Pastor Weedon writes:
One of us has the truth of the matter, which alone is God-pleasing and revealed. The other has human opinion.
And Pastor Charlton writes:
Both can be wrong. Both can't be right.
Peter writes:
The ELCA has taken the side of novelty and innovation.
I comment, first to Peter:
Thanks for ignoring and dismissing all our theology and prayer and discussion and calling our view mere "novelty and innovation." You keep finding new ways to insult us.
To Pastor Weedon and Pastor Charlton, Hogwash to both comments.
Pastor Weedon, perhaps the Church was right to order an all-male priesthood for all those years. Perhaps that was “revealed”. Is it ever possible that “more” can be “revealed”?
Pastor Charlton, are all theological concepts totally universal and eternal? Can the Spirit not guide the church in different ways in different times or different places? The date of Easter controversies come to mind, the time when Christians were excommunicated for not observing Easter on the “right” day. Or the Synod of Whitby in 664 which imposed the “Roman” way of computing the date for Easter on the Irish and Britons?
Now: Dare I play with speculation concerning The Spirit?
“Well, here are all these Christians passionate about a male-only clergy,” thinks The Spirit. “They’ve got a lot of history and some quirky theology behind them, but it would be a whopping can of worms opened to make a fast change.”
The Spirit takes another sip of chamomile tea. “Then, we’ve got these Protestants and others just tearing along, with some trendy theology and after only a couple-hundred years of discussion, ordaining women right and left. Bishops even! It’s not doing any real harm and is actually doing some good in some places for some people. I don’t like the rift between those two groups, but losing those ELCA folks would be bad for the Church, and making those LCMS people put women in their pulpits would probably be bad for their churches and the Church. They will both overstate their positions, but let Us let them both continue with Our blessing. There’s time to find ways to bring them together.”
See. Both can be right.