What's the big deal about women bishops?

[MrsThierryHenry]

Forgive me if this discussion's already been round the houses on MN, but I've been wondering about this for quite some time now.

Why is it that a woman can be a vicar but if she becomes a bishop it creates such a hoo-ha for some folk in the Church? I'm not even asking about whether it's deemed appropriate for women to be in leadership (as far as I'm concerned this shouldn't even be an issue worth discussing since men and women are equals).

But the bishop thing - surely it should be all or nothing? I.e if you can get onto the first rung on the ladder they should surely let you all the way up?

Properly understood, the doctrine of inerrancythe teaching that the Bible contains no errorsapplies only to the original copies of the biblical documents. The original writings came directly from God through human authors.

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic (cf. Genesis 31:46; Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Jeremiah 10:11; Daniel 2:4-7:28), and the New Testament was penned in Greek. After the Old and New Testament books were written, scribes produced and distributed copies of the original manuscripts. They took painstaking care to craft those copies by hand, long before the days of the printing press.

In God's providence, we no longer have the original documents. They disappeared over time. What we have available now are copies of those original documents--copies produced over a number of centuries. By comparing and analyzing those copies through a process called textual criticism, we are able to determine what the original manuscripts said and where variations crept into the copies. That process has confirmed that God has accurately preserved His Word for us.

I see it as if I dont believe fully then how can I take any of it as truth? How can I believe what God, the God salvation has to say, if any part of it is wrong?

It would mean that God isnt capable to save me from my sin thus rendering my faith pointless.

Re: Creationism

I'm afraid I don't have to sit here and pretend that I respect the creationist's point of view, and I certainly won't do it out of some sort of misguided political correctness. I think creationism is a frighteningly ignorant stance.

re: women bishops. I will say it again - anyone can dress it up any way they like, but there is only one reason why women don't have the same level of power or status as men in the main world religions - and that is because women don't have the same level of respect. End of.

I can assure you I am not ignorant@mrsmattie

I would never dream of getting into a slanging match on MN, especially not with someone I don't know@Lizzie. However, I do think creationism is an ignroant and presposterous stance. I think it's best to be honest about these things if one is going to discuss them at all.

MrsM- Im happy to get to know you, to discuss your views and have a grow up conversation about Christianity/why I beleive what I do but, its up to you. The offers there.

Lizzi - I guess the difference is that I don't think God wants us to believe in the Bible in the way that you consider a necessary part of your faith. I believe that God's individual relationship with us should be the main guiding factor in our lives, and that while the Bible is useful for giving a context for that relationship, it is not something in which we have to "believe" in the sense of trusting completely to its accuracy and authority. For me, that's just not what it's about.

So, I can believe completely that God is the source of everything in the universe and that by having a relationship with God I can change my attitudes to life, and will have the possibility of another life after this creation has gone. But I believe that because of my experience of relationship, not because of the words in the Bible.

It does help me to see how other people have experienced that relationship, and how God has acted to try to develop the relationship, but to me it's more like a set of detailed case-studies than an instruction book.

I respect your right to believe in it in a literal way, but I do struggle to understand how anyone can actually do that. Perhaps it's just one of those things where different people take different aspects of it, and each find their own route.

MrsMattie - I do agree that most religions, as they are practiced, do give women a lower status and less respect than men. I don't think that is what Jesus preached, but the human organisation part of religions has done that over time. Many denominations, and individuals, are trying to work through those issues and coming to conclusions which I think are more consistent with both Jesus teachings and what we strive for in society. But it is slow progress, and often very patchy.

muminscotland- I can understand where you are coming from,(to some extent) do you have any scripture to back up your thoughts? How is it you experience your relationship with christ, is it solely through prayer, or is it something else? I hope you dont think I am questioning your faith (Im genuninly interested) but what does it me to you to have a faith in christ?

I can't immediately think of any scriptures about this, but I will have a think about it!

The whole relationship thing - um, hard to describe really - I'm conscious that there is something within me which isn't actually me. So, not my own awareness or a consience or anything, but something separate which is always there. I don't necessarily think about it very often, but when I do I'm always conscious that it is there. And when I pray, I'm aware that I'm talking (silently!) to it or through it or maybe both.

That's what comes from my own experience and understanding - at the same time the Bible tells me that it is the Holy Spirit dwelling in me, and through its presence I can communicate with God.

I can talk to/through it in words, but what comes back isn't exactly verbal - usually more a sense of rightness or wrongness about things, sometimes disappointment or a bit of annoyance! Occasionally it's a lot more clear than that, with a strong awareness of something I ought to be doing, but not so often.

I always have the choice of whether to be guided by it or not, and it was my choice to give it "house-room" back when I was a teenager. I would be able to send it away if I chose to, but I can't see that happening.

I do believe what the Bible says about the Incarnation and Christ's death and resurrection making a different relationship with God possible, and I do believe that what I experience is the Holy Spirit as described in the NT.

So, for me, having faith in Christ is about believing that what God (father, son & Holy Spirit) wants for the world is right, and that I am able to be part of that in some very small way, by the choices that I am led to make.

Does that seem to make sense?

Yeah it does.

MuminScotland-

You may be interested to read these verses...

Romans 15:4
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Deuteronomy 4:2
You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Deuteronomy 12:32, Proverbs 30:6, Jeremiah 26:2 and Revelation 22:18-19

All these verses are taken from the bible and show that God meant that it wasnt open to mans interpretation.

"Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ." Romans 10:17

This is clear that out of the scriptures comes faith. How can you have faith without taking heed of the scriptures? How can you take heed of them, if you can pick-and-mix with the principles?

lou- I agree

There isn't a full canon version of the bible from original texts. The ECFs didn't have such a thing.

What we have are lots of copies of separate parts of the bible - the equivalent of photocopies of the day (but painstakingly done by hand). When you put these parts together, you have the canon agreed by the ECF in some council or other.

Scripture was not written in 21st Century English, and so we have to rely on translations. Translating Scripture is a very academic exercise, and relies on knowledge and understanding of the original languages. There is a certain amount of politics that goes into translating the bible, but I would hope that newer versions are very true to the original texts. Even lookinga at different verions, it is a very useful way to study Scripture to read the same passage in 3 or 4 different versions to give you a deeper understanding.

When reading the bible, I think it is very important to do so prayerfully and in the power of the Holy Spirit. This means that the bible can jump to life and make its meaning loud and clear.

The arguments about whether Genesis 1 is seven 24 hour periods or seven ages is really not the point. The key thing is that God created the world - not really how he did it exactly. I think Satan must have a field day when he sees us arguing about Young Earth creation vs Old Earth craetion ets. It is really missing the point entirely.

There are things that we want to know and things that we need to know. The bible tells us everything that we need to know for salvation, and we just have to let it go when it falls short of telling us everything that we want to know.

Squeakypop- I was just putting my point across about how I see what the time period was in Genesis. The was no argument. I was NOT trying to say that your salvation depends on it. I know that a friend in my church doesnt believe it but I also know that he is saved.

I do think it's very sweet of you to try to convince me to believe literally in the Bible by quoting what the Bible says on the subject.

I do take the Bible seriously, and I pay great attention to what it says. But I do not believe that every word of it is there because God put it there.

But I'll treat your chosen quotations seriously.

A number of the quotes mentioned are along the lines of "learn from the Bible, it is useful" - I don't disagree with that.

Others are "don't add your own words or take any away", which I take to mean "don't deliberately misuse the Bible to make your own points and give them extra weight" - again I agree with that sentiment.

The idea that the Bible is inspired by God depends a bit on definitions. I agree that the root "spiro" means breath, but it also means spirit. So yes you can say "God-breathed" as though that makes it word-by-word from the mouth of God. But you could equally say it is something which is prompted by the workings of the spirit within us, which is expressed via human understanding.

"Theologians speak of inspiration as the mysterious process by which God worked through the authors of Scripture to produce inerrant and divinely authoritative writings." - I'll allow you "some theologians" believe this, but many do not. There are a great many liberal theologians who don't think anything remotely like this.

MumInScotland-

I would agree that you need the holy sprit inside you giving you guidance on the word of God. (John 16:13)

Would you disagree with

1 Thessalonians 2:13 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.

Every translation is an interpretation. There are many places where a decision has to be made by the translators as to how a word or phrase will be rendered. How they do this depends on their interpretation of the texts.

I've just finished a degree at an evangelical Bible college and am in the end further from taking every word literally that I was before. There is so much historical/linguistic/contextual/cultural data which has to be taken into account in every translation.

If you beleive it is literal and you have to accept all of it - do you own a slave? Do you refuse to sit on the same bed as your husband when you have your period? Etc etc etc ....

I am very much an evangelical "bible-believing" Christian, and yet I also accept evolution and a 4 billion year old earth. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are written in a well recognised for of ancient Hebrew - poetic language only used otherwise in the apocalyptic literature of Daniel and Ezekiel and in Song of Songs. I would say you can take every line of the creation account literally when you are also prepared to take every line of SoS literally as well adn apply it to your life - because they are the same form of language.

I am of the opinion that the Bible is authoitative. But that doesn't mean I have to check my brain out every time I read it - quite the opposite in fact!

With regrads to Leviticus 15:24-33 It is Gods way of showing the Israelites that in order to show everyone that they were his choosen people they have to be clean, pure and holy. But I dont need to follow this law as God sent Jesus to die on the cross for my sins inorder to make me sanctified (Romans 6:22)Just like I dont need to offer scrifices anymore.

I'd say with all the quotations from the Bible that there is a question of what the writers meant exactly by the Word of God - they can't have meant the entire Bible, since it hadn't all been written and agreed yet.

I think in most of the Epistles at least, they are talking about the oral preaching and teaching which they had given the new churches. So this was not just words written down on paper once for all time, it was words coming directly from the teacher to the new Christians, almost certainly tailored to their circumstances to help them understand, and probably including a chance for questions and answers to deal with anything they struggled with.

So, rather than these quotations being about static written words, they are more about learning from those who have more experience, and who are speaking with promptings from the Holy Spirit.

Like weegiemum, I think there is so much historical/linguistic/contextual/cultural data, not just when the passages are translated but also in why and how they were written in the first place, that you simply can't say "I'm going to take it all literally" as if it was all one single piece of writing which was meant to be read in that way.

muminscotland-

Re one of your last post, I dont know what else to quote you apart from the bible. Without this book your nor I would have a faith. So if I cant quote it what can I?

Your right you have to look into every piece of text and look at what it meant at the time it was written re post to weegimum. So there are certain parts of the bible that dont apply to me, but this does not make the wrong, nor inacturate, nor does this not make it a 'God-Breathed' book.

I can find no writter of the bible to claim that they are not writting the words go God, in fact quite the opposite.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on this point

Oh I agree, we'll certainly have to disagree on this! It's just such a basic part of why Christians reach such different conclusions about issues like women bishops or homosexuality that I feel compelled to try to explain why I (and many others) can't simply say "It's wrong because the Bible says so"

But LizziAndB, you do follow parts of the OT. How do you decide which bits of the Old Covenant do and don't apply to you? You probably aren't one of several wives. You don't have a slave. You don't worry about the dietary laws. But I bet there are other bits that you do keep - the Sabbath? The 10 Commandments (though Jesus did endorse some of those, so I expect that's your argument).

You haven't answered how you read Genesis as literal ie 6 day creation, and Song of Songs as allegorical?

I'd be interested to know which version of the Bible you treat as authoratitave. If I have learned anything at college, it has been that they are all different - you get different meanings in the NIV, RSV, KJV (which, to many scholars today is regarded as little more than a paraphrase). You have to pick one and stick to it is you are going to be consistent.

My view of Scripture. I believe it is "inspired". But that doesn't mean that I think every word was dictated to the writers. I think the Bible can show up human frailty (like Paul's misogyny). I don't believe every word is literally true, though I probably believe that about most of it.

The 6 day creation myth, the flood etc are just too close to other cultic thinking in the ancient near east and further afield for me to accept it as literal truth. I think the proper "history" part of it starts with Abraham (based on linguistic style).

MuminScotland - I agree. There is just too much baggage in all kinds of writing to take it all as literal face value. Tbh, I think Biblical literalism is a cop-out.

I'm also in Scotland!

Weegiemum - I'm interested in what college you were at, and whether they were generally in agreement with the conclusions you've reached or if you reached them "in spite of" their teaching. I've tended to think of anything described as a "bible college" as being very fundamentalist/literal, but "theological college" as more open and critical. But maybe I've been unfair in my prejudices