Did Paul contradict Judges Four?

jas3 said:

Given that John Wesley taught that Quakers weren't Christian in part because they ordained women, that's unlikely. Women being ordained in Methodism only goes back to 1956.

"I desire Mr. Peacock to put a final stop to the preaching of women in his circuit. If it were suffered, it would grow, and we know not where it would end." - John Wesley, 1780.

Did Wesley reverse his position twice on women preaching, from against to for and back to against? Or is it more likely that the modern Methodists, whose status as Christians might be rejected by their own denomination's founder, have a vested interest in revising the history to paint John Wesley as a pioneer for women's ordination?

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jas3 said:

You don't need to double quote everyone. Just highlight the portion of text you want to reply to and click "reply," or if you have several parts you'd like to respond to you can click "quote" and then at the textbox for your message click "insert quotes" so you can insert them one at a time and respond to each part.

Then you didn't read the sources I provided after you asked me for them.

Yes, it turns out they were even more wrong than I originally thought. It turns out John Wesley criticized them both for their lack of ordination and for letting women preach, even informally.

"A LETTER TO A PERSON

LATELY JOINED WITH

THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS,

IN ANSWER TO A LETTER WRITTEN BY HIM.

--

Bristol, Feb. 10, 1747-8.

YOU ask me, 'Is there any difference between Quakerism and Christianity?' I think there is. What that difference is, I will tell you as plainly as I can. I will first set down the account of Quakerism (so called) which is given by Robert Barclay: and then add, wherein it agrees with, and wherein it differs from, Christianity...

X. 'By this light of God in the heart, every true minister is ordained, prepared, and supplied in the work of the ministry.'

As to part of this proposition, there is no difference between Quakerism and Christianity. Doubtless 'every true minister is by the light of God prepared and supplied in the work of the ministry.' But the Apostles themselves ordained them by 'laying on of hands.' So we read throughout the Acts of the Apostles.

'They who have received this gift, ought not to use it as a trade, to get money thereby. Yet it may be lawful for such to receive what may be needful to them for food and clothing.'

In this there is no difference between Quakerism and Christianity.

'We judge it no ways unlawful, for a woman to preach in the assemblies of God's people.'

In this there is a manifest difference. For the Apostle Paul saith expressly, 'Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak.—And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.' 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35.

Robert Barclay indeed says, 'Paul here only reproves the inconsiderate and talkative women.' But the text says no such thing. It evidently speaks of women in general. Again the Apostle Paul saith to Timothy, 'Let your women learn in silence with all subjection. For I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, (which public teaching necessarily implies,) but to be in silence.' (1 Tim. ii. 11, 12.) To this Robert Barclay makes only that harmless reply; 'We think this is not any ways repugnant to this doctrine.' Not repugnant to this, 'I do not suffer a woman to teach?' Then I know not what is.

'But a woman "laboured with Paul in the work of the gospel."'

Yea! but not in the way he had himself expressly forbidden.

'But Joel foretold, "Your sons and daughters shall prophesy." And "Philip had four daughters which prophesied." And the Apostle himself directs women to prophesy; only with their "heads covered."' Very good. But how do you prove that prophesying in any of these places means preaching?"

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The Liturgist said:

Not according to our Lord in the Gospel According to Luke, when he reveals at the end to the disciples that all the books of the law and the prophets are Christological prophecy.

The problem with your hyper-Antiochian hermeneutic is that it will produce historical-contextual interpretations that lack theological or Christological significance. What we see the most important Church Fathers like St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians and St. John Chrysostom use is an Alexandrian hermeneutic focused on extracting the Christological, typological prophecy with a minimal Antiochian historical exoteric reference, enough to provide needed cultural context but not to the extent that a pursuit for historical, often inaccurate interpretations overrides the meaning of the work as a prophecy of the Incarnation of the Word.

Thus, it is a point of New Testament doctrine, according to the Gospel of St. Luke the Evangelist, that the Old Testament is Christological prophecy, and therefore it is correct to say the New Testament interprets the Old, particularly in light of 2 Peter 1:20 and numerous instances in the New Testament of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees misinterpreting the Old Testament. And given how far removed we are from even Second Temple Judaism, trying to interpret the Old Testament according to the original “audience”, to be more precise, religious community of worship it was intended for as a work of prophecy and religious obedience, is effectively impossible, and also irrelevant from an ecclesiastical perspective.

Indeed such an endeavor reminds me of the futile attempts of some liberal scholars to extract a narrative of “the historical Jesus” apart from the ancient Christian church and various heretical emanationist-dualist-docetic sects that provide the only detailed (and mutually contradictory) accounts of His life, which is why despite the arguments of the likes of Robert W. Funk, Hal Taussig and Karen King to the contrary, various apocrypha never recognized as canonical by any orthodox Christian church such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, etc, are of no value other than as a means of confirming the accuracy of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Epiphanios of Cyprus, St. John of Damascus and other ancient heresiologists, who it turns out were actually telling the truth, which should not come as a surprise for these same men have been properly venerated for their holiness since antiquity.

