The reason you do not understand the symbolism of masculine and feminine playing itself out in the ecclesiological structure is because you are missing the basic relationship in that symbolism to head and body or of hierarchy in general which is presented by St-Paul. You are also missing the structural function of the Heaven and Earth duality which is the Genesis account and therefore you will struggle to understand any embodiment pattern which is present all trough scripture and in liturgy. You will not understand the offering, grumbling, holding, gathering, framing, praying of that which is below, nor will you understand the answer, identity, judging, giving, loving from above. You will also not understand how things play relatively masculine or feminine roles depending on their place in a larger relationship, and so Israel is the Bride of God, but then Israel is also a priest in relation to the nations. So in Christian clergy there is a coinciding of male with masculine role, a kind of gathering of symbolism across different levels into a head, just like a king, but that does not prevent the "people" from being in a feminine relationship to this head even if there are males, just like children are an extension of the father's identity, part of his body. This is actually a pretty universal symbolism, one which has its darker and twisted applications in phenomena as diverse as cultural pederasty and rappers calling both their women and their dependents "shorty". What is sad as usual in the moves made in this article, is that for lack of insight into why things are the way they are, you seem willing to change a tradition that has been universal for at least 1500 years.
"[W]omen’s exclusion from clerical roles does not serve Christianity’s witness; it only reinforces the widespread cultural sense of Christianity’s irrelevance."
I was just revisiting this and other posts, and this line caught my attention for comment. One could counter that capitulation to popular cultural sentiments, in and of itself, is not a recipe for general cultural respect or relevance. If anything, in a general sense, the act of mostly echoing the mainstream's mores itself, rather than setting the standards for a culture, has the potential make a religion irrelevant because the religion isn't needed to reinforce or propagate the sentiment.
Relatedly, Christianity is tanking in the West even in those churches which embrace a progressivist agenda, in some cases at an even steeper rate than the traditionalists.
David, I am very much enjoying getting caught up on these, for some reason I had missed that you were on substack (haven't been on FB much, which is where I had grown accustomed to reading your thoughts). One of the through-lines I am seeing, reflected very much in your recent conversation with Mackenzie Amara, is just how much realigning our eucharistic understanding to how it originally functioned (while incorporating its wonderful historical developments) needs to shape our understanding of sex and gender as the church deals with the wake of the sexual revolution and its continuing development. Women's ordination is definitely correlated with how one stands on LGBTQ issues, which is why I have made the move to Anglicanism. What I fear will be the case, however, is that if the traditionalists (of whatever stripe) are able to sufficiently advance their adgenda will essentially spell the end of Christianity as we know if. Maybe that's not a bad thing, and will allow the faith to take fresh and exciting forms through new retrievals of the past that are a better foundation to build toward the future upon. But, the overall religious and spiritual upheval of trying to return to a cartoon of the past has already done a good deal of damage in the church at large, and will only continue, until we can show that orthodoxy, on the main, has always been at its most lively when the innovators win. We owe our entire creedal legacy to the innovative theologies that helped result in Nicea, Chalcedon, et. al.
The reason you do not understand the symbolism of masculine and feminine playing itself out in the ecclesiological structure is because you are missing the basic relationship in that symbolism to head and body or of hierarchy in general which is presented by St-Paul. You are also missing the structural function of the Heaven and Earth duality which is the Genesis account and therefore you will struggle to understand any embodiment pattern which is present all trough scripture and in liturgy. You will not understand the offering, grumbling, holding, gathering, framing, praying of that which is below, nor will you understand the answer, identity, judging, giving, loving from above. You will also not understand how things play relatively masculine or feminine roles depending on their place in a larger relationship, and so Israel is the Bride of God, but then Israel is also a priest in relation to the nations. So in Christian clergy there is a coinciding of male with masculine role, a kind of gathering of symbolism across different levels into a head, just like a king, but that does not prevent the "people" from being in a feminine relationship to this head even if there are males, just like children are an extension of the father's identity, part of his body. This is actually a pretty universal symbolism, one which has its darker and twisted applications in phenomena as diverse as cultural pederasty and rappers calling both their women and their dependents "shorty". What is sad as usual in the moves made in this article, is that for lack of insight into why things are the way they are, you seem willing to change a tradition that has been universal for at least 1500 years.
"[W]omen’s exclusion from clerical roles does not serve Christianity’s witness; it only reinforces the widespread cultural sense of Christianity’s irrelevance."
I was just revisiting this and other posts, and this line caught my attention for comment. One could counter that capitulation to popular cultural sentiments, in and of itself, is not a recipe for general cultural respect or relevance. If anything, in a general sense, the act of mostly echoing the mainstream's mores itself, rather than setting the standards for a culture, has the potential make a religion irrelevant because the religion isn't needed to reinforce or propagate the sentiment.
Relatedly, Christianity is tanking in the West even in those churches which embrace a progressivist agenda, in some cases at an even steeper rate than the traditionalists.
David, I am very much enjoying getting caught up on these, for some reason I had missed that you were on substack (haven't been on FB much, which is where I had grown accustomed to reading your thoughts). One of the through-lines I am seeing, reflected very much in your recent conversation with Mackenzie Amara, is just how much realigning our eucharistic understanding to how it originally functioned (while incorporating its wonderful historical developments) needs to shape our understanding of sex and gender as the church deals with the wake of the sexual revolution and its continuing development. Women's ordination is definitely correlated with how one stands on LGBTQ issues, which is why I have made the move to Anglicanism. What I fear will be the case, however, is that if the traditionalists (of whatever stripe) are able to sufficiently advance their adgenda will essentially spell the end of Christianity as we know if. Maybe that's not a bad thing, and will allow the faith to take fresh and exciting forms through new retrievals of the past that are a better foundation to build toward the future upon. But, the overall religious and spiritual upheval of trying to return to a cartoon of the past has already done a good deal of damage in the church at large, and will only continue, until we can show that orthodoxy, on the main, has always been at its most lively when the innovators win. We owe our entire creedal legacy to the innovative theologies that helped result in Nicea, Chalcedon, et. al.
Perhaps I missed it, but what in your opinion is an adequate Christian definition of "woman' ?
Wrote some thoughts out here: https://twitter.com/mporterperkins/status/1441108779936874498
I love it!