The church stands under the authority of the sufficient and perspicuous Scriptures, and if a church starts to disobey these Scriptures, it must be rebuked, and if it persists, it must be rejected. May God give us the courage to stand up for the truth, the humility to recognize our failings, and the resolve to correct them in a spirit of repentance.

Introduction
The error of women’s ordination has stalked, cursed, and haunted Anglicanism for nearly half a century and no matter where we go or what efforts we make to correct our wrongs, we cannot seem to fully rid ourselves of it. For many conservative Anglicans, women’s ordination is like the relative you cannot stand but have to put up with because no matter what they will be coming to every family gathering. However, I believe that if we follow Scripture faithfully and assent to the Anglican Formularies, then women’s ordination cannot be tolerated; it must instead be rebuked, and every effort must be made to eradicate it from the church before it is too late.
1. The Church Is Bound to Scripture
In the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article XX says that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written.” The use of the word “ordain” here seems rather providential, as it was the Anglican Communion’s decision to “ordain” woman as Priests and Bishops, despite the fact that Scripture forbids such a thing, that helped bring about its demise. There is no need to explain at length how Scripture prohibits women from ordained Church leadership, simply quoting a few passages will suffice:
Man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. (1 Cor 11:8‒10)
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor 14:33‒35)
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Tim 2:11‒14)
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife. (1 Tim 3:1‒2)
Of course, egalitarian Biblical scholars will try to overturn these passages by appealing to others that are all vague and have nothing to do with the issue at hand. Article XX condemns this very method, saying “neither may [the church] so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.” When egalitarian scholars bring up Aquila and Priscilla’s explaining of the “way of God more accurately” to Apollos (Acts 18:26) or the possibility that St Paul might have called a Junia an “apostle”[1] (Rom 16:7), in order to undermine the clear and explicit teachings of these passages above, they are making some parts of Scripture repugnant to others.
Moreover, the claim that these passages are so mysterious that they cannot be understood without the esoteric and sometimes even Gnostic[2] insights of Biblical scholars also undermines the qualities of sufficiency and perspicuity which the Formularies attribute to Scripture:
In holy Scripture is fully contained what we ought to do, and what to eschew… We may learn also in these Books to know God’s will and pleasure, as much as (for this present time) is convenient for us to know… Although many things in the Scripture be spoken in obscure mysteries, yet there is nothing spoken under dark mysteries in one place, but the self-same thing in other places, is spoken more familiarly and plainly, to the capacity both of learned and unlearned. (A Fruitful Exhortation to the reading and knowledge of holy Scripture)
The passages quoted above (1 Cor 11:8‒10, 14:33‒35; 1 Tim 2:11‒14; 3:1‒2) are without question the ones that speak to women in church leadership the most clearly and directly. Therefore, to undermine their meaning being sufficiently known from a plain sense reading, or to use obscure passages to make those clear passages unclear, is to go against the hermeneutic given to us by the Anglican Formularies. Following this Anglican hermeneutic, we must conclude that Scripture forbids women to preach and teach the word in church or to have authority over a congregation. Since these duties are essential parts of a Priest’s vocation, we must as Anglicans who assent to Article XX deem it unlawful for churches to ordain women to the Priesthood.
