Historically muscle was crucial, and men are - on average - more muscular. This is primitive society in which only the fit survive. It made sense for men to hunt (and to get the lion's share of the food to build them up) while women did domestic things. They probably tried to inseminate as many women as possible as often as possible too. Also with high perinatal mortality and poor contraception, women spent more of their lives pregnant or suckling.

In later farming economies, women could take a more active part.

Since the industrial revolution, most of the muscle is provided by machines, and humans have to do intelligence jobs - pretty well equal between the sexes.

In recent years Western economies have been looking for something more subtle from the workforce - relational skills, not just pure brainpower.

The feminist movement created a wonderful slogan containing a lot of truth:

*** Biology is not destiny ***

People will adapt.

So historically sex and gender ran deeply; now they are less deep (e.g. the "new man", the working woman, people wanting to change sex), and in the future they may become less and less important.

There are some deeply unsavoury movements in some parts of right wing evangelicalism which want to turn the clocks back; some even want to deny women a vote. I have a recording somewhere of a US pastor explaining with pride how he had to use physical violence on his wife to remind her of her place. There is also a deeply disturbing book based on interviews with wives of evangelical ministers entitled "Battered into Submission". It seems that those who want to perpetuate "traditional" roles are getting desparate.

If women were sitting around in caves complaining about the men while they were out, it was because the women had spent 90% of their waking hours scrounging food for the group.

In hunter-gatherer societies, the burden of feeding the group is traditionally upon the women. Hunting, while certainly taking up a majority of the men's time, provided only incidental protein to their subsistence.

Even in tribal societies dependent upon agriculture, the cultivation tasks are handled by women. Back-breaking work, I might add, especially if you've also got an infant strapped on somewhere or you're heavily pregnant. No matter, the men are always around to sit and chat by the fire about "Remember when we saw that really big antelope over on the hill but we missed?"

Sorry, can't remember who did the quote in this thread about woman being man's oldest beast of burden. Amen to that.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fr. Gregory:
GH: This is not Orthodox doctrine and is not taught by either theologian, (and I have read a lot of their works not unsurprisingly).

---

Spot on, Mr H - it was a half-remembered article by Sergius Bulgakov.

As to the question ... I'll ask another one ...

The answers depend not on the nature of thing being imagined but on how well-developed one’s imagination happens to be.

The same question could be asked of you in these terms, "Try to imagine you are partially sighted", or of me, "Try to imagine you are fully sighted". Now, partial sight has affected the development of the entity that is "Dyfrig", but it does not make me essentially different from you at our basic level of shared humanity.

Level of difficulty? Well, if you’re not used to imagining things, probably quite hard. I remember, at 16, having to do an exercise at English A-level in a similar vain, and find it terribly hard.

However, if say you were a novelist or poet or other such creative writer of any real ability then imagining is part of your job, there it would be a lot easier. Personally I find it quite hard to imagine myself speaking as "another" in my poetry, tho’ I have written one or two poems with a female voice, but most of my work is limited to "my" point of view, because I have not yet developed the ability to write effectively in another voice.

But so much goes into the imagining process - one’s experience through encounter with the thing imagined, reading, listening, attempting to empathise. Imagining the "other" - any "other" - is a task that different people will find hard or easy to varying degrees. Clearly as a priest you have certain recognisable pastoral skills that enable you to empathise and be alongside those who might require spiritual counsel. Conversely, I find it hard to imagine what it is really like to be an Orthodox priest, because my knowledge of Orthodoxy is that of an outsider, my partial sight makes much of the Liturgy and other services hard to comprehend because of their visual nature, and so forth. I'd have a better job, tho', imagining what it was to be R.S.Thomas, both of us being Welsh, brought up in Holyhead, cantakerous and Anglican.

Did you get it right? That would have to be assessed by those whose experience I was trying to imagine. For example, I know of a woman who thinks that Roddy Doyle did a really bad job of describing the main female character in his "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors". However, Ann Michaels does quite a good job of writing about her two main characters in "Fugitive Pieces", both of whom are male, and tho’ one of them is morally reprehensible and deserves a good kicking, I could not fault Michaels on her portrayal.

