I thought of an interesting question regarding woman pastors. What if someone was married by a woman pastor? Do you think God recognizes the marriage?
Yes because the community recognizes it as a marriage.
There is no magic formula for what makes a couple married verses unmarried.
Nearest I can tell biblically is that if you go through your culturual standard for marriage and the community recognizes the marriage, then God will also recognize the marriage.
God recognizes civil weddings. . . although getting married by a civil offical as opposed to by the church is not exactly a good way to testify to your faith.
Really Lutheran's don't tend to belive that anyone's personal qualifications make something valid or their lack thereof make something in-valid. What makes things valid is God's word. God's word contains no specific instructions in regards to weddings, but it is clear that married people always had community recognition as being married. So we just go with our culture's wedding traditions.
In terms of sacraments its God's word that makes something valid, and not the pastor or his ordination. However as part of good church order we don't belive that a person should perform sacraments without a regular call. *Although many Lutherans would make an exception for a baptism in emergency conditions where no ordained ministers are present or available.*
So there is nothing about a woman pastor that makes anything she does invalid. . . HOWEVER the capacity she is serving in is a capacity in which God has entirely reserved for men. So what ends up happening is the entire church is living in sin, in disobedience to God's clear cut commands. Usually almost always they do this because of worldly concerns... We live in a world that teaches that women can do everything a man can do. And by all worldly standards in many cases they can. . . But the problem is that the pastorial office was created by God and was created specifically for men to fulfill that office.
It seems awefully arrogent to say the least to tell God that we should decide the qualifications of the people to fulfill that office and ignore the qualifications that he gives.
It does answer the question. He asked about the passage concerning "husband of one wife". That's what it refers to, not that only married men can be pastors.