It must also be said that there is no sense in which the Anglican Formularies themselves could be understood to have an egalitarian reading of Scripture. It is true that the Formularies nowhere explicitly forbid women from being ordained, but this is simply because the idea of that happening was unthinkable to their writers. However, the Ordinal assumes that a “man” is the one being ordained and patriarchal gender roles are taught throughout the Formularies. The BCP’s Solemnization of Matrimony directs the bride to vow to “obey, serve, and honour” her husband, and the Homily of the State of Matrimony says “wives must obey their husband and perform subjection… God hath commanded that ye should acknowledge the authority of the husband and refer to him the honour of obedience.” The Homily goes on to say that a woman must cover her head in church to signify that “she is under obedience of her husband, and to declare her subjection.” It thus seems very implausible that the writers of the Formularies would be happy to know that in the future women would be ordained as Priests and Bishops within the Church some of them died to defend. Some Anglican Divines did, however, speak against the possibility of such a thing happening. The great Anglican Divine, Richard Hooker, made the throwaway comment that “to make women teachers in the house of God were a gross absurdity,”[3] and the Bishop and Martyr John Hooper said “the preaching of the word is not the office of a woman, no more is the ministration of the sacraments.”[4]
While it is clear that the Formularies rule out the possibility of allowing women to become church leaders, one could of course argue (and some have argued) that since they never spoke directly to the issue it must not be an important one. This is to ascribe the quality of sufficiency to something that is not Scripture. The writers of the Formularies were not blessed with the ability to foresee the future, and the Formularies were not inspired to sufficiently touch on all matters of later importance. However, the Ordinal tells us that the Priesthood is so “weighty an office” and so “great a treasure” that an “horrible punishment will ensue” if it is misused (cf. James 3:1) This is because, being “Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord,” a Priest’s office is “appointed for the Salvation of mankind,” and therefore to distort it is a serious offense.
Returning to Scripture, after St Paul tells us that women cannot speak in church (1 Cor 14:34), he says that “what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command” and that it is given so that “everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (1 Cor 14:37‒39). Because the church is called to worship God “in Spirit and truth” (John 4:23), God takes our worship very seriously, and He demands that our worship be conducted in an orderly fashion. This is why Nadab and Abihu’s offering of “strange fire” to the Lord led to Him incinerating them (Lev 10:1‒2). It is precisely because of how God has ordered the sexes (rather than cultural concerns) that women cannot teach in church (1 Tim 2:13; cf. 1 Cor 11:8‒9), and so the ordination of women to a position of authority God forbids them from having is to have worship be led in a disordered way. If God was enraged by the offering of strange fire, or the fact that it was not the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant (1 Chron 15:2, 12‒13), He will surely be enraged when people He has forbidden from leadership lead the congregation in offering to Him the remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharist. We must then ask what this means for churches that ordain women, and whether it makes them run the risk of losing their lampstands (Rev 2:5), to answer that question we need to turn to the Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost.
2. The Marks of a True and False Church
The Homily identifies three marks that define “the true church,” which are “pure and sound doctrine, the Sacraments ministered according to Christ’s holy institution, and the right use of Ecclesiastical discipline.” The error of women’s ordination concerns all three of those marks. To say a woman can be a Priest is to make a doctrinal statement about not just spiritual leadership and the Priesthood, but also the church itself, and the very nature of gender and humanity. To ordain women to preside over and lead Holy Communion, directly affects the administration of the Sacraments. And finally, to allow women to violate God’s commandment that women shall not “teach or have authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:12) is to fail to exercise proper discipline, and to in fact encourage this sin on an institutional level is to fall under God’s condemnation, as we see happen in Isaiah 3:10‒14. Right away then, the Homily’s vision of a true church does not seem to perfectly resemble the churches who ordain women.
The only example the Homily provides of a false church is Rome, which it says is “so far wide from the nature of the true Church, that nothing can be more.” The reason why Rome is labelled as a false church is—it is claimed—because they have not followed the Scriptures in their doctrines, administration of the Sacraments, or discipline, but have “so intermingled their own traditions and inventions, by chopping and changing, by adding and plucking away, that now they may seem to be converted into a new guise.” And what is women’s ordination but the introduction of a man-made—or rather, a feminist-made—tradition and invention into the church? What is it but the chopping and changing of the passages we looked at above? The Homily claims that if a church follows “their own decrees before the express word of God… they are not of Christ,” and what is the ordination of women but the disobeying of God’s explicit commandments in order to follow the decrees of feminism?