Equally there are parts of Bjork’s portrayal of Selma in "Dancer in the Dark" which as a partially sighted person I could say, "Spot on!" and applaud the sensitivity and imaginative understanding that she has brought to the part. One prime example is when she lacks the perceptive depth to see how she is from the top of a flight of steps. I wish I could get the people I know around to watch it and say, "Right, that’s sometimes how it’s like for me - do you understand?" The same is true of Terry Pratchett’s blind character in "Small Gods". I can say that they have "understood" to a very high degree an experience which I have but they don’t - which is a testimony to their abilities as artists. A piece of poetry I wrote from a woman’s point of view has met with an amount of admiration from ‘frin, who is deeply conscious of literature’s failure to sometimes misinterpret the female experience, so I suppose I have "succeeded" in a very minor fashion. So the question of success again depends entirely on one’s imaginative abilities - otherwise any form of writing or acting would be impossible.

What are these fundamental differences?

(I'm not partially sighted in the pure sense of the phrase, Dyfrig, but I am so myopic that if my glasses got broken I'd have to hold someone's hand to get across a road. However surely the main difference between you andme doesn't lie in the function or otherwise of our eyes, but in the fact that you are Dyfrig and I'm Gill?)

quote:

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Originally posted by Gill:
I'm not partially sighted in the pure sense of the phrase, Dyfrig, but I am so myopic that if my glasses got broken I'd have to hold someone's hand to get across a road. However surely the main difference between you andme doesn't lie in the function or otherwise of our eyes, but in the fact that you are Dyfrig and I'm Gill?)

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Actually, tillhe gets here, we could go on playing, but instead of 'men' and 'women' we could use the words, 'Clergy ' and 'laity' or even 'Priests' and 'deacons'. I suspect some of the answers will come out the same!

There was a very interesting article a few months ago by someone undergoing a sex-change (female to male) who documented the day-to-day changes s/he underwent as the testosterone kicked in.

But there aghain, are we comparing men with women, full stop, or men with women the week before their period, in which case both are probably equally as contentious and prone to violence.

I'm having trouble with your earlier megapost - the one in which you humanity, malenes and femaleness in terms of H, HW and HM. I guess it sums up pretty well not just where you are coming from, but quite a few objections some of us might have. Let me try to explain...

"Humanity" is a generic noun. I can't be human without first meeting a (potentially) infinite variety of criteria - I am either a man or a woman - (or perhaps some obscure genetic accident in certain cases), have straight or curly hair (or a sad absence thereof) etc. etc. - in other words, nobody ever born has the property of H'ness without being either W or M in your parlance. Plus a lot of other things. That as individuals is what we are. H is a group descriptor. To ask

quote:

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But are these differences, whether we acknowledge them or not, ontological? Do they effect our basic "H"-ness?

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One other wee problemette - is there not something a shade satirical in basing our argument on 19/20th mathematical thought patterns, and Aristotelian logic, when you had just accused the early church fathers of importing Greek secular ideas in another thread?

Now, where's that flak jacket...?

I take your point on the H/W+M issue. Let me make sure I've got your objection right, before I go any further:

In order to be "H", a person has to be either "M" or "W"

(i.e., there being no "H" existing separately from these two things),

in the same way that, for example, being "H" must involve having a hair colour in one of the categories "blond", "brown", "red", "black", "grey", "white".

QUOTE:-

"In order to be "H", a person has to be either "M" or "W"

(i.e., there being no "H" existing separately from these two things),

in the same way that, for example, being "H" must involve having a hair colour in one of the categories "blond", "brown", "red", "black", "grey", "white".

How's that?"

GH: Ah Dyfrig ... there's the rub! This is the category dissonance between us. You seem to think that gender / sexuality differentiation is of the same order as hair colour, sightedness, being a particular kind of priest etc. etc. I used to get the same kind of response when women's non-ordination was compared to slavery, apartheid etc. You then go on to mispresent my position totally as suggesting that male and female are two different species!

Ian has made it quite clear that there are two distinct modes of being human ... male and female. You seem in your posts when cornered on this one to revert to seeing gender simply as a matter of psychology (and not sex specific anyway) for which one needs merely empathic imagination for "cross over." In setting the task I was interested to see whether your empathy extended to sexuality. It did not, (a bit cheeky and unfair of me I know ... particularly on this public medium!) Anyway this sort of suggests to me that sexual organs / hormones really are just "plumbing" / chemicals in your thought have merely a physical aspect (and this is the important point) somewhat disconnected from the psychological aspects. Maybe Cartesian dualism has created a semi-gnostic intellectualism in the west where the body and the mind inhabit diferent universes. This philosophical "solvent" has augmented the drive toward the curious notion that sexuality-in/as-gender is detachable and interchangeable. I am sure that trans-sexuals are satisfied neither with adopting the right kind of genitals nor with merely "feeling" a man / woman, (no pun intended). Being a man / woman is a whole integrated package ... body, mind and soul.

