As for the differences between a deacon and a priest, I don’t share your presuppositions about sacramental orders, which seem to come from “deeply misguided clericalism”. To me the difference is not a “qualitative” one, but simply one of what jobs in the church have been formally assigned to which people.

So there is a qualitative difference between a deacon and a priest, and at several points in the history of the church there have been orders of deaconesses, but never priestesses. This is not to say the Holy Spirit has ceased to work in the Church (although he clearly has in large parts of The Episcopal Something), I certainly hope not, but only that before we get all excited we need to ask, “What then has the Holy Spirit been doing in the Church for the last two thousand years?”

The lesson that I draw from συνιστημι δε υμιν φοιβην την αδελφην ημων is that the pastoral gifts of women have always been utilized and deeply appreciated by the Church, and it would be a grave error — and deeply misguided clericalism — to allow this debate over ordination to obscure the fact that lay women have always played an extremely important role in the life of the Church, as the most cursory glance at a Roman list of Saint’s Days demonstrates.

I have no ambition to be a “woman pastor” and I have never attended a church with a woman head pastor. I really don’t care if a denom chooses to have all male pastors. I have enjoyed, appreciated, respected, and loved the long line of male pastors of my various churches.

The only reason I started digging into this issue is- in mother bear mode – for my daughters sake (and other young ladies). My personal perspective is that biblically the only (remotely) supportable restriction upon a female church leadership role would be “the buck stops here” role…. (with the best biblical support for that being Jesus selection of the all male 12 apostles IMHO)

HOWEVER- even there- I vehemently disagree when this position is framed as a “restriction” by God imposed upon women. I would frame it as a “PROTECTION” that God put in place to spare HIS beloved daughters from the hostile treatment by people who are stuck in a fallen state with respect to their view and treatment of women.
Personally, I think a Priscilla and Aquilla/ husband wife pastoral team would be WONDERFUL, IDEAL, and entirely biblical.

My husband repeatedly painted in such broadly restrictive brush strokes “WOMEN cannot BE LEADERS” -in front of my five most precious, talented, and impressionable daughters- that I had to find out the truth and make sure to communicate the truth to them. The Truth? God calls women to be leaders. That is a FACT which is entirely and undeniably biblical and they are perfectly free to follow God where HE calls. Further, I would be very disappointed if any of my children chose to deny God’s calling for the sake of “man pleasing”

I was a homeschooler. I did it because I wanted to PROTECT my children from the evil influences of the world. I wanted to make sure that my children go to heaven, not hell.

The minute the authority of God’s Word is questioned, FEAR would arise and my ears would tightly close!

SO, IF one wants to reach an audience with comps in it, one must not EVER call into question the authority of the Bible. If it is “scholarly” to include questions about the authority of the Bible, then no wonder comps eschew the label “scholarly”.

Just my perspective, Peter.

But I am not sure this is really the comp way of arguing. When they come across an apparent contradiction like this, they tend to pick arbitrarily on the Bible verses which they do take as authoritative, because they fit their presuppositions, and make usually rather vague excuses about rejecting others which don’t fit their presuppositions.

I am reassured that you view God’s word as authoritative. I just wanted to say that I concur with your conclusion about “husband of one wife” but I approached the question with a comp style (literalist, the word) analysis and here is my logic:

Paul does not exclude female deacons (diakonos/servants/ministers).
In fact he commends Phoebe, a female deacon (diakonos, servant, minister): see Romans chapter 16 verses 1 and 27.

Therefore “husband of one wife” (“man of one woman”) cannot mean the exclusion of women from the role in question. If it did, Paul would be contradicting himself.

God’s Word does not contradict itself. Paul- under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit- would not contradict himself. Personally, I feel much safer and more confident with GOD’s own Word and Paul’s practice/interpretation of his own words rather than the way a church, interpretor, tradition, or commentary has taken them.

I know you had the above info as one little piece of your analysis… To me, the other stuff just muddies the waters, but I’m no scholar…

I think that is about all I can add to this discussion. I way over my head here, man!
Fare ye well!

I’m sorry I can’t answer everything here. I should just point out that I am not saying of Titus 2 “maybe it wasn’t written by Paul and maybe it is not “authoritative”.” I put that part into Part 5 simply to answer some objections by non-evangelicals. If they want to argue that this was not written by Paul, my response is that what matters is not authorship but that this is the authoritative Word of God.

I don’t know a lot about Vision Forum, but from what I have heard it is a destructive and racist cult which wants to reintroduce slavery. Read for example what Molly (the same one as on Complegalitarian) wrote about it some older posts on her blog. Well, I guess Jen’s story series you linked to (I have skimmed it all) also says it all, except for the racism and slavery aspects.

I just checked with my 19th century Greek dictionary, and according to that ouros “watchman” is not etymologically related to horao “see”. Note that the latter has the initial “h”, which is presumably a significant part of the difference. But I don’t know quite how they can tell, and more recent scholarship may give different answers.