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When someone loses a loved one, do they get calls and cards of sympathy? Are meals prepared and baby-sitting provided when someone gets sick? When someone loses a job, do people in the church help them find a new one? When someone stops attending church, do they get calls from concerned members who miss them? This is the kind of thing that Jesus is talking about when he speaks about doing the things the church did at the beginning. Jesus is not asking us to make superficial demonstrations of emotion. Jesus is talking about genuine love which manifests itself in action. By doing these things, the church is able to contend against false teachers and the poisonous cloud of suspicion, judgmentalism, and acrimony will be wonderfully dissipated by acts of mercy and charity.

The Lord of His Churches Addresses the Ephesians
Jesus Christ is the Lord of his church. He walks among the seven lampstands and holds the seven stars in his hand. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. He is alive forevermore and holds in his hands the keys of death and Hades. Jesus Christ is our great high priest who has freed us from our sins through the shedding of his own blood. He has made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve his God and father. That same Jesus now comes to us with words of exhortation and rebuke found in the seven letters addressed to the churches of Asia Minor.
In the opening section of the Book of Revelation (chapters 2-3) we find seven letters which were originally addressed to the seven churches scattered throughout Asia Minor (Turkey) and to whom John is sending this circular letter we now know as the Book of Revelation. The letters to the seven churches are part of a larger vision which begins in Revelation 1:12 and which continues on to the end of chapter 3. But before we go any farther, it is important to put these letters in their proper context in order to interpret them correctly.
Context of the Seven Letters
Although a number of commentators believe these letters represent seven consecutive periods in church history–the Ephesian era being the first, the Laodician being the last–it is much better to see these churches as historical Christian congregations facing horrible persecution at the hands of the pagan Roman empire, in addition to struggling with heretical teaching arising from within. Throughout the Book of Revelation, the number seven represents completeness and perfection. The letters to the “seven” churches means these letters and situations they describe are representative of the whole of Christ’s church throughout the ages. The issues these Christians faced in the first century are the very much the same issues we face in the twenty-first.
It is important to keep in mind the unique literary style of the Book of Revelation as we work our way through John’s visions. As Dennis Johnson points out in his excellent commentary (Triumph of the Lamb), each of these visions serve as a different camera angle as the redemptive drama unfolds during the course of this present evil age. Each vision focuses upon a particular aspect of the struggle between Christ and Satan during the last days and the great tribulation, which is the entire period of time between the first advent and second coming of Jesus Christ.
Symbolism Drawn from the Old Testament
Throughout these visions, John uses apocalyptic language in which symbols serve as word pictures of the cosmic struggle between Jesus Christ and his already defeated but ever defiant foe, the devil. John uses symbols such as lampstands, stars and keys, as well as certain numbers, such as “seven,” to point us to the realities which these symbols represent. This means that the symbols used in apocalyptic literature are not to be taken literally, as can be seen by the description of Jesus Christ which opens this vision in verses 12-20 (“The Alpha and the Omega” (Letters to the Seven Churches — Part One).
In order to correctly understand the meaning of these symbols we must look to the Old Testament from where they are drawn, as well as to the first century Roman empire, which serves as the historical backdrop against which the struggles these symbols portray is played out. For example, in these letters to the seven churches, John will refer to the historical circumstances faced by the Christians of first century Asia Minor. But John will frame these historical issues in the context of a greater struggle in which apocalyptic symbols are used to point us beyond Asia Minor and the Roman Empire of the first century to the struggles we currently face in our own day and age. The Christ of the seven churches of Asia Minor is the same Christ who wins the great victory over Satan and all those allied with him. The Christ of the first century church is the Christ of the twenty-first century church. The Christ who walks among the lampstands of the seven churches in Asia Minor, is the same Christ who walks among us when his people assemble for worship wherever they may be.
Before we look at the first of these seven letters–the letter written to the church in Ephesus–there are several things which can be said about these letters in general and which we should keep in mind. To begin with, it is vital that we connect the seven letters to the Christ who is ever-present in his church. This particular vision begins with John’s vision of the resurrected Christ recounted in verses 12-16 of chapter 1.