Dear Gill

I have resisted being drawn on the differences because I have usually found such arguments unhelpful. I start by saying (for example) that men judge distance better than women and women have superior linguistic ability than men and immediately we get a ding-dong between those who think that this is learned behaviour and those who think that it is an evolution thing tied up in our genes. I start off by saying that men's sexuality is different from womens and immediately we get a ding dong between those who see this as ingrained and those who think of it merely as a matter of practice and technique.

(You may wish to cut the above statement out and frame it. It being Monday and me in a good mood.)

quote:

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Maybe Cartesian dualism has created a semi-gnostic intellectualism in the west where the body and the mind inhabit diferent universes.

---

Interesting you should say that - you must have posted that whilst I was preparing my reply to Dyfrig. I was originally going to add a similar thing with respect to body and soul but decided to chop it out.

You seem to think that gender / sexuality differentiation is of the same order as hair colour, sightedness, being a particular kind of priest etc. etc.

But as hair colour and some elements of sight loss are genetic, it would seem reasonable that gender has some similarity. There all part of your genetic make up. (Granted, the analogy with our societal roles is a different argument). If you want to convince me that there is something fundamental, ontologically different, then start providing some evidence. Otherwise, I will make a presumption in accordance with the Criminal Justice Act and take your silence as evidence that you are in not able to justify your own case.

I used to get the same kind of response when women's non-ordination was compared to slavery, apartheid etc.

But the Ontological argument has been used to justify both. There were serious scientific texts in the 18th and 19th centuries dividing the human race up – with white men at the top of the list, distinguished from African (and that therefore, being less than human, they can be used as slaves), Native American, Asian, the Irish (this was a book written by the English). Parts of Christianity have always tried to argue from ontology to justify a state of affairs, even when that state of affairs was clearly unjust. Again, it is up to you to prove that your submission that there are ontological differences between men and women and that as a consequence a woman cannot be a priest. You have not so much “played hard to get” as evaded the point entirely. And given the purposes to which this variation on the ontological argument have been put to tin the past then people are quite justified in being suspicious of your reasons for putting it forward. It is an argument that you’re going to have to be very, very careful with, Gregory.

You then go on to mispresent my position totally as suggesting that male and female are two different species!

I am sorry if I misrepresented your case. Please explain to me how men and women are so different that a woman cannot be a priest.

You seem in your posts when cornered ? on this one to revert to seeing gender simply as a matter of psychology (and not sex specific anyway) for which one needs merely empathic imagination for "cross over."

Firstly, you will note that I have acknowledged physical difference. I'm getting married in 2 months time - if I haven't sussed that the differences between me and 'frin aren't just psychological by now, I'm in a bit of schtuck!

Secondly, you are now misrepresenting me. You put forward this “test” to see if men and women are different. I responded by pointing out that the success of such a test was entirely dependent on your imaginative abilities, and also that the same could be said of trying to imagine being anything else. I can only respond to things you put forward, Gregory. Give me examples (like I asked you) and perhaps we can go somewhere.

In setting the task I was interested to see whether your empathy extended to sexuality. It did not, ….

So you’ve conclusively proved that Dyfrig Lewis is not very good at imagining what it’s like to be a woman. Give that man an A Level (although, as I said so myself anyway, it doesn't take a genius to have worked it out.) Thankfully, Dyfrig Lewis is not the measure of all humanity.

Anyway this sort of suggests to me that sexual organs / hormones really are just "plumbing" / chemicals in your thought have merely a physical aspect (and this is the important point) somewhat disconnected from the psychological aspects.

No, Gregory. If you bothered reading my bit on my own partial sight, you’d know that I recognised that the physical bits of us effect who “we” are. So not only does your test not help your point, you’ve also managed to draw the exact opposite of what the data I submitted in response actually said. (What is it you teach, by the way?)

You will notice that I cited an example of a successful imagining by a woman author of what it was like to be a man. This illustrates that, at an imaginative level, it is possible to understand the psychological effects of a particular physical circumstance. So I’d say that what you have is Dyfrig Lewis who cannot carry out your test very well, and Ann Michaels who can. Did this not occur to you in drawing your conclusions? What about, say, Simon Brett who wrote quite a well-presented study of the relationships between three generations of women in the radio series “After Henry”?

