In December an important announcement was made by Amazing Facts. A book on Women’s Ordination published only weeks earlier was being released in electronic format for free distribution. Women’s Ordination, 31 Popular Arguments and Biblical Answers, is a short and sharable book by Eugene Prewitt that can be read in a couple hours and that has already turned the tide in minds of some who had been favoring the Ordination of woman. Prewitt is a member of the Theology of Ordination Study Committee.
Here are the links to ebooks in three of the more popular formats:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63487945/EB-WOe.epub
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63487945/EB-WOm.mobi
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63487945/Women%27s%20Ordination%20Text.pdf
Category: OrdinationTruth.com
By Many Hands
(ABOVE: Current ELCA presiding bishop Elizabeth Eaton December 5, 2013.)
(ABOVE: Matthew C. Harrison, August 29, 2009, commenting on the ECLA vote. “We must be willing to confess our dogma. We must be willing to confess Scripture, no matter what the world presses upon us.” Harrison is co-editor of the book Women Pastors? The Ordination of Women in Lutheran Perspective. He became LCMS president July 13, 2010.)
Although OrdinationTruth.com is especially focused on the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in order to keep church members informed, from time to time we share notes on the historical development of current Adventist problems as seen in other Christian groups. Often certain challenges that find their way to the front in the Adventist Church are seen in other groups many years beforehand.
The Lutheran Church is “ahead” of us on the questions of women’s ordination and homosexuality. Here’s a short sketch.
The whole sequence of events proceeded thus. In the 1960’s the evolutionary approach to creation was adopted by the LCA (Lutheran Church of America). In 1970 the denomination voted to ordain women pastors.
The actual step in the LCA permitting the ordination of women was quite simple. At the biennial convention at Minneapolis, as part of the report of the Commission on the Comprehensive Study of the Doctrine of the Ministry, it was recommended that in church bylaws the word ‘man’ in defining ‘a minister of this church’ be changed to ‘person.’ Shortly after 10 P.M. on June 29, 1970, the item was adopted ‘with a resounding voice vote,’ one delegate (a woman) asking to have her negative recorded. Appropriate changes were made in other church documents, and the first woman ordained, a campus pastor, on November 22, 1970″ (John H.P. Reumann, Ministries Examined (1987), p. 122).
No doubt the whole purpose behind the Comprehensive Study document was to introduce the change in wording from “male” to “person.” From the vote in June until the first female ordination on November 22, just 116 days passed.
In 1971 J.A.O. Preuss II was elected president of LCMS (Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod) which had been friendly with LCA. Controversy within LCMS exploded in the mid-1970s resulting in the removal from Concordia Theological Seminary of professors who practiced the Historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. The LCMS is the largest Lutheran body rejecting the ordination of women.
Reumann’s book quoted above advocates women’s ordination. Reumann was full-on historical-critical. He admits,
To begin with the Old Testament, with 1 Corinthians 14, or 1 Timothy 2, can lead only to the exclusion of women from ordained ministry. . . On the other hand, if one begins with Galatians 3:27-28, a case is possible that women should share equally with men in the church’s Ministry (Ibid., p. 117).
The LCA agreed to unite with the ALC and the AELC (which withdrawn from Missouri Synod in 1982) and the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) was thus formed in 1988. Twenty-one years later the ELCA assembly voted to approve same-sex marriage and the ordination of practicing homosexuals. That action was taken on the basis of a ten year “sociological study” of human sexuality, not on the basis of a biblical study. It was all possible because of a gradual erosion of sola scriptura and the inevitable hermeneutic that followed—most of which had developed virtually unperceived by the laity.
On August 21, 2009, the ELCA Assembly in Minneapolis voted to permit congregations to call and ordain gays and lesbians “in committed monogamous relationships” to serve as clergy. Voting 559 to 451, delegates declared that persons in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships” could serve as ministers. The decision was not made binding for all ELCA Congregations.