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jas3 said:

You don't seem to be reading any of the sources I've given you, or at least not responding to them.

I've already cited his Explanatory Notes. You did read that, didn't you?

No, he was pretty clear throughout his life that the "line in the sand" was public teaching, full stop.

Another denomination that feels its legitimacy threatened by the clear writings of its founder.

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The Liturgist said:

Not according to our Lord in the Gospel According to Luke, when he reveals at the end to the disciples that all the books of the law and the prophets are Christological prophecy.

The problem with your hyper-Antiochian hermeneutic is that it will produce historical-contextual interpretations that lack theological or Christological significance. What we see the most important Church Fathers like St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians and St. John Chrysostom use is an Alexandrian hermeneutic focused on extracting the Christological, typological prophecy with a minimal Antiochian historical exoteric reference, enough to provide needed cultural context but not to the extent that a pursuit for historical, often inaccurate interpretations overrides the meaning of the work as a prophecy of the Incarnation of the Word.

Thus, it is a point of New Testament doctrine, according to the Gospel of St. Luke the Evangelist, that the Old Testament is Christological prophecy, and therefore it is correct to say the New Testament interprets the Old, particularly in light of 2 Peter 1:20 and numerous instances in the New Testament of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees misinterpreting the Old Testament. And given how far removed we are from even Second Temple Judaism, trying to interpret the Old Testament according to the original “audience”, to be more precise, religious community of worship it was intended for as a work of prophecy and religious obedience, is effectively impossible, and also irrelevant from an ecclesiastical perspective.

Indeed such an endeavor reminds me of the futile attempts of some liberal scholars to extract a narrative of “the historical Jesus” apart from the ancient Christian church and various heretical emanationist-dualist-docetic sects that provide the only detailed (and mutually contradictory) accounts of His life, which is why despite the arguments of the likes of Robert W. Funk, Hal Taussig and Karen King to the contrary, various apocrypha never recognized as canonical by any orthodox Christian church such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, etc, are of no value other than as a means of confirming the accuracy of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Epiphanios of Cyprus, St. John of Damascus and other ancient heresiologists, who it turns out were actually telling the truth, which should not come as a surprise for these same men have been properly venerated for their holiness since antiquity.

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jas3 said:

So what you're saying is that you concede he didn't ordain any women?

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The Liturgist said:

FIrstly, I want to begin by saying the way you were treated by the Moravian Church is deplorable. You were excommunicated when according to ancient canon law clergy who engage in sodomy are to be deposed (and are also ineligible for ordination), and sodomy in general could be punished with penances of up to 30 years or until one was in extremis of penitential excommunication, wherein one was barred from receiving the sacrament but required to attend the church, standing with the penitents rather than the communicants. These canons have been relaxed according to the liturgical principle of oikonomia, as the canon law of the early church, which was intended to correct the immoral behavior that existed in the Roman Empire, was extremely severe, but bishops have always had the power to relax it according to the principle of oikonomia, that is, spiritual economy, to ensure the salvation of souls. The principle of oikonomia is also why during the Arian schism in the fourth century, Arians converting to Nicene Christianity were not required to be baptized (particularly since in some cases, since Emperor Constantius illegally exiled Nicene bishops such as St. Athanasius the Patriarch of Alexandria and replaced them with Arians, followers of Arius who denied that Jesus Christ was of one essence with the father, God incarnate, but rather insisted that He was a created being. At present, contemporary Arians like J/Ws, and Unitarians, are normally received by baptism in most traditional churches.

Now, in answer to your question, in Luke 24 on two instances did our Lord show how all the writings of the Law and Prophets testified about Him:

25Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He [g]expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

44Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and thePsalms concerning Me.” 45And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

It was in this manner that our Lord showed to the remaining disciples, who would form the core of the Apostles, joined by St. Matthias, St. Paul and the Seventy, how the Old Testament testified as to His death and resurrection.

The Alexandrian exegetical technique looks for typological prophecy in the Old Testament that pertains to Christ and to Christian soteriology. Thus, using the Alexandrian hermeneutic, Exodus is read as a spiritual journey from bondage to this world in Egypt through the deserts that are the trials of faith, to the Promised Land. Genesis 1 is read as a prophecy of how our Lord arrived in Jerusalem on the first day “Let there be light” would recreate humanity in His image on the sixth day, rest in the tomb on the seventh, and on the eighth day, the first of the next week, it is once again “let there be light” with His resurrection, and the eighth day is also interpreted as referring to the first day of the Age to Come, following the Last Judgement when the faithful will live with our Lord personally: this is called the mystical Eighth Day of Creation in Patristic sources.

This technique originated in the Catechtical School of Alexandria, which had a rivalry with the School of Antioch, which stressed a literal-historical method which is presently dominant in the Christian West. However, in the early church, the most important fathers used both approaches: St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and others regarded the Old Testament as both literally and historically accurate, while also containing the aforementioned typological prophecies.

