Phil Mills looks to the Scriptures and to the writings of Ellen G. White for the answer to the question, “Should we ordain at all?”
Month: July 2014
NAD's cultural WO solution
Pastors Larry Kirkpatrick and Mike Lambert discuss “NAD’s cultural WO solution.” Although the North American Division has packaged the adoption of women’s ordination as being a biblical necessity, the solution they insist upon for the church is strangely identical to the one offered by Lutheran scholar John H.P. Reumann to ELCA in 1987—just three years before the original attempt by the NAD to introduce WO to the world field in 1990 GC session. The CAP pastors also discuss a most critical hermeneutical admission made by Ruemann—although one that, so far, NAD WO advocates have not acknowledged.
NAD's trajectory hermeneutic examined
The North American Division’s 248 page 2013 Theology of Ordination Study Committee Report urged that Seventh-day Adventists adopt a variety of hermeneutical innovations, among them, the “redemptive movement” or “trajectory” hermeneutic. References in the NAD document in support of these ideas included William J. Webb’s book Slaves, Women & Homosexuals. Pastors Larry Kirkpatrick and Mike Lambert share material from that book showing what happens when the people who developed it use their own “principle-based” approach on an issue like the seventh day Sabbath.
The NAD Report refers to William J. Webb’s book, Slaves, Women, & Homosexuals, in footnotes 18 and 19, and in several paragraphs in the report on pp. 26-28. The dean of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, later in the NAD Report also promotes the “redemptive movement” hermeneutic.
The Bible provides our directives, not culture
TOSC committee member Pr. Daniel Scarone discusses hermeneutics, how what the Bible does not teach is not our authority, and these things in relation to women’s ordination and the role of culture. Daniel Scarone is a pastor, an international speaker, counselor, and author of several books and many articles that have been published in the Americas and abroad.
Dr. Phil Mills, who served on the GC Theology of Ordination Study Committee, looks at whether prophets are automatically “ordained.”
Does culture drive biblical interpretation?
Theology of Ordination (TOSC) committee member David Read discusses the question, Does culture drive biblical interpretation, in relation to the question of women’s ordination. Considering first the broader culture, then the Adventist subculture, Read also discusses WO in connection with the immediately following issue—homosexuality and the church.
Ingo Sorke testimony
Ingo Sorke was born in Germany. He did not grow up a Seventh-day Adventist. At one point he began to study the Sabbath—in order to show others how wrong they were about it! You can guess the rest of the story. Sorke spent years attaining advanced degrees and today teaches theology at SWAU in Texas. Sorke was also a member of the General Conference Theology of Ordination Study Committee. In this brief video, Sorke tells something of his experience, and of his change of views about women’s ordination, as well as responding to some of the popular arguments heard on the topic.
This is a very powerful short video and in our opinion, should be circulated as widely as possible! Tell others about it. Send them a link.
NOTE: FOR A SAMPLE OF SORKE’S WORK ON THE ISSUE OF WOMEN’S ORDINATION, READ THIS STUDY: Adam, where are you? On gender relations.
Can we take 1 Timothy chapter 3 to an extreme?
TOSC committee member Eugene Prewitt Carefully considers the biblical requirement that elders be the “husand of one wife.”