I have congenital cataracts, Gregory – that is, at a basic genetic level I am different from you and this manifests itself in physical difference (a growth over the ye leading to sight loss). Does that make us different ontologically?

We only know that there physical and psychological differences between men and women because they are observable – shape, bits, role in procreation, certain behaviours (we’re back to how you actually know something’s ontological nature again!) – following you reasoning about women, that upon encountering a person with a disability you will consider them to be ontologically different from you, as clearly they have physical and psychological manifestations of their disability?

I am sure that trans-sexuals are satisfied neither with adopting the right kind of genitals nor with merely "feeling" a man / woman, (no pun intended). Being a man / woman is a whole integrated package.

I am assuming this conclusion comes from first hand contact and dialogue with trans-gendered people?

So, "human beings" are expressed either as male or female.

quote:

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Originally posted by Father Gregory:
...
Maybe Cartesian dualism has created a semi-gnostic intellectualism in the west where the body and the mind inhabit diferent universes.
...

---

I could counter that you never address my point about transexuals either.

My point is simple. Being man or woman is ontologically the necessary subsistence of being human. They are not interchangeable identities ... therefore they have their own distinctive properties (not at all simply to do with "biological urges").

My point is simple. Being man or woman is ontologically the necessary subsistence of being human. They are not interchangeable identities ... therefore they have their own distinctive properties ).

Errrr.......o-kay..... I think I heard that somewhere before. Now where was it? Oh yes....

I submit that there are real embedded differences between men and women deeper than the physical

You see, Gregory, we've done that bit. We've done the "this is what I think" part - now we're into something else. As the Guidelines say "Expect to be disagreed with".

I have attempted to exchange ideas here, with you and others. Others have offered things back, and when they (cf. IanB's post and my response) I have recognised their critique and attempted further dialogue. You seem to be of the view that repeating the same thing amounts to debate.

I have asked you four times now, and Gill has asked you also, to give some justificaiton for this point of view. I don't have a problem with you expressing it, Gregory, because I know it's a very important issue and can't be dismissed out of hand. But once someone asks you to explain the why of your opinion, at least give them the due respect they deserve in this forum. Otherwise, we can only conclude that you don't have any reasons for backing it up, which makes you look rather stupid.

Remember the Councils thread? I started from a position that there was no organic link between the NT and the Councils. After you stopped being silly and actually engaged with me you persuaded me that (tho' I might disagree with you on details) your views had valid bases and had a legitimate claim to be heard.

Do you know of Orthodoxy's critique of western rapacious and our veneration of matter as a vehicle of the divine?

Do you know of our witness for the ecological revolution?

Do you know that our salvation doctrine is cosmic and anthropocentric only in so far as we are inextricably tied to and within the whole Universe?

Dualism? Female more deadly than the male? You must be joking!

Where is the feminine in spirituality?

Where is she whom even the cherubim and seraphim cannot match? (Mary of course ... no domestic woman in Orthodoxy).

Where is the conception of the Church and soul as feminine?

Where is there an attempt at sophiology that doesn't usurp christology?

Whose fathers referred to the Spirit in feminine terms, (Syriac)?

The east of course.

It is the patriarchy dominated west (more especially in Mary-marginalising Protestantism) that denied the feminine, not us.

If you don't mind me saying, us Orthodox are used to other Christians casting all sorts of heresies our way ... heresies that truly belong at their point of origin.

Look carefully your own religious traditions. When you start honouring Mary (the New Eve ... St. Irenaeus) as deeply as we do then perhaps we shall have something to share.

This is what I said to Gill ...

"I have resisted being drawn on the differences because I have usually found such arguments unhelpful. I start by saying (for example) that men judge distance better than women and women have superior linguistic ability than men and immediately we get a ding-dong between those who think that this is learned behaviour and those who think that it is an evolution thing tied up in our genes. I start off by saying that men's sexuality is different from womens and immediately we get a ding dong between those who see this as ingrained and those who think of it merely as a matter of practice and technique.

So, I wanted to flush out our feelings and beliefs on this one by asking a prior question. What is it really to be "man" ... to be "woman" ? I notice that this human ontology discomfits some contributors as much as much as ontology in another sphere ... christology ... for which there has been ample evidence on another thread."
END QUOTE

I will now go a little further ...

In what follows, I draw on this thread and the other on "priestly genitalia."