In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

All of the images John uses are drawn directly from the Old Testament and it is pointless to try and interpret these things literally as some medieval artists attempted to do in woodcuts and paintings, or in comic style today. When Jesus is described as being like a “son of man,” John reveals to us the true meaning of Daniel 7 and the everlasting kingdom of which Daniel had been speaking. When John speaks of Jesus with a long robe and golden sash, he is telling us that Jesus is the great high priest. When we hear that his head and hair are white, we see the reflected glory of the Ancient of Days. When Jesus’ feet glow like a furnace we should think of his purifying power. His voice, being like that of rushing water, means that his word is the Word of God. When Jesus speaks all creation must listen, for his testimony is true.
Furthermore, the lampstands are symbolic of God’s Holy Spirit, present in the churches, and who, through these lampstands, reminds us of the church’s function to be light-bearers to a fallen world. In Exodus 25:31, Moses describes in great detail how a golden lampstand with seven lamps is to be constructed for use in the tabernacle and then later in the temple. Even in Israel’s days in the wilderness, God was revealing his presence with his people through his Holy Spirit, to which the gold lampstand with seven lamps symbolically pointed. And now in John’s vision the same symbol appears again, only this time we are told of its true significance. Where the lampstand is present, Jesus is present. Where Jesus is present the Holy Spirit is present. And where the Holy Spirit is present, the church brings God’s light to the world around it which lives in darkness.
The Present and the Future
In verse 19, John is commanded by the Lord to write, “the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.” Some have argued that this statement is the interpretative key to the whole book, dividing things into the past (what you have seen), the present (what is now), and the future (what will take place later). But a number of commentators have pointed out that the correct division here is actually two-fold. John is commanded to write about what he has seen, things present and things future.[1] Since John has already told us in verse 1 that the things about to be revealed concern events which are soon to take place, it makes a great deal of sense to understand that John will discuss things that now are–i.e., the issues facing the seven churches to which he is writing, and then later–beginning in Revelation 4:1,where he will address things which are yet to take place in the future course of redemptive history until Christ’s second coming.
But there is something else we must consider. Jesus addresses seven historical churches in these letters. But when he addresses them, he also addresses us, promising blessing for obedience and threatening curse for disobedience. Yes, these are real imperatives which we must heed. But like all imperatives in the New Testament, they must be seen in the light of the indicatives (promises) which precede them.
The City of Ephesus
With these things in mind, we turn to Revelation 2:1-7 and Christ’s letter to the church in Ephesus. It might be helpful to know a bit about the city of Ephesus and the church which was founded there in the early 50’s of the first century. The city of Ephesus was famous throughout the ancient world for its temple dedicated to Diana (Artemis). In Acts 19, we read of Paul’s two years spent in the city which came to an end after certain Jews tried to exorcise a demon in the name of Jesus, only to have the demon possessed-man turn on them and beat them to a pulp (Acts 19:11-20). As a result of this incident, there were so many occultists in the area who came to faith in Jesus Christ that it was not long before those making a living selling religious trinkets associated with Diana worship and the temple began to see their formerly thriving businesses dry up.
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Written by Samuel D. James |
Sunday, April 10, 2022
As Christians remind each other of the gospel, we will build in one another the capacity for richer joys, deeper identity, and lasting meaning that digital technology promises but never delivers. The permanence of the gospel, revealed in a book, proclaimed by a community, and demonstrated through love, is more than enough ballast for screen-weary souls.

Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception tells a story about a technology called “dream-sharing,” invented at some indeterminate point in the future, that allows participants to enter into one another’s dreams via their subconscious. The main character, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, assembles a team of dream “hackers” to invade the mind of a billionaire business heir and convince his subconscious to break up his father’s commercial empire. In one of the film’s mostly subtly metaphorical scenes, the team visits a chemist who can make an especially potent sedative to allow for vivid and prolonged dream-sharing. The chemist takes the team downstairs, where they’re led to a dimly lit room where dozens of people are sleeping, connecting to dream sharing devices. The chemist explains that these people come to spend hours every day dreaming together, as their subconscious selves construct an alternative life in their dreams. Stunned, the team asks, “They come here to fall asleep?” “No,” the chemist replies. “They come here to wake up.” The dream has become their reality.