Those who committed themselves too heavily to the Alexandrian method wound up with a metaphorical, allegorical approach which is unsatisfactory - the most extreme example of this can be seen in the text known as 1 Barnabas, which the early church considered including in the Bible, and some ancient manuscripts have it, but St. Athanasius in his 39th Paschal Encyclical, which was the first to provide the 27 book New Testament canon agreed upon by nearly all churches today, did not regard 1 Barnabas as either canonical, or even approve of its use for catechesis, and he was Patriarch of Alexandria, so if it had been authentic he would have approved it.

Likewise Origen is generally considered to have overused the Alexandrian method.

However, it was also possible to overuse the literal-historical method, and some scholars from Antioch, most notably Theodore of Mopsuestia, were regarded as having done that, but in recent years we see this approach taken to an extreme in some Western churches, where people exegete the New Testament using the Old, which is backwards.

The idea that the Old Testament should be interpreted according to the New is uncontroversial among traditional Christians, particularly liturgical Protestants such as Evangelical Catholic Lutherans such as my friends @MarkRohfrietsch and @ViaCrucis. But we also see it in the early church fathers and thus it is clear this was the method used by the Orthodox fathers.

Click to expand...

The Liturgist said:

FIrstly, I want to begin by saying the way you were treated by the Moravian Church is deplorable. You were excommunicated when according to ancient canon law clergy who engage in sodomy are to be deposed (and are also ineligible for ordination), and sodomy in general could be punished with penances of up to 30 years or until one was in extremis of penitential excommunication, wherein one was barred from receiving the sacrament but required to attend the church, standing with the penitents rather than the communicants. These canons have been relaxed according to the liturgical principle of oikonomia, as the canon law of the early church, which was intended to correct the immoral behavior that existed in the Roman Empire, was extremely severe, but bishops have always had the power to relax it according to the principle of oikonomia, that is, spiritual economy, to ensure the salvation of souls. The principle of oikonomia is also why during the Arian schism in the fourth century, Arians converting to Nicene Christianity were not required to be baptized (particularly since in some cases, since Emperor Constantius illegally exiled Nicene bishops such as St. Athanasius the Patriarch of Alexandria and replaced them with Arians, followers of Arius who denied that Jesus Christ was of one essence with the father, God incarnate, but rather insisted that He was a created being. At present, contemporary Arians like J/Ws, and Unitarians, are normally received by baptism in most traditional churches.

Now, in answer to your question, in Luke 24 on two instances did our Lord show how all the writings of the Law and Prophets testified about Him:

25Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He [g]expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

44Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and thePsalms concerning Me.” 45And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

It was in this manner that our Lord showed to the remaining disciples, who would form the core of the Apostles, joined by St. Matthias, St. Paul and the Seventy, how the Old Testament testified as to His death and resurrection.

The Alexandrian exegetical technique looks for typological prophecy in the Old Testament that pertains to Christ and to Christian soteriology. Thus, using the Alexandrian hermeneutic, Exodus is read as a spiritual journey from bondage to this world in Egypt through the deserts that are the trials of faith, to the Promised Land. Genesis 1 is read as a prophecy of how our Lord arrived in Jerusalem on the first day “Let there be light” would recreate humanity in His image on the sixth day, rest in the tomb on the seventh, and on the eighth day, the first of the next week, it is once again “let there be light” with His resurrection, and the eighth day is also interpreted as referring to the first day of the Age to Come, following the Last Judgement when the faithful will live with our Lord personally: this is called the mystical Eighth Day of Creation in Patristic sources.

This technique originated in the Catechtical School of Alexandria, which had a rivalry with the School of Antioch, which stressed a literal-historical method which is presently dominant in the Christian West. However, in the early church, the most important fathers used both approaches: St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and others regarded the Old Testament as both literally and historically accurate, while also containing the aforementioned typological prophecies.

Those who committed themselves too heavily to the Alexandrian method wound up with a metaphorical, allegorical approach which is unsatisfactory - the most extreme example of this can be seen in the text known as 1 Barnabas, which the early church considered including in the Bible, and some ancient manuscripts have it, but St. Athanasius in his 39th Paschal Encyclical, which was the first to provide the 27 book New Testament canon agreed upon by nearly all churches today, did not regard 1 Barnabas as either canonical, or even approve of its use for catechesis, and he was Patriarch of Alexandria, so if it had been authentic he would have approved it.

Likewise Origen is generally considered to have overused the Alexandrian method.

However, it was also possible to overuse the literal-historical method, and some scholars from Antioch, most notably Theodore of Mopsuestia, were regarded as having done that, but in recent years we see this approach taken to an extreme in some Western churches, where people exegete the New Testament using the Old, which is backwards.

The idea that the Old Testament should be interpreted according to the New is uncontroversial among traditional Christians, particularly liturgical Protestants such as Evangelical Catholic Lutherans such as my friends @MarkRohfrietsch and @ViaCrucis. But we also see it in the early church fathers and thus it is clear this was the method used by the Orthodox fathers.

Click to expand...