Since then, the ELCA has lost more than 1000 congregations and at least a half-million members—approximately a fifth of its total membership. According to public figures, the ELCA budget stood at 88 million in 2005. The budget of the ELCA in 2011 was 48 million dollars.
(ABOVE: Then ELCA presiding bishop Mark Hanson announces ELCA downsizing October 15, 2010. The is the same person who officiates at the installation of practicing homosexual Guy Erwin in the video link later in this article.)
These links show ELCA membership trends both before and after the 2009 decision:
http://www.jakebouma.com/a-look-at-the-declining-membership-of-the-elca/
http://juicyecumenism.com/2013/08/14/always-declining-the-evangelical-lutheran-church-in-americas-stillborn-quarter-century-of-existence/
While some 1000 congregations have left the ELCA, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Synod have benefited from new members and congregations. Additionally, two newer groups have sprung up including many former ELCA congregations. The LCMC is the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ have gained some 500 new congregations in America since the 2009 ELCA decision. The NALC (North American Lutheran Church) was formed in 2010, and now numbers more than 350 congregations. Several other ELCA Lutherans have left it because of these developments and, almost unbelievably, joined the Roman Catholic Church (which rejects the ordination of women and homosexuals). A cursory search across the internet reveals that many ELCA members have left and joined the Roman Catholic Church as well.
But nothing stands still. The Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin on May 31, 2013 became the first practicing homosexual man to be chosen bishop in the ELCA. He was elected to a six year term as bishop of Southwest California Synod. (Video of Erwin’s “installation.”)
On August 14, 2013 the ELCA elected its first female world church leader, the Elizabeth Eaton. Eaton appeals to her church in the short 1:14 minute message linked above.
One last item. The ELCA is also part of the 70 million member Lutheran World Federation. The LWF offers a remarkable 44 page book for free download entitled Gender Justice Policy, which focuses on quotas for women in leadership in the church, enforcement, and well as hermeneutical approaches. The book is fairly slow in the early pages, but eventually begins to read somewhat similarly to the hermeneutics section of the NAD Report. For a hint on what’s planned, see the LWF Gender Justice Policy introduction video.
We would like to make it clear that LCMS, WELS, and the newer Lutheran bodies mentioned above have chosen not to ordain women, nor do they accept same-sex marriages nor ordain practicing homosexual clergy. The key difference between the two groups of Lutheran bodies is exactly in their systems of biblical interpretation. The Lutheran bodies which do not ordain women or favor homosexuality, employ the historical-grammatical method; those Lutheran bodies which ordain women and which accept the practice of homosexuality, favor critically-based methods.
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Biblical Interpretation Biblical Research Institute Clinton Wahlen Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Culturally driven Darius Jankiewicz E.D. Hirsch Feminist Theology Hermeneutic of Suspicion Historical-Critical Method Historical-grammatical method Lake Union Conference (LUC) Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Postmodernism Principle-based Historical-cultural Method Reader-response criticism Rio Document 1986 Seventh-day Adventist Church Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
Hermeneutics and Scripture in the 21st Century
Earlier this year we reported that the Lake Union had held a prayerful discussion on the matter of women’s ordination and had chosen rather than to move into a position of opposition to the Church, to work with the Church with reference to this topic. Among the presentations at the Lake Union was “Hermeneutics and Scripture in the 21st Century,” by Clinton Wahlen.
Wahlen points out how methods of interpreting Scripture continue to adjust and modify. The use of the historical-critical method has waned but a new focus has arisen. This new focus moves away from locating meaning in the text of Scripture and places meaning instead in the reader. It is fascinating that, while this material was presented nearly a year ago, reader-response criticism forms a central part of the NAD’s “new” proposed women’s ordination hermeneutic released last month (NAD Report, pp. 23-31). The NAD Report actually critiques the Church’s 1986 “Methods of Bible Study” (Rio) document for lacking this emphasis. However, we agree with Wahlen who warns in this paper, “…all of these methods [“literary ” and reader-focused”] as classically defined employ a critical approach to the text ‘which subordinates the Bible to human reason’ and should therefore be ‘unacceptable’ to Seventh-day Adventists, as the 1986 ‘Methods of Bible Study’ document voted in Annual Council has made clear” (“Hermeneutics and Scripture in the Twenty-First Century,” p. 1). The paper by Wahlen linked above provides important background for those who peruse the NAD Report.
