Calling for the Lord in the Priesthood Part 2

Tomoya adds to his discussion of gender and humanity this week. He presents a different approach to the ownership of the priesthood, suggesting that it needs to be stepped back from, and full ownership handed over to God rather than any humans of either gender. -Editor.

The Ripple Effects from before the Time of the Last Judgment

What the First Commandment addresses, namely the source from which truths ought to be thought of, has been one of the major pillars of inquiries in human philosophy. As a human philosophy, however, it ended up deciding that this source rested with us. Beginning with Descartes's cogito, which is our own immediate self-reflecting selfhood, we have come to see ourselves as a complete whole human based merely on our physical indivisibility, which is the smallest unit of our cogito. This idea was emphasized in the atheistic existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre in the last century, wherein we were the owner of our own existence and the power of rationality, before being defined by anything else, including the Divine. In its insistence that we must keep the ownership of our own existence, this philosophy did not allow any room for us to ever start from the Divine. So it established itself diametrically against the First Commandment; the truths must not be thought of from any other source than our own cogito.

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Calling for the Lord in the Priesthood Part 1

This week we have the first of a two part article by Tomoya. He takes a step back and looks at the question of the ordination of women by first looking at the ordination of human beings in general. -Editor.

Regarding the topic of women in the priesthood, I have read the articles and the reader comments as well as the most of the papers here in New Church Perspective. The more I read, the more I was drawn to the processes, rather than the products, of proponents’ arguments. I thought that I might be able to contribute to this topic from a different perspective, without exploring anything more about masculinity and femininity. We have seemingly exhausted what needs to be said about these, and I am convinced now that the call for women in the priesthood doesn’t even have much to do with masculinity and femininity, if none at all. Since this is a long article, I’d like to start with a synopsis.

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Care for the Morrow of the Church

Individual or group, business or church. This week Tomoya looks at what it means to be an organization—buildings, programs, and membership, or individuals, teachings, and spirit? By looking at these things together and separately Tomoya offers ideas about how to go forward with our church. -Editor

A church seems to start with simple motives in its beginning. It starts with people who read the Word and are genuinely affected by it, coming together on their own accord because of their individual longing for the Word. This longing for the Word at an individual level is what I think gives the substance to a gathering and qualifies it as a church. Everything else that might later develop and appear, such as the liturgy, membership, the organized structure, the building for gathering, social functions, evangelization, and various other programs, quantifies the church as an organization by giving it such a form. What differentiates the individual longing for the Word and the form as an organization is in the causality. The former fully defines a gathering as a church, while the latter merely invigorates and further inspires the former but without adding any substance to it on its own. In spiritual affairs, quantity does not justify quality; "more" does not reproduce "better" on its own.

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Forgiveness As a “State To Be”

Tomoya shares nuanced reflections on what forgiveness is. He contrasts the state of innate condemnation, where forgiveness is seen as a choice, with that of humility and mercy—one that offers forgiveness in all directions in the face of every possible offense. -Editor

There seem to be two different appearances to the Lord's commandments: one appears direct, literal, and countable; the other appears indirect, figurative, and uncountable. The former is likely perceived as a "choice to make," easily recognizable by others and ourselves, while the latter as a "state to be," often obscure to others and even ourselves. These appearances probably do not amount to actual differences in the commandments themselves but rather indicate differences in the recipients in their attitudes or their approaches toward the commandments. In fact, it seems that there are more of the former in the Old Testament and more of the latter in the New Testament. In this article, I’d like to contrast forgiveness in terms of these two different points of view. My attempt is to show that forgiveness is meant to develop into a "state to be" rather than to remain as a "choice to make."

A choice is a phenomenon unique to the finite. A choice is a change, which happens only within the confines of time and the appearance thereof. Inherently in it are two different states: one before it and one after it. When something presents itself as a choice to us, we are always dealing with both these two states. When forgiveness is a choice to us then, we start from a state before forgiveness, which is condemnation. And if we settle at exercising forgiveness as a mere "choice to make," we also settle at leaving condemnation untouched as a default "state to be." Forgiveness that follows thereby remains as a tool to solidify its opposite. I think that was a state this Pharisee was in with respect to the commandments in general, in this passage:

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