An excellent example of fulfillment of Paul's prophecy and the coming Apostasy of False (even Vile) Teachings :
Paul predicted the “Middle Ages” and Catholic apostasy:
“But evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse: erring, and driving into error, But continue thou in those things which thou hast learned and which have been committed to thee. Knowing of whom thou hast learned them: And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures which can instruct thee to salvation by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice: That the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work. I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming and his kingdom: Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. 3:13 through 4:4, Douay Version).
Roman Catholicism Against Itself, A Compiled List of Forgeries and Frauds
The true translation of the verse into English is "All Scripture... Inspired by God... is profitable to teach, reprove, correct and instruct."
MISTRANSLATED/MISINTERPRETED into "Every scripture" to support the false doctrine of "Biblical Inerrancy" and "Infallibility of Scripture". (See the prior except posted from commentary on Bible Hub.)
But does not Paul say, in his letter to Timothy, that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God?" No, Paul does not say that. Look again at your Revised Version (2 Tim. iii.16): "Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is in righteousness." Every writing inspired of God is profitable reading. That is the whole statement.
What Did Moses Write?, biblehub.com
FABLES... FABLES... and FRAUD
"Woman is a temple built over a sewer.
–Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225)
"[Women’s] very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame.
–Saint Clement of Alexandria, Christian theologian (c150-215): Pedagogues II, 33, 2
"In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell."
–Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225): On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1
"For it is improper for a woman to speak in an assembly, no matter what she says,even if she says admirable things, or even saintly things, that is of little consequence, since they come from the mouth of a woman."
–Origen (d. 258): Fragments on First Corinthians, 74
"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman… I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children."
–Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354 – 430): De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5-9
"The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes."
–Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546), Works 12.94
"No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise."
–Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546)
"Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children."
–Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546), Table Talk
"Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one."
–Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354-430)
/EXCERPT from: Twenty Vile Quotes Against Women By Church Leaders from St. Augustine to Pat Robertson
There are many, many, MANY more FABLES taught against woman by the early church fathers. Paul taught to be on guard, and hold fast to scriptures inspired by God, and not teachings or (as Jesus condemned) traditions of men.
The False Doctrine of "Inerrancy" and "Infallibility"
Why did the United Methodist Women put up a webpage distinguishing between the Genuine Letters of Paul and the "Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral Epistles" that were not written by Paul but are in the New Testament in Paul's Name? Did Paul Want Women Silent in Church?
Compare the Active Women in the Churches in Paul's Genuine Letters (above) with the Roles of Women Described in the Pseudepigraphical Pastoral Epistles, especially 1 Timothy 2:11-13:"Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor."Scholarship May have Found a Solution to this Problem . . .
As Ehrman (p. 346) states concerning "the harsh words of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. Indeed, this passage is so similar to that of 1 Timothy 2:11-15, and so unlike what Paul says elsewhere, that many scholars are convinced that these too are words that Paul himself never wrote; rather they were later inserted into the letter of 1 Corinthians by a scribe who wanted to make Paul's views conform to those of the Pastoral epistles."
The Oppression of Women in Early Christianity: Is Paul Responsible?
Bart Ehrman - The New Testament - A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings"
From Paul's Female Colleagues to the Pastor's Intimidated Women: The Oppression of Women in Early Christianity"Women played a prominent role in the earliest Christian churches, including those associated with the apostle Paul. They served as evangelists, pastors, teachers, and prophets. Some were wealthy and provided financial support for the apostle; others served as patrons for entire churches, allowing congregations to meet in their homes and supplying them with the resources necessary for their gatherings. Some women were Paul's co-workers on the mission field. Why, then, do most people today think that all of the early Christian leaders were men?
