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Priesthood
Forgive my nuber of posts. I'm doing a lot of research and have many questions. Red the scripture below:
Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their
children and their own houses well.” (1 Tim 3:8-9,12)
I see two ways of inturpreting this. One being the popular that deacons must never have been divorced or two that a deacon only have one wife.
I know the second sounds wierd but I know in the old times many would have many wives. I understood it as that one of many wives could not be a deacon because his time would be occupied by a large family and therefor should not sacrifice his time with his family.
Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their
children and their own houses well.” (1 Tim 3:8-9,12)
I see two ways of inturpreting this. One being the popular that deacons must never have been divorced or two that a deacon only have one wife.
I know the second sounds wierd but I know in the old times many would have many wives. I understood it as that one of many wives could not be a deacon because his time would be occupied by a large family and therefor should not sacrifice his time with his family.
Comments
In our church, there are 5 ranks of deaconship: chanter, reader, subdeacon, full-deacon, archdeacon. Being a full deacon is what this verse refers to. The rule in our Church is, if a person is married when he is ordained as a deaon (or higher rank, like a priest) He cannot remarry even if his wife died (where for regular laity is a valid reason for remarriage). And if he persists on getting married, he would have to give up that rank (deacon) to be married again.
Whenever you are a convert or even as a believer who is baptized......through your confession/repentance and faith, you are made a new person. you die with Christ and rise alive with Him. In this case, you are allowed to get married. This is an issue towards divorce thoo.....what does it have to do with Priesthood?
Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their
children and their own houses well.” (1 Tim 3:8-9,12)
In our church it is a little different. We don't have much full deacons considering that you can just make them priests. I would say it would take many years though. Also the process of ordaining priests is not written on stone tablets. yes there are set rules for that we follow, but there is also a huge gap for other things to consider for a congregation to choose or the bishop to choose for someone to become a priest. I am saying this because it is not as organized as other orthodox churches were those who want to become priests just go to the seminary, study and then just be sent to a church to serve in.
Please pm Fr. Peter for him to confirm what i have said.
I don't think so. As Mina said, once you are baptized, you are made a new person. If you were divorced before baptism, I believe you can still become a deacon/priest after you convert.
I am not a deacon or well educated, so I may be wrong.
ILSM (ilovesaintmark) is the deacon guru on this site, I would ask him.
to be a priest the following has to happen:
u have to be male.
u have to be an orthodox Christian.
if u are going to get married, u have to do this before u are a priest (priests can never marry, and married priests can never remarry, even if their wife dies).
if u r not going to get married, u could theoretically be a celibate priest (have taken lifelong vow of celibacy but not all the vows of monasticism) or a monk.
and, most importantly, someone (like an old uncle in the church or a priest or bishop) has to recommend u for being a priest. then the bishop has to agree and recommend u for service. u can't just become a priest because u want to.
priests are expected to know lots and lots about the Bible and about church history and also of course all the liturgy and lots of things about giving people good spiritual advice, but this is not formally assessed. we have some priests who have no formal theological training. one priest i know gave up a good career (studied at degree level and had other qualifications) to become a priest. he is very knowledgeable about theology, very caring, a natural leader and pastor, always welcoming newcomers (before he was a priest), always serving (cleaning up, taking care of people, doing menial tasks) and being very humble before he was chosen to be a priest.
so when his consecration was announced in church, no one was very surprised. (i assume his close friends knew about it, but most people didn't know before).
having said that, u can also have a theological qualification and become a priest. but it does not qualify u by itself.
so all potential priests need to start working on their character and spiritual life many years in advance!
:)
Hopefully Fr. Peter will clear things for us!
In Christ
My priest said to me that I was the priest of my house. So I guess that I am supposed to take on that type of role when dealing with the things that happen in our house. I see it only one part of the structure. If that was one, then the next would be our church, and the next the Coptic Othodox Church as the bride of Christ, and finally Heaven.
Doesn’t a priest/deacon have to be a virgin before his wedding? i.e. a virgin between his baptism and wedding. This is written in the church canons. I understand the verse “Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, …” (1 Tim 3:12) to mean not only that a deacon can’t remarry but also that he can only sleep with only one person (his wife) after his baptism.
Hopefully Fr. Peter will clear things for us!
In Christ
don't repentence and confession make the adulterers virgins?!
St. Paul was a murderer--he was party to the murder of St. Stephen.
St. Peter denied Our Lord three times, in essence a prouncement of heresy.
So people can do bad things, and be absolved from them, and become great Apostles for the Gospel of the Lord.
As for issues pertaining to entering the different ranks of service, they are treated on a case by case basis. There is no blanket answer. Each bishop has to make judgment relative to a given candidate. Some bishops will interpret any of the scenarios relative to the person persenting for a given vocation. The bishop must assess the aspects of that person.
If one divorces his wife, having carried any rank of the church, they should be summarily removed from the given rank.
As to factors prior to ordination, there has to be a review of the situation along with the originating (prior church affiliation). There are signed protocols and agreements between the different Apostolic Churches in terms of dealing with such matters.