There are no real-world dream sharing devices, but there is one real-world technology that connects billions of people in a dream-reality: the Internet.
As Carl Trueman brilliantly lays out in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, expressive individualism has its origins in a complex collision of history, philosophy, and politics. Today, however, the most powerful vehicle for shaping people in its image is not the classroom or Supreme Court, but the Internet. To see this more clearly, we need to think of the Internet less as a singular tool or hobby, and more like what it is now: an immersive epistemological habitat in which hundreds of millions of people have regular, active membership. The Internet has transformed the way humans read, learn, communicate, labor, shop, recreate, and even “worship.” No other technology is as disruptive to traditional forms of human activity.
Membership in the online commons has formative effects on us, just like membership in a local church. The liturgies of assembled, embodied, gospel worship point us toward one set of beliefs and values, while the liturgies of Internet membership point us toward a different set.
While secular technology critics have been talking this way about digital life for a while, Christians largely have not. Instead, we’ve focused not on the form of the Internet, but on its content, encouraging one another to avoid pornography, slander, and envy on the various website and social media platforms we navigate daily. This encouragement is good and necessary, but much more is needed. Pastors and church leaders in particular need to see online technologies as powerful instruments of personal formation that push us in a certain spiritual and epistemological direction.
Before going further, we should take careful note of something important. The Bible’s vision of human flourishing as divine image-bearers and Christ-followers is a deeply analog vision. By this I mean that Scripture both assumes and prescribes doctrines, attitudes, and practices that are tied to our embodied, physical existence. For one thing, Christians believe that divine revelation is expressed in a physical book, the Bible, and that this book features language with objective meaning.[1] Further, the very first thing we learn from the Bible about ourselves is that we are created in the image of God, male and female. This means that our fundamental identity as people is tied to our bodies. God creates physical image-bearers who have embodied sexual identities, and in submission to God these image-bearers come together to marry, make love, and bear children that fill the earth (with their physical selves) and subdue it. Family is not an abstract concept, but a flesh-and-blood institution that is ordered according to real, embodied persons.
The Internet, by contrast, is radically disembodied. To be online is, in a very real sense, to escape the givenness of created existence. The social critic Laurence Scott writes:
If our bodies have traditionally provided the basic outline of our presence in the world, then we can’t enter a networked environment, in which we present ourselves in multiple places at once, without rethinking the scope and limits of embodiment. While we sit next to one person, smiling through a screen at someone else, our thoughts, our visions, our offhand and heartfelt declarations materialise in the fragments in one another’s pockets. It’s astonishing to think how in the last twenty years the limits and coherence of our bodies have been so radically redefined.[2]
The Internet’s disembodied, “fragmented” character is not merely interesting trivia. It is a massively important part of the way being online shapes our beliefs, intuitions, and habits.
Consider now three distinct “digital liturgies” that shape all of us in the image of the disembodied Internet.[3]

“My Story, My Truth”

Online technology’s flattening, democratizing character means that the most valuable social currency is not expertise, wisdom, or character, but story. When a truth claim goes up against a narrative, the narrative wins every time. Personal experience is the authoritative norm in digital discourse, and in many cases no amount of evidence or argument can trump it. To suggest that someone’s story may be relevant but not necessarily authoritative is often seen as a grossly unacceptable attack on their personhood.
The power of individual story to provide justification for desires and thwart any criticism is powerfully evident to Gen-Z. In her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, journalist Abigail Shrier describes how large and growing numbers of teen and preteen Americans are learning to question their given gender through transgendered influencers, particularly on YouTube, Reddit, and Tumblr.
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