This question has generated a number of interesting studies in recent years. Here I will present one of the persuasive perspectives that has emerged from these studies. Despite the crucial role that women played in the earliest Christian churches, by the end of the first century they faced serious opposition from those who denied their right to occupy positions of status and authority. This opposition succeeded in pressing Christian women into submission to male authority and obscured the record of their earlier involvement.WOMEN IN PAUL'S CHURCHES
Despite the impression that one might get from such ancient Christian writings as the Pastoral epistles, women were not always a silent presence in the churches. Consider Paul's letter to the Romans, in which he sends greetings to and from a number of his acquaintances (chap. 16). Although Paul does name more men than women here, the women in the church appear to be in no way inferior to their male counterparts. There is Phoebe, a deacon (or minister) in the church of Cenchreae, entrusted by Paul with the task of carrying the letter to Rome (vv. 1-2). There is Prisca, who along with her husband Aquila, is largely responsible for the Gentile mission and who supports a congregation in her own home (vv. 3-4; notice that she is named ahead of her husband). There is Mary, Paul's colleague who works among the Romans (v. 6). There are Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis, women whom Paul calls his "co-workers" for the gospel (vv. 6, 12). And there are Julia and the mother of Rufus and the sister of Nereus, all of whom appear to have a high profile in this community (vv. 13, 15). Most impressively of all, there is Junia, a woman whom Paul names as "foremost among the apostles" (v. 7). The apostolic band was evidently larger--and more inclusive than the list of twelve men of common knowledge.Other Pauline letters provide a similar impression of women's active involvement in the Christian churches. In Corinth women are full members of the body, with spiritual gifts and the right to use them. They actively participate in services of worship, praying and prophesying along-side the men (1 Cor 11:4-6). In Philippians the only two believers worth mentioning by name are two women, Euodia and Syntyche, whose dissension concerns the apostle, evidently because of their prominent standing in the community (Phil 4:2). Indeed, according to the narrative of Acts, the church in Philippi began with the conversion of Lydia, a woman of means whose entire household came to follow her lead in adopting this new faith. She was the head of her household when the apostle first met her and soon became head of the church that met in her home (Acts 16:1-15).
Even after the period of the New Testament, women continued to be prominent in churches connected with Paul. The tales connected with Thecla, recounted in Chapter 21, appear to have struck a resonant chord with such people. Here were stories of women who renounced sexual relations and thereby broke the bonds of patriarchal marriage, that is, the laws and customs that compelled them to serve the desires and dictates of their husbands. Joining the apostle, these women came to experience the freedom provided by an ascetic life dedicated to the gospel. These narratives portray Paul as one who proclaimed that the chaste will inherit the kingdom, with women in particular being drawn to his message. Even though the stories themselves are fictions, they appear to contain a germ of historical truth.
Women who were associated with Paul's churches came to renounce marriage for the sake of the gospel and attained positions of prominence in their communities. Recall that letters later written in Paul's name speak of such women and try to bring them into submission. Some of these women were "widows," that is, women who had no husband overlord (whether they had previously been married or not). Such women are said to go about telling "old wives tales" (1 Tim 4:7 and 5:13), possibly stories like The Acts of Paul and Thecla that justified their lifestyles and views. Even in writings that oppose them, such women are acknowledged to be important to the church because of their full-time ministry in its service (1 Tim 5:3-16).
There is still other evidence of women enjoying prestigious positions in churches, well into the late second century. Some of this evidence derives from Gnostic groups that claimed allegiance to Paul and that were known to have women as their leaders and spokespersons. Other evidence comes from groups associated with the prophet Montanus and his two women colleagues, Prisca and Maximillia, who had forsaken their marriages to live ascetic lives, insisting that the end of the age was near and that God had called his people to renounce all fleshly passions in preparation for the final consummation.
How is it that women attained such a high status and assumed such high levels of authority in the early Christian movement? One way to answer the question is by looking at the ministry of Jesus himself, to see whether women enjoyed a high profile from the very outset of the movement."
/EXCERPT
FABLES! So much that "...words that Paul himself never wrote were later inserted into the letter of 1 Corinthians by a scribe who wanted to make Paul's views conform to those of the Pastoral epistles."
