Excellent Thoughts on the Deaconess Issue...

[tgoerz]

To get this thread back on point....although the women's education aspect is excellant.

What this deaconess issue has become is an issue of willful and blatant resistance to authority....authority of the BCO as a constitution and the authority of scripture.

For churches to willfully refuse to ordain deacons and to instead "commission" is tantamount to idolatry. It is flat out compromising.

As Carpenter has succinctly put it, this is all about Feminism and the Egalitarian movement. This is about dumbing down to secularism. As he points out, it's not by accident that this movement is taking place in the cultural and political hotbeds of this nation.

Feminism is all about equality and removing the "glass ceiling" for the ultimate advancement of women. That is why they have "obliterated" the distinction between male and female deacons. This is not about under-utilizing gifts of women it is about usurpation of authority and willful disobedience. It is bowing before the alter of secular humanism.

This is undermining a key "philosophical underpinning" of the Reformed faith. This is the start of incrementalism to liberalism.

As Carpenter so correctly states, "THE PCA WILL GO THE WAY OF LIBERAL MAINLINE. It will take awhile. The presenting issues will be different, but the dynamics will be the same. We are already well on the way when a minister stands up and says he is not going to obey the constitution, AND NOBODY DOES ANYTHING."

If we don't draw the line here, PCA will go the way of PCUSA.

 

[JBaldwin]

Those are practical considerations though. The real issue is much more salient to the topic. Even if ordaining only men meant that women would have inferior training, if God commanded that only men be ordained, then it does not matter what the consequences ... only men should be ordained. While I do not believe that women do face lesser instruction, I would not be concerned if they did. If God commands something for his children, he does it for their good. When he commanded Adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it was not because he wanted to be stingy or mean. Whatever God commands he does so out of love for his children. When he commands different things to men and to women, he does so knowing what is best for both men and women. We get into trouble when we start trying to out-reason the creator/king

Am I to understand you correctly in saying that it wouldn't bother you if women received less instruction than the men? If that is the case, this bothers me deeply. While women should not be ordained (that to me is not even up for discussion), they should be as well-versed in the Scriptures as the men. I know many women who know as much Scripture as their scholarly husbands, and what I see is men who are challenged to dig into the Scriptures more deeply because of the influence of their wives.

 

[PresbyDane]

Thanks for posting this

 

[tgoerz]

This thread is totally confusing per the hijacking from the original topic.

Can someone take the womens education to its own thread?

 

[Sven]

This thread is totally confusing per the hijacking from the original topic.

Can someone take the womens education to its own thread?

There are several threads that do discuss the deaconess topic, however, I think mainly the discussion is somewhat hovering around the article I posted to.

 

[tgoerz]

Steven...and an outstanding article it is.

That's why I'd like a moderator to sort out the other topic from yours, so as to cut down on the confusion.