How do you square that with the Bible?
What is the higher law? And how can we know it?
The three sources of authority within Anglicanism (and since everybody else is, without any hint of irony, asserting what their church states as
the infallible doctrine, I'm doing so too) are Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, as a "three-legged stool" which falls if any of those legs is not upright. Reason includes the human capacity to discern the truth in both rational and intuitive ways, and that most certainly includes Scripture, which came literally billions of years after Creation and Reason had been divinely established - and was only accessible to a minority of the world's population.
However, Paul himself also speaks of several ordained women.
When? Because afaik there's no evidence of female priests or pastors in the early church. Female deacons did exist, on the other hand.
Female deacons did indeed exist (although it was controversial among some church fathers and theologians whether women could also be priests), but it was only until the 12th century that the church started saying "Don't ordain women as priests" (without implying that women never were ordained), but prior to that, theologians argued that whenever the words of consecration are recited, the consecration happens regardless of whether a man or a woman says them. (The right to consecrate the bread and the wine, however,
is the sacrament of orders for priests, according to Alexander of Hales.)
Theologically you could argue that women who were ordained and served in priestly roles and consecrated the bread and the wine weren't "actually priests", but that would be a theological argument and not a historical one.
In the 13th century, we see the rise of Aristotelian philosophy in the church, and Aristotelian biology does not take a very favorable view of women. But that, contrary to what conservative Christians might suspect, is when the debate begins to take place. Some said, "Women used to be ordained but we don't do it anymore." Some said, "Yes, we still do. Abbesses are still ordained." And some said, "Not only do we do not ordain women, but we never did." And by the end of the 13th century the latter becomes the dominant opinion.
And this is where the authors/censors of history come in: you have examples of laws that say, "Women have to stop serving at the altar." Many older laws make reference to the
presbytera (feminine word for priest) and the
diacona (feminine word for deacon). So then the church had to explain those references away, because it was never supposed to have happened.
Furthermore, my conscience not only neutrally dissents from those who forbid the ordination of women - it outright demands such ordination. I would view myself as being guilty before my mother, my female pastor, my grandmother, and many other women if I told them that I was more qualified for the priesthood than they are. Indeed, if I told my mother that, I would expect to get slapped.
I'm certainly not saying I'm more qualified than women. I'm equally unqualified as very few men are qualified to be ordained.
You are saying that, actually, as you are taking the position that women by default are wholly unqualified to be ordained. You would inherently be more qualified for ordination based on the fact that you are male, if the complementarian view is correct.
Sexism is a sin, and to partake in it on God’s behalf is the highest form of blasphemy.
I'm not partaking in sexism. The Bible is clear that men and women are equal, but it is also clear that the two sexes are not interchangeable.
Nature's pretty clear about that too. But as to whether men or women may be called to serve as priests, I think history shows that the pre-13th century church's position on that was ambiguous at best. And it's perfectly valid to question if women's exclusion from leadership roles was in fact divinely inspired in a society where men already had more rights and authority over virtually anything and everything.