The Gospel according to Thomas
"Simon Peter said to [the disciples]: Let Mary be excluded from among us, for she is a woman, and not worthy of Life. Jesus said: Behold I will take Mary, and make her a male, so that she may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For I tell you truly, that every female who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."Clement of Alexandria, Pedagogues II, 33, 2
With women "the very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame."Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus III
"Nor are women to be deprived of bodily exercise. But they are not to be encouraged to engage in wrestling or running, but are to exercise themselves in spinning, and weaving, and superintending the cooking if necessary. And they are, with their own hand, to fetch from the store what we require. And it is no disgrace for them to apply themselves to the mill. Nor is it a reproach to a wife--housekeeper and helpmeet--to occupy herself in cooking, so that it may be palatable to her husband. And if she shake up the couch, reach drink to her husband when thirsty, set food on the table as neatly as possible, and so give herself exercise tending to sound health, the Instructor will approve of a woman like this, who 'stretches forth her arms to useful tasks, rests her hands on the distaff, opens her hand to the pool, and extends her wrist to the beggar.'"Origen, On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1
"And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert--that is, death--even the Son of God had to die."St. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount 1, 41
"Therefore, if I were to ask any good Christian who has a wife, and even though he may still be having children by her, whether he would like to have his wife in that kingdom; mindful in any case of the promises of God, and of that life where this incorruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality; though at present hesitating from the greatness, or at least from a certain degree of love, he would reply with execration that he is strongly averse to it. Were I to ask him again, whether he would like his wife to live with him there, after the resurrection, when she had undergone that angelic change which is promised to the saints, he would reply that he desired this as strongly as he reprobated the other. Thus a good Christian is found in one and the same woman to love the creature of God, whom he desires to be transformed and renewed; but to hate the corruptible and mortal conjugal connection and sexual intercourse: i.e. to love in her what is characteristic of a human being, to hate what belongs to her as a wife."St. Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5-9
"I don't see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman was not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?"St. Augustine, Soliloq. I 10
"I consider that nothing so casts down the manly mind from its heights as the fondling of women, and those bodily contacts which belong to the married state."St. John Chrysostom
"The whole of her bodily beauty is nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum, and the fluid of digested food... If you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is merely a whitened sepulcher."St. John Chrysostom, On Priesthood, VI, ch. 8
"There are in the world a great many situations that weaken the conscientiousness of the soul. First and foremost of these is dealings with women. In his concern for the male sex, the superior may not forget the females, who need greater care precisely because of their ready inclination to sin. In this situation the evil enemy can find many ways to creep in secretly. For the eye of woman touches and disturbs our soul, and not only the eye of the unbridled woman, but that of the decent one as well."St. Jerome, Commentary on Ephesians, III ch.5
"As long as a woman is for birth and children she is different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman, and will be called man."Petrus Cantor (d. 1197)
"Consider that the most lovely woman has come into being from a foul-smelling drop of semen, then consider her midpoint, how she is a container of filth; and after that consider her end, when she will be food for worms."St. Albert the Great, Quaestiones super de animalibus XV q. 11
"Woman is less qualified [than man] for moral behavior. For the woman contains more liquid than the man, and it is a property of liquid to take things up easily and to hold onto them poorly. Liquids are easily moved, hence women are inconstant and curious. When a woman has relations with a man, she would like, as much as possible, to be lying with another man at the same time. Woman knows nothing of fidelity. Believe me, if you give her your trust, you will be disappointed. Trust an experienced teacher. For this reason prudent men share their plans and actions least of all with their wives. Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison with his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she herself cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil.... In evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good."St. Albert the Great, Quaestiones super de animalibus XVIII q.1
"The north wind strengthens the power, and the south wind weakens it... The north wind leads to the generation of males, the south wind to the generation of females, because the north wind is pure and dries out the exhalations and stimulates the natural force. But the south wind is moist and heavy with rain."St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Cor. Ch.11, lectio 2
"By taking the vow of virginity or of consecrated widowhood and thus being betrothed to Christ, they are raised to the dignity of men, through which they are freed from subordination to men and are immediately united with Christ."St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q. 92 a. 1
"Woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence, such as that of a south wind, which is moist."St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.92 a.1 reply 2
"Good order would have been wanting in the human family if some were not governed by others wiser than themselves. So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates."St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II q.149 a.4
"Sobriety is most requisite in the young and in women, because concupiscence of pleasure thrives in the young on account of the heat of youth, while in women there is not sufficient strength of mind to resist concupiscence."St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II q.70 a.3
"The reliability of a person's evidence is weakened, sometimes indeed on account of some fault of his...; sometimes, without any fault on his part, and this owing either to a defect in the reason, as in the case of children, imbeciles and women, or to personal feeling..."St. John Eudes (d. 1680)
"It is a subject of humiliation of all the mothers of the children of Adam to know that while they are with child, they carry with them an infant... who is the enemy of God, the object of his hatred and malediction, and the shrine of the demon."
A Compilation from : Statements on Women by Church Fathers, Doctors, and Saints
FABLES. and even beckons the question whether or not Homosexuality makes for better natural sense than union between man and woman! YES... ALLUDING TO HOMOSEXUALITY
AUGUSTINE: "...If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? ---> To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?"<---
"... The famous and influential theologian, Origen (c185-254) is well known for his hatred of sex and women. At the tender age of eighteen, he castrated himself in his quest to achieve Christian perfection. Origen's teaching weaved together the Christian hatred for women and abhorrence for the sexual act into one system. According to him, women are worse than animals because they are continuously full of lust. [3] Origen does not approve of the sexual act even in marriage and taught that although widowers can remarry, they are by no means crowned for this. [4]
St. Gregory of Nazianzum (329-389), the Bishop of Constantinople had this to say about women, "Fierce is the dragon and cunning the asp; But woman have the malice of both." The other St. Gregory (330-395), Bishop of Nyassa, taught that the sexual act was an outcome of the fall and that marriage is the outcome of sin. [5]
St. Ambrose (c339-397), a Doctor of the Church, and Bishop of Milan reminded believers that the way women was originally created confirms her second class status: "Remember that God took the rib out of Adam's body, not a part of his soul, to make her. She was not made in the image of God, like man." [6] Like all Christian misogynists, Ambrose glorified virginity. To him virginity was the Christian virtue. He advised that marriage was to be avoided like a burden. For those who do marry, he forbade intercourse for any other reason except the procreation of children. Naturally, Ambrose taught that old couples, in which the woman can no longer conceive, should not have sex at all."