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1 Peter 1 Timothy Acts Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) Culturally driven Dueteronomy Ellen G. White Exodus Genesis Louis R Torres Male-sex specific roles Mike Lambert Numbers Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Priesthood of all believers Seventh-day Adventist Church Titus Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
Biblical Sacredness of Ordination
Louis R. Torres shares an extended study on ordination and its biblical sacredness, and how the question pertains to women’s ordination. Pastor Torres has a long history of service and soul-winning in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Appended to the article is an extended section addressing many questions relating to Ellen White materials on ordination. FIND IT HERE!
Categories
Church governance Church Manual Council of Adventist Pastors (CAP) delegated authority Doctrine of the Church Doctrine of Unity E-60 Gary Patterson General Conference General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio General Conference Working Policy Insubordination NAD Working Policy Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Unilateral Action Unity Utrecht General Conference Session 1995 Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
Questions & Answers regarding current issues of unity facing the Church
Last year a document was released that quite succinctly answered some of the key questions in the present controversy over unity and the ordination of women. That document was titled Questions & Answers Regarding Current Issues of Unity Facing the Church. We reproduce this document here in hopes of lending it wider circulation. This document was subtitled, “A response by the General Conference Officers and Division Presidents” (i.e., the top 25 world leaders of the Adventist Church).
We also remind visitors to this site that CAP has made available a document summarizing developments of the past five years titled E-60 and the WO Endgame, which is also quite useful in understanding these developments. Finally, a third document addresses similar policy questions as the above and may be helpful. That document is titled Church policy, Church unity, and Women’s Ordination.
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Trans-European Division seeks WO
The Trans-European Division at its 2013 Year-end Meeting made several recommendations connected with the issue of Women’s Ordination. Among its recommendations to the world church: “Removing the intricate differences between various levels of ministry, such as the licensed and ordained minister, the licensed minister and the ordained local church elder, the pastor and the local church elder,” that the Church “remove all gender distinctions in its Working Policy related to the ministry,” that “unions, whose constituency meetings in session have voted approval and whose division committee has voted approval, be allowed to maintain an inclusive pastoral ministry which removes all gender distinctions within the work of the church in that union territory,” “recommend that the ritualistic and consecrational flavour of the act of ordination, its vague mixture of granting the Holy Spirit or gifts for ministry and ecclesiastical authority be radically toned done and removed from policy and practice,” recommends “that the imposition of hands be an optional part of the ceremony,” and asks that the church “separate Ordination from Election to an Organisational Office of Leadership.” An article reporting more fully can be found here:
http://www.ted-adventist.org/news/ted-executive-committee-recommends-inclusive-ministry-without-gender-distinctions
A committee in the Division has been at work on these issues for 19 months. Over the coming months TED has plans to offer well over 1,000 pages of material they hope will support these ideas and others. The TED report is by far the legthiest to be sent to the GC Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC). TED is also the smallest of the 13 world divisions in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, having some 84,000 members.
