Craig

Just a couple of quotes from Mark on the Sola Panel (not Mark from Cheryl’s blog) to fill you in:

First, I don’t collapse the authority of a public office into the ability to lead all kinds of people to God. People can do that very well without holding those offices.
Second, and related to that, I don’t go with the idea that maleness involves leading and femaleness submission.

Do I think women can have leadership in the church and it would benefit?  Yes.  But ‘leadership’ is not the same as ‘authority’ for me.  And you can look at Kristen’s distinction between the Father having primacy and him having authority to see something analogous on that.  Often the influential leaders in a group aren’t the ones with the authority.  The Jensen brothers senior arguably were the two most influential leaders in the Sydney Diocese when they were a rector of a parish church and the principal of Moore – of which neither position had much direct authority over how the Diocese was run. That distinction needs more attention in this debate, in my view as well.