The priest at the altar must "image" Jesus since He (Christ) is the celebrating High Priest. In Catholic/Orthodox Eucharistic theology the celebrating priest is not merely a "worship leader" or a representative of Christ in the sense that an ambassador represents the Head of State. In these last two examples the gender of the representative is incidental to He/She who is represented. In the Church Christ acts through the priest who in ESSENTIAL matters (ie not Jewish or circumcised) must configure to Christ Himself.

I have tried to show that gender is an essential and not incidental aspect of our common humanity. I then went on to consider whether or not Christ could have been female. I think I showed that maleness was not incidental or accidental to the Incarnation. I then claimed that the burden of proof ... that God didn't know what He was doing or that 1st century Judaism was a defective culture for the Incarnation (by excluding women from certain functions sacred functions) or that Christ would have knowingly held back from the truth for pragmatic reasons ... this burden of proof falls on those who would ordain women to the priesthood, (and I don't mean Methodist ministers here, I mean priests).

Now, on the matter of WHY 1st century Judaism and Christ Himself did not admit women to certain sacred functions one has first to recognise that women did exercise certain ministerial functions that were to do with the Word, (analagous to Protestant conceptions of ministry ... not priesthood). So, there were women prophets (Anna), women preachers (Mary Magadalene), women religious / political leaders (Esther). In those sacred functions that have a sacramental and sacrificial quality about them though (eg. the Levitical priesthood) women were never admitted.

Now this is not just about menstruation or else post menopausal women might have been priests. It is about how in a sacramental-sacrificial system (which Protestants generally do not have) the priest images the divine action in and through him. The Jews were not blind to the fact that only God can deal with sin and the maleness of the priest that imaged this had everything to do with the fact that Israel had to be distinguished from her pagan neighbours who also had sacramental-sacrificial systems. In these, of course, fertility and not redemption was a primary theme. Not unsurprisingly this gave rise to a debased religiosity where divinity was naturalised and human sexuality divinised. Interestingly, in those sacramental-sacrificial Christian systems where the earth-feminine-mother has reasserted itself (see Rosemary Radford Ruether's "Women Church") the priesting of women (why do Christians resist the term "priestess"?) is part and parcel of a religious reconstruction in which the Universe is born out of the God/wom or Cosmic Egg.

This radical feminist agenda literally creates a new religion where "God" is stripped of transcendence and Fox-like we equate spirituality with getting better acquainted with our sensuality (sex 'n dirt school).

Protestant Christians avoid this altogether by sticking to their non-sacramental non-sacrificial practice of ministry ... but this is not the same as priesthood where the Image and the Presence are controllong factors.

The key isue then is whether there is any virtue in the sacramental-sacrificial system. There is because look what happens when you dump it. You get a cultus completely indifferent to gender which then conditions people to thinking of their own gender and sexuality as merely "plumbing" or an inconsequential aspect of their humanity. In arguing their case our Protestant brethren are arguing backwards from their own conclusions. The difference with us Orthodox and Catholics is that SEX / GENDER MATTERS.

... which brings me finally to the key issue ...

in what sense(s) does sex / gender matter?

because:-

(1) As Ian has shown the only way to be human is to be man or woman
.... as to your own example of chromosomal abnormalities .... exceptions make bad law.

(2) Mens' and womens' sexuality is different. It's not just a question of intercourse, it's to do with how we relate to each other.

(3) In religious symbolism the fertility component must be feminine and on the human side. To divinise it leads to idolatry and pagnism. That is why the role of Mary .... on the human side .... is so important in orthodox Christianity.

So Ruth, your gentle goading about "tell us the disabling differences ... anything you can do we can do ... misses the mark by a long way. There is nothing that a man could DOin priesthood or anything else that a woman couldn't DO as well if not better. Let's be clear about that . Arguments concerning female ordination from the Orthodox/Catholic side have nothing to do with function and everything to do with being man or woman, sexuality and imaging God as transcendent to the material realm.

I am sure that there will be a lot more to be said about this.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fr. Gregory:
The priest at the altar must "image" Jesus since He (Christ) is the celebrating High Priest....In the Church Christ acts through the priest who in ESSENTIAL matters (ie not Jewish or circumcised) must configure to Christ Himself.

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It is about how … the priest images the divine action in and through him … the maleness of the priest that imaged [God’s forgiveness of sin] had everything to do with the fact that Israel had to be distinguished from her pagan neighbours who also had sacramental-sacrificial systems … [The fertility aspects of neighbouring other religions] unsurprisingly this gave rise to a debased religiosity where divinity was naturalised and human sexuality divinised.