Categories
East-Central Africa Division (ECD) Euro-Asia Division (ESD) General Conference General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio Inter-American Division (IAD) Inter-European Division (IED) Inter-European Division (IED) North American Division (NAD) Northern Asia-Pacific Division (NSD) OrdinationTruth.com Seventh-day Adventist Church South Africa-Indian Ocean Division (SID) South American Division (SAD) South Pacific Division (SPD) Southern Asia Division (SUD) Southern Asia-Pacific Division (SSD) Trans-European Division (TED) West-Central Africa Division (WAD)
SDA Divisions comparison
The following tabulation lists each of the 13 current divisions which make up the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The leftmost column indicates the basic favoring/opposing Women’s Ordination position of their biblical research committee and 2013 division Year-end Meeting vote. In reading the actual completed reports which are now becoming available, we note that in several cases the response is not purely yes/no. Our heart goes out to these Adventists from round the globe who have labored with these issues, and we cherish the thought that they will pardon us for the inevitable simplification in reducing their reports to raw yes/no answers. Every division has been asked to give input to the General Conference TOSC (Theology of Ordination Study Committee). Remember, there is no necessary direct correlation between the view of the broader membership of a division, the views of its administrators, and the vote of its study committee. There is, however, a correlation between the membership of a Division and the number of delegates that shall be sent to the 2015 General Conference Session in San Antonio. While this list does not include an estimate of the regular delegates to come from each division, it suggests something about the relative delegate count and of the possible direction they could be coming from when vote is taken concerning the ordination question.
WO DIV MEMBERSHIP NAME ===================================================== No ECD 2,704,468 East-Central Africa Division No ESD 120,351 Euro-Asia Division Indt IAD 3,612,480 Inter-American Division Indt IED 177,902 Inter-European Division Yes NAD 1,135,233 North American Division Yes NSD 661,652 Northern Asia-Pacific Division No SAD 2,101,991 South American Division No SID 3,062,672 South Africa-Indian Ocean Division Yes SPD 423,891 South Pacific Division No SSD 1,175,324 Southern Asia-Pacific Division* Indt SUD 1,607,108 Southern Asia Division Yes TED 84,093 Trans-European Division No WAD 866,254 West-Central Africa Division
No = No Yes = Yes Indt = Indeterminate
*This is a close call. The SSD BRC recommendation is more indeterminate, but the decided majority was “no,” often by approximately a 2 to 1 margin in the eight votes recorded by the committee at the end. In all cases, we encourage readers seeking more exact data to read the actual reports on the Adventistarchives.org website.
Last updated: 2014-01-31 06:27Z
Categories
1 Corinthians 1 Timothy Biblical Interpretation Clinton Wahlen Complimentarian Deborah Distinct roles Doctrine of Unity Edwin E. Reynolds General Conference Session 2015 San Antonio Genesis Headship Historical-grammatical method NAD TOSC Minority Report NAD TOSC Report NAD Year-end Meeting North American Division (NAD) Ordination Without Regard to Gender OrdinationTruth.com Principle-based Historical-cultural Method Rio Document 1986 Seventh-day Adventist Church Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) Women in Ministry Women's Ordination
NAD Minority Report
It may appear to the world church that the North American Division is immovably united in favor of Women’s Ordination. This is far from the case. Many Adventists in the small towns surrounding our universities in North America do favor Women’s Ordination. There are a few geographical locations like Southern California, Western Oregon, and parts of Ohio, where this is also the case. However, it is probably still true that the majority of Adventists in North America are not committed to Women’s Ordination. Many oppose it on serious biblical grounds.
Many NAD administrators and scholars seem in favor. But not all. For example, Edwin E. Reynolds teaches in the religion department at Southern Adventist University. Clinton Wahlen is an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute. Both are members in the North American Division and were among those selected to engage in study on behalf of the North American Division Theology of Ordination Study Committee. They have prepared a powerful study in which they dissent from the Majority report. This material is included as part of the NAD Report released on November 2, 2013. We have made available in the following link the full North American Division Theology of Ordination Study Committee Minority Report.
http://ordinationtruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/nad-ordination-14-minority.pdf
In the report, Reynolds and Wahlen point in particular to the central issue of interpretive method. “The current divergence in views on the subject of women’s ordination is due in part to different understandings of the nature of Scripture and how it should be interpreted. . . Some advocate an approach that takes into account the ‘trajectory’ of Scripture. . . extrapolated so that the trajectory beyond and outside of Scripture can be seen. . . such an approach, even though it might broadly affirm the Bible’s inspiration, nevertheless undermines it by characterizing selected portions of Scripture as time- and culture-bound and, therefore, tinged with the author’s prejudicial views on such topics, rather than God’s thoughts which are valid for all places and all time” (p. 195). The authors are concerned about this approach, and warn, “it is one thing to study the historical-cultural backgrounds to enlighten our understanding of the setting in which the text was written; it is another thing altogether to suggest that the text was culturally conditioned and that, therefore, a trajectory beyond the text must be constructed for our current, more enlightened age” (pp. 196, 197).