St. Jerome (c342-420), the well known Biblical scholar and translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate) have a simple view of women. To him "woman is the root of all evil." [8] Like all the early Christian theologians, Jerome glorified virginity and looked down on marriage. He reasoning, was also rooted in Genesis: "Eve in paradise was a virgin ... understand that virginity is natural and that marriage comes after the Fall." [9] The marital act to Jerome cannot be good because it only acts as a relief valve: "Thus it must be bad to touch a woman. If indulgences is nonetheless granted to the marital act, this is only to avoid something worse. But what value can be recognized in a good that is allowed only with a view of preventing something worse?" Jerome wrote that the only good thing about marriage is that "it produces virgins." [10]
St. John Chrysostom (c347-407), Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Constantinople, said that women are, in general, "weak and flighty." He neatly put together the twin theological ideas of anti-women and anti-sex in this passage: "It does not profit a man to marry. For what is a woman but an enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic danger, delectable mischief, a fault in nature, painted with beautiful colors?" [11] To help believers overcome the temptation of women, Chrysostom devised the following description: "The whole of her body is nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum and the fluid of digested food ... If you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and the cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is only a whitened sepulchre." [12]
In a way, the previous theologians we have seen merely prepared the ground for the misogynist par excellance, St. Augustine (354-450), Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Hippo. Augustine skilfully weaved the story of The Fall with the theology of the Original Sin. The main casualty of his theology was the position of woman in Christian society.
Augustine elevated the hatred of women and sex to a level unsurpassed before. To him, women's inferiority to men was so obvious [13] that he felt that he had to ask the question: "Why was woman created at all?" [14] His own answer to this question is a fine example of Christian misogyny:
I don't see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate? [15]/EXCERPT
The Position of Women: The Teachings of the Theologians
MISOGYNIST FABLES to forge scripture in Paul's name,
The Church Fathers and the Ministry of Women
by Carolyn Osiek
from Women Priests, Arlene Swidler & Leonard Swidler (eds.), Paulist Press 1977, pp. 75-80.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions
Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ, has been Research/Resource Associate in Women’s Studies at Harvard Divinity School, where she achieved her doctorate in the field of New Testament and Christian Origins. She is Professor of New Testament at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
"...The Declaration’s interpretation of the evidence regarding the Church Fathers’ attitude to women in ministerial roles implies a number of underlying assumptions that are highly problematic. Let us consider each statement in turn.
“A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones....” The Commentary on the Vatican Declaration (par. 10) expands the interpretation: in “some heretical sects” we find “attempts” to have women exercise priestly ministry, but these are “very sporadic occurrences.” Again, the interpretation of the data is misleading. We know that the Marcionite and Montanist Churches had women in prominent ministerial roles as did many Gnostic communities. Most of the evidence for these groups comes only from the heresiologists precisely because the majority of the books and documents written by such groups perished with them in the eventual triumph of the Catholic Church as it gained political ascendancy as well as doctrinal clarity. The discovery in this century of a wealth of Gnostic literature, particularly from Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, has added much information about the theology and spirituality of communities from which it came, but very little knowledge of their ecclesiastical organization.(1) Consequently we must rely almost exclusively on the writings of their opponents for accurate information of this sort about them, and the Church Fathers who wrote polemical treatises against the “heretics” were anything but objective. One of their favorite tactics was to insinuate sexual impropriety and delusion on the part of women who exercised church leadership, exactly as does the Commentary on the Declaration by its passing statement that these “very sporadic occurrences” of women in ministry are associated with “rather questionable practices,” a suggestion which, given the tendency to rhetorical exaggeration on the part of the same heresiologists and the strong stress on sexual continence on the part of most of these “heretical” groups, is often not credible. Many Gnostic gospels were written under the authority of a woman, and some of the second-century apocryphal acts of apostles portray women as important evangelizers.(2) While such literature was long recognized as pseudepigraphical, it nevertheless shows women exercising roles which must have been credible in the Christian communities from which they came: teaching, preaching, even performing miracles.(3) We know of many women, some in traditions based on New Testament times, who were prophets and teachers in Gnostic and Montanist communities: Marcellina, Helene, Salome, Mariamne.(4)