I have a problem here. Firstly, Holy Tradition teaches us (in the book of Genesis) that God created man in his own image as male and female, therefore it doesn’t seem to make sense to speak of only the male being able to “image” God in this. (And before we get into the false division between “image” and “likeness”, that is the result of a literalist thought form imposed on Hebrew poetic parallelism). I’m also concerned with the emotive language being used here – “debased” and insinuating that to be in favour of women priests you're some kind of Fox-like pagan – as you seem to be equating the priesting of women with some bizarre fertility cults.

However, let’s consider matters of more substance. Undoubtedly – as Holy Tradition teaches (in the letter to the Hebrews) Jesus is our great high priest.

But your view of both yours and Christ’s priesthood is dangerously limited and is at the very edge of the Chalcedonian definition of the God-Man. It also suggests that you have missed a fundamentl point of much of the OT priesthood.

As stated in the piece I linked to at the Assyrian Church’s website, “priesthood” is a dual role, and your focus seems to be on only one. The article refers only briefly to the priest’s representation of Christ – but deals at length with the priest being the representative of the people, acting on their behalf in the drama of the liturgy (because it would get a bit crowded if everybody was up there), expressing in his words the prayers of the whole church. It is as much about imaging the people before God as the other way around. And this is drawn straight from the OT – the priest is there to act for and on behalf of the people, bringing their sacrifices to the holy place. This is the sense in which the writer to the Hebrews describes Jesus Chrftist as our great high priest – he, fully human, is our representative before God (“we have an advocate who plead with the Father on our behalf” as St John would say in another part of Tradition). Your view of Jesus is incredibly lopsided, Gregory, in that it totally underestimates the “fully human” part. Jesus Christ, fully divine, is also the fully human response of obedience to God, the full meaning of being “Israel”, “he who struggles with God”.

For the moment let’s consider your view that a priest must be congruent with the thing that the priest is “imaging”. Fair enough. So, if God is “male”, the priest must be male. ….

So….the other half of a priest’s work, of imaging the people to God – how does this work then? The priest is not congruent with at least 50% of those he is purporting to represent, because they are fundamentally ontologically different. Oh dear. If I were ever to become a priest I couldn’t even represent the person I am marrying because we are so fundamentally different.

And it gets worse! The God-Man, being male, is not congruent with half the human population! Therefore he cannot be their priest! And as he is not congruent, what he did not assume he cannot save.

[R]adical feminist agenda literally creates a new religion where "God" is stripped of transcendence and Fox-like we equate spirituality with getting better acquainted with our sensuality (sex 'n dirt school).

Not a fan of Fox (an idiot of the highest order, as far as I’m concerned), but the first half of this sentence assumes that “male” and “transcendent” are interchangeable; the second half forgets (shame on you – was Chalcedon in vain?) that Jesus shat and pissed like the rest of us.

The difference with us Orthodox and Catholics is that SEX / GENDER MATTERS.

Of course gender matters – that’s why there are some issues that are germaine to women (e.g. cervical cancer) that are not to men. It matters at the basic level of human reproduction. But does that “matter” when we consider trying to image “God”? I remain unconvinced by your argument. Let’s see…

(1) the only way to be human is to be man or woman

Yee-ees – in the likeness of God he created them, male and female. That doesn’t help your case. What it suggests that the “male” on its own is an inadequate expression for imaging of “God”.

chromosomal abnormalities .... exceptions make bad law.

Yes, Gregory, but am I fully human?

(2) Mens' and womens' sexuality is different. It's not just a question of intercourse, it's to do with how we relate to each other.

That’s just stating the bleedin’ obvious, innit? Of course the experience differs because the external mechanisms are different. But we’re still no nearer establishing your case – as I’ve said before, my physical body, with its various imperfections, gives me a different experience from someone without those imperfections. But that’s because I’m me.

(3) In religious symbolism the fertility component must be feminine and on the human side.

Now this is interesting. Where do you get this from, sir? From Holy Tradition – oops, no because the Bible teaches us female and fertile images of God as well, and the Syrian fathers taught that the Holy Spirit was feminine (but I bet you’re not allowed to call the Spirit ”She” during a service.) So – justify this. All the other bits of your argument (the ones that don’t justify your position) you’ve explained. Now we’ve come to the actual crux, you make an unsustained statement. I repeat – in the image of God he created them, male and female. What does that tell us?

