Resolving the question of women’s ordination
By Many Hands
The church faces an enormously significant decision, one that above all others in our lifetime will determine its future. What will the church do about women’s ordination?
Stop, you say! How could that be such a monumental question? Aren’t there much larger issues?
There are. But women’s ordination is the linchpin-question bringing the more significant and truly fateful inquiries in its train. How this question is answered determines how much authority we grant to culture; it reveals how far we are and are not willing to go in being shaped by God’s Word; and, it brings to the front the single, most baseline of all factors: how will the acceptance of women’s ordination change how Adventists interpret Scripture?
Consider the three options the church faces in deciding how to address women’s ordination.
The first path
One path would be to follow a pro-biblical qualifications plan. That is, the Church takes a deep breath and looks to the Bible. With determination it seeks to follow the qualifications there outlined for leadership in the church. Many who have studied these issues on a Scriptural basis hold that women are not called to serve as elders or pastors leading congregations. On a biblical basis, they can not be qualified to serve in these offices.
Under this plan, women would continue to serve in many active roles in the church, but in ways harmonizing with what Scripture reveals. This would take seriously the Adventist commitment to the historical-grammatical method of biblical interpretation. It would sustain the decision concerning that method voted by the church almost 30 years ago.
The second path
Another path is to ordain women as pastors. This would change the practice which has prevailed from the beginning of this Church until now. If this path is taken, women would be ordained to lead congregations and serve as presidents over conferences, unions, and divisions. It would mean the practice of “female” headship, with the adoption of (already proposed!) systems of biblical interpretation that locate the meaning of Scripture in readers rather than the Bible itself.
The interpretation aspect is the most significant. It raises the question to a new level. Many who might have been willing to accept the practice (could a convincing biblical case for women’s ordination be made), are immovably opposed to the abandonment of the Seventh-day Adventist use of the historical-grammatical method. Make no mistake; such abandonment would be required in practice if not in word. Only by changing our approach to interpretation can a case for the practice be said to be attained via an appeal to the Bible.
The third approach
A third approach, the most dangerous of all, yet which some might deem a “moderate” path, would be to let each of the 13 divisions of the world church decide on women’s ordination for themselves. This would go further toward dissolving global unity than any other action in the past century. It would reallocate authority away from the church as a world body, to numerous theologically self-determining local regions. This decision would mark an unprecedented fracturing of the Church.
This course of action would pave the way for localized decisions in other matters including the granting of ecclesiastical legitimacy to homosexual “marriages” and the ordination of clergy engaging in same-sex activity. Many favoring women’s ordination will balk at the claim, but other churches have already traveled this path and the results are only too clear. To advance in this direction is to walk directly into that storm with eyes open to the yet more serious controversies just ahead along that road.
Furthermore, in divisions where the leaders may support women’s ordination, many pastors and other members do not. To name one example, in the North American Division where many in leadership support the change in practice, many remain sharply opposed. Many pastors in the division oppose women’s ordination as insupportable from the Bible. Many of our church members likewise oppose the practice. Letting each division decide for itself, rather than decreasing conflict, will only make it more heated.
Some practices are seen as being non-negotiable. Even if they would be permitted by Adventists in different organizational jurisdictions, that would not render these practices acceptable. If the Trans-European Division, for example, would approve same-sex unions or same-gender sexual relationships, many Seventh-day Adventists in America, Africa and elsewhere will withdraw their membership from the church so as not to be associated with that practice.
It must be pointed out that a decision to let each division choose for itself would in effect be a declaration that the world church in General Conference session now agrees that women’s ordination is not a matter involving the Scriptures but only a local, cultural concern. Such a decision would mark the catastrophic surrender of the Church to culture.
Simply put, should the church choose the pro-women’s ordination or the let-each-division-decide-for-itself pathway, it would mean material movement on those larger questions, propelling the church toward dissolution.
Canary in the coal mine
Already the Theology of Ordination Study Committee process has disclosed urgent realities. Calling on those advancing women’s ordination to explain the approach they bring to Scripture in support of the practice has been revealing. Like workers bringing along a canary with them into the coal mine and watching whether it swoons to see if life-threatening gases are present, the principles standing behind the advocacy of women’s ordination have been revealed.
The degree to which alien, non-Adventist interpretational assumptions have filtered into the church among trusted scholars is coming to light. A significant segment of Adventist scholarship has already embraced postmodern interpretational principles that contradict the Scriptural foundations upon which this Church was built.
Women’s ordination itself is not the ultimate question. This is not like questions concerning salvation, Jesus, or the Atonement. But the loudly pounding footfalls following in its train include the giant questions outlined above.
The future determined
How the church decides the question of women’s ordination at the 2015 General Conference in San Antonio will determine the Adventist future. The stakes are that high.