The Declaration goes on to say that these heretical sects “entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women.” It is unclear in the Declaration itself, just as it is in most texts of the period of church history which we are considering, precisely what “priestly ministry” does and does not include. As the statement of the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the question points out (Introduction, #2), the New Testament knows no specialized office of hiereus, or priest in the later sense, and never connects authorization to perform the Eucharist with the office of apostle, bishop, or presbyter. The early Church Order known as the Didache expressly allows itinerant prophets to celebrate Eucharist in the form and wording that they wish (10.7). Ignatius of Antioch (Smyrneans 8.1) says that there can be no Eucharist without the bishop that is bebaia: reliable and, in that sense, valid or authorized. An examination of the role descriptions of ministers in the early Church reveals that attention is focused not on authority to perform the Eucharist but on authority to preach and teach, and therefore to be recognized as a teacher of sound doctrine.(5)
The Declaration notes seven texts in the Church Fathers in which information is found about the exercise of “priestly ministry” by women.(6) Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 1.13.2) describes part of the Gnostic liturgy of the Marcosians in which women offer the cup at the altar; Marcus is depicted as a charlatan and the women in question as deranged. Tertullian (De Praescriptione Haereticorum 41.5) satirizes the lightness and lack of seriousness of heretical groups by mocking their lack of structure. Another proof in his estimation of their lack of genuineness is the arrogance of their women who dare to teach, refute, exorcize, promise healing, and perhaps even baptize, No eucharistic celebration is mentioned in this passage. The letter of Firmilian recounts the tale of a woman of the generation before him who exercised prophetic powers and performed Baptism and Eucharist in the accepted way and with the correct formulae, apparently not in a heretical church but in a situation well known to the bishop. (He of course considered such liturgical actions invalid.) This occasion may be considered exceptional, but those described by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius are not; they are rather practices of long standing in some Christian communities. Origen’s remarks on 1Cor. 14:34-35 concern the right to prophesy or teach in the assembly they are directed against the Montanists’ women prophets. Epiphanius’ account of the prophecy and leadership of Priscilla and Quintilla speaks of the Montanists’ practice of admitting women “into the clergy” (en klero) as presbyters and bishops but does not specify what the offices entailed (Panarion 49.2-3). His description of the Collyridians is more specific. In this case groups of women assemble and perform priestly functions (hierourgein) in honor of the Virgin Mary (Panarion 78.2-3, 79.2-4). Of these seven references cited by the Declaration, three concern the exercise of a eucharistic function two that of baptizing, and four that of the authority to preach or teach. There is no one model of ministry used in these texts. Moreover, once we see the variety of roles included here in the exercise of priestly ministry, we must also see that it is simply not accurate to state as the Commentary does (par 10) that we know of these roles being exercised by women only from the above texts. There are other texts by some of the same authors as well as passages in Church Order collections such as the Apostolic Constitutions which condemn a woman’s right to teach, baptize, or offer Eucharist.7 The controversy over the question was more widespread than the impression left by the Declaration.
The Church Fathers and the Ministry of Women
/EXCERPT
--> "...examination of the role descriptions of ministers in the early Church reveals that attention is focused not on authority to perform the Eucharist but on authority to preach and teach, and therefore to be recognized as a teacher of sound doctrine." <--
Qualified by "virtue" of gender but not the Holy spirit. Tertullian's vindictive hatred of women sounds like "Sound Doctrine" indeed. No?
Now where within the gospels was Tertullian's fable taught by Jesus?
CONCLUSION: I love the opening chapters to the book of Genesis, because they're so much more than they seem on the surface. That period (600-300 BC) in history was a turning point, the precursor to what would become "modern science" --and sadly, the contribution of Greek thought in the opening chapters of Genesis has been avoided, missed or glossed over for centuries by theologians.
Edward T. Babinski has written numerous articles on the topic "Who wrote the books of Moses?" It's quite obvious what he's written about much of the books, written in the "Third Person" perspective bears true:
" Israelites and Canaanites. How Different Were They?" and "Who wrote the books of Moses?""...In short, the Pentateuch reads like a story "about" Moses, written in the third person, and from the point of view of later editors (as demonstrated by many little phrases scattered throughout the Pentateuch) rather than being a story written entirely by Moses. In fact, whomever wrote the Pentateuch, they did not make any great effort to disguise the fact that Moses "wrote" only select portions, not the whole books, just sections mentions within them."
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