To divinise [the feminine] leads to idolatry and pagnism. So here we have it – Christianity = maleness, Paganism = femaleness. Or as they would have said at Animal Farm – one willy good, no willy bad.

That is why the role of Mary .... on the human side .... is so important in orthodox Christianity.

So are women saved because Christ or by Mary?

Arguments concerning female ordination from the Orthodox/Catholic side have nothing to do with function and everything to do with being man or woman, sexuality and imaging God as transcendent to the material realm.

Again, there is this false “transcendent=male” / “female=material” split. Other than the cultural expressions of peoples who treated women as objects rather than fully human, what is the basis for such a view?

quote:

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:

But the Ontological argument has been used to justify both. There were serious scientific texts in the 18th and 19th centuries

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quote:

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I repeat – in the image of God he created them, male and female. What does that tell us?

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That we all all have the divine spark within us and reflect a small part of the image of God. That men and women are equally valued and loved by the Lord and that we are designed to work together. Not better not worse but equal. And that That the roles that the Church expects women and men to furfill have more to do with tradition than Biblical revelation?! [I may respect your tradition but I reserve the right to disagree with it].

Sorry for the weird emphasise but if we were in the pub I'd be banging the table now.

We are going round and round and getting dizzy! You make a number of distorting responses to my post .... especially the funny Animal Farm jibe .... at no point am I indicating inferiority to the female ... but I do actually think there are problems attached to the use of the feminine pronoun. Anyway to one or two other points ...

The priest represents us to God in the context of Christ's High Priesthood? Most surely. But there again (as you infer) Christ's High Priesthood is not debilitated by his maleness ... so why should ours be?

Concerning imaging God ... you stetch my point too far. I am ONLY talking about the coherence of a male priest and Jesus in their connectedness ... I am not making a point about creation at all. A woman is fully qualified to be a bearer of the divine ... for goodness sake, the Theotokos was and you know I believe that!

So, the mystical symbolism has to do with God-language. It's NOT that God is male, it's that male language is better suited to the description of creation in montheistic theology (ie., Judaism, Christianity, Islam). Once again you try to rubbish my argument by claiming that I think that women are not worthy enough etc. etc. Nothing of the kind! The male's role is the maturation of a new individual is limited (physically) to conception. That's why, I believe, montheistic / transcendent theism prefers male language ... because you don't get the Universe as God's "body" ... whereas in those pagan religions where the feminine aspect is to the fore, you do.

There is all the difference in the world between the language and the reality. God is Himself (no apology) completely beyond agenda. You know us Orthodox types are hot on apophatic theology. So what gives?!

There is all the difference in the world between the language and the reality. God is Himself (no apology) completely beyond GENDER. You know us Orthodox types are hot on apophatic theology. So what gives?!

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Originally posted by Dyfrig:
it has nothing to do with holiness, abilities or skills, and everything to do, as far as I can tell, with mystical symbolism.

Ok, David, what does a man symbolise about God that a woman doesn't, bearing in mind their mutual God-createdness?

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(2) The tradition of male-only priests (as well as other things) partly conveys this cosmic order on a sacramental level.

I am grateful that you have now responded, and what you have said has given me a far greater appreciation of the Catholic & Orthodox arguments (as was my intention when I started the other thread - there seems little point in continuing both).

However, I still remain thoroughly unconvinced of its solidity, and some of your arguments have actually helped reinforce me in my original view. You may be going around in circles, but I am virtually where I was on the 19th of July.

I believe that you are honest when you say that you don’t intend to devalue women - however, I believe you’re also being naïve in thinking that using language as you are, assigning male and female in a "God vs. Not God" manner, can have any other effect than to promote a "Man = Male = Good" vs "Woman = Female = Not So Good", with all its consequences for male-female relations. But that is far too big an issue to get into and is probably the subject of another thread.

I shall return to something you said earlier today:

In the Church Christ acts through the priest who in ESSENTIAL matters (ie not Jewish or circumcised) must configure to Christ Himself.

(Of course, you still have to answer Alan’s query as to why certain genetic elements are considered essential whilst others aren’t).

Assuming for the moment that this is right, and assuming that we are agreed that the "God" bit of Jesus Christ, by definition, is beyond gender language and beyond "imaging" (neither a man nor a woman could do such a thing), what you are essentially saying is that this part of the priest’s role in the Church is to image the Incarnate, Jesus Christ.

