orders, comparing the Complementarian hermeneutic to Arianism or Nazism is offensive and poor biblical theology.

@WATCH_ACT Fantastic news! Great to see CofE still has many who hold to the faith delivered once and for all without bending to every cultural wind and idea! Praise God !

@WATCH_ACT i.e. All Souls Langham Place follow the doctrines of the Bible rather than the doctrines of modern feminism.