tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688820610845171516.post1181389342445485837..comments2024-03-24T11:03:03.106-07:00Comments on Just Genesis : C.S. Lewis on Women PriestsAlice C. Linsleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13069827354696169270noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688820610845171516.post-17091206256805234412009-01-27T06:40:00.000-08:002009-01-27T06:40:00.000-08:00Roland, you are correct. The Priest as one who dea...Roland, you are correct. The Priest as one who deals with blood and anxiety about shed blood. So called "priestesses" were not priests at all. They were seers who pronounced oracles in a trace state, like shamans. Likewise, Shinto "priests" are also shamans as they deal with the spirits. The use of the term "priest" in both cases reveals ignorance about the difference between priests and shamans. That ignorance, unfortunately, also pervades the writings of many 20th century Christian thinkers.<BR/><BR/>What C.S. Lewis is getting at, however, is the importance of right orientation and binary distinctions. The priest stands facing East. The people are at his back, to the West. This is a critical and ancient aspect of Holy Tradition. Among Abraham's people the Sun was the emblem of the Creator. The Creator ruled the heavens, making a daily visitaion of His realm from East to West (phenomenologically speaking). In so doing, the Creator cast His glory over His lower holdings on Earth. Out of deference to the Creator, Afro-Asiatic chiefs placed their 2 wives in separate households on a North-South axis (except Lamech the Elder, who set himself up as equal to God). This means that the Christian priest stands at the sacred center between the rising of our God at His visitation and the passing of His glory over the people. All of this was tossed out in the post Vatican II liturgical "reforms".Alice C. Linsleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13069827354696169270noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-688820610845171516.post-50542648717195851862009-01-26T19:50:00.000-08:002009-01-26T19:50:00.000-08:00To us a priest is primarily a representative, a do...<I>To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is the second.</I><BR/><BR/>I'm not so sure about this. I, for one, find the first to be as big a problem as the second. When the priest is making a sacrifice to God on behalf of the people, he is engaged in an act that nearly all cultures have defined as masculine. In religions that have priestesses, the role of priestess is distinguished from that of priest, and only priests perform sacrifices.<BR/><BR/>Here is one possible explanation: In the natural human hunter-gatherer culture, men specialize in hunting. In more developed herding and agricultural cultures, killing livestock, as in animal sacrifice, is the last vestige of the natural masculine role as hunter. The Eucharist is the Christian sacrifice.Arimatheanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06783088995172601340noreply@blogger.com