Your argument is that only a man can do this, because there are certain ontological elements in maleness that require a congruence between the imagor and the imaged.

So, only a man can image the God-Man Jesus, not because a man is God-like (that would be the height - or is it the depth? - of hubris) but because he shares with Jesus an essential maleness.

I shan’t repeat my argument that the priest’s role is dual, but in response to it you said, (as you infer) Christ's High Priesthood is not debilitated by his maleness ... so why should ours be? … I am ONLY talking about the coherence of a male priest and Jesus in their connectedness ...

This is where the whole thing breaks down.

You have argued, in order to justify a male-only priesthood, that the priest must be male to represent Jesus, because of a requirement of "coherence … in their connectedness"...

However, you argue at the same time that Jesus’ and your maleness is not debilitated by … maleness", so you can represent the human female (with whom you have no ontolgocial congruence).

This becomes meaningles - because your whole premise is that women and men do not have this "coherence of connectedness" at the ontological level, therefore as a woman cannot represent the man Jesus, equally neither can you as a man represent any woman in any act. You, or I, or my vicar, simply do no have that ontological "sameness" with women about us.

So we have the curious position of you requiring congruence in maleness for one part of your role, while arguing that lack of congruence does affect the other part of your role.

I am not a logician. Neither am a scientist. And I only paddle in the shallow end of theology. But I am a lawyer - it is my ousia, if you will - and it is my job to see if words fit together, to see if they have some coherence, that they hang together in some rational order. And yours don’t. Consider a contract on the following terms:

"Clause 1: I promise to pay you £300, which is the price of two motors cars.

Clause 2: The price of two motors is £600, which is the price I will pay you."

These two clauses are contradictory. Both cannot co-exist together. A court would have to consider, bearing in mind all the facts and the intentions of the parties, which one should have effect, and which one should be struck out completely.

If you are dizzy it’s because you are spinning on the spot, trying to use one argument of neccessary congruence to justify one position, whilst using its opposite, of their being no need of congruence, to justify another.

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Arguments concerning female ordination from the Orthodox/Catholic side have nothing to do with function and everything to do with being man or woman

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Doh! I'm tired. VERY tired. And I have trawled through this thread in the hope of understanding some of it - and laughed outloud at the Orwell misquote, thanks, Dyfrig! - and have not really understood anything except that...
...I DO believe you don't mean to insult, FG, but you should try out your empathy skills here. You would discover that what you say does make me feel devalued, not to say leaving me with no hope of representation of God or TO God.

Speaking of function, how come in your church married men can be priests but not Bishops?

Is this a matter of function, modelling or yet more dubious theology?

How do married guys feel about it?

Oh, and one more thing...

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So, the mystical symbolism has to do with God-language. It's NOT that God is male, it's that male language is better suited to the description of creation in montheistic theology (ie., Judaism, Christianity, Islam).

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Oh for GOODNESS' sake! What utter crap! What the HELL is 'male language'???

As for the rest, I'm a Quaker and don't believe in ordination, or in priesthood in the sense most of you mean it. So carry on...

I have enjoyed reading this thread but I don't have much to add except that the tome seems to be headed towards Hell. Hmmmm... maybe I am oversensitive....

It's an interesting idea that a male god metaphor reminds us that creation is not God's body. That god impregnates creation rather than creation impreganting God.

It is a good resister to the "everything is god, I am god" idea I suppose.

I do wonder if our dcotrine of creation is influenced by gender ideas though. Perhaps christian doctrine says creation is not God's body because we don't really think women are very nice? Doing all their bodily pregnancy stuff.

People who write theology have always been the people who like having their noses in books and their hands clean... Combine this with the idea that we only honour ideas we can argue with logic and of these ideas we can give them more power by writing them down...

I wonder if menstruation and baby bearing has stopped women divorcing themselves from their bodies as thoroughly as we men have in our clean ivory towers...(WE don't have any nasty sticky stuff coming out of our bodies!). Just noticed how Freudian this last paragraph was... delightful!

So I guess I am in the sex and dirt camp...

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Originally posted by Ferg:
(WE don't have any nasty sticky stuff coming out of our bodies!)

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Oh, really? Never? (Sorry, couldn't resist that one!)

Fr. G: I'm with Gill on how your language makes me feel. You may not mean to devalue women, but you've certainly done so in my eyes. And the prodding was to elicit the full explanation which you have now given.

Insert the following clause at the relevant point in my last post: