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RuthM's avatar

Yesss. Something I have been thinking about in the last month or so is how easy it is to mistake good things (such as racial + economic justice and, for this post in particular, proper honoring and empowering of women) as the ultimate telos as believers. I would venture to say that while these things are important and we should be mindful of them, if we chase after these things we will miss the whole point. I think of John 15 where the impetus of the branches is to be towards the Vine, not towards the fruit. Yet if we are abiding in the Vine, the fruit will come.

These thoughts are a little more directed at the first half of your post, not so much addressing the Baptist stuff.

Thanks for always writing thought-provoking posts.

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Aaron Hann's avatar

I posted this last week in reply to an article on 1 Tim 2:11-15: “I feel out of place with the comp/egal debate because my study of John has pretty much led me to believe it’s all moot. If John’s community didn’t have any authoritative ordained teachers, then of course women can teach. Which is exactly what we see in John.”

Re: the priesthood of believers, Philip Benedict quotes Bob Scribner that it became one of the “lost doctrines of the reformation”:

“Although anticlerical sentiments gave impetus to the Reformation and although the triumph of Protestantism meant a sharp reduction in the size and legal privileges of the clergy, the Reformation emphatically did not deny the ministry all special functions and power. The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers threatened briefly to eliminate all distinctions between laypeople and clergy, but this soon became one of the "lost doctrines of the Reformation.” As soon as the upheavals of the Peasants' War showed the dangers of asserting it too blithely, the leading Reformed theologians started to insist that only trained theologians could be authoritative interpreters of the Bible.”

As an amateur historian (and a recovering presbyterian, fwiw), it seems that the tension between clericalism and anti-clericalism (understood neutrally and/or pejoratively) will continue to oscillate until Christ returns.

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