This is a Christian society, established in Japan at Toyohashi in 2006, whose primary function is to enable both Christians and Non-Christians to study the Bible.

WHY NO WOMEN PRIESTS

Reverend I.P.S.G. COSBY



III. CHRISTIAN GOD/MAN RELATIONSHIP REVERSED

2. First Order Heresy
It is in the context of the above that we must understand what is implicit in the ordination of women to the priesthood. Priesthood²⁵⁾/Eldership is ultimately about headship. A priest (presbyter = Elder) is answerable for his congregation and the wider family of the parish. If there is a priestess exercising headship over a parish, or an arch-priestess is presiding over a diocese, it is clearly in violation of Holy Scripture²⁶⁾. If a priestess is married, it begs the question, who is the head of her own immediate family, she or her husband? Furthermore, it raises the question as to which of them is the de facto although not de iure head of that parish or diocese. The same question would/could have been silently asked or insinuated of Mr Denis Thatcher, of Prince Philip, and was openly known to be the case with Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria.²⁷⁾ There is a requirement for complementarity, never more so than in the Church. What principles pertain in Holy Scripture should pertain in the parish, in the family and in the wider Church as a whole. There has always been female headship in all female societies, vide the Mother Superior of a Convent.²⁸⁾ The matter arises only in society involving both sexes. The observation noted here is that in the real world this principle does widely prevail in Western Humanist Society. However, it is a bone of contention, because it is firmly rejected in principle. This paper argues that the duty of responsible male headship is not only a requirement of Christianity, it is how the world actually is, i.e. reality. When that complementarity is not there, it undermines the integrity not only of the Church but society at large whatever its religion or culture. It will create social tensions which, if not attended to, will manifest themselves in unsocial behaviour such as bullying, broken marriages, truant children, irresponsible manhood, etc. all of which serves to undermine the integrity of family in the first instant and the integrity of society as a whole.

★★★★★★

25) 　
The Greek word Presbyter (Πρεσβύτερος) meaning ‘Elder’ has in English morphed into ‘Priest.’ It still retains this meaning, namely ‘elder’ in the Church of England and where the term is still used in Anglican Churches. The Roman Catholic Church having adopted the English word Priest ascribe to it the sense of Ιερέας (Literally Hierarch, but having the sense of ‘Intercessor’ (Μεσολαβητής), a concept strongly rejected in the Reformation, because, as far as Holy Scripture is concerned, there is only one Intermediary/Intercessor between GOD and man, namely Jesus Christ.

26) 　
1 Corinthians 11: 3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

27) 　
Charles Greville, Clerk of the Privy Council wrote in his diary, ‘He is king to all intents and purposes…’ (Greville’s Diaries – vol. 5, p. 257) quoted in Fulford, 1949, p. 117

28) 　
See, Acts 14: 15–16, 40 Lydia had her own household and international business as a seller of Purple, an expensive import item

In the wider context of the parish, the overriding of male headship not only challenges Christian teaching on headship but emasculates a fundamental principle of Christian marriage. The parish with a priestess in charge, however capable, is now recognizing that the iconic role model, womanhood, is not one that represents being answerable to, but of being answerable for. The icon of Womanhood, as illustrated in Mary, is now functioning as that which is answerable for. It is giving rectitude to the conduct of Martha, and as such contradicts Christ’s teaching. If the Church sees fit to contradict Christ in his matter, it begs the question in what other areas it might do so when Christ’s teaching does not chime harmoniously with contemporary secular values. More significantly, the role reversal implicit in the ordination of priestesses now logically goes on up the chain of hierarchy. The Bride, the Church instead of being answerable to Christ, is now answerable for Him. At the ultimate level, GOD is now answerable to Man, and Man is answerable for GOD. In other words, Man is the inventor of GOD. That is precisely the foundational position of the WEH religion. For this reason alone, a woman by very reason of being a woman cannot be a Christian priest/elder. It is for good reason that in the whole of the Judeo-Christian biblical tradition, there has never been an order of priestesses. It is an offence to GOD. It is an office usually reserved for religions underpinned by fertility worship. The culture of Western Europe & America, and those that ape it, has for the most part become besotted with sex, co-habitation and abortion, a variant of infanticide, much of which conduct is stimulated by the confusion and reversal of the roles of the sexes, as explained above. These are the hallmarks of ancient fertility religions, and the ancient world of Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. It is not surprising that there is no place for recognizing priestesses. The Children of Israel paid a heavy price for embracing any other religion, let alone the fertility cults, such as the worship of Moloch, deeply embedded in which are extra marital sexual practices, and more ominously, the sacrifice of women and children. Is it so strange, rather is it not logical to find in a society where sexual promiscuity has largely become the norm, to find protest movements, of the ilk of “Me Too”? Such movements are, in effect, protesting the sacrifice of women on the altar of irresponsible male promiscuity, where men are, in the humanist understanding of freedom, exercising their male freedom to do what they choose to do.

It can be understood from the above that the decision to ordain priestesses not only is profoundly demeaning of women, treating the qualities of womanhood as being of less worth than those of manhood, but theologically it is a heresy of the first order, because it reverses the GOD/Man relationship rendering Man the inventor of GOD. It is wrong, therefore, to say that the ordination of women is a secondary issue. As will be demonstrated in the next section, the consequences of holding to such a view will be severe. A church that has chosen to ordain priestesses has, however unwittingly, bought into the cultural order described above. It may be reluctant and conservative in going along with the logic of events, but along it is committed to going.

NEXT is "IV. NATION, GIVEN OVER TO ITS SIN"