Reynolds and Wahlen look closely at passages like Genesis two, Deborah in Judges, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11, among others. They conclude that “ordaining women represents a significant departure from the biblical model” (p. 207). And, they warn that “To follow the Bible model on the issue of women’s ordination will require courage like that of our pioneers. Nevertheless, it is the only basis on which we can expect to maintain global unity, receive God’s continued blessing, and, most importantly, anticipate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to finish His work” (p. 208).
Among the varied studies produced on Women’s Ordination in the past five years in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, few illuminate so much in so compact a space as this document. The Council of Adventist Pastors encourages all to read the NAD Theology of Ordination Study Committee Report Minority Report.
With Year-end Meetings occurring in the 13 divisions across the world field, the reports of each division are being received by those divisions in preparation to be passed to the GC Theology of Ordination Study Committee. These reports are scheduled to be presented to TOSC in January 2014.
The South Pacific Division, which includes Australia and many other units in the South Pacific region, has received its Biblical Research Committee report favoring Women’s Ordination. More information, as well as a six-page summary of their work, can be found here:
http://record.net.au/items/spd-recommends-womens-ordination.
The report that follows was made public today (November 12, 2013) by the Inter-European Division. While we do not concur with the decision of their study committee, we share their news release here as pertinent to the the chief topic we have been investigating.
Madrid, Spain [Corrado Cozzi]. The Inter-European Division will recommend to the Seventh-day Adventist world church’s Theology of Ordination Study Committee that there is room for the church to ordain women to pastoral ministry.
The recommendation follows study of the papers presented at the division’s Biblical Research Committee [BRC] as well as those prepared for the Theology of Ordination Study Committee this year from January 15 to 17 and July 22 to 24.
The process is part of the world church’s ongoing study of the theology of ordination, which was first established at the denomination’s General Conference Session in 2010. Each of the Adventist Church’s 13 world divisions is preparing its own report, and world church officials have promised to bring back a compiled report to the 2015 General Conference Session.
The Inter-European Division’s recommendation stems from several points:
- The Bible does not specifically define what ordination for
pastoral ministry is.- There are no direct statements in the Bible either commanding or
prohibiting women’s ordination.- As the church felt free to develop its organizational structure
to further its mission based on biblical principles, division BRC
members consider ordination not as a doctrinal or biblical issue, but something that must be handled at an administrative level.- There are no clear biblical principles that would require or
guide the application of the principle of headship in the family or the church.- The Old Testament priesthood has its fulfillment in the unique
priesthood of Christ, which is the basis for the priesthood of all
believers.- BRC members were unclear over why ordination requires a
differentiation between genders that doesn’t exist in other levels of ministry or service, such as teachers, deacons, prophets and leaders.
Based on the report of the Biblical Research Committee, the Executive Committee of the Inter-European Division recommends the ordination of women to pastoral ministry, taking into consideration the possibility of applying it according to the needs of the fields (http://eud.adventist.org/news/detail/date/2013/11/12/inter-european-division-will-recommend-that-there-is-room-for-womens-ordination/, accessed 2013-11-12).
The decision was made at the Division’s 2013 Year-end Meeting. The Inter-European Division is one of 13 Divisions which make up the world-wide Seventh-day Adventist Church. There are nearly 18 million members of the church. Inter-European Division has approximately 178,000 members. It is composed of the Austrian, Bulgarian, Czecho-Slovakian, Franco-Belgian, Italian, North German, Portuguese, Romanian, South German, Spanish, and Swiss Unions.